Getting ingredients

When it comes to finding ethnic ingredients in our local supermarkets, we have come a long way in the past several years.  You can walk through the international aisle and find ingredients from several parts of the world, especially Mexican and Asian.  Heck, just last year, it was almost impossible to find Greek yogurt but now it is all the rage.

But some things are still almost impossible to find.  My mother has had some success finding Houloumi, a Cypriot cheese but she is finding it at the more expensive and out of the ways stores like Trader Joe's.  We have nothing like that in my neck of the woods.

One of my favorite, hard to find, foods is taramosalada (fish roe salad).  The main ingredient is Tarama - the fish roe (recipe to follow in later posts).  I have looked for and found it online but it would be very expensive and I am not sure that it is int he same form that I am used to.  But, have no fear, I do know of one place I can find my tarama.  There is a little store in Greektown in Baltimore within walking distance of St. Joeseph's church.  But, alas, Baltimore is about an hour from my house so I never get there.  This past Tuesday I had to be in Baltimore for business so I took a little detour.

I found my jar of tarama and bought a block of houlumi for good measure.  I chatted with the store owner and told him how far I had come for my tarama and he kindly threw in a loaf of his bread for free.  I wish I had the extra cash for some of his delicous looking pastries but now I have a reason to try to make them myself - and share the experience, of course.

Chesapeake Blue Crabs

There are probably as many recipes and methods to cook blue crabs as there are crabs in the bay.  In fact, our recipe is not so much a 'recipe' as an instinct, a nugget of knowledge that we Marylanders are born with.

The recipe starts with a day out on the boat catching crabs.  But, you can always buy your crabs by the dozen, half bushel or bushel.  Most places that sell blue crabs sell them either live or steamed but we always choose to stem our own. 

The most important thing to remember when steaming your won crabs is that the crabs must be alive.  Crabs start decomposing almost immediately when they die so if it dies right in front of you it is OK to eat but if you are not sure how long it has been dead or if it has been dead for any period of time, throw it out.

The exception, of course is crabs you purchase which have been refrigerated right after they were killed.

When I was growing up, my parents had a crab steamer and would cook the crabs on the stove top.  We use the same type steamer pot but we cook ours on the propane tturkey fryer base

The bottom part of the steamer is filled with several inches of water, vinegar, beer and Old Bay spice

The crabs are then layered in the upper pot (perforated bottom).  Generously pour Old Bay and Kosher salt over each layer of crabs

Put on the lid and steam away

The crabs can take anywhere from 25 - 45 minutes to steam depending on several factors such as how many crabs you are cooking and how high your flame is.  The crabs are done when the shell turns a bright orange.

Lay newspaper or brown craft paper on the table, pour the pot of crabs right in the middle of the table, fill a pitcher of beer and invite several friends.

Eating crabs is a social activity.  It can take hours and having someone there for great conversation adds to the experience.

Just Chicken

I will be the first to admit when I fail so I feel that it would only be fair to include failed meals in this blog.  I must defend my horrible dinner though. 

My neighbor, our four kids and I went crabbing and we did not get home until 8:30.  The kids usually eat by 6:30 at the latest and they were about to eat me.  Also, the neighbor announced that he would be back in 20 minutes so that we could steam the crabs.

I had bought about 150 pounds of chicken thighs the other day so that was what it was going to be.  I had to challenge myself.  How fast can I cook Chicken?

I threw a little bit of oil and pressed garlic into a hot skillet and browned the chicken on medium to high heat

I ripped open a box of rice-a-roni

I plated it up.

I didn't even bother to open any vegetable because the kids wouldn't eat them anyway and I didn't  have time to do much more than gobble down what was on the plate.

THE REVIEWS

I thought it was more than edible especially considering the time crunch.  I wouldn't bother to write down the recipe but I enjoyed it enough

The kids ate like they had never seen food before but never commented on the quality of the meal

My husband ate the plate I had saved for him but his critique was less than kind and I will not repeat it.

Keftedhakia

Fried tiny meatballs

This is one of those beloved childhood dishes that had been banned from the household menu.  The recipe I grew up with calls for a dash of cinnamon but the thought of cinnamon with beef totally freaks my husband out for some reason.  The mixture of those two ingredients makes a unique smell which makes me salivate while it turns my husband's stomach.  I believe that this was the exact dish which caused my husband to get the idea that I can't cook.  I can cook, jut not in the flavor palette that he is used to.

Also, throughout my childhood, we called this food Keftedes, not Keftedhakia as it is called in my recipe book.  Keftedhakia actually translated to 'small' meatballs.  Keftedes refers to the larger version of the same food.

I don't recall ever actually using a recipe when cooking this dish but I looked it up for the purpose of this blog and it turns out that I have been  sticking pretty close to this particular recipe.

I should have previously given my disclaimer:  Any recipe that I cook from memory will be the Cypriot version not the one from Greece.  I have several Greek cookbooks and when I am cooking from one of those, I will try to identify if it is from the Greek one or the Greek Cypriot one.

Ingredients:

One pound of ground beef (the book calls for minced pork)
1 cup grated potatoes (I was lazy and chopped instead of grated because I didn't want to clean the grater - grated is better)
1/2 cup of bread crumbs (I left these out because I couldn't find them - I later found some in the pantry)
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

I began by chopping the potato and, parsley and onion.

The potatoes should have been chopped finer, or preferably, grated.

I threw all ingredients into a large bowl, leaving out the cinnamon so as not to freak out my husband when he came home and smelled the cooking odors.

You have to mix it all by hand, getting good and messy - it is just part of the recipe.  Don't try to cheat and use a spoon.

For Keftedes, make oval shaped and hamburger sized meatballs and fry one side at a time in a pan of hot oil.  For keftedhakia, make golf ball sized balls and deep fry in hot oil.

Don't put too many in the pan at once since that will cool the oil and they won't get the crunchy brown outside and perfectly cooked inside.

They are done when they are a nice, medium brown.

 Drain in a bowl (or plate) lined with paper towels.

These meatballs do not have a sauce and can be served hot or cold.  I think they are great for parties or a meal.

The Reviews:

I thought the keftedes turned out great except by taking a shortcut and not grating the potatoes, it was hard to make them into nice balls.  Also, bits of potato kept falling out while they were being cooked.  This gave me a bunch of yummy potato crumblies but I would have rather had them stay in the potato..

The kids ate a few but did not seem as in love with them as I was.

My husband came home from work none the wiser that I had cooked the forbidden keftedes in his kitchen.

Kotopoulo Sto Fourno

Oven Baked Chicken

The recipe called for one large Chicken cut into six pieces but I only had chicken thighs so I substituted

Ingredients

1 large chicken
1 cup corn oil
2 cups sliced onion
2 cups of sliced mushrooms
4 slices of smoked bacon
1/2 cup of white wine
1/3 cup of hot water
1 stick of cinnamon
salt and pepper.

I left out the cinnamon because I didn't want to shock my family's tastebuds too much.

I started by washing the drying the chicken and then browned it in a skillet.

  The chicken was then set aside in a baking dish.

I sliced the onions and mushroom while the chicken was cooking and the mushrooms went into the pan next.

Beautifully browned and ready to go

The mushrooms were removed from the pan and put on top of the chicken.  Then, it was time for the onions

I cut the bacon into one inch pieces and they went into the pan with the onions as soon as the onions were softened.

Once the bacon was cooked, in went the white wine and water. I should take a moment to explain that my husband and I are not wine drinkers so I had to forage to find a bottle of white wine.  It was kind of old and had little bits of something floating in it.  I used a coffee filter to clean it up and after using my 1/2 cup, the rest went down the sink.  Before tossing it, I looked at the bottle.  It was from Nicosia Cyprus.  We had brought it back from our honeymoon when we were married 16 years ago!  I told you we were not big wine drinkers.

Once the wine and water came to a boil, the mixture was poured over the chicken.

I had made one tactical error.  I should have put the chicken, and subsequent ingredients into a dutch over rather than a baking dish.  The recipe called for the dish to be baked covered for the first 25 minutes.  I resorted to aluminum foil and put it int he oven at 325 degrees.

The recipe calls for removing the lid after 20 minutes so that the chicken can absorb most of the juice.  That part didn't happen as well as I expected. I did remove the foil and I did bake it an addition 20 minutes but the bacon did not get crunchy and the juice did not reduce as I had expected. but it was still pretty

During cooking, I had gotten caught up in a phone call so I never got around to making any side dishes.  Plus we are out of just about everything.  I think potatoes or rice would have been very nice with this dish but we had to settle for a can of green beans.

The Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed the dish.  There was just enough of the flavor of the wine and the chicken was cooked perfectly.  I thought that the bacon could have been a bit less chewy and the sauce could have been thicker.

The kids initially said they liked it but ended up eating very little.  My son ended up sneaking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich later.

I forgot to mention that the whole reason that I am doing the cooking and can experiment with it is that my husband is working evenings and won't be home for dinner.  Well, when he came home, he looked at the remnants (which did not include any of the chicken) and declared that they smelled delicious.  He asked that I save him a plate next time.

Let's get cooking!

When I was growing up, my mother did all of the cooking.  My father was an American with some Irish, Welsh and maybe some other ethnicities in his lineage.  His European roots never had much influence on us.  My mother, on the other hand, hails from the Greek island of Cyprus.  As a child, I ate all of the typical American food but we also ate Greek food pretty regularly.  I didn’t know that my friends and classmates were not dining on Macoronia de Forno (patstitsio) or Keftedes or Soupa Avgolemeno.  As an adult, I cooked some of my Greek favorites on my own and enjoyed others at the Greek festivals and occasional Greek restaurants.  I have perfected Baklava and will put mine up against my mother's any day.

When my husband and I first became a couple, he made it clear that he liked to do the grocery shopping and cooking. No problem.  I didn't mind having hot food placed in front of me at all.  I did cook a few of the dinners and he seemed to enjoy what I made...as long as it was something he was familiar with.  My husband did not seem to have the palette for Greek cooking.  As years went on, his tastes matured and he enjoyed the occasional dish at the festival.

After what seemed like forever, he finally proposed marriage to me and we decided to fly to Cyprus and get married in the church where my parents had married.  We were in Cyprus for three weeks and he quickly fell in love with Greek food.  But, for some reason, still not my cooking.  We had settled into the habit of his doing all of the cooking and he remembered a few dishes of mine that he did not like.  Funny, he didn't remember all of the dishes of mine that he did like but, oh well.

I recently retired and we have decided that we really don't want the kids back in daycare so I am starting my adventure as a stay at home mom.  This means that I am now also the head chef.

Follow my journey as I re-learn how to cook the old dishes and experiment with new ones.  I plan on introducing my children to the flavors of Middle Eastern food and also plan on trying some new flavors.  I will cook some of our family staples, some of your family staples and maybe order in a pizza now and again.