Egg and Lemon Soup

Avgolémono (avgo = egg - lemono = lemon) is called Greek penicillin for a reason. It's what your mother and grandmother give you when it's chilly, or when you have a cold; it is soothing and kind to the throat. The tang of the lemon cuts through dulled senses, and makes you taste again. It's …

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Quick Fasolada/White Bean Soup

If I have celery, the first thing that comes to mind is usually apple, celery and pecan salad. The second thing is always Greek fasolada soup. Or fasolia soupa, or fasulye, or whatever you decide to call it. This is my quick store cupboard version. Tinned cannellini beans, basic veg, no fresh onions as they …

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Meat Free Moshari Kokkinisto / Pastitsada

I'd made something called Moshari Kokkinisto - reddened beef - with the remains of the seitan left over from the doner experiment. I had a pretty large chunk of it left so I twisted it, pulled it and broke it into pieces. It takes some doing, as it's pretty elastic! Bear in mind that these …

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Kolokassi Kebabs Cypriot Style

Kolokassi is a tuber of little renown in the UK. It’s also called Taro, and it used a lot in Asia, even for cake making, and is what they call poi in Hawaii, where it is a staple. I know it’s hard to find here, and I apologise in advance for that.I freely admit that …

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Spelt Flour Koulourakia–Easter Cookies

I try to make these every Easter. Buttery, short cookies that are moreish and come flavoured with orange or lemon or vanilla. As I had no fresh oranges, I decided to go with orange blossom water, orange extract and mastiha, seeing as I had some left over from making the savoury hot cross buns. I …

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Greek Easter Buns

Orthodox Easter can’t be pinned down. It wanders about, never in the same place. Every year those of us without a Greek family group nearby to remind us, Google “When is Orthodox Easter?” with the vague worry that we might have missed it. The Orthodox Easter dates are often different because they are based on …

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Artichokes with browned butter and Hilopites noodles

You know how sometimes a cooking method can escape you time and time again, and then one day you read one more account of how to do it, and it all makes sense? Today I had that with artichoke prep.Not the big globe ones, but the smaller, purple ones. Perfect little flower heads that, nonetheless, …

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Chicken, Garlic and Trahanas soup

There are days when you wake up, bounce out of bed and think “Yes, I can face the day.”Then there are days when you wake up, bounce out of bed, and slowly realise that no, today is not one to be faced, it’s going to be one to be endured because at some time in …

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Christmas: Kourabiedes, or Greek Butter Cookies

I have a cookbook. (Nobody is surprised at this.) I have 2 copies of the same cookbook, because the first one fell apart. My Mum used it to learn to cook Greek food for my Dad after they got married, then I found it, and started reading it. It had a cover, back then. One …

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Melitzanasalata and last minute mash.

You know that thing where you’re out shopping, and you get all excited and inspired by ingredients, buy them, bring them home, then…forget them? Well, I always do that with aubergines, and tinned beans. Beans are great, I eat them a lot, so long as I don’t put the tins away in the cupboard. *rolls …

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