Grilled salmon with yogurt and tomato sauce

You know how they say that kids don't like fish? I guess I was an exception. I would not eat many other "normal" things, torturing for hours my mom who tried to feed me. But I always loved fish. Growing up in Russia, salmon was probably the first fish I ever tried and the most common on our table. It didn't matter whether it was fried, grilled or most commonly just smoked, it was always a yum-yum :) Later on I tried of course other fish, but salmon always remained my all time favorite!

I know that we Greeks are VERY spoiled when it comes to food (I think most of the people in my office figured that out after the first couple of weeks :P), but I refuse to cook chicken when it is just pouring water while being fried (typical when bought from AH)! That's why I was more than happy to discover that in Holland it is easy to find a good quality fresh salmon. I don't wanna become all negative again, but fish is actually one of the few things that is really worth eating here.

Anyways, I bought nice slices of salmon and was planning to grill them in the oven. But I thought it would be nice to improvise with the topping. So I made tzatziki-like sauce but something was missing. Hmmm, what goes well with yogurt? I guess tomatoes should be nice... Yes, that's it! Tomatoes and thyme! Veeeeery good!

INGREDIENTS:

4 large slices salmon

for the topping:

1 1/2 cup Greek yogurt

1 large ripe tomato, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

2 tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped

1 tbsp fresh chives, finely chopped

1 tsp dried thyme

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. In a bowl mix all the topping ingredients and set aside for 5-10 minutes to allow the flavors to mix.

2. On a baking tray place the salmon and pour the yogurt sauce on top. Place in the preheated oven and bake util the fish is cooked through. Turn on the grill at the last 2-3 minutes, to make a crust on top of the sauce. Yummy!

Shrimp "saganaki" - Garides saganaki

More than a month of no blogging! That turns into a bad habit! This time I have a really good excuse though, I was on vacation. I went to my beloved Thessaloniki for 3 weeks, which sounds almost too good to be true. And as always it meant enormous amounts of food being consumed, completely disregarding any humanly possible limits! Well, since we moved to Holland whenever we find good food, we take good care of it :) Surprisingly this time no extra weight gained which probably proves once again that Greek food is awesome for another reason apart from great taste! Love it!

Anyway, I returned a week before my man and was too lazy to cook just for myself, which resulted in eating out every day. On the other hand, on Sunday, when Stratis came back I though it would be nice to cook for a change, if nothing else to make the transition from Greece to Holland easier for him. So I woke up in the morning planning to cook something really really Greek and really really summerish. That's when I came up with the idea of Shrimp "saganaki".

Saganaki is actually a type of small pan with two little handles. However, nowadays the word refers mainly to the type of food cooked in it. For example Feta saganaki is Feta cheese melted in a pan. Shrimp saganaki on the other hand is a delicious dish made with shrimps, feta and either tomato or white wine sauce. Both are truly amazing, but this time I went for the tomato one and it was properly appreciated. For the recipe I used small shrimps but you could use the same proportion of large shrimp as well. In this case you should not peel them in advance.

INGREDIENTS:

300 gr small shrimps, peeled

100 gr Greek feta cheese, in bite-size pieces

50 gr Ladotyri cheese, grated (you could use Parmesano-type cheese instead)

4 large ripe tomatoes, grated

1 onion, sliced

1 green bell pepper, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped

4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tbsp dried oregano

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. In a pan heat the oil and saute the onions, green peppers and garlic until they are soft.

2. Add the grated tomatoes and parsley, season with salt, pepper and oregano andcook until the sauce thickens.

3. Put the shrimps and feta pieces into an ovenproof saganaki pan or a little ceramic pot.

4. Pour the tomato sauce over the shrimp and feta mix and sprinkle with Ladotyri.

5. Place the pan in the oven and bake at 200°C until the Ladotyri makes a crust on top. Serve immediately and enjoy along with some freshly baked bread and ouzo!

Thai shrimp soup

The last few weekends we switched for fish and sea food, since we have time to go to the market and buy fresh fish there. So today I got shrimps and made a very nice Thai soup. And it actually smelled like Thai, cause other times I tried some recipes and even though they were nice it didn't smell authentic. Well this time it was great! :)

INGREDIENTS:

350 gr shrimps, peeled

1.5 liter fish stock

4 lemon grass stalks, chopped into 2 cm pieces

3 limes

2 chilly peppers

2 cm piece fresh ginger, finely chopped

6 coriander stalks with leaves

1 tbsp rice vinegar

3 tbsp oyster sauce

2-3 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped

1. Pour the stock in a large pot and bring to the boil.

2. With a vegetable peeler peel off 3-4 strips of lime rind. Squeeze the limes and reserve the juice.

3. Add the lemon grass, lime rind, chillies, ginger and coriander stalks to the stock and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Remove the lime ring from the pot.

