A culinary journey of self discovery and expression

The final menu ending up being :

Tsatsiki with pita bread and cheese to dip

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Stacks

Lamb and Eggplant Moussaka

And Baklava for dessert

*** All the recipes are at the bottom, or in the recipe section of this blog.

Tsatsiki

I wasn’t real impressed with this dish. Well let me correct that, the recipe was a bit strange. Every Tsatsiki I’ve had has been somewhat smooth; this recipe had chunks of Cucumber. The flavor was good, but it was missing something. The pita bread was delicious with the dip though. We’ll have to try other recipes in the future.

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Stacks

AMAZINGLY simple and delicious. I could not find Halloumi Cheese, so I substituted with Yuri Grilling Cheese, I’m not sure how it compares to Halloumi, as I have never had it, but this flavor was almost smoky. Paired with mint and cumin, it was heaven on a slice of cheese. The only thing I have to complain with is the I cut the tomato too thick, so the tomato overpowered the cheese and grilled pita bread. The overall flavor, was amazing. Nothing to change or work on with this recipe.

The final Cheese Stacks with the Tsatsiki

B. Being silly. You can see the Cheese
marinating in olive oil, mint and cumin.

Lamb and Eggplant Moussaka

All of the igredients used for the Moussaka

The easiest way I can describe this dish, is a Greek version of lasagna. A very delicious lasagna at that. It’s a long process. We made a couple of changes. The recipes calls for salting of the eggplant and letting it drain for about 20 minutes. We did this, but only for a few minutes. The recipe states the reason for this is to take the bitterness out of the eggplant. We like eggplant as is, and like the flavor, so we didn’t want to lose too much of that flavor, so again we only let it sit for maybe 10 minutes. There is also a lot of cutting, so just make sure you have plenty of room to cut and keep all the veggies you cut up. Also, the recipe calls for a dry red wine. The wine that we bought as a Greek sweet red wine, I’m not a wine fan, but I couldn’t get enough of this wine, and it made the meat sauce almost a little sweeter then it probably would have been. The overall mean was tasty.

I have never had lamb, and I had heard that lamb was a strong tasting meat. So I was expecting a big flavor when I ate it. But when I tried the lamb before adding anything to the pan after it was brown, it wasn’t a strong flavor. It defiantly has its own taste, you won’t get it confused with a beef or pork.

The final Mousakka. It kind of fell apart :(

Baklava

One word to describe this; SWEET; overwhelmingly sweet. It is so rich and full over flavor, I could only honestly handle 1 bite, before I started feeling the rush of sugar to my head. Again we made some substitutions, because we thought it sounded good. While shopping for the ingredients, we found cinnamon sugar almonds. The recipe called for 1lb of almonds, so we used half cinnamon sugar almonds and half regular. Bad idea! WAY too much sugar, way too much. The coating on these almost were almost twice the size of the almonds themselves, so when we chopped them up, it ended up being all coating going into the bowl. Next time, if there is a next time, we try Baklava it will be plain almonds and half the sugar. My boyfriend loves Baklava, had a couple of pieces, but regretted it the next day working out.

The process of making baklava is long, it isn’t hard, but it is a long process. If you have never worked with phyllo dough, it is very thing, paper thin. And you layer these sheets of dough with butter and the nuts. It took us about an hour of layer before the baklava was ready to go in the oven. Also heads up, the brush we were using to brush the phyllo dough with butter was one of those rubber ones, I think a traditional kitchen brush would work better. This brush didn’t spread the butter too well, it just released it in one spot and it was a lot of work making sure the whole layer was covered with butter. Which by the way, if you’re watching your girlish figure, this is NOT the meal for you, 3 sticks of butter!

Not sure if you can see or not, but when
we added the syrup to the pan it started
to boil. A little scary!

Overall with this week, I have not only learned some good recipes I will keep in my recipe collection, I have learned a lot of the Greek culture when it comes to food. They love to share. A lot of time is spent around the kitchen table. Food is how the honor not only guests but Gods as well. Just have fun with it. Enjoy life, and that will translate into your food.

I hope you guys enjoyed this week as much as I did, and try the recipes just as I have. Give me your feedback, let me know how it turns out for you.

Tsatsiki

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Stacks

Lamb and Eggplant Moussaka

Baklava

Other Pictures from the evening: