Greek Easter bread (Tsoureki)

Isn’t it interesting how unlike Christmas, there aren’t really any desserts associated with Easter? Obviously, light, fruity desserts feel right for springtime but I am not aware of any treats that are made solely for Easter. That is, apart from the celebration breads that are made in most countries around the Mediterranean. In Greece, this is called Tsoureki and it is a sweet, braided loaf with a brioche-like texture.

My mum and I have been using this recipe since I can remember and I couldn’t find the original source. I can however guarantee that this yields a delicious bread that is wonderful for breakfast or to accompany coffee after your Easter meal.

bookworm’s variation: We do a simple three-strand braid but you could try your hand at a six-strand one for a more impressive look. I’ve also seen variations of this where instead of using almonds as a topping, the bread is covered in melted white chocolate or apricot jam.

Tsoureki

Makes 4 loafs

2 tbs dried yeast

1 kg self raising flour

1 pinch of salt

3 eggs

3 egg yolks

1 cup of milk

4 tbs unsalted butter

1 cup of caster sugar + 1 tbs of caster sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp grated lemon or orange zest

1 egg yolk beaten with 2 tbs of milk

handful of flaked almonds

In a cup of warm water, mix in the dried yeast and 1 tbs of sugar and set aside for 10 mins.  Then add 1 cup of flour and mix. Leave the mixture to rise in a warm place for 1 1/2 hour.

Beat the eggs and egg yolks and set aside. Place a pan on low heat and pour in the milk, butter and sugar. Mix until combined. Remove the pan from heat and slowly add the beaten eggs, lemon juice and zest.

Pour this mixture in a large bowl and add the yeast mixture. then proceed to add the remainder of flour and mix until you get a firm dough. Knead in the bowl for about 10 minutes, until the dough is soft and elastic. Cover the bowl with a plastic bag or wrap and put in a warm place for 2-3 hours, until it doubles in volume.

Tip the dough on to a floured surface and knock back the air by kneading it for 5-10 minutes. Then, divide the dough in 4 parts. Each part should be separated into 3 parts that you roll out to form the strands, with the ends slightly thinner than the middle. Stick the 3 strands together on one end and proceed to make a braid.

Carefully lift the loafs and place on buttered baking sheets. Cover and leave in a warm place until double in size.

Once ready to bake, preheat the oven to 210C/400F/Gas 6. Brush the egg and milk wash over the loafs and sprinkle the flaked almonds on top. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the loaves are lovely and golden brown. Set the loaves to cool on wire racks.

From my kitchen: Roasted red pepper and tomato pasta

I’ve been working quite hard this week, trying to finish a project before my holiday. So when I was on my way home last night, exhausted and hungry at 8:30pm, I promised myself I would make something nice for dinner. And when I want to eat reasonably easy and fast to make but also filling and delicious, it’s usually something with carbs and cream and cheese. This time it was Roasted Pepper and Tomato Pasta.

And it was good! I wasn’t working from a recipe, I simply combined things we already had at home and I have to say, the result was divine!

It’s really simple, really. I preheated the grill  to the hottest setting (I think Americans might call this the broiler) and stuck 2 red peppers and 2 tomatoes under it for about 10 minutes. The idea is to char the skin, so you want it to be really hot. I made sure to turn them every few minutes so that they would get black all around. Once they were done, I removed them to a plate for a few minutes and when they were slightly cooler, stuck them in a plastic bag to steam up.

Meanwhile, I chopped some garlic and diced an onion.

After a few minutes of steaming, I simply pulled the skin off the tomatoes and the peppers. The steam makes it slide of without much effort.

I mushed (is that a word?) the tomatoes in a bowl. For the peppers, I cut them open and scraped out the seeds with a knife. Then I sliced them into thin pieces. You could stick everything in a blender if you prefer a completely smooth sauce, but I didn’t.

Then, I let the onion and garlic gently sweat in a hot pan with some olive oil.

Once they were translucent and beginning to go golden around the edges, I poured in the tomatoes and peppers. (At least that was the plan; I actually got distracted and my garlic got a bit more colour but it doesn’t matter.)

While everything simmered on low heat for a bit, I boiled some pasta in hot, salted water. After a few minutes of simmering, I added some vegetable stock to the sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sweet paprika and turned the heat up.

Once it came to the boil, I lowered the heat and left it to reduce a little.

I drained the cooked pasta (I always reserve a bit of the water in case the sauce is a bit thick in the end). When the sauce had simmered for a few minutes, I poured in a nice healthy amount of double cream. I gave it a stir and checked the seasoning, I found that I had to add a bit more salt.

Finally, I added some finely chopped parsley and tossed in the pasta. I piled it all on a plate and grated some nice parmesan on top. It was so good! It was just a heavenly combination of cream and tomato and cheese, with a lovely sweetness coming from the roasted peppers and paprika. It was exactly what I needed.

Here’s the little recipe card:

 

Saving meals for best?

On Tuesday night we had a really rather special dinner of sirloin steaks cooked medium rare, fluffy baked potatoes, delicious buttery bearnaise sauce, and a fresh green salad. It was so good! I was looking forward to dinner all day; it was easy to prepare and utterly satisfying to eat. It really made a dull, unremarkable day feel a bit special!

