The Food of Cyprus

This week's pick was Cyprus (Dave pulled this one out of the container).

First order of the day - was to look up exactly where Cyprus was located on our trusty world globe....

Cyprus a small island just east of Greece in the Mediterranean Sea. It has had a very colourful history. It was originally settled by the Greeks - so as you can imagine, there is a heavy Greek influence on their cuisine, but it is by no means the same. As it has a prime position in the Middle East, it has been occupied over the years by many world powers including the Ottomans, Egyptians, French, Persians, Arabs, Romans and Venetians. Cypriot food has therefore been influenced in many ways by these ruling powers - there were what I would almost call Italian dishes as well as turkish style dishes in my trusty "Middle Eastern Cookbook".

The Cypriots developed Haloumi cheese, so that has featured heavily in this week's food.  I would go so far as to call it "Haloumi" week! They also like to "stuff" things - so we had both Stuffed vine leaves as well as Meat stuffed pancakes this week.

It has been for me, a cruisey week in the kitchen as I have only made three meals - however I must say, that except for the first meal, the rest were time consuming. went out to dinner on Thursday night with the Aussie girls to a lovely cafe restaurant called Little Brother - it is at the Red Hill Lookout. On Saturday we went to a friend's place for a BBQ dinner.

So here is a brief summary of what we tried:

On Tuesday - I made a very simple chicken and pasta dish. I used a traditional recipe published on Afordite's Kitchen Blog - she provides both modern and traditional Cypriot recipes on her blog. It was essentially chicken boiled in stock and then removed, pasta cooked in the stock and then drained and added to the sliced chicken, some lemon juice - with of course - Haloumi Cheese grated all over it! This is apparently eaten by Cypriot families sometimes as often as once a week.

We followed this up with a Fig and Apple Crumble (not strictly Cypriot - but I had a heap of figs, and figs do feature in the Cypriot cuisine).

On Wednesday night I thought I might make some Mezethakia - which are meze, small bits of different foods.  I included on the meze plate

• some bread, olive oil and raspberry balsamic vinegar (I was going to make Cypriot Kouloura bread recipe - but I just ran out of time)
• some Fig and Balsamic Jam (I used a recipe on the Afordite's Kitchen Blog)
• Fig paste (which I made on the Monday night)
• Olives stuffed with feta (store bought)
• Fried Haloumi - called Saganaki Haloumi
• Stuffed grape vine leaves - called Koupepia. To my surprise I found the grape vine leaves at our local IGA supermarket in the fridge section

The figs were sourced from Dad's fig trees in Goulburn.

The Koupepia were a bit fiddly to make - so if you ever make them, leave plenty of time. You had to wash, separate and then blanch the vine leaves (one at a time) in boiling water before adding the meat filling to them (making the meat sauce was also a multi-step process!).  Saganaki Haloumi is extremely easy - just flour the Haloumi slices and fry in butter.

On Friday night I made meat filled pancakes - another time consuming recipe - with multiple steps. These are called Kanellonia. Making this dish consisted of making the meat filling, making a separate fresh tomato sauce called Saltsa Tomata, and making the pancakes. You then stuff and roll the pancakes, put them in a baking dish - pour over the Saltsa Tomata and then add (wait for it), grated haloumi cheese to the top, baking it in the oven under it melted and turned brown.

I still have some leftovers of this one - so may go and have some for lunch!

See you next week for a week in Scotland!
Di :-)

Fijian Food Week

When Eliza and I sat down and wrote out the countries to go in our container, she wrote all the countries we had traveled to and added them in, this included Fiji.

When I sat and thought about it - I could remember drinking lots of cocktails and Fiji, and going to lots of restaurants which served multi-country food. For example, a restaurant that served both Italian and Chinese food. I can also remember quite a bit of fish. When we went out on tours we were normally served a buffet of salads, curries and BBQ'ed meat - fish, sausages and steak. The morning buffets were what you would normally get at any resort - but I think the highlight for the girls was the fresh tropical fruit..... with some varieties of fruit they hadn't tried before - eg. custard apples.

I don't have any cookbooks with Fijian food in them, so I went to the very handy "Google" and searched on "Fijian Recipes" - only to turn up a handful of the similar curry recipes. I must admit I was fairly uninspired, and I didn't think the girls would eat fish and curry all week.

Not to be deterred the next week I attempted another search - this time doing a broader search on "Fijian Food".  This turned up some information web-sites on what typical Fijians eat, and how their food is influenced predominantly by the Indian and Asian cultures. That's when I came across a link to Lance Seeto's Facebook page - "Fijian Food Safari" and his web page. This was all the inspiration I needed. Lance is an Australian Chef who is now an award winning international food and travel writer. He is also the presenter of a television cooking show called "Taste of Paradise" which is set on Castaway Island in Fiji. This year he will be bringing out a cookbook called "Coconut Bliss", so I'll have to find a copy when it is finally released.

