Vanilla Bean Spoon Sweet

Handmade.

Sickly Sweet.

Oh So Good.

Father's Day is looming. Again.

Never thrilled about commercial holidays.

But I do like to shower dad with sweets.

He is a notorious midnight snacker.

In his clumsy refridgerator hunt and gather, he'll combine grapes with feta cheese, sesame halva in a buttered bread roll, sardines with olives and pickles….

Often it's a simple devouring of half a platter of baklava or some other sickly Greek sweet.

I'll make his feat easier with this homemade favourite, straight out of the jar!

Ingredients

125ml whole cream milk

125ml 35% full cream

500g sugar

50g glucose

2 vanilla beans, scraped for seeds

Method

Attach a sugar thermometer to the saucepan and add all ingredients.

Stir over low heat until mix reaches 116C.

Immediately remove from heat, and pour thickened mixture into a cool ceramic bowl or tray.

Do not stir or it will crystalise.

Allow to cool to 35C.

Using a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, add mix and blend until smooth, stable and to the point where it is no longer elastic.

Store in glass jars.
Serve on a long spoon submerged in a glass of water, Submarine style.

NB. Don't expect the end product to look bleached white as the store bought version, it is homemade afterall.

Easter Tsoureki

TSOUREKI CLUB

In Greek women possies all over, the tsoureki making feat is spoken about and critiqued as if one's life depends on it (or as if Michael Pierre White is judging).
The best never readily share their secrets or recipes.
I always felt like they were part of an exclusive 'Tsoureki Club', ostracising other Greek women who didn't wear doily aprons, had long polished fingernails and peroxide bouffant hair (my mum).
I was brought up amongst a posse of full time working Greek mums who much preferred to buy their tsourekia than spend hours kneading and waiting for molecules to react, so I never really learnt how to bake from scratch until much later on.
My 'formal' tsoureki training took place in Mrs Loula's kitchen.
Mrs Loula hailed from Athens (that's about all I can reveal about her identity, 'they' may be watching!)
A polished, softly spoken, super polite and compassionate lady who gave up her whole day one Greek Easter, divulging her secrets to little old me.
Her baking skills were legendary. Her tsourekia, a dream.
Armed with my handycam and a pencil, I recorded and scribbled as much of her info and instruction as possible.
I needed all I could get to enable me to replicate these new found skills in my own little kitchen.
The following year I baked and partly failed.
The year after that I became Mr Miyagi.
Following that, I was teaching others.

The recipe below is my posse's secret. Guard it as if your life depends on it.

And always remember:

The first rule of Tsoureki Club is, you do not talk about Tsoureki Club.
The second rule of Tsoureki Club is,….

GATHER

(To this day I don't muck around when it's Tsoureki baking time. I can't get enough of them and aim to over-indulge every Easter, so the quantity below makes about 13 Tsourekia, enough for giveaways and to curb my addiction.)

3 kg plain strong flour (eg. Western Milling Special White or Cake/Bread flour)
300g fresh yeast
1 cup warm water (about 40 C) for yeast
1 cup water (for mahlepi seeds)
2 1/2 cups full cream milk
1kg unsalted organic butter, melted
1 kg sugar
12 free range eggs
2 packets (15g each) mahlepi seeds or 30g ground mastic tears
4 tspn vanilla extract
grated zest of 2 lemons or oranges (if flavouring with mastiha, omit the zest)

To decorate:
5 beaten egg yolks with a little water, to glaze
red dyed eggs,1 per loaf (if using)
flaked almonds or sesame seeds

DO

Bring all ingredients to room temperature.
(Warm the room that you will be preparing and proving the dough in. I always say - “..Warm the room to a Byron Bay summer, strip down and start baking”. This is essential to get a good rise out of the dough.)

Preparation of starter dough: Place warm water and fresh yeast into a bowl, and dissolve it by hand, squishing away any lumps. 

Slowly add some of the flour (3 tablespoons at a time) until it turns into a very smooth batter.

Cover bowl with cling film and a blanket or kitchen towel, and place in a warm spot for about 1 ½ to 2 hours.