4. Add the shrimps, vinegar, oyster sauce and half of the lime juice. Simmer for 5 minutes.

5. Remove the coriander stalks from the pot and discard.

6. Taste the broth and add more lime juice if necessary. Serve with some extra coriander.

Jambalaya

About 2 weeks ago a couple of friends moved just next door. The first day we had a dinner at out place. The men really wanted something meaty, while the ladies were craving for fishy. So we compromised on the mix of the two (if you could call meat the chicken and fish the shrimps :P ). Was a nice dish, easy to cook and very tasty! And it also looks just great (well this picture is probably not th best :P)!

INGREDIENTS:

1kg chicken fillet, chopped in pieces

30 large shrimps, peeled

300 gr raw smoked ham, diced

1/2 cup flour

3 medium onions, sliced

2 sweet green peppers, seeded and diced

400 gr ripe tomatoes, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tsp dried thyme

350 gr long-grain rice, washed

1 large cup water

1 bunch spring onions, finely chopped

1/2 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped

3-4 tbsp olive oil

1. In a large flameproof casserole heat the oil and brown the chicken. Remove the chicken from the casserole and set aside.

2. Lower the heat, sprinkle the flour onto the fat in the pan and stir continuously until the mixture turns golden brown.

3. Return the chicken to the pan, add the ham, onions, pepper, tomatoes, garlic and thyme and cook for about 15 minutes, then add the shrimps.

4. Add the rice and the water to the pan. Season with salt and pepper and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and keep cooking, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed. Add more water if necessary.

5. Once the rice is cooked, mix in the spring onions and parsley and serve hot.

Bacalao a la catalana

It's been a month since my last post :( To be honest I haven't been cooking much lately. We sort of switched to salads for some time so there wasn't anything worth posting anyways.

Tonight I felt like healthy food but a bit more complicated than just a salad. I remembered that I had a cod fillet in the fridge. On the other hand a couple of weeks ago I bought a Spanish cooking book, so I thought I might as well try something from there. I always buy cooking books with pictures. When you see how the result looks your motivation to cook something new is doubled! Well this time my eye stopped on a cod fillet with spinach which looked pretty amazing. Luckily I had spinach in the freezer. According to the recipe I was supposed to used fresh but even with the frozen one it was still delicious!

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup black raisins
1/3 cup pine nuts
2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
10 cups fresh spinach leaves, roughly chopped
4 cod fillets
freshly ground nutmeg
salt and ground black pepper to taste
some lemon juice

1. Soak the raisins in hot water for 15-20 minutes.
2. Roast the pine nuts in a heavy pan over high heat until golden.
3. Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the garlic and fry for few minutes. Remove and discard.
4. Add the spinach to the oil. Do not add extra water, the spinach has enough juices. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes. The spinach will decrease in volume. Remove the lid, add the drained raisins and pine nuts, season to taste and cook until the liquids evaporate.
5. Meanwhile place the cod in an ovenproof dish, brush with some olive oil, season with salt pepper and nutmeg and place in the oven for about 15 minutes. Once the fish is almost cooked through turn on the broiler and continue cooking until the fish is gold brown. Drizzle the fish with freshly squeezed lemon juice and serve along with the spinach.

Cod fillet with fresh tomato sauce

Sadly the Christmas vacation is over. And as always it involved a lot of eating :) But when the food is good it's almost impossible not to exceed the limits. So unfortunately, what is left from the holidays, apart from the wonderful memories, are some extra kilos. And the summer will come... And I won't be happy... So better now and slowly than in May and in panic. Diet it is!

The first thing I do when going on diet is trying to cut on carbs like rice and potatoes and substitute them with vegetables. So today when I prepared a crunchy fish fillet, I combined it with steamed green beans instead of usual rice. Actually, it feels good to be eating properly for once in weeks.

