A truly different soup. Ingredients as such are typical for the Mediterranean and go well together but one would expect them rather to be served separately on a tray with a glass of wine as a Mezze. The milk of course seems entirely misplaced but is totally necessary. Another great dish discovered in the cook book “Tastes of the Mediterranean”.

Preparation time: 15 minutes
easy recipe

Preparation:

Remove the pit from the olives and place into a blender. Add the ancovy, the chopped spring onion, some fresh marjoram and basil and top up with milk, lemon juice and a sip of olive oil.
Add the crumbled rusk and mix for a couple of minutes.

Season with salt and pepper and serve.

A delicious ice cream with few ingredients. It is not summer yet, so I wanted an ice cream that has a touch of winter. Hot milk with honey and cinnamon is a typical winter taste. Having this frozen makes a great dessert.

Preparation time: 10 minutes and occasionally stirring
very simple recipe

Preparation:

Put all ingredients into a small pot and heat gently. Take off the heat just befor the milk starts to boil.
Let it cool down and place in the freezer when cooled down completely.

Remove form the freezer and stir with a hand mixer.
Repeat this procedure during the next few hours. You want the ice crystals to get as smooth as possible.

Remove from the freezer 20 minutes before serving.

I am stunned by how many of you took the time to participate. With some of you I am even more amazed about the efford you took to post multiple recipes. You have written 21 recipes in English, French and Dutch! This is an absolut record for the event. This is the first time that the participants exeed the number of participants on my german blog!!! Thank you all!

Here are the participants with their recipes:

A delicious dish was presented by Erbe in cucina. Moroccan Meatballs with Rice and Parsley, don’t only look good but taste even better.

Taste of Beirut cooked a Citrus Salad for us. Looks good and is an absolut must for Orange lovers.

Sousou has cooked a Moroccan Chicken for us. But not only that, she also made a video for us. Fun to watch, don’t miss it!

The Curious Blogquat prepared a Dessert Tagine. Surprise yourself with a steamed pudding and citrus. I never knew that one could make desserts in a Tajine.

Seduce your tastebuds is written by PJ, who posted 3 recipes. Please check them out, they are all interesting. The fits thing that PJ prepared is Moroccan Spaghetti. An unexpected dish as I had not associated Morocco with spaghetti.

The next dish is Harira, a Moroccan Lentil and Tomato soup A hefty soup that also features chick peas.

The Moroccan Spiced Instant Coffee is infused with Ginger, Cardamon,
Black Pepper and Cinnamon!

This fabulous Harcha Bread was posted on World Womens day by Joy of cooking. A blog you should check out.

Unbelievable but true is Lyan from Zoveel lekkers, which means as much as “So many YUMMY things”. Lyan did the unbelievable and posted 11, yes, 11 recipes. This calls for a big BRAVO!  Her first dish is a called tajine kip met aardappel en bleekserderij Check out the translation button on her blog. It is certainly worth to go through the trouble of tranlsating it. A fun read for sure.

The bananas with honey and roasted almonds is a healthy sweet that her childen love. And so will you!

The other favourite sweet is called Snowball. And that is as well how it looks.

Olive oil bread with fig-butter is the next recipe you can find here. If you have any problem with the language or your Dutch is a bit rusty, use the translation button to the right of the page.

The round Babout Breads are easy to make and look traditionaly Moroccan. For those who love baking a must.

Rolled Baklava remionds me of the Greek version of this sweet. Obviously there are many versions of it to be found.

Here on the left we hava a moroccan style salad with olives. The use of olives is known in Greece as well.

On the right she has cooked us a Tajine with eggplant and cellery. A vergetarian Tajine, finally!

The cous cous with milk and pumpkin surprised me as Ihad never seen cous cous with milk before!

Corn with herb butter is also worth checking out. Sounds like a juicy dish.

Last but not least, we get a moroccan mint tea to help us digest this vast meal!

Simplicity’s table by the sea presents us an other sweet dish with cous cous that is not considered a desert! Seffa de Couscous.

One more dessert and the second post of the curious Blogquat. Honey Saffron Ice Cream & Chocolate Cous Cous

Please vote!

Al classic dish of the Greek Cuisine and a must during lent. The Stifado with Octopus is one of my favourite Greek dishes. Stifado can be made with chicken, lamb, or veal but the verison with octopus is the most delicious, at least for me.

Preparation time: 20 minutes
cooking time: 100 minutes
easy recipe

Preparation:

Let your fish dealer prepare the octopus. Place the octopus in a pot that fits it easily ant place a lid on top. Do not add any water and bring to boil on low heat. Simmer for 30 minutes. Take the octopus out and let it cool down on a plate. Save the juices in the pot for later.

Use the same pot to fry the peeled small onions in olive oil until they have some colour. Add the sugar after a few minutes. Let it caramelize then add the vinegar. A thick sauce will develop on the bottom of the pot. Now add the bay leaves, the cinnamon, the chili, salt and pepper. Cut the tomato into the pot, add the tomato paste and a glass of white wine as well as the liquid form boiling the octopus. cover and let it boil for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile cut the octopus into small pieces. Then add the octopus to the pot and let is cook on very low heat for 40 minutes, the pot not covered so it thickens.

