Opa!

My college friend Jamie came to visit me this past weekend and it was no surprise that she chose Taverna Cretekou in Alexandria, VA, as the destination for our first meal out. We happened to arrive at the restaurant in the middle of a birthday celebration for the daughter of one of the owners. After ten minutes of standing in the doorway waiting for someone to acknowledge us and wondering if the restaurant was even open for business that night, a woman with a fabulous head of fake red hair and a thick Greek accent let us know that a table was available for us in the corner. She pointed to it and then went back to the dance floor where some of the wait staff were already drunkenly swaying to the bouzouki. I looked at Jamie in disbelief, but she only laughed, shrugged her shoulders and said “so typical.”

Jamie studied for four months in Athens, Greece, where she became well-acquainted with the relaxed, uninhibited, Mediterranean attitude. It was not uncommon in Athens to spend three to four hours each night eating and drinking at one the local tavernas.

Well before her trip abroad Jamie became familiar with Greek cuisine through her mother’s side of the family. She grew up eating dishes like spanakopita, tomato and cucumber salads and stuffed eggplant.

Jamie has always seen cooking and gardening as going hand in hand. She credits her green thumb to her Greek heritage. Greeks like to cook fresh, simple and seasonal and the best way to find fresh ingredients is by picking them from your own back yard. Jamie grew up gardening with her mother, worked at a nursery in high school and for a landscape designer through college. She finds it gratifying to grow her own food and sees it as an artistic pursuit. In Greece it was very common for people to have vegetable patches in their yards and farmer’s markets with fresh produce could be found a few blocks from her house almost every day of the week.

The tavernas in Greece usually didn’t have a set menu, explains Jamie. They cooked from what was available and in season. They usually prepared a dish or two a night and if you didn’t like what they were cooking, you went somewhere else. “Most of the tavernas also make their own house wines, which range anywhere from delicious to unfiltered vinegar,” says Jamie.

Unlike Athens, where the streets are sprinkled with olive and orange trees, Jamie now lives in Colorado, where short summers, cold nights and high altitudes make it more difficult to grow some of the produce she loves. But she has adjusted to growing cooler weather crops and has been whipping up glazed carrot dishes, arugula salads, and French onion soup, with the vegetables from her garden. According to Jamie, meals are tastier and fresher when cooked with homegrown ingredients and she can feel good about eating locally and saving money. Her attitude is: "If you have the space to plant yourself a garden, then you might as well."

Jamie and I enjoyed our meal at Taverna Cretekou this weekend: fresh bread dipped in basil-infused olive oil, saganaki (fried sheep’s milk cheese that they set fire to right at your table), Greek salad, grilled octopus and a roasted leg of lamb with lemon and oregano. And at the end of the night as we sat sipping our complementary wine, we watched a seventy-something-year-old Greek woman climb on top of one of the party tables during “Zorba’s Dance” and start gyrating her hips at a group of young men. We decided to stay for another half hour and watch the spectacle. Jamie shrugged again and said, “Greek people just like to have fun.”

This weekend Jamie was nice enough to cook me some Greek “meze,” the equivalent of tapas in Spain. Her favorite is a dish called kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters).

Kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters)

Ingredients

3 or 4 zucchinis

1/2 cup of diced yellow onion

1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano (less if using dried oregano)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 egg

1/2 cup bread crumbs (more if mixture is really wet)

4 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

1/4 cup crumbled feta

Flour for rolling shaped fritters

Grate the zucchinis on a fine grate setting and place in a strainer. Set strainer over a deep bowl to catch the zucchini juice.  Place a heavy bowl on top of the grated zucchinis and use a bottle of wine, soda, juice etc as a weight to help press the juice out of the vegetable.  Leave for at least 30 minutes. 

Once a good deal of liquid has drained (sometimes up to 16+ oz) mix the grated vegetables with all other ingredients, adding more breadcrumbs if the mixture is very wet.  In a frying pan, heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan, but not enough to drown the fritters.  When the oil is hot, shape the zucchini mixture into flat, round discs about 2-3 inches in diameter.  Cover in flour and set directly into the hot pan. Cook until brown on both sides.  Remove from heat and place on a paper towel to absorb the excess oil.  Makes 16-18 fritters.

Serve with immediately with tzatiki.

Tzatziki

one large container greek style plain yogurt

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cucumber, peeled, seeds removed and roughly grated

salt and pepper to taste.