INGREDIENTS:

1kg cod fillet (or any other white fish), cut into 5-6 pieces
400 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
5-6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp dry thyme
2 tbsp fresh basil leaves, chopped salt and ground black pepper

1. In a medium pot heat 2 tbsp of olive oil. Add the tomatoes, thyme, basil, sugar, salt and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes.
2. Place the sauce in a food processor and pulse until the mixture is smooth. Press through a fine sieve, pour back to the pot and warm up over a medium heat.
3. Season the fish with salt and pepper.
4. In a heavy pan with a non-stick surface heat the rest of the oil and fry the fish until it is crunchy on the outside and cooked through. Serve with the tomato sauce on top of the steamed green beans.

Party crackers with shrimps and avocado

Christmas is getting closer and I thought that tonight would be the perfect chance to meet with some friends at home, in a nice christmasy atmosphere, just to have some beers and play some board games. Next weekend my sister comes to visit and we will be probably just going all around Amsterdam and after that I am going home to Greece for the holidays. So, this was probably the last opportunity to get together with some friends before Christmas.

Since morning I was thinking about inviting the guys over, but I was not in the mood for real cooking today, so I decided to prepare just some appetizers. There was this recipe that I found at one of my most favorite blogs. I was planing to prepare it since I first saw it and here it was, the perfect opportunity! It looks really fancy even though it's really easy to make. It took me something like 20 minutes to actually make 2 plates of this little snack. I think it is perfect for parties and little gatherings when you wanna make something different and impressive. Anyways, enough with the talk, here it comes.

INGREDIENTS:

30 shrimps, peeled and cooked
30 salty, thin crackers
1 ripe avocado
2-3 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp lemon juice
ground black pepper to taste

1. Cut the avocado in half, remove the stone and run the spoon around it to remove the skin. Place the flesh in a medium bowl and mash it until it's smooth.
2. Add the mayonnaise and the lemon juice and mix well. Season with some black pepper.
3. On each cracker place about 1 tsp of avocado mix and top with a shrimp. Doesn't it look amazingly beautiful and yet ridiculously easy?

Shrimp and Spinach Pasta

A couple of weeks ago a saw a nice shrimp pasta recipe at big mama's blog. And I remembered right away the shrimp pasta at Vapiano's, a chain of Italian restaurants. First time I tried it I really liked it and so I tried to recreate it at home with some changes. I think the original recipe was without cream and also walnuts are used instead of pine nuts. But I really like it with cream, it's more full (and more fatty as well!)

INGREDIENTS:

500gr penne or shells pasta
200gr spinach, roughly chopped
30-35 medium peeled shrimps
3 large, ripe tomatoes, diced
1 cup sour cream, preferably low fat
3-4 tbsp green pesto
3 tbsp pine nuts
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Throw in the shrimps and cook for a couple of minutes. Fish the shrimps out and cook the pasta in the same water for about 10 minutes, until al dente.
2. In a small pan mix the cream, pesto and garlic and cook on a low heat for 3-5 minutes. Don't overcook it or the cream and pesto will start separating.
3. Drain the pasta and put it back to the pot. Add the spinach, tomato, nuts and top with the sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Serve with a generous amount of Parmesan cheese.

Eschovished Fish

I have to admit, I had no idea what does the word "eschovished" mean. I was looking for additional fish recipe to complete the Latin American dinner party menu and I found a recipe in a Carribean cooking book, liked how it looked and decided to try it. Later when I checked the meaning, I found that it actually refers to a particular way of marinading and cooking the fish, which is popular across the Caribbean islands, particularly in Jamaica.

I started preparing the recipe something about half an hour before the guests came so I adopted a "fast-version" of the recipe, which practically means that I skipped the marinading part. I also used a bit less vinegar than required, because honestly I was a bit afraid to use too much. But people liked it and so did I, which makes it... a success!

INGREDIENTS:

1 kg cod fillet
juice of half lemon
flour, for dusting
oil, for frying

For the sauce:

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion sliced
1/2 red and 1/2 green pepper, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1/3 cup malt vinegar (I used white vinegar instead)
5 tbsp water
8-10 grains allspice
2 bay leafs
1 dry hot chilly pepper, whole
2 tbsp brown sugar
salt and ground black pepper to taste
parsley, chopped, for garnishing

1. If you decide to marinade the fish in advance, just sprinkle it with salt and pepper, place it in a shallow dish and pour over the lemon juice. Marinade for one hour. As I said, I skipped the marinading part.
2. Cut the fish in pieces and dust with some flower.
3. Heat some oil in a heavy frying pan and fry the fish until it is golden brown. Wile frying the pieces should not "overlap" so it may take a couple of rounds until all the fish is fried. Remove from the pan and set aside.
4. Make the sauce. In the same pan where you fried the fish add 5 tbsp of oil. Fry the onions until soft. Add pepper and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes more.
5. Pour in the vinegar, water and all the spices and sugar. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for 5 minutes.
6. Mix the fish with the sauce and serve garnished with some chopped parsley.

