Strouthkiopitta

I have had a bed of bladder campion (known here as 'strouthkia', in Crete as 'agriopoupoula' and widely used in Italian cooking as 'stridoli') in the garden for about three years. After the first season– being a 'good' organic gardener and attempting to follow a system of crop rotation – I tried to get rid of it . I cut it and dug it and mulched over it, and it just kept coming back... So I shrugged and encouraged it and now actively enjoy it pretty much year-round.

For Easter Sunday and Monday, we generally go to Bill and Sil's house for lunch with Sil's family and various other assorted friends and relatives. Yesterday my offering was Panna Cotta which somehow failed to set (“Ok, so it's just Panna,” I told the company. “Use it as sauce on the chocolate cake!”) Nobody seemed to mind and it tasted good, particularly with the accompaniment of Irish Coffee Sauce from Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course.

Today, bearing in mind that I had harvested a basket of campion yesterday, I decided to make a 'Strouthkiopitta', or pie with strouthkia. This is not a traditional Cypriot dish – Cypriots usually take their strouthkia fried with eggs – but it has become a favourite with Best Beloved and me, and is simple and extremely nutritious. The only tedious part is the stripping of the leaves from the fibrous stems, and I had done that yesterday.

Today all I had to do was wash the greens, blanch them quickly, and refresh them with cold water before preparing the pie. The amount of anari (soft mild cheese that roughly corresponds to Italian ricotta) is variable depending on your preference of the greens to cream ratio – I crumbled in half a kilo of commercial Keses brand, a sheep and goat mix. If I had my druthers, I'd use Auntie Maroulla's homemade, but it doesn't come my way very often, and BB generally eats it as soon as he spots it, so no luck there. To the greens and cheese, I added the grated zest of a lemon, about a quarter of a grated nutmeg, and salt and pepper, and squinched them all together with my hands until they were well mixed.

Usually I use phyllo (though I haven't got around to making my own with the recipe from blogging friend Ivy Liacopoulou's excellent Cypriot food-blog Mint, Cinnamon, and Blossom Water), but the phyllo in my fridge had been there for so long that it was brittle and out of the question. Mili came to the rescue with two sheets of defrosted puff pastry. Butter the dish, line it with pastry, add the filling, put the pastry cover on top, brush with egg, sprinkle with sesame and bake for forty minutes at 180C (350F). Hey Presto, Asproulla's Strouthkiopitta!

I took it up to Bill and Sil's, still hot, arriving just as everyone was passing along the buffet and filling their plates. Interestingly, Mili also brought something with strouthkia, but hers was more on the lines of a Spanish tortilla and included eggs, onions, and potatoes. I found it a little heavy, and because she hadn't blanched the greens, a little bitter. Cypriots like their greens bitter, though, so it had a more 'traditional' taste and probably appealed more to the local palate.

About half of mine came back, so there's plenty for dinner tonight or lunch tomorrow.

Interestingly enough, while searching for internet information on campion, I found that in Canada, it's considered an invasive species!

Going Bananas

Best Beloved has a cousin who grows bananas, and last week he was kind enough to give us some.  Not a few, not a hand, a whole freakin' tree's worth...  Now I'm not knocking this:  Cypriots are truly generous, especially with what they produce.  We get tons of yoghurt, anari, peanuts, citrus, and other things from relatives, and it is very welcome.  I try and keep up in mango and plum season, and with my offerings of hand cream, etc.

But when someone gives you around 150 unripe bananas, whaddaya do???

Well, I started out putting some sugar solution in the stem 'to make them ripen evenly' according to BB (who had initially said when I had asked, open-mouthed, what do do with them 'Put them in the compost, if you want!').  For want of a better place, I put them in the Back Kitchen -- on a par with the basement for organisation -- and kept a beady eye out for the next few days.

They did, indeed, change from green to yellow.  Then, alarmingly, their skins began to split.