The mixture will rise and create air bubbles.

If using mahlepi seeds, add to a saucepan and pour in 1 cup water.

Simmer on low heat until this liquid concentrates the essence and reduces to about 1/2 cup. Strain and allow to cool to lukewarm.

Melt butter and allow to cool to lukewarm.

Warm milk to lukewarm.

Into a huge bowl or giant plastic 'lekani' (as my blue one in the top picture), add sugar, citrus zest &/or ground mastiha (if using) and eggs.

Add milk to sugar mixture and mix by hand.

Add mahlepi liquid (if using) and continue to mix by hand.

Add a little flour and continue mixing by hand.

Now add the starter dough.

Now alternating between the flour and melted butter, add slowly and gently mix until all ingredients are incorporated into a non-sticky elastic dough.

This dough should lift out of the bowl, leaving it clean.

If it becomes too sticky, add more melted butter.

Mix and keep kneading, until the sides come clean again.

Cover this bowl with cling film and a clean kitchen towel or blanket, and leave in a warm spot again to rise for another 2 hrs or until double in size.

Grease or line with baking paper 12-13 small pizza or biscuit trays.

When dough has doubled, remove from bowl and knead a little more, dusting with a little flour if required.

What should be present are 'elastic threads' in the dough (in Greek they are called 'Ιnes'. It is these that will create the flaky strands when you pull apart a well baked tsoureki.


Divide mix into 13 parts and mould into desired shapes. You can braid or form a ring of little round buns. Insert red egg into shape.

Place each loaf onto a greased tray or on baking paper (on a tray) and put aside in a warm place to rise again.

Brush with egg yolks, scatter with almonds or sesame and bake at 180C until lightly golden.

Don’t over bake, as you want them to still be slightly ‘doughy’. 

As they cool, they will dry up a little but still remain moist over the next few days.

Eat warm or wrap in cling film and store.

They can also be frozen - unthawed and sliced, they make a gorgeous ‘bread & butter’ pudding!!…


NOTES:

Mahlepi - is a spice derived from wild cherry seeds. Mahlepi can also be bought already ground into a powder. Use either.

Mastiha tears - the dried resin from the mastiha tree, commonly found on the island of Chios. 

Both can be purchased from all good Greek delicatessens.

Cherries in Visoka.

I'm never gaga over the gift-giving aspect of Christmas and the pressure of trying to decide on what to buy so-and-so drives me bat****-crazy!

UNLESS……there is food involved (of course).

As soon as we flip over into December, I start to think about what edible homemade pressies I can whip up. 

I get goosebumpy with the anticipation of what to cook, how to cook it and how soon I will be eating it……

Oh, and yeah, that squeal of excitement from the recipient of my yummy pressie.

Late Spring/Early Summer is sweet cherry season.
Half my bloodline comes from a teeny-tiny village 45 mins north of Thessaloniki called Ossa (Visoka). For as long as I can remember, every June was cherry picking festival time.
Utes, donkeys and boots of cars were jam packed with over-filled boxes and crates of cherries.
Sadly, the last decade has seen the decline of cherry farming in this and the surrounding villages to make way for bio-diesel sunflower farms.

However, (back in Melbs) two farms I frequent every December in the Peninsula hills is Red Hill Cherry Farm & Ripe n' Ready Cherry Farm

The goods are good because you've picked them yourself, then driven home and thrown them straight into the pot.

Sure there is a little labour but it's one of love.

The house will smell devine and the sight of those ruby jewels bobbing about will become a yummy reminder that balmy nights, twinkly lights and good eating is near.


Christmas cherry spoon sweet

(Κερασακι γλυκο του κουταλιου)

This makes a gorgeous handmade Christmas present for the sweet toothed!

Add a unique spoon or ceramic bowl picked up from your local op-shop, a tub of yummy organic vanilla icecream and a jar of this gooey, sticky summer cherry treat in a beautifully wrapped box or basket….What more could one want!....

1kg sweet cherries (red or white)

1kg unrefined or organic sugar

1/2 cup water

1 tspn pure vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean

Sterilize about 15 or so 150g jars in the dishwasher on the highest heat setting or wash by hand and put into an 180C oven for about 20-30 mins.

