A week of Greek ... Day One!
The last blog post I wrote was in November 2018 … and from memory there were promises of activity and great intentions … well I failed …
Well we are where we are and now as I haven’t been cooking in my own kitchen for quite a while (as I was living on the beautiful island of Corfu for a bit) I am making a conscious effort over the next week to try add to this lighter than expected blog history.
As I have a Greek guest living with me for the “foreseeable” I thought it would be nice to ease their acclimatisation to Luxembourg by cooking traditional”ish” dishes for a week. I had picked up a copy of Akis Petretzikis’ recent book and first one in English “Greek Comfort Food” while in Corfu and didn’t yet get around to cooking out of it, so I thought why not .. it’ll keep me busy and out of trouble for a bit.
When I suggested the idea of cooking a dish a day to one of the Greeks … the only request was that we have 3 days with legumes/pulses, 2 days with meat , 2 days with fish. Not sure I will achieve exactly that but we’ll give it a go.
Most of the dishes I will cook this week I have chosen from the book specifically for winter … so they will be comforting and glorious!
Notes on the cooking.
This is a dish that sneaks up on you, it’s not a difficult dish by any stretch of the imagination but as I was coming to the end of cooking and tasting for seasoning, I felt it was a little bland … so I added a little more salt … still not to my taste … so I fell back to an old friend … a knob of butter … this added something but I was still unimpressed …
I wasn’t happy with the dish as I plated it up … then I added the final bit of lemon juice, a few spring onion greens, a toss of parsley and a drizzle of finishing oil!
I handed it to the Greeks … a little annoyed with myself … and a little embarrassed that I couldn’t even get a simple chickpea stew right!
Well … apparently that’s when the “fat lady sang” … the final dish was TASTY “AF” … simple and definitely worth making on a winters evening. Will 100% be making this again (especially if I’m feeling lazy).
To buy the book - you can click on the photo to take you to Akis’ webshop
Recipe
Chickpea stew
The Book
Greek Comfort Food by Akis Petretzikis (Akis Petretzikis (1 Jan. 2019)
2 sprigs of rosemary (leaves only)
3 sprigs of thyme (leaves only)
1.5 litres water
Salt & Pepper
1 Tablespoon of sumac
Juice of two lemons
Chickpea Stew
Ingredients (Serves 6-8 - Not that many chunky Irish men!)
500g dried chickpeas
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 onions (sliced)
2 cloves of garlic (sliced)
100g olive oil
2 bay leaves
What to do …
Place the chickpeas in a large bowl with 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Cover with plenty of water and leave to soak overnight. Next day drain, rinse and transfer to a Dutch oven / Covered Casserole (30cm diameter)
Preheat the oven to 150 C (Fan)
To the chickpeas in the dutch oven add the onions, garlic, olive oil, bayleaves, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, sumac, juice of one lemon.
Cover the chickpeas with the water, should cover by about two fingers). Cover with a lid and place in the oven for 2 hours.
After those 2 hours remove the lid and return to the oven for a further 2 hours, until the chickpeas are soft and mushy. You may need to add a little more water if there doesn’t seem to be enough liquid.
Remove the chickpeas from the oven. Add the juice of the second lemon, check the seasoning and serve hot.
(I garnished with a little spring onion greens and parsley and of course feta was added as per normal!)
