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 :-)