Wash cherries well and remove stems.

Take a cherry pitter (you can buy these at any good homeware shop), sit in front of your telly or in the garden and start de-pitting!!

There’s no gentle way of doing this - just stick the cherry in the tool and wedge out the pip.

You can try doing it by hand, I guess, but guaranteed the mess will be greater!

Don’t fuss if you can’t get all the pits out- after cooking the few left behind will usually rise to the surface.

Rinse cherries again and add to a heavy based pot.

Add sugar, water and vanilla and boil on medium heat for about 1 hr or until the mixtures becomes syrupy and thick.

Remove any foam that comes to the surface while cooking as this will make the syrup cloudy.

You will know when the syrup is ready by placing a few drops onto a cold plate.

As it cools, the mixture will tell you when it’s ready because the drops will spread a little and be sticky.

If you want a runnier syrup, don’t boil for as long or add a little more water.

Pour into your jars, lid on and they’re ready for giving!!

Or not!.....Yummy on it’s own, on icecream or on a cherry pavlova!!

Or do as is customary Greek hospitality and serve on a small plate with an ice cold glass of water........

Gadgets to make life easier…..

Cherry stoner

Cherry Stoner (my fave)

Cherry pitter

I'm going to tell you a sweet secret…...

I'm going to tell you a secret.
A spoon sweet secret.
Ready?
There is none.
It's b###$#*t, made up, fabricated.
A storytale to make housewives seem supreme.

When I was young, I was in a love affair with cherry spoon sweets.
There was something so decadent and special about those little glassy, ruby coloured balls bobbing in  all that syrupy goodness.
I'd always sneak a jar into mum's shopping trolley; she was a spoon sweet hater and would 'tsk, tsk, tsk' me at the registers when she saw the jar on the grocery belt.
But she'd let me have it anyway.
She probably figured it was better than me begging for a packet of chips or a bottle of coke.
Little did she know that the contents of that jar would always dissappear in one sitting, a skill I would perfect all the way into adult life.

Fast forward 25 years and I'm still having an affair with spoon sweets.
All of them.
Watermelon rind, sweet December cherries, sour February morellos, unripened brown turkey figs, baby eggplants, winter citrus and the sweet made by the heady first flush roses of November.
I recently flew into the Mastichohoria (Mastic villages) in Chios for the mastic and flew out mesmerised by the thriving citrus spoon sweet production in Kambos, my luggage clunking with carefully wrapped jars of preserved lemons, bergamot oranges and cumquats.

The hardest part of making spoon sweets is collecting the good fruit, the unblemished pods, the unbruised petals; organic is always best, naturally.
The second hardest is the cleaning and cutting.
The rest is simply a bucket load of sugar, a handful of essenses (vanilla bean, rose geranium leaves, cloves, etc) and time.

My parents are friendly with a very courteous and congenial Athenian lady called Kyria Loula.
She is friendly with a Calabrian lady who grows her own Bergamot oranges.
Every winter the ladies barter spoon sweets for fruit.
Kyria Loula makes and gives a colossal jar of Bergamot spoon sweet to my dad and saves a bag of citrus for me.
I, too, make my own from her simple and foolproof recipe below, and remember Kambos.

Kyria Loula's Bergamot Orange Spoon Sweet

Περγαμοντο Γλυκο Του Κουταλιου

5kg unwaxed, whole Bergamot oranges

3kg organic sugar

1.5L cold water, plus more for removing bitterness. 

4 rose geranium leaves, fresh

1 vanilla bean

Wash fruit and slice top and bottom.

Using a microplane zester, zest entire surface of all oranges. 

Reserve zest, preseve in vodka. Use where ever zest is required or use infused vodka for when you fancy a tipple (your very own 'Absolut Citron').

Slice pith into quarters (or thirds, depending on how large the citrus is).

Peel pith away from inner fruit.

Reserve inner fruit for Bergamot orange juice

or freeze and use thawed juice in cakes or turn into a summertime granita.