Grate cucumber and let drain in a strainer for at least 30 minutes to remove excess juice. Combine all ingredients and serve with zucchini fritters  

 

Do It Yourself

Six years ago, while spending a summer with my sister in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a guy I barely knew asked me if I’d like to “float down the Susquehanna River” with about twelve of his friends on a raft that he had built out of plywood and empty beer kegs. I had to admit, I’d gotten wind of this project and was a little skeptical that he would actually be able to pull it off. But on a beautiful Sunday in July, the raft that Ryan built, equipped with a mini barbeque and a half-keg of beer, floated smoothly down the Susquehanna River for four hours while we sipped Yuengling, ate hot dogs and soaked up the Pennsylvania sun.

My boyfriend Ryan struck me immediately as the do-it-yourself type of person. Whether it is building a raft out of kegs or teaching himself how to play guitar, he is always in the middle of tackling some project or another. Right now he has twenty gallons of Dortmunder lager, English strong ale, raspberry nut brown beer and Belgian abbey beer, brewing in his basement. Just for fun.

Lucky for me, Ryan’s do-it-yourself mentality translates to the kitchen as well. I am never surprised to find two or three jars of something pickling in his fridge or a container of cabbage fermenting into kimchi on the kitchen counter. When he comes over, it is often with Tupperware containers filled with some delicious homemade soup or stew, a pound of salmon that he cold-smoked himself, or some sort of baked good that he made without ever looking at a recipe. Right now in my fridge, is a jar of his homemade pesto, made from the last of his summer basil. Although his backyard consists of a plot of concrete, this hasn’t stopped him from growing an herb and vegetable garden in a series of pots on his deck.

Whereas most of us probably think there are some foods that are best made by experts, Ryan never hesitates to try out a new recipe or cooking technique. While sampling unfamiliar dishes like ahi poke, char siu, and loco moco on our recent vacation to Hawaii, I heard him exclaim several times, “I have to make this when we get back!” This trip also inspired his resolve to start making his own jams, salamis and a hot sauce. And why not? Most of us would never think about making our own hot sauce when we can easily pick up a bottle of Tabasco at the store. But Ryan enjoys the laborious processes of brining, smoking, stewing, pickling, roasting, brewing, and growing his own food.

Ryan also likes cooking because he says it is “a mixture of science and art.” He finds the scientific processes involved in different cooking techniques fascinating and approaches them at the molecular level. When we’re cooking together we’re not making a salad dressing, we’re “emulsifying,” and we’re not browning the onions we’re “carbonizing” them. When I ask Ryan how to brew beer I don’t get a set of directions, I get a lesson on microbiology. Understanding not only how to make something using the do-it-yourself mentality, but also the scientific reasoning for why it must be done that way, is important to his cooking experience.

Ryan's recipe is braised lamb shank:

Braised Lamb Shank

4 lamb shanks

2 large onions, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
2 tbs chopped fresh rosemary (3 or 4 tbs if dried)
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 cup red wine
stock or water
2 cups mushrooms, chopped

Season the lamb shanks with salt. Brown each side in a Dutch oven or large pot at medium high heat with a tablespoon of olive oil. Remove the shanks from the pot. Add onions and celery and sauté until tender or until the onions begin to brown. Return the shank to the pot. Add next 5 ingredients: tomatoes through red wine. Add stock or water until shanks are two thirds submerged in liquid, bring to a simmer, and cover with low heat. Mix periodically and adjust heat if not simmering. Add fresh black pepper and salt to taste.
While simmering the shanks, bring a large sauté pan to medium high heat with two tablespoons of olive oil. Add mushrooms and sauté until mushrooms are brown and slightly crispy around the edges. Add to lamb shanks.
Add fresh black pepper and salt to taste, but remember the broth will appear saltier as the liquid evaporates. Simmer lamb shanks until fork tender but before the meat falls easily off the bone (approximately 90-120 minutes). Simmer uncovered for the last 20 minutes if a thicker sauce is desired.
Serve with potatoes. Garnish with rosemary.

Rise of the Foodies

When I was in eighth grade, my history teacher introduced me to a little show called Iron Chef. This poorly-dubbed, but highly entertaining Japanese cook-off show had little to do with history, but my teacher decided that it simply must find a way into the curriculum. So after our examination on the Revolutionary War one day, our class watched Takeshi Kaga take a rapturous bite out of a red bell pepper to signal the start of a riveting competition where three chefs would compete for the title of "Iron Chef." A dark cloth was ripped away to reveal the secret ingredient of the episode: a tank of octopi waiting to be baked, stuffed, grilled, and sautéed into thirty delectable gourmet dishes in the course of just 90 minutes. 

