μου ταΐστε τα ελληνικά τρόφιμα

Now that we know schnitzel is in fact Austrian and not German (though germans do eat it so I wasn't completely wrong) we can move on. We are moving on to something a little more adventurous, something I've never tried before. It was greek night last night and I followed a recipe.  I don't really like following recipes, it's just not how I was trained but I bought the magazine above a while ago and I wanted to try something from it because everything looked and sounded authentic. Notice how the magazine says 'The Greek Issue'? If there are any Greeks reading this and think what I made is totally not Greek then you can contact the magazine, not me. That'd be great! So, the closest thing I've gotten to greek food is making fresh pita bread, a chicken and sausage stirfy, feta, tomatoes, lettuce, tzaziki and packing it all in together. And then there's Opa! in nearly every food court. I love that stuff but I was looking for something a little less typical. I decided to go with piperies gemistes me feta, kolokithoketedes, and souvlaki hirino. For those who aren't fluent in Greek, that is peppers stuffed with feta, zucchini fritters, and pork kabobs. For the piperies gemistes me feta, I decided to use goats cheese because I'm so in love with it I might as well marry it and we had it in the fridge so why not? I liked these except for the lemon zest that was in it. I'm just not a huge fan of lemon flavoured things unless it's something sweet. These peppers were not sweet. The recipe also asks for hot peppers but I'm not really into that sort of thing so we used a regular red bell pepper. The zucchini fritters were a little bit of an ordeal. Talk about stubborn two year old! First I had to strain the shredded zucchini, putting a heavy weight on it while it sat for 30 minutes. Then I had to wrap a cloth around it to soak up any more moisture. Man, it retains a lot of water. While the zucchini was doing it's thing, the rest of the mixture was waiting nice and patiently in the fridge - or so I thought. As I opened the fridge to get the pork out, the bowl sprung out like a moody, unpredictable teenager and fell onto the kitchen floor, the mix flying and splattering itself abruptly on the floor and the dishwasher. How graceful. Did I mention the bowl was glass? Yes, but thankfully, though painfully, it first dropped on my foot and then onto the floor. I kept my composure and asked myself what would be my next plan of attack. I told myself the floor was clean and picked up three quarters of the mix (the other quarter being a little questionable), put it back in the bowl and acted as though nothing ever happened. To those who ate them...surprise! I hope that doesn't bother you too much! Then I mixed the zucchini in and shaped the fritters. They sat for a bit, still leaking out water of course and then it was time to fry them. Still stubborn as could be, they would not stay together as I flipped them. Was all my tender loving care not enough? How needy can a fritter be? But I did not toil in vain, believe it or not. They were delicious and definately my favourite item. The soulvaki hirino wasn't bad. For starters, I'm not a huge pork fan and it always seems to be so dry. They were fun to make, though. One thing I changed was not grilling them on the barbeque. We don't have a barbeque so that was a little impossible. We do have a little portable grill thing that I thought about using but then dark memories started clouding my brain. I should know how to use one of these, seeing as though every camping trip I helped lead while working at Capernwray Bible school we had to use one but somehow I was always able to pass up that responsibility to the male leader except for one time. The one time there was more flames than I had prepared myself to see. And then there was the time in the not so distant past where a big commercial oven decided to have a spaz attack in my face which contained of one massive blue flame. So needless to say, I decided to fry the pork kabobs on the stove. The meal was nice, not my favourite but still nice and fun to try something different. Thanks for reading and enjoy the photos!

Antio!