Most of this week's recipes have been obtained from his facebook page, and by watching an episode of his Taste of Paradise Show.

This was the menu for the week (starting on Tuesday on account that we had Greek leftovers on Monday!):

Tuesday

Grilled Fish with Curried Beans and Tomato

From the show "Taste of Paradise"

Wednesday
Pumpkin, Citrus and Cardamom Soup
with Indian Dipping Bread
From the Facebook page - Fijian Food Safari

Thursday
Stir-fry Chicken with Hoisin Sauce, Pineapple and Coconut
From the show "Taste of Paradise"

Friday
Di's Lunch : Kokoda
From taste.com.au

Pizza Night

Saturday
Dinner at Friend's Place

Pineapple, Apple and Ginger Crumble
From the Facebook page - Fijian Food Safari

Monday
Fijian Chicken Curry
From the Food web-site
http://www.food.com/recipe/fijian-curried-chicken-24938

Some observations from this week:

• There are not a lot of cookbooks with Fijian recipes in them, so you have to use the web!
• I bought 4 cans of Coconut Milk and Cream.
• Spices such as Coriander, Cinnamon, Chili, Cardamom, Cumin and Tumeric featured in many of the recipes.
• Lots of citrus juice - orange, lime and lemon 
• I loved the colour of the food this week.

Here is our food week in pictures:

Tuesday

Grilled Fish with Curried Beans and Tomatoes. I used some Pink Ling fillets for this recipe, the curried sauce was very tasty.

Wednesday

Swimming night - so we needed a quick meal that we could have after we got home late. This is the Pumpkin, Citrus and Cardamom Soup. Extremely nice - and I think I might make this in future, as opposed to a plain pumpkin soup - very tasty. I served it with Indian dipping breads, as they would use similar breads in Fiji.

Thursday

A Chicken Stir-fry using Soy and Hoisin Sauces (should have been oyster sauce - but I forgot to check whether I had some before embarking on making it).  The interesting thing about this stir-fry which makes it more Fijian than Asian, is the addition of pineapple and shredded coconut.

Friday

I was pretty keen on making some traditional Fijian Kokoda. In essence, this is raw fish which has been cooked overnight in the fridge using lemon juice. Once marinated, you add finely chopped onion, capsicum, tomato and chilli, and add some coconut milk to the mix.  I used snapper for this one. Delicious - although if I make it again I will only put a little bit of onion in - the onion was just a little too much against the subtle flavours of the fish and coconut milk.  I used a recipe from taste.com.au.

Saturday

I made Pineapple, Apple and Ginger Crumble to take to a friend's place for dinner. I forgot to take a picture - so here is the picture from Lance Seeto's facebook page:

Monday

The last Fijian dish for the week was this Fijian Chicken Curry. It was very similar in taste to a dish Jasmin loved on the breakfast buffet in Phuket. I will have to keep this recipe to cook again.  Everyone loved it and I especially loved the vibrant yellow colour (from the Tumeric). The recipe can be found here.

For this week, Dave pulled "Cyprus" out of the container. Similar to Greek food with some differences. Dave is going to love the Haloumi cheese which is used in a lot of savoury dishes. I was also surprised by the amount of coriander found in Cypriot food.

Di :-)

Greek Food Week

Eliza pulled Greece out of the container for this week's food choice. I think it will be a bit healthier than the week we had last week - but let's see what the scales say at the end of the week!

For Dave and I, Greek food conjures up images off our teenage years, when we used to visit our friend Phil's house, always to be greeted by the smell of food as we walked through the door. It seemed to us, that his mother was always cooking, and she always insisted on feeding us her latest batch of food, proclaiming that we were "too skinny"! I remember dolmades, baklava and honey cookies among the delights we were fed.

So this week we ate food from a "cuisine shaped through 3000 years of history; through the geography and climate of a country lolling in the azure blue seas; through sloping mountains thrusting upwards to the heavens where humans and nature vie for control; through the people of the land those joy for life is evident every evening at the quaysides, in the tavernas, in town squares at the kafenia". A quote from "Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook", given to me by my friend Mel for my birthday. It's full of great middle eastern recipes from all countries in the middle east, and has the most gorgeous food pictures.

This week Eliza's best friend's mum also got excited we were doing Greek food - so she lent me some older Greek/Middle Eastern cookbooks as well - one of the cookbooks was an old Women's Weekly cookbook, which had some delicious recipes in it as well.

On the menu this week:

Monday
Spanikopita me Salata Horiatiko
aka Spinach Pie with Village Salad
from the "Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook"

Tuesday
Kolokithokeftethes me Tzatziki
aka Zucchini Fritters with Yoghurt Dip
from the Women's Weekly "Easy Greek Style Cookery" book

Wednesday
Stifatho
aka Braised Beef and Onions
from the "Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook"

Thursday
Kotopoulo me Spanaki ke Feta me Briami
aka Chicken with Spinach and Feta, with Vegetable Casserole
from the Women's Weekly "Easy Greek Style Cookery" book

Friday
Takeaway night & Cheat's Baklava
Baklava from Donna Hay's "Easy" cookbook

Saturday
A break in program to have some more American food, today we had a planning session to plan a USA holiday towards the end of the year. I thought we would all get in the mood with some American food, so I made:

Rio Grande Chilli
(from the "Cowboy Cookbook")

Southern Fried Chicken
Cola Cakes for Dessert
from "Love to Eat"

Sunday
Pastitso me Salata Eliniki
aka Macaroni and Meat Pie with Greek Salad
from the "Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook"

Some observations about this week's recipes:

• Once again, the ingredients are really easy to source, and are available from our regular supermarkets;
• Every dish featured herbs including dill, mint, parsley and in some cases basil;
• I had to top up my supply of cinnamon sticks which featured in many of the savoury dishes, along with cloves and nutmeg;
• I purchased a lot of Feta Cheese this week - and now understand why I've seen it sold in large tubs in many supermarkets!
• Other ingredients that featured heavily included tomatoes (both fresh, tinned and passata); olives and olive oil; green vegetables such as spinach, zucchini, cos lettuce, green capsicums and cucumbers; lemons and nuts - especially walnuts; and filo pastry - used in both savoury and sweet dishes.
• Also - they love cooking with wine, both red and white (which is just fine by me!).

Although I didn't select any lamb recipes - lamb is a very popular meat in Greek cookery, and in fact in most Middle Eastern countries.

Our food week in pictures follows:

Monday

We couldn't resist purchasing some Greek beer - Mythos (love the name), whilst in Dan Murphy's on the weekend, just to make it an authentic drinking experience as well. I was tempted to get a small bottle of Ouzo - but I don't like aniseed flavours, so suspect Dave would have been left to drink the whole bottle!

Monday we had Spanikopita (spinach pie), with Village Salad. The village salad was similar to Greek Salad, but didn't include any cos lettuce.

Tuesday

My dad gave me a mutantly large zucchini on the weekend we went back for fruit picking - so it was great to find a zucchini fritters recipe in the Greek cookbook Rebecca lent me. I made a delicious little Tzatziki to go with them.

Wednesday
Wednesday was swimming night, so I decided to do the Braised Beef and Onions (Stifatho) in the slow cooker, so it would be ready by the time we got home. Served it with mashed potato (as well as some Brussels sprouts - on account that Jassy really wanted some). I used up one of my jars of home-made tomato sauce in this recipe.

Thursday

Chicken with Spinach and Feta (Kotopoulo me Spanaki ke Feta) was on the menu for tonight, and I made a vegetable casserole (Briami) to go with it - this used up the last bit of massive zucchini dad had given me!  I think this was one of my favourite dishes this week - the Chicken was stuffed with the spinach and the feta, and the sauce was essentially a white wine and chicken sauce.

Friday
Every cook needs a bit of a rest - so we had Pizza and Movie night, but I couldn't resist making some Baklava for dessert. On account that it's the only night I don't normally cook, I made it easy for myself and made "Cheats Baklava" from Donna Hay's latest cookbook "Easy".

Sunday
The final Greek dishes for the week. We went around to Eliza's best friends place and had a gaming afternoon with Rebecca and Wade, while the Eliza and Isabelle played together. We took dinner around with us, which included Pastitso (Macaroni and Meat Pie), a great dish for feeding lots of people, and a Salata Eliniki (Greek Salad). Rebecca had found an Orange Cake for dessert which we had with Greek Yoghurt.

OK - so the verdict weight-wise was good. I managed to shed about 1.5kgs, so most definitely a healthier choice than the American food I had cooked the week before. I'm not sure how we will fair next week, as Jasmin pulled "Fiji" out of the container. A nice challenge, given that none of my several hundred cookbooks have any Fijian recipes in them - so I had to do some "Googling". The results - quite a few curry dishes, as a lot of the food of Fiji has Indian influences.

Stay tuned for next week's cooking adventures from Fiji.

