main courses recipes
A TRIPLE-MOUSSAKA means using all 3 customary vegetables such as 1 layer each of fried or roasted potato slices, zucchini slices and eggplant slices with 2 layers of triple-meat sauce (not ground meats this time but braised & shredded meats with beef, veal and lamb) and 1 layer of a béchamel/mornay sauce. So in all, 6 lovely layers for...
And I mean instead of TOMATOES ! This fine month of September, many of you may be in the midst of or getting ready to prepare your home-made jarred tomatoes and sauces for the coming seasons until the next summer. Have you ever thought about EGGPLANTS ? Not only as a sauce, but also as a base for other sauces and foods ?! Eggplants, yes....
This comforting dish definitely has the flavors of ITALY but isn’t Italian in its form nor presentation nor originally an authentic Italian dish at all from Italy but actually an adaptation of a dish by Italian immigrants in America in the early 20th century. And yet, like modern-day versions of lasagna and pizza, it provides complete...
It’s a comforting MINESTRONE soup with equal parts of everything : an initial 18 cups of the 6 different chopped vegetables and beans and crushed tomatoes and pasta (before partly reducing in volume to 14 cups), all simmering in an equal amount of 12 cups of prepared broth made with extra vegetables and scraps and 2 cups of pasta...
A delightful northern Spanish celebratory dish that’s involves rolling up 4 different layers and creating a multi-layered spiralling loaf, starting with a layer of freshly chopped tuna blended with onions, garlic, parsley, white wine, breadcrumbs and flour, then a layer of Serrano dry-cured ham slices, then an egg omelet layer, then the...
Six layers in all. Three layers of extra thick roasted eggplant slices and 2 layers of chunky braised & shredded “kokkinisto” triple-meat sauce and one layer of thickened bechamel topping (so it doesn’t slide off), all stacked together thickly and cooked individually for an impressive presentation. It reduces the need for...
It’s already AUGUST 1st so how about if we prepare enough fillings for 25 VEGETARIAN TACOS to eat for the next 3 days or throw a small intimate party for our family and/or close friends and eat everything tonight ?! And don’t forget the watermelon cocktails and fruit salad … Tacos are so Mexican and yet, the...
I’m a “hoarder” by nature (but I prefer “prudent planner”) and I do have a comfort zone that consists of having a stock of stuff I use regularly and often, which has nothing to do with the present “lockdown” situation. But I may have overdone it with too many fresh products (becoming less fresh over time)...
I know you’re feeling the cold temperatures out there (just like I am), so perhaps something hot & spicy (instead of a soup) can warm you up this weekend and get your blood boiling (or at least pumping) a little more ! The roasted red pepper & tomato sauce was an experiment, using a jar of roasted red peppers to transform a...
RETSINA is a Greek dry white wine with resinous flavors because of the wooden caskets it is aged in, that are sealed with Aleppo pine sap. In my opinion, it’s an ideal alternative flavoring for winter dishes, just like rosemary and pine nuts for savory dishes and mastic resin for sweets. Other years, I focused on warmer flavors like...
A “kokkinisto” which means “reddened” is a preparation of meat bathed in a sauce and is usually made with either larger pieces or cubes of stewed meat, when served with starchy accompaniments or prepared with ground meats when incorporated in other oven-baked dishes. This version is something in between and quite...
Nothings says joyful, relaxing and lazy “summer” more than a marinated seafood salad (even though seafood is more plentiful in the colder months) so a summery version must include vegetables, both leafy and water-gorged crunchy ones, to make it both seasonally coherent and complete ! My version is one third seafood, one third...
A small and simple dish with honest and readily available flavors, using a MIREPOIX base and the simplicity of BEER, but pushing it until it becomes not only its foundation of flavor but the actual structure of the dish, with no interfering extras. A “MIREPOIX”, just like an Italian BATTUTO and SOFFRITTO and a variation of Spanish...
It’s BEAN season (or actually the season for those dried beans that we should use up during the winter) and I don’t feel like I eat enough of them, which ideally would be at least once a week, whether they’re chickpeas or lentils or fancier mixes and my absolute favorite : giant LIMA BEANS (also called BUTTER BEANS in English and...
A chunkier & heartier version of a perfect winter meal with a bottom layer of beer-braised beef, later shredded, cooked with vegetables, later chopped, followed by a layer of whole corn kernels and creamed corn layer too and topped with a layer of partly-crushed boiled root vegetables such as potatoes, parsnips and white carrots and then...