Greek Recipes

Quite frankly, I am in love with artichokes. They are so beautiful to look at that I am prone to putting them in vases and then capturing them on paper in watercolours. While I adore their thistle-like beauty, it is their complex flavour and texture that I really love. Artichoke hearts are dense and velvety, and their green flavour profile sits somewhere between a mushroomy broccoli stalk with a hint of asparagus. When they come into their season in spring - I just want to eat them every single day. A couple of years ago, when Mr K and I were in Rome on a hot spring day, we found ourselves enjoying a simply magical lunch of 'carciofi alla guida' - deep-fried whole artichokes - eaten hot, doused with big squeezes of lemon and washed down with a very, very chilled acidic local white wine. We often find ourselves reminiscing about just how good those artichokes were ( you can read more about them here ). The love of the artichoke spreads far and wide through the Mediterranean. Whe...

I have a very dear friend who is a serious chocoholic. A few weeks ago, my lovely friend was joining us for lunch and I knew I had to make something with chocolate and as the weather was becoming much warmer, it had to be my homemade chocolate semifreddo. This semifreddo has a smooth, velvety mousse-like texture, which is due to the " zabaglione" base of eggs and sugar beaten in a bain-marie. It doesn't freeze as solidly as homemade ice cream, which is a real bonus as you don't end up with those super annoying ice crystals that sometimes plague homemade ice cream. Really, there is nothing worse than getting a big mouthful of those!! The other bonus is that you don't need a ice cream maker for this recipe. The Pavlidis Ygeias connection in this recipe is basically because it is my favourite brand of Greek chocolate. Really, any chocolate that is called "Ygeias" (healthy) gets my vote....and I also can't resist the gorgeous blue retro packaging. I us...

Brilliantly versatile, punchy and sweet - I love florina peppers and their intense flavour. This simple meze dish is one of the most luscious things you can make from a few humble ingredients. You simply slow cook red onions - and plenty of garlic and then add the peppers until you have a meltingly rich sauce. I've based this meze around the foundations for a classic Greek family favourite, speztofai, which is basically this rich sauce with the addition of some tomatoes or tomato paste and really spicy country style sausage, known as horiatika loukanika plus some extra hot pepperonici and sliced chili peppers. For a fantastic speztofai recipe see Magda's blog My Little Expat Kitchen . While speztofai is delicious, it is a pretty heavy comfort food and I find it is more suited to cooler weather. Warmer days here in Sydney mean lighter food - so no horiatika loukanika for us this week. You can serve this meze alongside some olives and cheese, or you can rub half a clove of garlic...

A few weeks ago, I posted a recipe for one my favourite Greek dishes, Hortopita (χορτόπιτα) or wild greens pie . In that recipe I used some store bought phyllo and I promised a follow up recipe for homemade pastry. I am still to get a lesson from my lovely mother in law - but in the interim, I have a recipe to share from my travels in Kefalonia. Last year we stayed in Kefalonia for a couple of weeks in a little village near Klismata Beach. While staying there, thanks to Mr K's beautifully fluent Greek, we befriended Stavros and Anna who owned a small taverna and supermarket nearby our villa. This is Anna's recipe for hortopita, which I recently found in my travel notebook. I love keeping a travel notebook, the one from this trip to Greece was packed with watercolour and gouache sketches, recipes, business cards - as well as lots of labels from new season olive oil and wine. Anna's recipe is completely vegetarian and does not use any cheese, so it is perfect for fasting. It...

Welcome to another month in my kitchen. Thank you so much to the very lovely Celia of Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for continuing to host this wonderful and inspiring series. I am such a stickybeak - I love seeing what is on offer in kitchens in Australia and around the world. This time last year I was in beautiful Greece - and collecting lots of inspiration for my 'in my kitchen' posts . I am (sadly) not in Greece this month, but the gorgeous unfolding Sydney springtime is truly delightful. This month, I thought I would share with you just a few of the staples that I always have on hand in my kitchen in Sydney - which mean that the flavours of Greece are just a step (and not a 24 hour flight) away. In my kitchen this month, I have got over my fear of frozen vegetables. I have never been a fan - always preferring fresh and making an exception only for peas. Plus the range of frozen vegetables on offer in Australia are always just so plain dull. In Greece, there is such a better a...

Broad beans have to be one of my favourite spring time gifts from the garden, they are full of protein and iron - so excellent for those who prefer a more vegetarian diet. They are also a good source of B vitamins, including thiamin (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2) and niacin (vitamin B3) and vitamin C. Most importantly of all, the are absolutely delicious, I love their fresh raw-grassy flavour. While in Australia we refer to "broad beans" in the US they are referred to as "fava beans". This causes some confusion - as in Greece, "fava" is the term used to describe a beautifully creamy dish made from yellow split peas. So in Greek, if you are talking about broad beans they are called "koukia" (κουκιά). In Greece, fresh broad beans are a real culinary highlight and springtime favourite, especially during Lent. Sometimes they are boiled and added to horta to make a warm salad or they can be eaten raw in in a fresh salad, sprinkled with a litt...