mediterranean mood

I´d like to believe that I most often cook what I crave but seeing my latest posts and even if I look back a bit longer, I see that what I cook often depends on available ingredients. What I mean, is that cooking for one often leaves me with leftover ingredients and it develops into a chain.

In my last post I cooked the lamb tagine, so I needed dates. Of course I couldn't use up all the dates in the tagine so I found a desert that used mainly dates, the stuffed dates. To be able to make the stuffed dates I needed pistachios that came in a package of 400g that left me with a few handfuls of pistachios that needed to be used.

This last week I have been leafing through Cucina Siciliana ( see my previous post on this book) by Clarissa Hyman as I have booked a trip to Sicily and I was about to plan which places to visit and there I saw these wonderfully grass green lamb chops with pistachio pesto. They were quick and easy to make, flavourful and colorful, especially if you like pink lamb chops. Of course I couldn´t resist to make some tzatziki on the side and they went very well together. Don´t be misled by the name Pistachio Pesto because this dish has very little with the well known pesto to do. Here we are talking about a paste made of chopped or ground pistachios, breadcrumbs, lemon zest and olive oil that you spread on the chops one minute before they are ready.

The tzatziki doesn´t need any presentation I guess, it´s Greek yogurt, grated cucumber, garlic, dill and a little lemon juice. You can add mint too, but I prefer it without.

filled dadels -in moroccan mood

After finishing The Caliph´s house by Tahir Shah I went straight to my laptop and started searching for cheap airline tickets to Marrakech. I was spellbound by the thousand-and-one-night atmosphere in the book for more then a week, but finding the prices far too high for me, I eventually realized that the closest I´ll come to Morocco this year will be a bowl of tagine and some strong, sweet peppermint tea.

Since my mother was visiting, I chose to cook her favourite tagine with shallots and dates from Hilaire Walden´s The Moroccan Collection.

Having bought a whole box of "fresh dates" (fresh dates from a box?? I don´t think so, but that´s what the label said) I wanted to use up the rest so they wouldn´t go all dry on me. I recalled having seen a recipe for stuffed dates in my new Middle Eastern book called Orient - food and culture . I really love this book, it´s both beautiful and informative but I haven´t cooked anything from it before now, so I was happy to finally start using it.

beautiful color!!! - ground pistachios

I thought this would be awfully sweet but to my surprise it was edible-sweet and went perfectly with the peppermint tea. The filling is made of ground pistachios, butter, icing sugar and rosewater, so obviously this is not a low-carb or low-fat recipe :)

Filled dadles
serves 4

12 large dadles
50g butter, melted
1/2tsp rose water
100ml chopped pistachios (used a kitchen aid)
4tbsp confectioners sugar
1tbsp chopped pistachios for decoration
if it's too thick, add water

gooseberry tart

It´s not like I´ve taken an oath to produce tart tarts solely from now on, I promise you this was only a coincidence. I craved something summery for my afternoon tea but didn´t have any other summer fruit but a litre of red gooseberries in the freezer. I have been looking for a recipe to use them for quite a time now, but I couldn´t really find anything that appealed to me. When searching in my Hungarian cookbooks I found a sauce that goes well with rich steaks and the Swedish cookbooks "promoted"recipes for stewed gooseberry purée served with milk for breakfast. I found a recipe for clafoutis in Nigella´s How To Be A Domestic Goddess but I craved something more substantial so I decided to make a tart.



I made a shortcrust pastry with

300ml of flour

1 egg

1 tbs sugar and

150g butter

Let rest in the fridge for about 1 hour. I knew about the gooseberry elderflower combination but I wanted to try something new, so I surfed the web in English, Swedish and Hungarian but found very little. There was a recipe where cinnamon was used, then another one with lemon zest but then that was about it. I decided to use Nigella´s idea from her clafoutis recipe (the orange flower water) and the lemon zest, just because I absolutely love the flavour.

I baked the pastry shell for 15 minutes on 225C degrees then filled it with the

gooseberries (1 litre)

sprinkled 100ml sugar

1 tbs potato starch

some vanilla sugar

few sprinklings of lemon zest and

1 tbs of orange flower water over the fruit.

(You could also stew the fruit first by crushing the gooseberries and cook i´t with the other ingredients for a few minutes) but I like a bit texture, so I just used the raw fruit.)

I baked it for another 25 minutes and served it with Greek yogurt (yes, I know, I use Greek yogurt to everything but it actually went very well with this tart). You can serve it with cream, custard or like Delia Smith, with a nice elderflower ice cream.

Note: I couldn´t wait for the tart to cool completely but I would advise you to make your very best and wait, because my second slice tasted so much better! It really makes a difference. The tart was perfectly sweet-and-sour, if you like rhubarb you will love gooseberries. I couldn´t taste the orange flower water at all but the lemon zest complemented the gooseberries perfectly. This time I only used 1 tbs of orange flower water as I didn´t want my tart to taste soapy, but I´ll might give it another try with at least 2 tsp next time. Also I can imagine using orange zest, it should be delicious.

I made myself a nice cup of tea on my new PG loose tea that I bought yesterday at the English shop and I was happy and contented for the rest of my Sunday afternoon :)

tart leek tart

The next recipe that I´ve tried from Twelve was this Leek Tart. It sounded delicious on reading through it as it contains several of my favourite ingredients in food: booze (this time white wine :D), nutmeg, parmesan and cream. Oh, and of course our main character: leek! I was really looking forward to this treat and even "Feng-shui"d it a bit: I put two pastry hearts on top to attract The Knight.