Di :-) 

American Food Week

It was American food week this week in the Turner household. We selected American Food this week, mainly because Jasmin was craving some Burgers, and I figured they kind of fit best into an American themed week.

Here is a round up of our menu for the week:

Monday
Meatball Caesar Salad
from Delicious "Love to Eat" - the American section

Tuesday
Classic Cheeseburgers (we also added bacon, pineapple and avocado LOL!)
from a cheap $5 book that Dave got me once which has every imaginable burger recipe in it!
Apple Brown Betty
from "A Taste of America"

Wednesday
Southern Fried Chicken with Coleslaw
"Love to Eat"

Thursday
Maryland Crab Cakes with Dill Pickle Mayo, Coleslaw, Rocket and Tomato
from Delicious "Love to Eat" - the American section, 

Friday
Deep Pan Pizza
from Delicious "Love to Eat" - the American section

Saturday
The Night Noodle Markets

Sunday
Californian Salad
the Delicious Magazine March 2015 p128

Some observations about food this week:

• The ingredients are easily found in our supermarket. Among the special ingredients I purchased were - some American mustard, onion powder and dried onion flakes, some dill pickles.
• Carbs feature in almost every dish - there was bread in the Caesar Salad, rolls with the cheeseburgers, breadcrumbs in the Apple Brown Betty, breadcrumbs in the chicken and the crab cakes, flour obviously in the Pan Pizza
• Cheese also featured quite heavily - every recipe except the crab cakes and Apple Brown Betty.
• I couldn't get fresh or frozen crab meat in either Gungahlin or Belconnen, or the fresh food markets, so had to use tinned instead.
• Lots of fried food normally served with salad on the side.

Monday
Monday night's dinner was delicious. The Caesar salad dressing was made from scratch, I also added Avocado to the salad (it wasn't in the recipe). The meatballs were chicken meatballs.

Tuesday
Thought we would have the Cheeseburgers on this day, as Jassy went to school camp on Wednesday morning.

Interesting thing with the Cheeseburgers is that you added grated cheese to the top of the patties once you had turned them over after cooking on one side.

I couldn't resist adding fresh pineapple slices, avocado, bacon, rocket (instead of lettuce) and grated carrot to the mix. Eliza has vegetarian burgers (without the meat patty) - so I added some sliced mature cheddar to the mix as well.

The Apple Brown Betty I mentioned in my last post, it was from a book I borrowed from a friend. This was a layered crumble type dish - a layer of crumbs, thinly sliced apple, crumbs with some little cubes of butter ... continued three times. Instead of making the crumble, I used the left overs from the week-end. The only difference was that my crumble used flour not breadcrumbs, and macadamias not walnuts.

Wednesday
Tonight's meal included Southern Fried Chicken and a coleslaw. This was very tasty indeed, and Dave said that he would have it again. Instead of making it with Chicken Thighs and Drumsticks I made it with Chicken Tenderloins, and semi-deep fried the pieces, draining them well on paper afterwards. Served the chicken with a homemade coleslaw and mashed potatoes on the side.

Thursday
Maryland Crab Cakes served with left over Coleslaw, some rocket and tomato wedges. These were also very tasty - but I would have liked to have tried them with fresh crab meat as opposed to the tinned variety - I just couldn't find fresh crab meat anywhere!  The dill pickle mayo was also very nice - made with sour cream, mayo, american mustard, capers, dill pickles, dill and some vinegar.

Friday
We normally have take-away on Friday nights (normally pizza), so I thought it was quite fitting to cook Deep Pan Pizza for the first time. I did add ham into the mix - as it was a vegetarian pizza, and omitted the eggplant - as we aren't really fans of large chunks of eggplant in our food. I made the pizza dough from scratch - the recipe was perfect. I also used a jar of tomato sauce which I had made using our friend Shane's recipe as a guide (LOL might have added a bit too much brown sugar to the recipe, but it was nice). The only problem with Deep Pan Pizza, is that the crust starts to go soggy from all the moisture in the sauce which is poured in to make essentially a pizza pie.

Sunday
Sunday lunch we met the neighbours for lunch at Sirens in Gungahlin, so I thought I would finish the week with a light salad - a Californian salad from the Delicious Magazine March issue. It was a Jamie Oliver recipe, and I did end up alternating it somewhat. I decided not to include the mixed rice (we didn't really need the carbs that night), and I added avocado, and tomatoes (as I couldn't get pomegranate in the supermarket). I also had to miss out the heirloom beetroots, as they went soft before I could use them!

Eliza drew Greece out of the container for next week ... so stay tuned to see what we have on the menu next week!

Di :-)