Roll each third and secure with a toothpick.

Weigh peel and note weight. (This data will be required when measuring sugar on Day 2).

Day 1 - Removing bitterness

Add peel to saucepan and cover with cold water.

Bring to boil, remove pot from heat, strain water.

Fill pot with fresh cold water and bring to boil again.

Repeat this process 5-6 times.

After the final time you bring to boil, turn off heat and leave fruit in pot to cool until the next day.

Nb. Each growing season may produce slightly different fruit. You may need an additional step one year and less another. Either way, boil, rinse, repeat until the fruit is no longer bitter (or as bitter as you like it).

Day 2 - Syrup time

Rinse water and remove tootpicks from fruit.

Add equal weight of sugar to fruit peel. 

(From 5kg of fruit you should get about 3 kg of fruit peel to 3 kg of sugar)

Add half the weight in fresh cold water (1.5L)

Add vanilla bean and geranium leaves.

Bring to simmer and skim any gunk from the surface.

Simmer for about 25 mins (with no lid).

Allow fruit to infuse and cool in pot until the next day.

Day 3 - Setting the syrup

Simmer until syrup sets and resembles a honey-like consistency.

The best way to test this during cooking is to add a drop of syrup to a cold plate and allow to cool.

Keep simmering until you achieve the desired consistency, about 30-40mins.

The fruit will take on a semi-transparent appearance when ready.

Allow to cool completely before preserving in sterilised glass jars.

Store in the fridge or a cool spot in the house.

Copper spoon sweet pots at Citrus Estate, Kambos

Domatokeftethes

Hey you!?

Yeh you!

The one with the pink bikini on, lying on a Greek island beach

somewhere and pretending to act like you do this effortlessly,

every Greek summer…..

Unless you can feed me Greek summer tomatoes via a Facebook

portal, go away.

I don't want to see your pics on my feed.

Nor do I want to read about how awesome your life is at the 

moment.

I already know.

I've been there, too.

Numerous times.

I get it.

It sucks to not be there every year 'cause if you think you are

eating amazing summer tomatoes in oz each year, you need your

head read; the ripe tomatoes of high summer in Greece are out

of this world!

Travel to Santorini or Chios, for example, and take a bite out of

those dry farmed ones hanging for months against a stone

wall, that are still plump and juicy.

The experience is intense.

It's so intense that you will risk it all at Australian Customs

to smuggle a few of those seeds in.

Anything to recreate the experience at home.

But it won't happen.

For the following reasons:

a) we get way too much rain here in the summertime; these babies need a REAL summer.

b) we get too many summer temperature fluctuations, and if you are as unlucky with summer in Melbourne as I am, a mid-season cold snap will bump your crop production into the next millennium.

c) it is not Greece and the sound of the word 'malaka' and a donkey's 'eee-awwwhhh' is very, very far away; yes, they need Greek swear words and donkey songs to grow well.

d) c, again.

So for the time being, I will sit here and punch away and this keyboard and pretend, that I too, get to eat Greek tomatoes each year, effortlessly.

500g ripe tomatoes

2 medium onions, finely chopped

1 cup fresh mint, chopped

1 cup sundried tomatoes, cut into small pieces

1 tspn tomato paste

3 slices bread (about 2 cm thick each), crusts removed

400 gr plain flour

2 tspn tablespoons balsamic vinegar

200 ml whole milk

salt and freshly ground pepper

olive oil for frying

Soak the bread slices in milk and then squeeze well.

Cut tomatoes in half and grate flesh into a large bowl.

Add the sundried tomatoes, tomato paste, bread, onions, mint, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

Slowly add the flour (you may not need all of it) and stir until the mixture resembles a thick batter.

Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pan.

When oil is hot, dip a tablespoon into a cup of olive oil then scoop out some of the batter.

Slide the batter off the spoon into the hot oil and fry on both sides until golden, about 2 ½ minutes on each side.

Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and let drain on paper towels.

Serve them as they are warm and accompany with steamed green beans or salad of boiled wild amaranth (vlita) dressed with oil and vinegar.

This recipe was translated from Gastronomos online. 