Well, after tasting it I realized that this tart tart won´t attract any Knight if they have the same palate as I :) The wine and nutmeg didn´t harmonize with the leek, I can´t say why but it just didn´t taste good. It tasted as if it has turned sour. I won´t give a recipe for this one as I don´t feel I can recommend it, but if you are brave enough or just want to give it a chance and cook it anyway, it would be nice to hear another opinion. Also, if anyone has a tried and tested leek tart recipe, would you please share it with me?

Oh, and another thing! I am sooooo happy that I finally have Tamasin Day Lewis´ West of Ireland Summers- Recipes and Memories from an Irish Childhood ! I have been on the hunt for this book for at least two years but couldn´t find it for a reasonable price. It is out of print and on Amazon there are three copies right now for £42 and four copies for £118,48!!!!! Crazy people... I happened to check in last Saturday and found a copy for £10, bought it the same second and yesterday the book has moved into my bookshelf :)

lamb stew with egg and lemon sauce

It started with a friend not wanting her copy of World Food Cafe, because it was the English edition and she wanted it in Swedish. I offered her a swap, she kind of liked Tessa Kiros´ Twelve and I have only cooked from it once (the plum cake) and wasn´t too satisfied. The book simply never inspired me (before!!) opposed to her Falling Cloudberries that I adore. My friends said she will think about it and tell me the next day, so that night I went to bed with Twelve.

Needless to say, I have leafed through this book several times before, but now that I was about to "loose" it, I suddenly found more than a few recipes that looked interesting that I somehow have missed before. (The Lemon Tart, Ricotta Tart, Apricot Ice Cream, Leek Tart, Chicken in Lemon, Green Nettle Frittata and the Green Nettle Gnocchi are on my "to try" list now)

I have asked for recipe recommendations from this book before, both on n.com and Vi´s, but nobody seemed to have cooked that much from it. For those of you who don´t have the book, the photography and layout is beautiful, as all of her books´. It is called Twelve because it is divided in twelve chapters, one for each month, so in a way it is seasonal cooking, although it doesn´t translate well to Sweden...we are a bit late up here :) There is also a chapter called The store cupboard with tips on useful ingredients, then Wine notes (unfortunately totally wasted on me) and my favourite: Basics. In Basics you find recipes for fresh pasta, white country-style bread, anchovy sauce, Béchamel, Ragù, Pasta brisée, Crème anglaise and mascarpone cream.
There is a short chatty-informative intro to each month, although it becomes a bit qualmish from time to time - in true Tessa style. (sorry! but thankfully that doesn´t affect her recipes)

So today I made the Agnello in Fricassea -lamb stew with lemon and egg sauce and although it´s not a good-looking dish and therefore not a first choice blogging stuff, I just couldn't not share it with you. Very often when I try new dishes, they are nice, they are OK, but they are very seldom fantastic. Well, this one is. Fantastic. If you like lamb, I urge you to try it.

My first thought when I saw the egg and lemon sauce was the Greek Avgolemono but this was a Tuscan cookbook ?! As Tessa mentions in the introduction of the recipe the sauce is a popular Mediterranean feature, so that explains the usage of it.

The recipe calls for rosemary that I didn´t have, I just threw it out the other day, as it seemed to have caught some strange disease just a few days after I bought it. So instead of the rosemary I used thyme and Greek oregano that I bought on Alonnisos last summer. I made another minor adjustment, I added a few lemon rinds because I love the citrusy freshness it gives to the dish. I used more spring onions and also bayleaf.

If I were to grade this dish, I would give it a ten out of ten.




Lamb stew with egg and lemon sauce
serves 2

about 500-600g shoulder or leg of lamb trimmed and cut into chunks
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 pinch of dried oregano
1 pinch of dried thyme
2 bay leaves
80 ml of white wine (or more ;P)
350ml water
1 egg
juice of 1 lemon (I used 1/2 lemon 1/2 lime)
2 tbsp of chopped parsley

Heat olive oil, brown lamb on all sides. Add spring onions and sauté for a little longer.
Add herbs and season with salt and pepper. Pour in the wine and cook until it has evaporated then add the warm water and cook for 45-60 minutes until the lamb is very tender. Add more hot water if necessary so that you have about 250ml of sauce in the pan at all times.

Lightly whip the egg in a bowl, add a little of the hot sauce from the pan to the eggs and whisk to prevent them from scrambling. Whisk in the lemon juice.
Make sure the lamb is on a very low heat when you add the egg mixture to the pan, very slowly, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon. Heat through for a couple of minutes carefully not cooking the egg. Remove from heat, stir in the parsley and serve.

I have also made the Tiramisu from the same book, but no photos or verdict yet because it is still in the fridge.

Shall I add that my friend haven´t mention the swap yet and even if she will, it´s too late now. The deal is off :D This recipe alone makes it worth owning this book and of course I am hoping for more fabulous discoveries.

Update: here is the Tiramisu made from Twelve. Delicious! The only change I made was that I was using STROH rum instead of the Marsala and I must say I prefer this dessert with the rum. Also I couldn´t find Mascarpone, so I used homemade Mascarpone from Ursula Ferrigno´s book Trattoria.

greek food

Just a short note about a new blog I found the other day, called Greek Food. Most of you know about my almost-obsession about Greece and Greek food, so I was more then happy when I saw that this blog unites many of the elements I love: food with recipes, family stories, history of food and mythology of course!

I have a few previous posts about Greek food, but I look forward to cook more of that, gaining inspiration from Sam, the host over at Greek Food. So if you, like me, like Greek food, then you will absolutely like Greek Food (I know, that last sentence became more twisted then usual) :D

the cutest general store on my beloved Alonnisos