I knew that it was time to start using them, so I made banana bread.  I googled the recipe, used the first that showed up, and tweaked it by adding cardamon and walnuts.  That took care of nine bananas... except that, although yellow and with splitting skins, they are still a little hard.  When I put them in the Kitchen Aid and turned in to the lowest setting, bananas -- whole and parts thereof -- erupted from the bowl and whizzed around the room.  I returned them to the bowl and held a tea-towel around it, mashing this time without hazard...

Turned out tasty.  Now, what to do with the rest?  Muffins, pancakes, more bread -- for the freezer this time -- gifts for friends, and if the worst comes to the worst, the compost is always just 30 steps away!

Sophia and the Thai Cookbook

A few Saturdays ago Sophia, sitting at the kitchen table drinking morning tea, gestured at the cookbook shelf saying: “Mum, please put that Thai cookbook away. It reminds me of the lovely food that we had at the Chilli Pad in England last month...” And I said: “Well, why don't you have a look through it and see if there's anything you'd fancy making?”

“Is it that easy?” she asked. “Can we get the stuff here?” Sophia has never displayed culinary tendencies – or even interests – before, although left with detailed instructions, she has been known to produce a roast chicken in my absence.

Mili had given me the book, Stylish Thai in Minutes, several Christmases ago, and although I had flipped through it drooling slightly, I had never used it.

She took it down from the shelf and quickly established that we had 'the stuff' for Barbequed Prawns on Lemongrass, “If,” she continued “I can use a griddle and don't have to light the foukou.”

“Yes,” I said. “That is indeed possible.”

So we had prawns on lemongrass skewers (“I am never harvesting lemongrass again!” she harumphed, emerging from our clump with cuts to face and hands from the razor-edged blades) for brunch that day. A few days later, the boys being at school and Best Beloved at work, she produced fried meatballs with a tasty blend of fish sauce, coriander, onion and garlic in addition to minced beef (“These are just Thai keftedes!”) for our midmorning snack. And now that I have found Spring Roll wrappers, I'm sure we are on our way to something else.

“I'm not quite ready to start on the main courses yet,” she said. That's ok, Sophia. We're all enjoying the appetisers...

The Gallery: My Kitchen

This week, the Gallery's prompt is 'My Kitchen'.  Please follow the link to see how other Gallery members interpreted the theme.

 

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My friend Cleo came over one morning for some baking. She and her four children and me and my two younger ones made plain rolls, olive rolls, and some wonderful cheesy pull-aparts with a filling loosely based on the recipe from Greek-Canadian food blogger Peter Minakis – but incorporating some of my mother-in-law's jewel-like cherry tomatoes.

I love the hands-on aspect of breadmaking, the texture and feel of kneading, the smell of rising dough. For kneading technique, we freely adopted our own take from Martin Bertinet's Dough, which incorporates a lot of banging of dough onto the table.

It is one of my favourite kitchen memories, and I'm glad that I had my trusty little Lumix on hand to record it.  

Cleo and her family are leaving to return to the UK on Monday, and we will miss them.

Summer Lunches

My sister Ruth is here. She usually arrives this time of the year for a week or two, and it's always good to see her. She has lived in Baltimore, on the east coast of the US, for the last thirty-one years, but has a small flat in Chinchon just outside Madrid where she spends the early summer before visiting us in June then spending some time with our older brother on the west coast of Ireland.

She comes bearing family news – of all of us far-flung siblings, Ruth is the only one who keeps in touch with everyone, ideas to keep the Little Ones entertained during the increasingly hot days, and a light vegetarian habit that gets me eating the way that I prefer to.

“You must give me the recipe for this talatouri (as the Cypriots call tzatziki),” she said as we sat down a little after noon today surrounded by bowls and dishes containing the hummous and talatouri that I had just made, the beetroot that I had pickled according to my Greek and Cypriot food blog friend Ivy's recipe (beetroots roasted until soft then peeled and preserved in half-and-half balsamic and red-wine vinegar and a little salt), and the sliced tomato and cucumber that sat dewily on a small plate.

