Strapatsada: Tomato and Olive Oil Scrambled Eggs

We called it strapatsada, from the Italian uova strapazzate (scrambled eggs); it was the comfort food my mother cooked for me and my sister on summer evenings. In the winter I often make it with the cherry tomatoes from the greenhouses of southern Crete, which are quite tasty, althout a far cry from summer tomatoes. 

Last week I decided to fry the tomatoes, and instead of mixing in the eggs, I nestled them in the pan, and after 2-3 minutes, I moved the pan to a 200 C oven and baked for 5-8 minutes, until the eggwhite was opaque. We enjoyed it enormously with fresh crusty bread. 

 

Plain scrambled eggs are not a common Greek dish, but a huge egg and tomato scramble, as you might find in a Greek diner in America, is still a national institution. Some people add crumbled feta in the pan, but I much prefer to sprinkle it at the end; I enjoy my strapatsada with toasted bread or with olive-oil-fried potato slices, a heavenly combination!

Serve with toasted multi-grain, whole-wheat bread and a green salad, or with roast vegetables I often serve it with toasted bulgur pilaf, but simple sliced potatoes fried in olive oil are still my favorite complement.

 

See also the Scrambled Eggs with Fava beans which is another somewhat different, yet equally delicious combination. 

 

Menemen, the Turkish version, has diced peppers, both sweet and hot, along with tomatoes and chopped scallions. The Provençale bruillade à l’Arlésienne (scrambled eggs from Arles) has grated zucchini, tomatoes and garlic (see variations). Much like classic scrambled eggs, strapatsada needs to be soft and creamy, not dry or too watery. I use my own tomato confit or add a few sun-dried tomatoes to the pan to get the intense tomato flavor I remember from my childhood. 

 

 

Serves 2-4 as a main course, 5-6 as part of a meze spread (more…)

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Apple and Quince Crumble with Caramel

I used apples, or apples together with quince instead of the pears Samantha Seneviratne suggests in NYT Cooking to make this quite wonderful crumble that has a caramel base enriched with cottage cheese, instead of cream. I omitted half of the flour, added breadcrumbs, olive oil and orange juice and the results were delicious, both with just apples, or adding some quince for texture.

Served with or without ice cream, this is a seriously addictive dessert.

 

 

SERVES 8 – 10  (more…)

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Roasted Cabbage with Smoked Pepper and Rosemary

At Nolan restaurant in Athens, I tasted a salad of deliciously ‘burned,’ caramelized winter vegetables –pieces of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli— dressed with a lovely Asian-inspired sauce.  “Roasting cabbage wedges at high heat makes them crisp at the edges and tender in the middle,“ writes Melissa Clark in NYT Cooking.

 

 

Her recipe, the very first I encountered of roasted cabbage wedges –many have been published since– inspired me to try my version.

I omitted the anchovies and parmesan, but added both soy and fish sauce, as well as a large pinch of my favorite hot Florina smoked pepper, along with plenty of rosemary, which I think complements beautifully this Asian-Mediterranean roasted cabbage.  Costas and I loved it, and we make it quite regularly these days.

It accompanies beautifully any kind of meat or chicken, but we also eat it with the wonderful olive-oil-fried eggs from our neighbor’s hens, and feta cheese.

 

Serves 3- 4  (more…)

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Vietnamese-Inspired Baked Chicken with Potatoes and Squash

In an older recipe, I had stayed close to our Mediterranean traditions borrowing ideas from North Africa and the Middle East to propose the Rosemarry, Preserved Lemon, Garlic, and Orange Chicken.

Now I wend a long way east, taking inspiration from a very interesting recipe in Serious Eats.

“There’s a lot going on in the marinade, but one of the standouts—arguably even the key ingredient—is anchovy-based Vietnamese fish sauce, or nuoc mam,” write Emily and Matt Clifton. “Lime, ginger, and fish sauce add bold, bright, deep flavor to chicken,” they point out.

 

 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the particular fish sauce they mention, so I used the standard Thai fish sauce (nam pla) available at the Asian food stores in Greece. Limes are, again, an imported fruit that we can only get on Kea in the summer, when bars and the more sophisticated restaurants use it. I only had the local fragrant lemons, which, I must admit, are quite different in flavor; I decided to combine lemon and orange in my recipe.

I didn’t discard the very flavorful Vietnamese-inspired marinade but used it as the sauce to bake both the chicken as well as the accompanying vegetables, potatoes, some of our last garden peppers, and squash, drizzling with olive oil, as I usually do.

I think you will like this deep-flavored, easy chickenand vegetable dish as much as Costas and I did…

 

Serves 4  (more…)

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Fassoláda: the Traditional Bean soup, Revisited

The epitome of comforting, winter meal for Greeks, fassoláda is warming and filling. Prepared with the excellent ingredients from northern Greece that are now available, it becomes even more enticing!

 

I originally wrote and posted this seven years ago, as I was going through my first-grade school book published right after the Second World War. In it there was a description of fassoláda (bean soup), which was often referred to as ‘the Greek national dish’ in the old days. Surprisingly, the version in my book had no tomato! I was shocked, as fassoláda is always made with tomatoes as far as I can remember, but probably in those days canned tomatoes as well as tomato paste were not yet a common ingredient in all households. See also how the kitchen and stove looked in most parts of the country the 1950ies…

 

My revised recipe below is flavored with the wonderful Piperokama, the dried, smoked, hot peppers of Florina that our friend Naoumidis prepares.  I am told that it will be soon available in the US, as are his other deeply flavored roasted peppers which you can order  HERE and also HERE

 

We love to eat fassolàda with feta cheese, but also with canned sardines in olive oil or any smoked fish.

A simple bowl of olives, and/or taramosalata is the custom during the days of Lent, preceding Christmas.

 

Serves 4-6


(more…)

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