Yuvetsi could be considered a kind of stew. It comes with veal but as well with sea food. A main ingredient is small pasta like Kritharaki but any small size pasta will do. I have chosen to cook a Yuvetsi with Octopus. You can cook this dish with frozen Octopus when you don’t have a fresh one available. I love cooking this dish when friends are coming over because it is so easy to make. Now in summer it tastes great if one adds some fresh tomato to it.

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Easy recipe

Ingredients:

Preparation :

Defrost the octopus in a pot with salted water and a few drops of lemon.
Cut the octopus along one of his legs and around the head in order to remove the head and the pecan.

Boil the octopus without adding water for 30 minutes until it is soft. Remove the Octopus and let it cool down a bit.

Chop the Octopus in small pieces and put it with the Kritharaki (Pasta) the diced tomato, the bay leave and the wine back into the pot and cook it in the juice until the Kritharaki are boiled soft (20 minutes).

Season with Salt and fresh pepper and serve hot.

The German version of “Oktopus Juvetsi” you can find here.

All my friends that come visit me in Greece get a lasagne served at some point. Not that it is a Greek recipe, but it is one of my personal favourites. I love to eat lasagne. Yesterday I had some friends over for dinner and I served lasagne as a main course.

My neighbour Ms. Roula had visited me in the afternoon and brought me fresh courgettes (zucchini) from her garden. This is when I decided that I would make a lasagne with zucchini. I prefer vegetarian lasagne in summer, as meat seems too heavy with the heat.

Preparation time: 45 minutes
Cooking time: 3 hours +
Medium difficult recipe

Ingredients:

Preparation :

Dice the onions and fry them in a large pan or pot until they change colour. Add some sugar and let it caramelize. Chop the garlic and add it. Let it fry for a couple of minutes.
Now dice the tomatoes and add them to the onions. Pour some wine to it and add the tomato paste, salt, pepper, oregano and the grinded chilli. Add some water in case it is needed. Make sure all ingredients are covered in liquid. Stir well and let the tomato sauce cook on small flame for 2 hours. I do not cover the pot as I want the sauce to reduce.
Slice the zucchini very fine.

For the Béchamel sauce:

Melt the butter in a pot and let it turn brown. Now add the flour while you are constantly stirring it. It will turn into a brown mesh. Add some nutmeg, salt and pepper.
While you are constantly stirring, add the warmed milk to the flour-butter mix. The mixture will turn into a cream. Keep adding the milk until the cream is thin enough to pour it, but not as thin as milk.

Making the lasagne layers:

Thinly spread butter in a 10-12 cm deep baking form. Cover the floor of the form with a layer of lasagne-sheets.
Now add a layer of zucchini. Sprinkle some dill over it. Now add a layer of the tomato sauce. Now add again a layer of lasagne sheets again.
Repeat the step above and add some zucchini, dill, then tomato.
Once the form is filled up to half, I add a layer of the béchamel sauce on top of the tomato sauce. Then I continue with the lasagne sheets.
The layering finishes with a layer of béchamel sauce on top of the tomato sauce. Finally the parmesan is evenly sprinkled over the dish.
Now the lasagne goes into the oven for one hour at 180 degrees centigrade.
I am baking the lasagne a day in advance and leave it in the fridge over night.

The day I want to serve it I put it into the oven for 30 minutes at 120 degrees.

The German version of “lasagne” you can find here.

Apricots filled with smoked trout

Around easter time my friend Eberhard and I had spoken about a cookbook with Greek recipes that was published in 1991. The author, an American journalist named Susie Jacobs, had lived in Greece, mostly in Hydra. From 1976 on, she collected throughout the years a great number of recipes but also created her own ones.Eberhard, who is a book freak, has now sent me a rare copy of “Recipes from a Greek island”. The following recipe is from this book.This way I want to thank him for the cook book and his support.

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Simple recipe

Ingredients:

Preparation:

Peel and dice the cucumber. Chop the onion very fine. Flake the trout and chop up the dill.
Toss all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, add the lemon juice and the oil. Season with fresh pepper, salt if needed.
Wash the apricots, cut them in half and remove the stone. Fill them with the mixture and serve cold, arranged on a platter.

find the recipe “Aprikose gefüllt mit geräucherter Forelle” here in German.

Cake with fresh Cherries

Driving back from Sparti we came through a village called Kerassea (Kerassi is cherry in Greek). There, on the side of the road sat an old lady selling cherries and I could do nothing but stop. I bought three kilos of cherries from her. Today I had to use those juicy, fresh cherries instantly. I found a dough recipe I liked at Larissa’s blog (German language blog) adapted a few things and baked a great cake. I decided to use brown sugar with this recipe, becasue my cherries were already very sweet.

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Baking time: 25 minutes
Easy recipe

Ingredients:

Preparation:

Pre heat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade.
Remove the pits from the cherries.
Mix all ingredient by hand or with a kitchen aid to a smooth dough.
Put some baking paper on a tray and spread the dough on the paper.
Cover the dough with cherries and press them lightly into the dough.
Bake in the over for 25 minutes.
Let the cake cool down.
Serve.

Find the recipe “Kuchen mit frischen Kirschen” in German language here.

Feta cheese pastries with artichoke, mint and cinnamon

Dear friends of mine have invited me to cater for a Mediterranean evening on an island. The occasion is a wedding reception. Driven by my perfectionism I am trying one finger food recipe after the other. Today I have tried feta cheese pastries that satisfied me. Though they are a classical part of Greek cuisine (Tiropita) they are different enough to be interesting. The combination of the feta cheese with the mint gives the dish a summer time note. The cinnamon ads the Mediterranean flair to it.

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Baking time: 20 minutes
Simple recipe

Ingredients :

Reparation:

For the filling grind the cheese into a bowl. Chop the artichoke into pieces. Not too fine though. Ad the finely chopped mint and mix well. Season with pepper and salt if necessary. Usually the cheese gives enough salt to the dish.

Turn on the oven to 220 degrees centigrade.

I sue puff pastry from the super market for this recipe. Lay out a single piece of the puff pastry onto a clean surface and cut into 7 cm wide stripes. Put a full table spoon of the filling and fold the puff pastry into a triangle. Keep folding a triangle until you have used up the stripe. By now the filling will be perfectly covered by the pastry.
Repeat this step until you have used all the filling. Place the pastries onto an oven pan and apply some egg to give it a nice colour. You might want to use baking paper, not to spoil the pan.

Bake for 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 200 degrees centigrade and bake for another 10 minutes.

Place pastries onto a tray to let them cool down. Powder a bit of cinnamon over the pastries.

Serve while still warm. Also tastes great when served cold.

Read the recipe “Käsetaschen mit Artischocken, frischer Minze und Zimt” in german language here.