Greek to Us

We reveled in the Greek Fest again this year, eating our way through the lunch line and the pastries as usual.  In fact, the matriarchs of the sweets remembered Sis and Bud from years past, recalling them even as babies in strollers.  And, as in years past, at least one person mistook Mama for my other son (I know you don't believe me, but it happens regularly) saying, "Your big one was so helpful.  He told the younger ones not to touch anything!"

Anyway, in addition to our usual menu (note to selves for next year:  the kids do not like the chicken souvlaki; they prefer the roasted chicken and gyro), we gorged (well, I did) on gigante beans.  And when I went back to get some to take home for dinner, the woman behind the counter said she had made them and we compared notes.  She uses celery, a bit of parsley, and lots of dill in hers; she was interested to hear that I do mine in a slow cooker, but without dill.  I'm adding dill next time (which will be soon because I bought a bag of gigante beans).   


We bought fewer sweets this year but reveled in the ones we did get:  ravani, a citrus-soaked semolina cake, is still the favorite; diples, which is like Greek sopapillas, were Sis and Bud's favorirtes; Mama likes kataifi; and I still get finikia (honey-walnut cookie), methismena (the label said they make it with beer!), karidopita (the honey-walnut cake), galatoboureko (custard with phyllo).  We skipped kourambiedes and what I now know is saragli, kinda like a baklava roll (Bud got baklava but didn't like the nuts).  Our new favorite is pasta flora.  I know, odd name.  But it's a Greek jam tart, this time apricot, and we were all sorry we hadn't bought a whole one!


There is always next year!


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Greek Big Beans

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 cups slow cooked beans or two 15.5 oz cans lima or butter beans, drained and rinsed (or actual Greek gigante beans. )

28 oz can diced tomatoes, with juices

salt and pepper

1/2 cup minced fresh parsley leaves

Heat oil and cook onion, covered, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook another minute or so.

Transfer the onion and garlic to a 3 1/2 to 4-quart slow cooker. Add beans, tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir. Cover and cook on LOW for 4-6 hours. Just before serving, stir in parsley.

Robin Robertson, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker


Or, an alternate "fabulous faux fassolia":   I sauteed onions in olive oil, added some garlic when the onions were translucent, then poured in half a can (or less) of tomato sauce, and added the other half of my cooked limas. This was incredible. Both hot and then later in the weekend cold, just like it had been in DC. Mmmmmmm

My Big Fat Greek Bean Pot

Revisiting one of my favorite cookbooks, Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson, I came across a recipe for that tomato-y white bean dish that I love so much (called fassolia, usually, I believe). And it so happens that I had purchased two bags of Greek gigante beans at the Greek Festival in the spring. I put the huge beans on to soak last night, with salt as is my new way (I've found that it's the acid not the salt that toughens beans), and boiled them til tender this morning. The smell of the garlic and onion sauteing in a ton of olive oil was perfect on this cold and windy morning. And the beans, now mixed with that and tomatoes in my slow cooker, smell fantastic! And you can eat them hot or cold . . . I just wish I had some bread and some baklava!

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Greek Big Beans

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 cups slow cooked beans or two 15.5 oz cans lima or butter beans, drained and rinsed (or actual Greek gigante beans. I wonder if you could use fava?)

28 oz can diced tomatoes, with juices

salt and pepper

1/2 cup minced fresh parsley leaves

Heat oil and cook onion, covered, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook another minute or so.

Transfer the onion and garlic to a 3 1/2 to 4-quart slow cooker. Add beans, tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir. Cover and cook on LOW for 4-6 hours. Just before serving, stir in parsley.

Robin Robertson, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker

Opa!

Same thing, this year:

souvlaki

roasted chicken

dolmades

olives

taramsalata

tzatzkiki

skordalia

spanokopita

tiropita

ravani

galaktoboureko

karidopita

methismena

kataifi

diples

plus:

two little Greek flags

two bags of Gigante beans

a jar of Cretan honey

and a cookbook with recipes for many of the above, because Sis wants to make galaktoboureko!