This got me thinking about special meals versus everyday dinners. I am all about cooking and eating something special when celebrating, whether it’s a birthday, Christmas, Easter, a promotion or an anniversary. I always think of meals like roast chicken or shoulder of lamb, salmon en croute, or steak as more appropriate for special occasions than weekday dinners. But that needn’t be the case.

Obviously, when cooking dinner during the week, time is a consideration so having a roast isn’t exactly practical. But things like steak and chips take very little time to make and there’s no reason they can’t sometimes be enjoyed on ordinary days as well as celebration meals.
I’m determined to mix things up a little bit; apart from the usual rotation of pasta, stir fry, risotto, and bangers/fishcakes and mash that make up most of our weekday dinners I want to try out new recipes, make something a bit “fancier”, something that feels like a treat. After all, I don’t believe in saving things like clothes or candles or crockery or cosmetics for best, so why do it for food?

What do you think about special meals on not special days? Do you liven up weekday dinners by having a treat?

A couple of tips

I thought I’d share two little tips that I found helpful when cooking this past week.

• First, this really surprisingly simple tip for perfect, foolproof poached eggs from my good friend E. Poaching eggs is pretty straightforward but I think making them pretty is a bit tricky. This doesn’t really bother me, as long as the egg is nice and runny and delicious all is well. However, if you have guests over and you want a nice looking as well as tasty breakfast/brunch for them, this tip pretty much guarantees your poached eggs will look pretty. It’s really straightforward: before you crack the eggs, simply place them in the boiling water for 15-20 seconds. Then remove them, wait a few seconds so that they cool down a tad, and proceed as normal. The few seconds in the water with their shells on mean that the eggs will be less likely to go everywhere when you poach them. Really simple, right?

• My second tip is about homemade pizza. I really like making my own pizza dough; I usually make a lot and separate it into 3-4 dough balls that I keep individually wrapped in the freezer. It’s so easy to take the dough out in the morning and then it’s only a matter of minutes to roll it out, stick toppings of my choice on top and bake it. I’ve noticed though that sometimes the middle part of my pizza would sometimes come out a bit soggy. I was watching an episode of James Martin’s Home Comforts the other day and he said that his pizza oven reaches 500 degrees Celsius. This made me suspect that the problem with my pizza was that my oven was not hot enough to bake it properly. Of course, I don’t have a pizza oven in my garden but as an experiment, when I was making pizza for dinner on Thursday I turned my oven temperature up as high as it would go, at 260 degrees Celsius. And guess what? My pizza didn’t burn as I feared; instead it baked perfectly: the crust was crispy, the base was cooked and not soggy and the cheese was melted and bubbling.

Do you have any little kitchen tips and tricks you’d like to share?

Our spoils from the Asian supermarket

I’ve mentioned before that I’m quite familiar with most of the ethnic cuisine aisles at my local shop (with the exception of the American food aisle). I’m often at the Asian food aisle, buying soy sauce, oyster sauce, basmati rice, or pastes for red and green thai curry. However, up until this week I had never visited an Asian supermarket. I’ve been really wanting to go for a very long time because I kept reading about how much cheaper they are and of course, I was longing to discover new and exotic foods.

So on a boring Tuesday evening, The Boy and I made an excursion to our nearest Asian food store. I think it was even better than I expected. There were rows and rows of colourful jars and packs, many with no proper english labelling. This meant there was a lot of speculation on what things could be, trying to figure it out from the pictures or the adorably funny mis-translated labels. I loved seeing all the different kinds of noodles and rice, so much more variety than at the supermarket. And then there were all the sauces and spices. And the Japanese sweets. It really was fascinating! I can’t wait to go back for more discoveries.

We ended up getting a few pantry staples.

We bought a big bag of fragrant rice, which I’m assuming is similar to basmati rice. Then we got some noodles; I really couldn’t pick out of all the different varieties so I randomly got these vermicelli ones. Doesn’t the meal pictured on the pack look delicious? And then, one of our most exciting purchases, panko breadcrumbs. This is something that I’ve wanted to try for a long time; I keep seeing them used in recipes and people rave about them but I have never cooked with them before. So exciting.

Then we got water chestnuts, bamboo shoots and a bag of baby pak choy. I like that pak choy grows so well in England; it means you can buy it locally grown around the year. These items will all go in a stir-fry with some prawns we have in the freezer.

I was really excited to see Siracha Chili Sauce because I could never find it anywhere and some of my favourite food bloggers love and use it all the time. And when The Pioneer Woman says something is delicious, it is delicious. We also bought a bottle of Suki Yaki sauce. We have no idea what this tastes like but it very possibly will go in the aforementioned stir-fry. Finally, my impulse purchase right before reaching the till: a pack of instant teriyaki noodles. You know how in films, college students are supposed to have no money and one of there staple meals is noodles? Well I never had that. I was an undergraduate in Greece and the cheap student food there is gyro or souvlaki, which is delicious and possibly healthier considering all the E-numbers in the instant noodles. But, I just really wanted to try it just one time, and for £0.80 it is definitely the cheapest lunch I ever packed.

And that’s it. There were so many other things I would have liked to buy and we really should have bought that box of wasabi peanuts. But it’s ok, I’m already planning our next visit to the Asian supermarket.