main courses recipes

Spring festivities roast lamb leftovers can take a while to get through, so here’s an option to make a second dish with what’s left, after at least the 2nd day of enjoying the initial preparation, with a colorful Mediterranean twist ! Shepherd’s pie, as opposed to Cottage pie, is made with lamb or mutton, while the second...

This lighter & brighter version of the traditional “FAKÈS” soup, which is usually both dense & heavy, quite brown in appearance (and in flavor) and laden with garlic, incorporates more of the other vegetables to give it brighter colors as well as flavors and lighten it all up ! I’m not saying that the...

A multi-step approach to make an earthy, autumnal and vibrant cream of mushroom soup, with layers of flavor and intensity, due to the combination of the simmered as well as the roasted and also fried ingredients, recombined and tamed to become a comforting soup, through its smoothness and its creaminess. As the title suggests, there are 4 parts...

We’ve talked about “GEMISTA” before, which are all those different mediterranean and/or greek versions of stuffed vegetables, sometimes vegetarian and sometimes not. This partcicularly green bell pepper version is my favorite, stuffed with beef and rice and a larger mix of different grated vegetables inside, with more fresh...

I don’t pay enough attention to leeks, even though they always flavor most of my broths, my spanakopita spinach pie as well as additions in many soups and stews and chicken & fish dishes, but it’s never the STAR of the dish ? So here’s a quiche with extra leek flavor because when I say LEEKS, I mean that 50% of the quiche...

Here’s my 5th leg of lamb recipe for this year’s Catholic and Protestant Easter (in 7 days), Orthodox Easter (in 14 days), Jewish Passover (which begins in 4 days) and Muslim Ramadan (which began 10 days ago and will last another 19 days), because even when I erroneously think that my last recipe and method can be set in stone, it...

Here’s a pizza experiment with mushrooms, maximizing the mushroom flavor of a predominantly mushroom pizza and obtaining a balance between the mushrooms, the tomato-less sauce, the cheeses and the dough, while using every part of the mushroom (the caps as well as the stems) to achieve this and using the oven-roasting juices of these same...

FASOLAKIA are green string beans and LATHERA means with oil, because when making this meatless version, the extra virgin olive oil gives it both taste and body. My version also adds beer as well as yeast extract to give it more body and I roast the vegetables before adding them to the tomato base, making this simple stew into something...

A seafood dish prepared in spring as we anticipate and wait for the summer to make its official entry.  These pleasantly tender, chewy & grilled baby calamari (which could either be made with squids or cuttlefish) are easy to prepare with bright lemony and fennel flavors and stuffed with a delicate filling of various greens, fresh...

What else would you eat in this freezing weather ? Something hot, something you can chew on but also slurp, something meaty (unless you’re vegetarian and you add beans instead) and served in a large bowl that you can wrap your hands around to warm them up ! It’s just a simple rustic vegetable soup with cabbage and smoked...

… composed of a blend of dried aromatic herbs, onion and garlic powders, dried lemon zests and of course salt, ground green peppercorns and the most interesting secret ingredient of baking powder, for even crispier skin, all finely ground into a an herbal and zesty Mediterranean powder for dry-basting overnight before roasting. What is a...

The end-of-the-year holidays countdown is upon us : home, work, family, family, friends, neighbors and all those lists of extra things that need to get done today, tomorrow, next week, in 3 weeks, maybe sooner or maybe later ! So here’s a customized & international dish whose ingredients can be prepared in advance and then heated and...

I discovered a new type of filo dough. A sheet of dough so thick that 5 sheets weigh 400 grams ! This version here, at least the dough part, was an experiment, in addition to my other older pita recipes ! A traditional spanakopita is more rustic and could include a modifiable variety of ingredients but of course is composed of mostly spinach...

Another new pizza recipe, celebrating the flavors of SPAIN and PORTUGAL, using the same techniques that I’ve used in the past but with different toppings and some modifications to get the Iberian flavor balances just right ! A balance between smokiness, spiciness, sweetness, acidity, freshness, crispiness & gooeyness. What’s...

The simplified method for this traditional preserving method for seasonal duck meat could easily become an alternative for an easier do-ahead prepared holiday meal. The method, that involves pre-salting, some waiting and then preserving the salted meats in fat seems simple enough but sometimes we get the ratios wrong so here’s how I do it...