I was hooked.

Now most TV networks have at least one show dedicated to the food genre. Bravo has Top Chef, Fox has Hell’s Kitchen and TLC has BBQ Pit Masters. Some of the chefs and hosts of these popular shows have reached incredible celebrity status. Chefs like Emeril, Gordon Ramsay, Bobby Flay, Jamie Oliver, Rachael Ray and Anthony Bourdain have become household names and terms such as “EVOO” and “BAM!” are echoed in every kitchen across America.

Food Network now broadcasts almost a hundred different shows including classic cooking competition shows, reality restaurant and bakery shows, shows exploring diners and dives across the country, and a show that explores regional food rivalries, like who has the best cheesesteak in Philadelphia. There’s even a show that busts common myths about food, like whether or not celery has negative calories (no, it doesn’t).

Food and cooking have recently started to dominate other media outlets as well. The magazine rack at my local Whole Foods displays at least ten different food magazines at the checkout line. This month’s issue of Cooking Light shows us twenty different ways to cook pumpkin, including an intriguing recipe for pumpkin ravioli with gorgonzola. It also gives its readers a useful guide for cooking apples: which apples are best for eating, which are best for baking, and which are best for making soups, salsas and sangria. And the October issue of Bon Appetit offers tantalizing recipes like “Peppered Chicken with Pomegranate-Darjeeling Jelly.” I don’t even know what Darjeeling jelly is, but it sounds delicious.

Recipe websites and food blogs are sprouting up all over the internet. In blogs like like Orangette and Zucchini & Chocolate, thousands of followers tune in daily to read the culinary musings and view the mouth-watering photography of food enthusiasts. I think it’s safe to say that our modern culture is obsessed with food. Our epicurean obsession is also manifesting itself in popular literature.

Food has always been a theme in children’s stories, but is just now gaining popularity in adult literature. One of my favorite childhood stories was Strega Nona. Strega Nona is an old Italian witch who owns an enchanted pasta pot. When she casts a spell on the pot, it produces as much pasta as she wishes. Her assistant Anthony witnesses Strega Nona performing the spell one day and decides he will try it when she is gone, but he does not witness her performing the spell that stops the pot from making pasta. So when Strega Nona leaves town and Anthony performs the spell, the pot produces so much pasta that it floods the whole town. When Strega Nona returns, she forces Anthony to eat every last bite of pasta as punishment.

This story is reminiscent of many other childhood stories: take Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for example, where the children who become carried away by greed and gluttony end up turning into blueberries or nearly drowning in a pool of liquid chocolate. Similarly, in the classic story of Hansel and Gretel, a brother and sister are lured into the home of a cannibalistic witch whose house is made of gingerbread. Then of course there’s Alice, who eats strange mushrooms, and Snow White, who eats a poisonous apple given to her by a stranger.

Unfortunately, most of the children’s stories I grew up with that revolve around food tend to focus on danger and temptation. Only the protagonist in The Very Hungry Caterpillar is rewarded for his propensity to binge eat. Interestingly though, the food books that come to mind for adult readers often portray food in a positive light, symbolizing things like reward, power, healing, happiness and liberation.

In the “Eat” section of the book Eat Pray Love, recently divorced Elizabeth Gilbert tries to rediscover pleasure in Italy by gorging herself on pizza and gelato. She celebrates every pound she gains and every pant size she goes up. In Julie Powell’s book Julie & Julia, a young woman named Julie, who is trying to distract herself from a job where she talks to victims of 9/11, decides to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and write a blog documenting her experience. In Joanna Harris’s novel Chocolat, a woman named Vianne opens up a chocolaterie in a small, conservative village in France. The shop is opened during the season of Lent and the priest in the town forbids his congregation to patronize the shop. In this story, chocolate becomes both a symbol of sin and overindulgence (in the eyes of the priest), and a symbol of pleasure, magic and liberation for those who dare to try it.

Food culture is currently permeating every branch of the media. From TV and magazines to food blogs and fiction, we love reading, watching and hearing about food. And it’s not just because it appeals to our senses. Food is a part of our identity, a symbol of culture, ritual and family. And cooking is a therapeutic and creative process that generates much more than just something to eat.