So I did. It's not difficult, and it's certainly tasty – given extra zing by the garlic that I had pulled out of the earth only last night and the cucumbers just plucked from the vine: take half a kilo of strained yoghurt and empty it into a bowl (glass looks nice, or a pretty dark, glossy blue). Grate two cucumbers and squeeze out the excess water. Add them, and a tablespoon of dried mint, to the yoghurt. Finely mince some garlic (I used about a quarter of a clove), add a small glug of olive oil, and a few twists of the salt grinder. Mix well and taste. If you like it, it's good. If not, add what's missing – a little more garlic or salt, probably.

I heated some Paphos pitta-breads – much fluffier than those found in other parts of Cyprus – and that was lunch. Yesterday we had some garden zucchinis fried with scrambled eggs (take two medium zucchinis and slice them finely with a sharp knife or mandoline, fry them in butter until they colour. Meanwhile, break four eggs in a bowl and beat them with a little milk. When the zucchinis are slightly brown, add the eggs and let them all scramble softly together with a few twists of the salt and pepper grinder. Serve hot.) which went beautifully with a village salad of tomato, cucumber, and pepper chunks sprinkled with crumbled feta and a scattering of oregano leaves.

In a little while I will go out the the garden and pick parsley for Best Beloved to take to Nicosia. Somewhat anaemic because of his Thalassaemia gene, he craves parsley, and will devour taboulleh, the Lebanese salad made with mint, parsley, bulghur wheat, and tomato, by the bucket. I usually make him some on Monday morning, and tomorrow will make enough for us to enjoy as well.

I can't wait for the aubergines to be ready with their endless possibilities for dips, salads, and fritters.

A Day of Baking in anticipation of the Morrow…

I started out making pumpkin pie this morning… well, butternut squash pie, really. I know it’s not Christmas Fare. We don’t always play by the rules, Christmas being such a grafted on novelty to Cypriot culture and our family being such a hybrid blend. Besides that, I had a butternut languishing on the shelf, and Phil liked the pie last time I made it.

By the time that was out of the oven, the Christmas lunch starters were on the rise. Also not Christmas Fare, they are bread sticks from Richard Bertinet’s excellent book, Dough. I pitted olives, grated parmesan, gathered and chopped fresh herbs, then applied them to the dough that Leo had kneaded earlier, folded, cut, and twisted the sticks, put them for a second rise and then baked them… Lo and behold, appetiser and starter for lunch tomorrow… Done!

Poor Leo’s grasped the short straw with his no-gluten diet, so we dived into a recipe of gluten-free carob cookies. We were both a bit dubious of the blend of dried figs, almond flour, honey, vanilla, and butter, and it seemed to produce only a small amount, but I just took them out of the oven and Wowee!! Worth a try even if you’re gluten tolerant, and a super-super food.

This new diet thingie in our lives has led me down some interesting culinary roads and into some fantastic and inspiring blogs. I mean to post more in the new year, but the main thing I’ve learned (which many others have learned before me, but each has to travel their own path) is that substitutes DON’T work. Don’t think you can spend a fortune on gluten free flour or pasta and get the same result that you would with wheat… It doesn’t happen that way. People just say ‘Yuck! It doesn’t taste the same…’ Explore new cuisines instead: Asian food and Mexican are almost completely gluten free. It’s just hard work getting four children to stop resisting new tastes. From all of them, at least once, I’ve heard: ‘I don’t see why I should eat differently just because the others can’t eat what I want!’ Even Best Beloved, though he is the most innovative of us all, drew the line at a gluten free meal.

I did try blood tests for the Littles yesterday, just to see if the results tallied with the bioresonance – even though I have been warned that blood results ‘can give false negatives’. Stay tuned!

Best wishes to everyone for a happy Christmas and a peaceful, healthy, and prosperous 2011.

Mangos Finished...

This morning I had the last of the mangos.

We had a great season this year: sold 100 kilos, gave away about fifty, and easily ate another 100 kilos ourselves, starting mid-August and finishing today. We have about fifteen trees, some of them wild, others grafted to four different varieties, and still others in the nursery that are only a foot high and waiting for Best Beloved’s best efforts with his grafting knife. We are the only producers of organic mangos in Cyprus and our fruit is the best because we pick individually and sell in small quantities when each piece is at its optimum ripeness.

