Get Me To The Greek – Spanakopita – Daring Kitchen

categories: Daring Kitchen, Europe, Feta, Greece, Pie, Spinach, World Cooking

God Bless the Greeks. They invented democracy, philosophy and some damn fine food. Including fried cheese. How good is that stuff? You take cheese…which is one of my all time best ever foods to begin with…and fry it. That;’s not even eleven. That’s twelve! Possibly thirteen. But, I digress, yeah, I know opening paragraph…and we’re already off track, because today we’re talking about the second wonder of the Greek cuisine pantheon…(or should that be Parthenon?) the cheese and spinach pie, also more formally known as the Spanakopita.

I live in Melbourne, which as anyone in Melbourne will tell you has the largest population of Greek people outside of Athens. I have no idea if this is actually true or just one of those urban myths about the city you live in. Regardless of numbers, there are a lot of Greek people and hence a lot of super delicious Greek food. In fact, just as much as some families have the local Chinese or Indian restaurant, my family would go Greek.

No, not like that you bunch of perverts….I meant we would celebrate family occasions at the local Greek restaurant.

Mind you, this did come after a debacle at the local Chinese. You know the classic tale of the gauche family who drink the fingerbowls? Not that old chestnut for my family. No way. Uh huh.

We’re a much classier lot.

So when, towards the end of our meal, the waiter delivered some small bowls of water to our table we dutifully dipped and dunked and positively soaked our fingers revelling in our (sub) urban/e sophistication. He then reappeared with a plate of…I can best describe them as caramel coated sweet dumplings. The idea being that you dipped your caramel dumpling into the icy cold water thereby changing the caramel from a hot liquid to a crispy shell. We all looked to our now slightly grubby bowls of warmish water and the thought of dessert suddenly didn’t seem so good.

Now, I can’t speak a word of Mandarin, but believe me, that wasn’t a prerequisite to understand what our waiter was muttering as he swished away the original bowls. There is a certain tone people adopt when they say “You people are morons” that is pretty much universal.

We celebrated with Greek food from then on.

Spanakopita Ingredients - pre massage — Spanakopita Ingredients – pre massage

The February Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Audax of Audax Artifex. The challenge brought us to Greece with a delicious, flaky spanakopita – a spinach pie in a phyllo pastry shell. I had thought I was au fait with the cooking of this particular dish as it is something I make fairly regularly. However Audax’s version had a few curve balls.

First there was massaging the ingredients. It made me think about those Wagyu cows…

Then post the massage there was the squeeze….this was both kind of disgusting and a shit ton of fun.

Squeezing...kind of gross. — Squeezing…kind of gross.

Squeezed Spinach (and my abnormally large man hands)

Post the squeeze, you end up with two bowls. Once containing a dry mixture, one containing a milky green liquid.

It is at this point that I would diverge from the recipe as given by Audax and add some more cheese into the dry mixture. I don’t know what happened to the cheese but somewhere during the massage or the squeeze it kind of disappeared, leaving a less cheesy spanakopita than I would normally have. For me, it’s all about the cheese.

Anyhow, then you add some couscous to the liquid and let it soak it all up. This is utter brilliance. The couscous bulks up the mixture so you can have a higher pie and it stops the bottom pastry getting soggy.

Another brilliant idea? Cutting the squares before baking. Stroke of genius!

Spanakopita - hot from the oven — Spanakopita – hot from the oven

Huh, I just realised I’ve mentioned fried Greek cheese in at least two out of the last three posts. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

I’m going to be spending my week having at least one trip to the Paradise of Lindos to partake of some plate smashing, some haloumi and maybe even a little bit of this…

Zorba

Have a great week whatever you get up to!

08
Feb
2014

Holy Prune Kebabs Batman…It’s Cheesy Meaty Goodness on a Stick Part 3

categories: Bacon, Barbecue / BBQ, Cheese, Prunes, Sausage

So, we had our first bbq in the new house on the weekend. And to celebrate, I made the Prune Kebabs from Nancy Spain’s All Colour Cookbook. Before we sail this ship we call the Titanic into that particular iceberg, let’s talk about kebabs.

There seems to have been no standard spelling for food before about 1980. I’ve seen these things spelled Kebabs, Kebobs, Kabobs and even Kaboobs….

I’m actually a little disappointed we didn’t go with Kabobs. It sounds likes something out of Batman. KA-BOB!

Whereas kaboobs? Another thing altogether.

But I digress. Where were we? Oh yeah, Nancy’s kebabs…Nancy’s Prune Kebabs. Jeez, Even I’m distracted by Dolly’s boobage….I can only imagine what it’s like for all you boys….