For pics of the finished product, go to recipe by Dina Nicolaou; I ate all of mine before I remembered to take a shot.

Aug 2011, Pyrgi Chios. Dry farmed tomato-styling.

The image of summer market tomatoes that always make me want to jump onto the next flight to Greece

 I would happily tomato-slap

Trout trip

Recently, I took a trip to Victoria's High Country.
European craft beers and wines, dairies, honey and nut farms; the region was abundant, even in the heart of winter.
Passing through Harrietville, we pitstopped at Mountain Fresh Trout for locally smoked trout.

Coincidentally few days ago, my monthly online subscription of Hellenic 'Gastronomos' arrived with page 46 showcasing some gorgeous Greek trout recipes.
Pestrofas / Πεστροφας (trout) is commonly found around Iannena, in Northern Greece where rapid flowing waters are a plenty.

My fave way to eat smoked trout is to sit under the sun with a fillet and a Hellenic brew, patiently picking away at the flesh.
But I'll do it any way really, such as infusing with liquors, herbs and spices and blitzing to a velvet cream.

Call these a 'dip', if you must.
I call them 'spread for bread'.

Smoked trout in Harrietville, Victoria

TROUT WITH ALMONDS, LEMON & OUZO

Makes about 400g

2 trout fillets, flaked

50g flaked almonds, toasted

30ml ouzo

1-2 Tblspns of cold water

30 ml fresh lemon juice

1/2 tspn ground caraway seeds

salt & pepper, to taste

Blitz toasted almonds in food processor for 1-2 mins.

Add fillets and ouzo and continue to blitz for 1-2 mins.

With motor on, drizzle in lemon juice and remaining water (if required) to achieve a smooth, creamy consistency.

Add caraway seeds, season and correct with more lemon juice, if necessary.

Will keep for 1 week refridgerated in an airtight container

Alternative serving suggestions:

Wild greens and nettles, pasta, pulses and roasted zucchini.

TROUT-SALATA (like taramosalata)

Makes about 400g
2 trout fillets, flaked
2-3 Tblspns of cold water
100ml Extra Virgin olive oil
50 ml fresh lemon juice
2 slices of bread, crusts off, soaked in a little water for 15 mins and squeezed dry.
⅓ tspn ground fennel seeds
salt & pepper, to taste

To serve:
finely chopped spring onions
finely chopped dill
extra EV olive oil

Add fillets and 1 Tblspn water in a food processor and blitz for 1-2 mins.
Add bread and blitz again.
With motor on, drizzle in oil, lemon juice and remaining water to achieve a smooth, creamy consistency.
Add fennel seeds, season and correct with more lemon juice, if necessary.

To serve, sprinkle spring onions and dill and drixxle with extra virgin olive oil.

Will keep for 1 week refridgerated in an airtight container


TROUT WITH GOAT CHEESE, CAPERS & DILL


Makes about 400g

2 trout fillets, flaked

150g goat cheese feta

60g greek strained yoghurt

3 whole spring onions, chopped

2 large pickled cucumbers

a handful of fresh dill, roughly chopped

2 Tblspn capers (soaked in cold water for 15 mins to desalinate)

salt & pepper, to taste

In a food processor, blitz feta and yoghurt until creamy.

Add trout and remaining ingredients and blitz to a creamy consistency.

Season and correct with more salt, if necessary.

Will keep for 1 week refridgerated in an airtight container

*These recipes have been translated from the Jul 2012 issue of Gastronomos online.

Nut trees in Stanley, Victoria

Say it, 'Pesto'

'Pesto' translated in Greek is 'Say it'.
So let's say it with walnuts, parsley and kefalograviera.

It could be Greek, with a nice Hellenic EV.

250g walnuts, shelled
A big bunch of parsley, including stalks
2-3 garlic cloves
200g kefalograviera cheese, grated
½ cup EV olive oil

Throw it all into the food processor and whizz till smooth.
Thin out with more oil, if needed.

Spread on bread, turn into a dressing for Greek salad, toss with warm kritharaki pasta, squish into baked eggplant…..