Some days this summer we would feast on them out of hand – cutting six or seven at a time and slurping them at the table.

One unforgettable Sunday, I rediscovered that the best place to eat a mango is in the sea: we had gone with Li’l Bro (my youngest brother-in-law who lives abroad) and his children to a deserted beach in the Akamas. There I gorged in the shallows, salt water mixing with sweet juice – and an in-place clean-up. Perfect.

Most mornings Best Beloved and I enjoyed a smoothie. Pick 2 or three ripe mangos and a handful of figs. Blend with yoghurt, water, and ice-cubes. Beats wheatie-puffs hands down as breakfast of champions.

This morning was my last one… I walked the Littles to the supermarket to catch the bus, then went to the field where I spent an hour-and-a-half digging berms and basins for rainwater harvesting around the fruit trees.

Then I went home, sliced the last, perfect mango into the blender (no figs today), and enjoyed the closing of the season.

Blessings on the mangos, for they are the very best.

Lemon Season

The lemon trees are loaded. Normally at this time of year, Mili requests the glass tomato sauce bottles that I have diligently hoarded throughout the year, and sends them back a few days later full of tart-sweet fragrant yellow lemonade-spiked-with-bergamot. I’m sure that will happen over the next few days, and I’m equally certain that no matter how I try to squirrel a few bottles away for the long summer days to come, we will manage to finish the lot before April is out.

The Grand Folks have two big lemon trees and one bergamot tree in the large orchard beside their house. The orange and mandarin trees have already given us their bounty: lemons are the season’s last citrus. Next will be the mespila, or loquat – a taste for which fresh I have never been able to acquire, but I have just discovered some recipes for jam, so perhaps I can turn the boxes of fruit that we always end up with into something other than compost.

But back to lemons.

“Marmalade, Manamou,” said best Beloved at breakfast. “Go and get lemons from the trees and make a big batch of lemon marmalade…” and “Lemon curd, too!” requested Alex.

“Lemon curd?” I said. “Last time I made lemon curd no-one ate it!” But my son and my husband insisted that I was wrong, and that lemon curd is one of their favourite spreads for toast.

News to me.

But I love it in tarts and as a filling for cakes, and it’s dead simple, so I picked the lemons and got started. On a low heat, I melted 50grams of butter in a heavy saucepan. Then added 110 grams of caster sugar and the zest and juice of two big yellow lemons, two whole eggs, and one yolk, well beaten. I stirred the mixture constantly until it thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon, then took it off the heat. It’s cooling now, in a bowl. If Best Beloved and Alex are right, it will be scoffed before it needs to be stored. But if, as I suspect, they’re merely caught in lemon madness, then I need to put it in a sterilised jar where it can stay happily in the fridge for a week or two.

I noticed the other day that the elderflower tree on our hill is in bloom, so if next time I want to add a new twist to the lemon curd, Darina Allen at The Ballymaloe Cookery School, suggests that at the beginning of the process I add the flowers from eight fresh

elderflower heads, and serve the finished product with crème fraiche, meringues, and strawberries. Hold me back!

Since curd only uses a couple of lemons at I time and I have about forty, I’ve preserved some in salt for Moroccan dishes to come. Tomorrow I must buy some vodka and repeat past years’ success with limoncello, research and experiment with cheesecake recipes, and start thin slicing for marmalade.

But for now, time for elevenses. Excuse me while I make some toast.

Cookbooks

I love cookbooks. I have a shelf and a half of them and always lookout for more at book sales or in charity shops. It must be an inherited trait: my mother had a good collection, and when I visited my brother in Ireland, I was thrilled to see that he shares my compulsion. “Oh yes,” he said when I mentioned it. “I love cookbooks!”

Some of the attraction must lie in the simple fact that they are books and I love books and words. My house (and my brother's) is filled with books. And some of our cookbooks are full of superlative writing. Maybe luscious illustrations were a reason that I bought some. Others found their way to my shelves because they have recipes that suit my lifestyle and the ingredients that I have available.