Actually, one more. On a slightly more disturbing note, did you know if you Google image “kaboobs” this ranks quite high in the list of hits:

WTF? I don’t want to know. Seriously I don’t. Please no one ever explain the link to me. Ever.

Ok back to biz. Which was Nancy Spain’s Prune Kebabs. Nancy recommends these as being popular with teenagers. I find that hard to believe. It’s not like McDonalds didn’t exist then. Believe me, none of the cool kids were chomping on Nancy’s Prune Kebabs. Not when there was even the remotest possibility of two all beef patties, special sauce etc.

Also, given their renowned laxative properties, I would have thought Prune Kebabs more suited to the older gen.

But what do I know?

Sweet FA apparently because this recipe just lurched from one disaster to the next.

Issue 1.

Doing my mise-en-place I realised I had no apples. It must be the only time in the history off the world that we have not had an apple, any apple in the house.

Solution 1

Checked all the other ingredients just to be sure and went down to the shops. Bought apples. Did not realise until a week later when I came to scan the recipe to post that it also needed tomatoes. I swear I must have originally read this recipe in the dark. I didn’t miss them. Use them if you got ’em, if not never mind.

Issue 2

Nancy suggests soaking the prunes over night which I forgot to do. I also do not care for Mango Chutney so subbed in some caramelised onion relish. Maybe because I hadn’t soaked them, stuffing the prunes with the relish was nigh on impossible.

Creative Innovation #1

I smeared the bacon with the relish then wrapped the prunes up in the bacon.

Issue 3

There was a problem with the cheese. A few problems actually. First , Nancy suggests processed cheese. I would rather eat my own snot. I had some nice cheddar.

Issue 3.1

At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, cheese melts. So, how do you cook a sausage and bacon on a bbq without having the cheese melt away to nothing? Also it kept breaking off the skewer. In retrospect, I should have bought some of that super delicious Greek frying cheese.

Creative Innovation #2

I took the sausage out of its skin and made it into a little meatball and popped the cheese inside. It still leaked a little bit but if it hadn’t been wrapped in the meat, you may as well not bother with it.

Issue 4

I made two kebabs on my metal skewers then went the drawer to get the bamboo skewers. Only we had no bamboo skewers in the drawer. . .Or the pantry. Or any other place in the house. I can only think we left them at the old house .

So now we’re officially shit out of luck.

And skewers.

There’ no way I was getting in the car and driving to Safeway again. It was as hot as hell out there. In fact I’m blaming the heat on my utter scattiness – we had at least 6 days in a row over 40º. (That”s over 100º for my American friends). My brain is melting.

Creative Innovation #2

Brain melt or no, I may not have had skewers but I had rosemary. And you know what? Those rosemary mini kebabs were not only as cute as hell, but they smelled crazy stupid good when being bbq’ed and gave an extra flavour boost to the kebabs.

Finally, they were ready to go on the bbq. Good thing I was also making the cocktail that will feature in my Valetines Day post at the same time because I needed a drink after all that!

Prunes and bacon are always good. The onion relish was a nice addition as was the smoky flavour of the bbq. The recipe called for chippoloatas, I couldn’t find any so I used a spicy Italian fennel sausage from my local butcher. This was really nice with the cheese that didn’t leak out all over the bbq.

The two revelations were the apple…who knew bbq’ed apple was so good? It got a little bit charred and slightly soft but still crunchy, it soaked up the flavours of the bacon and the sausage, apples go fabulously with cheese…it was a real winner. And the other thing I loved was the rosemary. This was the opposite of the apple in that whilst the apple was busy soaking up all the flavours around it, the rosemary was just putting it all out there…the aroma as this cooked was awesome and the skewered items really did pick up some of the lovely rosemary flavour and aroma.

I have included both Nancy’s original and my adaptations below.

If you want more cheesy meaty goodness on a stick, you can look at:

Part 1 Here

Part 2 Here – this one also features prunes and bacon.

Here is the orginal Nancy Spain recipe:

Have a great week. We’ll talk cocktails soon.

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26
Jan
2014

Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Rice? (Daring Kitchen Arancini)

categories: Cheese, Daring Kitchen, Italy, Spinach, Tomatoes

Ever made food where just looking at it made you feel happy?

That’s how I felt with the December Daring Kitchen Challenge. Just looking at these golden balls of goodness made me smile.

Yes, I did just say golden balls of goodness, and yes, I did have a little smirk as I did.

Sigh.