Opa! Redux

I thought I would have something new to say about the Greek festival we went to on Saturday, but, in reading over last year's post on the fest, I realize nothing really changed for us in the experience.  Bud still liked the cherry tomatoes.  Sis still liked the phyllo.  We all had a favorite dessert.

Only difference:  Bud noticed and danced to the music more this time and so we bought a CD entitled the Best of Bouzouki, complete with Theodrakis's theme from Zorba.  We've been listening to it ever since.

And you can bet we'll look forward to repeating the experience next year!

It's All Greek

Opa! It's Greek Festival time of year again and we went to the one in Bridgeport/Fairfield. Rain threatened so we went early, before most of the festivities began, but the food was there.

And, as a new vegetarian, I was sorely tempted (the first time, really). The chicken souvlaki looked and smelled so good. As did the moussaka (baked eggplant in bechamel with meat sauce) and the pastisio (baked noodles with bechamel and meat sauce). Mmmmmmm. I don't eat lamb, ever, so that wasn't a problem. But the others are some of my favorite foods. I had a noodle off the top of the pastisio, some bechamel from the moussaka, and the rice under the chicken. Splitting hairs? Disloyal? Whatever. Mainly, I inhaled my tiropita and spanikopita (spanakopita? spanokopita? choose your favorite spelling), which were excellent, plus feta and dolmades (stuffed grape leaves). Sis liked the crunchy phyllo off the top, Buddy liked the pastisio noodles and the tomatoes from the salad. Mama ate all of it, plus taramsolata, the caviar spread.

And then came the desserts. Of course, baklava and kataifi (which is like baklava with shredded wheat instead of phyllo), the cookies kourambiedes (butter) and finikia (walnut), diples (like a sopapilla), and my all-time favorite galatoboureko, a phyllo custard cake. Thank goodness the kiddos can have honey! Though, we didn't let them have any nuts. So we tried something new--a yellow cake flavored with orange, which they had labeled as karidopita (traditional walnut cake) but which I think was ravani (semolina cake with orange).

I have been going to Greek festivals off and on since I was a tween, though we weren't called that then. The one where I lived was huge and, as usual, the main focus was food. I don't remember what I ate then, probably chicken. Definitely dessert. When there wasn't a festival, we would go to a restaurant--for one birthday, my folks took me to the main one in the city and there was even some dancing (or at least I remember dancing). But no plate breaking. In college, my Greek class and I--I took ancient Greek for 8 semesters--would often go to the local restaurant for dolmades and the like.

Why the fascination with Greece? Chalk it up to too much mythology at a very young age. I'll credit Edith Hamilton and D'Aulaire with three things: a rejection of Christianity (because if people said the Greek gods weren't real, who was to say that the Christian God wasn't real? I was a precocious kid, building temples to Neptune at my parents' bay house to the shock of my aunts); a fascination with all things Greek, which eventually included two visits there; and a B.A. in Classical Studies. Everytime I go to a festival, I want to go back to Greece, to brush up my translation skills, but mainly to eat Greek food more often.

We did tour the agora with its Greek pride crafts and shirts, looked at the cultural display, bought some semolina and taramsolata. I almost bought more sweet cherry spoon fruit, but remember that I hadn't finished the jar from last year. Not that I will, just that I wouldn't.

Spoon fruit. I had read about this hospitable custom as a child--the presentation to a guest of a spoon of candied fruit in a glass of water. First you eat the fruit, then you drink the water. At home, we just gave guests something to drink, at my house now it's usually iced tea. And so, when I first went to Greece in 1989, and visited my friend Martha Bitsopoulou (whose name I include here in case she ever googles herself--we lost touch a long time ago and I can't find her or her sister Vicki)--I was thrilled to be the recipient of this custom.

Maybe I should have bought a new jar after all.