But I think that the main reason that I collect cookbooks is because, although food is the vehicle, the idea behind the cooking and sharing of food is that of nurturing and community, the forging of common bonds. The first cookbook that I remember impulse buying was in Waldenbooks in Kahala Mall on a visit home to Hawaii. It was Viana La Place's The Unplugged Kitchen, and the simple way that she conveyed the pleasure that her kitchen, her ingredients, and the associations that working in her kitchen wrought between her modern life in California and her mother's in Italy hooked me.

Who are my favourite authors? Well, Elizabeth David is one. No collection of cookbooks is complete without one of her volumes. She manages to embrace personal and cultural history – as well as passion for ingredients and method – in a single recipe, and reading one of her books is to acquire an education, not just in Italian Food or French Provincial Cooking but in the geography, demography, and society that produced them and the people for whom they are daily fare.

Fast forward to the present, and although I have not read nearly all the celebrity chefs' writings that are so popular today (something – fear of falling short of the mark? – keeps me from How to be a Domestic Goddess, although I really want to read it), I enjoy Jamie Oliver and Nigel Slater because they seem to truly enjoy what they're doing and are genuinely interested in conveying their experience so that other people can enjoy it, too.

Claudia Roden is one of my favourite food writers and her A New Book of Middle Eastern Fare is a volume that I have turned to at least once a week for the last ten years. When Arabesque, A taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon came out in 2005, I bought it at once. Her depth of understanding of the region and its peoples is unparalleled, and her books are full of stories whose characters come to life in a way that brings their food to life, and makes enjoying the dishes all the more intimate because, while preparing or eating them, you remember something of the other people that enjoy them.

But Elizabeth David, Jamie Oliver, and Claudia Roden are all big names. Some of my favourite cookbooks come from lesser-known names or groups of friends who put together a collection of recipes that have a particular significance for them. Gilli Davis spent time in Cyprus and grew to so love and respect Cypriot cuisine that she published The Taste of Cyprus – A Seasonal Look at Cypriot Cooking, and although for most Cypriot recipes I turn to my mother-in-law, I enjoy reading Gilli's experiences as she wanders the same paths that I do. Kopiaste: Cyprus Food, Customs, and Traditions – written by a Cypriot, Amaranth Sitas, but published in English – is full of priceless advice like: 'Incidentally, when you go and buy your olives, don't be talked into buying the large variety... What you need are the medium type of green olives, and nothing else will do. Now, take the olives one by one... No! First find a small stool to sit on – you can't possibly crush all those bending down! And take everything onto your back veranda...'

Four years ago my California brother sent me Palestinian and Jewish Recipes for Peace, a book that celebrated 'twelve years of sustained relationship-building and outreach by the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group of San Mateo County, California'. The frontispiece shows a group of mostly middle-aged friends gathered in a room, above the quotation by Dr Harold Saunders, a former US Assistant Secretary of State and negotiator of the Camp David Accords: “There are some things that only governments can do, such as negotiating binding agreements. But there are some things that only citizens can do, such as changing human relationships.”

The book is about food – the kosher food of European Jews; spicy Arab dishes with a hint of the desert; Levantine food , the pittas and hoummous, tabouleh and felafel loved by both Arab and Israeli. It is also about people and community, compassion, and peace. The recipes are interwoven with stories – of celebrations and holidays and the recipes that accompany them; of families marking rites of passage; of the determination of a small group of individuals to see past stereotypes.

Take cookbooks at face value – flip through one to decide what to make for dinner, how to cope with the glut of eggplant in the garden, or to learn how to test the set of jam. But if you look a little deeper, you find a whole new world, and it's there that I like to dwell. I learn which variety of plum is the best for preserving; how, why, and by whom certain breads are prepared for Easter by Orthodox Christians; how to use every last scrap of a butchered hog; and how a long table and a commonly prepared feast can provide a foundation for understanding.