I so have the mind of a 12-year-old boy. And you know what? This whole post is full of stuff like that.

So, you know, take a moment….watch this clip from a British tv show called, I kid you not, Golden Balls, which appears to be a game show version of the Prisoner’s dilemma. (Yay, I knew that Philosophy major would come in handy one day! Stay tuned, next week…Baking with Nietzsche…)

Anyway, marvel at the British nuttiness of it all and come back ready to talk about arancini….

Golden Balls

Ok, I’m ready. Arancini.

January’s Daring Cooks’ challenge was a ball! The lovely Manu from Manu’s Menu brought our taste buds to the streets of Sicily and taught us her family tradition of making arancine – filled and fried balls of risotto. Delizioso!

These were super delizioso but believe me, you’re not making them in any sort of hurry. These babies need some time and devotion to the cause.

First you’ve got to make:

The Risotto

I’ll put the full recipe at the end. but this is actually a great risotto recipe.

What you end up with is this. How gorgeous is this bright yellow?

This lovely sunshiney yellow is well on its way to becoming my favourite colour. And mmmmm…butter….

Then you lay it into a tray to cool and then you make…

Golden Balls o’ Sunshine…

And you know what? You could stop right here and crumb these babies and they would be all kinds of delicious. But in the daring kitchen, we’re turning that flavour experience up to 11. Yeah. EL-EV-EN.

Starting With:

The Bechamel

Wow. has there ever been a bigger moment of cognitive dissonance?

Did you all just fist pump the air Eye of the Tiger style and then do a double take?

Bechamel? WTF? BlecHHHHHamel more like. Isn’t that the creepy white sauce that tastes like glue?

Bear with me..this one’s good.

You need to make it quite thick.

And finally:

The Filling

I chose to do a spinach and mozzarella filling. The recipe has a meat ragu version and a cheese version.

I didn’t get a photo of the sauteed spinach.

But it looked like sauteed spinach.

Trust me.

You make a hole in the Risotto ball and add the filling ingredients – sauce, cheese, spinach.

And close.

Word to the wise. Do the sauce first. I’ll show you what happens in a moment if you try to do the sauce last…

One of these things does not quite belong…guess which one of these was the one where I put the sauce in last?

See what I mean about this being a labour of love?

It’s not all over yet folks, now you gotta egg them, crumb them and fry them up.

Bet you’re thinking you can sit down and have a quiet bottle of vino and some valium now aren’t you?

Not so fast, Speedy. These are fabulous and you could quite easily eat them as is. Look at that oozy goodness….

Yep, oozy goodness from my golden balls…don’t roll your eyes…you were warned.

But remember when i said we were taking this up to eleven?

For eleven you need my spicy tomato relish (recipe below)

The arancini have a delightful crunch, then the aromatic risotto and the creamy cheesey garlicy goodness of the filling. The relish brings some heat and some tanginess. And that my friends is the five food groups covered.

Plus it has spinach so it’s good for you.

Like I said. Eleven.

Arancini recipe:

HERE

And just because I love you all, here’s the classic Spinal Tap clip about….

Eleven

Have a fabulous week, And what ever you love doing – this week, take it to eleven!

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24
Jan
2014

Watch Me Pull a Magic Cake Out Of My Hat

categories: Cake

Anyone else out there remember Saturday morning cartoons and the gang from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

One of the running gags was that Bullwinkle was forever trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat…

Rocky & Bullwinkle

And failing miserably…

Rocky & Bullwinkle Magic Trick

Maybe Rocky’s disdain was hardwired into me at an early age as I have never been a fan of magic tricks…although, having just said I really liked the movie The Prestige. Then again, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla? What’s not to like?

And that dorky kid from Harry Potter growing up to be handsome as hell?

Now that’s the kind of magic I can get behind.

But in general, my David Copperfield tends to be more of the Dickens rather than the disappearing Statue of Liberty variety.

However, recently a thing called the Magic Cake has been haunting my Pinterest feed and, it had me intrigued. The blurb promised that the Magic Cake would “come out of the oven with three distinct layers…a dense layer on bottom, custard-like layer in the middle, and a fluffy cake layer on top”.

WTF? No…this can’t possibly work.

And yet…

There are photos…

And Lemon Delicious Pudding somehow manages to make itself into awesome pudding and sauce…so there is some sort of precedent.

But three layers?

No way.

Mind you, last time I went into a recipe with a “that trick never works” mindset I was proved semi wrong…(see here for my icecream muffins.)