At this point some of the original recipes that I found online require leaving the fish to absorb the flavors for a couple of hours. Since I didn't have the luxury of time I skipped this step too. It was still very tasty but I think next time I will try to prepare it well in advance, follow all the steps and see what is the difference.

Cod Caramba

One of my most favorite cuisines is Latin American, starting from Mexican and finishing with Brazilian, Colombian and Caribbean. Apart from being extremely tasty it is usually very healthy and colorful because of all the different vegetables used. So when I was thinking what to cook today, I automatically picked the Caribbean cuisine book from my book shelf. Whenever I decide to cook something from this book it is really hard to stop the decision on something. Everything looks amazingly delicious. So this time I just decided to open the book at some random page and cook whatever was there. I slightly changed the recipe, since I can't stand the real Mexican-spicy food (the original recipe requires some Tabasco sauce instead of chili flakes). But I would absolutely recommend this dish!

INGREDIENTS:

600 gr cod fillets (you could use half raw and half smoked fillet too)
1 cup fish stock or water
2 tbsp butter
1 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 green and 1 red pepper, seeded and diced
2 zucchinis, diced
150 gr canned sweet corn, drained
3 small tomatoes, diced
3-4 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp hot chili flakes
100 gr tortilla chips (better unsalted)
1/2 cup grated Cheddar cheese
slat, ground black pepper and cayenne pepper

1. In a baking tray lay the fish and the fish stock or water. Bake in the oven at 200°C until the fish is cooked and the flesh breaks easily. When ready separate the fish into large flakes and keep it hot. Leave the juices in the tray.
2. In a large pan melt the butter. Add onion, garlic and peppers and cook over low heat until the onions is soft and transparent. Stir in the zucchinis and cook for some more minutes.
3. Add corn, tomatoes, chili flakes, salt, black and cayenne pepper. Cook for few minutes, then add the mixture to the tray with fish. Mix well.
4. Crash the tortilla chips (not too small), mix with the cheese and sprinkle over the fish. Cook under the grill until the chips are crunchy and slightly brown.

If you have all the ingredients in your fridge (I had to visit the store) its really a matter of 30-40 minutes to prepare, so you could absolutely cook it during the week to make a really nice and different dinner.

Chow Mein

I always wanted to get myself a good wok. And each time in the store I would find excuses, that the ones offered were either too expensive or of a poor quality or a combination of both. That's why I was really happy when for my birthday Katja and David got me a wok! (Thank you guys!) Of course the very next day I had to try it. It proved to be a very good one.

In order to decide what to cook I checked one of many cooking books that I have (in fact I have a whole collection of them!) and I found the following recipe, which I adjusted according to my taste and the ingredients in my fridge. This is what I got:

INGREDIENTS:

500 gr egg noodles, cooked according to the package directions
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp fresh ginger, chopped
1 red chilly, chopped
1 skinless, boneless chicken breast, thinly sliced
20-25 uncooked large shrimps or tiger prawns, peeled
100 gr green beans
1 medium-size carrot, chopped
100 gr baby corn, chopped
1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped
2 tbsp bamboo shoots, sliced
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp oyster sauce
black pepper, freshly ground

1. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a wok.
2. Add garlic, ginger and chillies and fry for 1-2 minutes over a high heat.
3. Add chicken, shrimps and beans. Stir-fry until the chicken and shrimps are cooked through. Transfer to a bowl.
4. Heat the rest of the oil in the same wok. Add green beans, carrots, baby corn, mushrooms and bamboo shoots. Stir-fry for few minutes.
5. Add the noodles and toss to mix. Season with soy sauce, oyster sauce and black pepper.
6. Add the chicken - shrimp mixture. Reheat and mix well with the noodles.

I actually changed the original recipe, which required 2 lap cheong (air-dried Chinese sausage) and a bit different mix of vigetables (green beans, beansprouts, garlic chives). I also added more soy and oyster sauce, I think the original amount was not enough and the food was a bit dry. Finally, it was really good and if you eat reasonable amount (pretty hard for me!) it's not heavy at all!

Bon appétit!

PS: The recipe was adopted from the book "Around the World in 450 Recipes".