Tip: To store it I remove the cinnamon stick. It may turn a bit bitter when kept for a while.

I had a fennel bulb left over and was more into baking then cooking. I decided to use the fennel in a rather unusual way. Fennel in a cake, I had never tried before but the thought was tempting. Smelling a fennel bulb allows you to imagine eating it sweet.

Preparation time: 20 minutes
baking time: 25 minutes
easy recipe

Preparation:

Wash and dice the fennel bulb. Melt half of the sugar in a small pot until it turns into Caramel. Add a cup of water and dissolve the caramel. Add the fennel and boil for 10 minutes.Remove and drain.

Mix the flour, the eggs and some olive oil in a blowl. Add the remaining sugar, a pinch of salt, the cinnamon, the baking powder and mix all well.

Now add the fennel and put the dough in to baking forms. I used small Muffin-like forms.

Bake in the preheated oven at 180 Degrees for 25 to 30 minutes.

Returning from our excursion from the African coast, we travel back to good old Europe where we land in Italy. World famous for its delicatessen such as Mozzarella, Mortadella, Parma ham, Polenta and Pasta but as well for its wines such as the Chianti or the Barolo.
Here we can find a vast variety of local traditions and recipes. Cucina alto-borghese or Cucina povera, you choose!

The 6th Mediterranean Cooking Event has started and the topic is:

Italy

Start date is the 10th of March 2010.
End date is the 10th of April 2010.

The winner receives this great cookbook on Italian cooking:

“Made in Italy – Food & Stories by Giorgio Locatelli”

These are the RULES:

Who can participate?
Everyone that blogs and loves food.

What do I have to do to participate?

1. Cook a dish from the actual country of focus.
2. Post the recipe on your blog. Mention the event with a backlink and include one of the banners in the recipe post or on your blog in general.
3. Leave a comment with a trackback (backlink) to your recipe here (below), so we all can find
it.

How is the winner chosen?

After the event has finished I will put up a poll

on the blog that includes all participants. You will have 2 weeks time to vote for your favourite dish.

Can I participate with more than 1 recipe?

Yes, you can. All recipes participate the poll.

Banners you can take along:

(just copy the HTML code and paste it into your blog)

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Eva, whom I had met in my Yoga classes had told me about a fish dealer in the central market that sells superb salmon. He even would be so honest to tell if the salmon was not fresh enough for Sushi. I instanltly wanted to try that out and so we met in the morning in Athinas street to do some shopping. As it turned out the fish was fresh and exquisit and we ate countless Sashimi and Sushi.

Preparation time: 25 minutes + the time until the rice has cooled down
preparation time: 30 minutes, according to your skills and the amount of sushi.
medium difficulty

Ingredients:

Preparation:

See the other Sushi attempt I did. accompanied by an instruction video.

And the winner of the 4th Mediterranean Cooking Event – Croatia - is the blog Domestic Divas Meet up.

The winning recipe is Sarma.

Congratulations!

Childhood memories of my grandmother Elisabeth came up when I prepared this dish today. When ever I visited her there was rice pudding. It had a garnish of sugar and cinnamon on top and a tiny piece of butter was melting in the middle of the hot pudding on my plate. Also Greek childen have such memories. Here it is called Risogalo – Ρυζόγαλο. The Rice pudding is served in good tavernas as desert. Old and young love to eat it. it is served chilled though.

cooking time: 20 minutes

very simple recipe

Preparation:

Fry the rice lightly with some butter in a small pot. Add the sugar and the mild and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Keep the pot covered. Stir occasionally.

When the rice is done fill into bowls and serve with a piece of butter, some sugar and cinnamon on top.

You can also let the bowls with the pudding cool down and serve them chilled. In this case do not add the butter and sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar over the dish before you serve it.

This recipe I found in a cookbook called “flavours of the mediterranean” which I had gotten form my almost mother in law for Christmas. Finally I had gotter arround to cooking from it. A great dish for eggplant lovers with a touch of anchovies. The eggplant slices are boiled as well before being fryed which prevents them form drawing lots of oil. This makes the dish very light.

Preparation time: 20 minutes

baking time: 15 minutes

easy recipe

Preparation:

Cut the eggplant along its long side into slices of half a finger. Boil the slice in water for 2 to 3 minutes, then place them in a drianer to loose some water. Now fry them in a pan with a little bit oil. You want them to get some nice colour.

Menawhile blend the onion in a mixer to a fine puree. Mix it in a bowl with some ground almonds, the egg, the olive paste, the tomato paste, the thzme and the oregano. Season with salt and pepper.

Lay the eggplant slice on a cutting board and spread the mix evenly onto it. Place an anchovy on one end of the slice and roll it up from this end. Stick a tooth pick into it to stabelize it and place into an oiled baking tray.

Repeat the last step until the eggplant and the filing is used up.

You can sprinkle some cheese over the dish if you wish.

Place in the oven and broil for 10 to 15 minutes at 180 degrees.