Still, it was the so-called beloved’s birthday and…I feel terrible for all you people born in the first week of January because…oh boy…I love to cook, I love to entertain…but by the time his birthday rolls around I’m usually kind of over it. Not to mention broke.

Which is another reason why the Magic Cake seemed too good to be true.

i thought it may be one of those things where the magic would only occur if you added the blood of seven virgins harvested on the 29 of February under a full moon.

But quelle surprise, there was just normal stuff…flour, butter, sugar, eggs…not a drop of virgin’s blood to be found. Good thing really, I don’t recall seeing a line of it at the local supermarket. Although I didn’t look too closely at the Heston Blumenthal range. Funny thing is, it doesn’t even seem too outrageous anymore does it? Browsing the shelves and seeing Heinz Tomato Ketchup, McIlhenney’s Tabasco Sauce, Blumenthal’s Virgin Blood…

But does it work?

Best answer I can give based on a sample size of one is… kinda, sorta, maybe.

There was a definite top layer but it was more meringue-y than cakey.

There was definitely a custardy middle. This was delicious by the way, sweet and creamy.

And, you can’t see this in any of the photo’s but there was a thicker layer of…..custardy type stuff on the bottom. The third layer was definitely discernible to the tooth if not the eye.

Hmm…if you notice, even in the original description the bottom layer is left bit vague…

To call this a cake is a stretch there was nothing cake-y about it. The thick later at the bottom was a little rubbery and not altogether pleasant. It tasted ok, it was just an odd texture which I didn’t really care for.

So, on a scale of magic, how does the Magic Cake rate?

Better than Bullwinkle, nowhere near as good as Neville Longbottom.

Hope your week is magic, whatever you get up to!

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13
Jan
2014

My New Year’s Resolutions

categories: New Year's Resolutions

I think we all know that the holidays can be stressful.

Hands up how many of you silently vowed to kill at least one family member over the festive period?.

Yep, nearly everyone…

Now, hands up how many of you gave it a red-hot go.

Just me huh?

Oh, and the creepy looking guy in the corner. Dude, you may have issues. Mine was an accident….

This is how it happened.

If you ‘ve been reading this for a while you probably know I am a huge fan of Vietnamese food.

Since our first visit there in 2012, the so-called beloved and I have been exploring Melbourne’s Vietnamese restaurants. We finally settled on a favourite which we have visited at least once a month since then. The food has always been fabulous, the prices are great, the service is good, and the ambience is of the bustling, cheap and cheerful sort which is actually quite reminiscent of Vietnam. And it was hugely popular with people lining up for tables.

And for the last few years I have been trying to get my family to try the food there.

The reasons for the refusals have ranged from the casually racist and formally ludicrous “I don’t want to eat dog” to the slightly more realistic “I don’t want to have my car stolen/be robbed at knifepoint”. Because this restaurant is not in the most salubrious of areas. The first time we visited it, walking through the local car park, I nearly stepped on used syringes…twice. And I don’t think they were due to a meeting of the local diabetic society.

But there is such a thing as a Christmas miracle and on Boxing Day, maybe they were all still a little drunk, or just hungover and hence in a weakened state, I managed to convince three family members to visit this restaurant. Yay me. This was going to be the best meal ever. And once they tasted it, they too would love this restaurant as much as I did. And the world would be a better place full of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows or grilled beef in vine leaves ,claypot rice and pho.

So we went and we had a fabulous meal. They really liked it. Even started to make plans for a return visit.

But you know the saying about something being too good to be true?

Thus it was with this.

A few days ago my aunt who had eaten with us called my mum. “That restaurant she took us to? It’s in the news. On every channel”.

Yeaahhhh…

And not in a good, it’s won some great award way either.

In short. Three people in hospital. Another 18 ill, all diagnosed with salmonella poisoning. Restaurant shut down.

Best guess at date of poisoning because apparently salmonella can take a few days to develop – somewhere between 27 and 31 December. We were there on the 28th so bang in the wheelhouse of potential death.

And you know what’s even worse than taking your family to the salmonella restaurant?

It’s the knowledge that they will never, ever, ever, let me forget it. I’m going to be living this one down for the rest of my life!

So my New Year’s Resolution is…no, not to do a better job of it next time I try to kill my family (but thanks for the input creepy guy in the corner). My resolution is never to recommend another restaurant to anyone ever again. I’m done with that.

And to find a new best restaurant.

So, what are your New Year’s Resolutions?

And just in case you’re wondering, the photo’s this week were of some of the food I made over the holidays. I didn’t think we really needed pictorial representation of the subject matter.

Have a great week!

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