Greek
Fresh, light (most of the time), vegetable-forward, I love Greek food. I feel like I grew up on Greek cuisine. Almost every weekend, I would go to the same Greek restaurant in the town over with my grandparents for dinner. I would always order avgolemono soup (I called it lemon soup at the time). As I grew up, I discovered Cava, a Mediterranean quick-serve restaurant that has exploded in the D.C. metro area in recent years. And now, I had another opportunity to explore one of my favorite types of food with this Greek Cuisine Adventure.
Of course, no Cuisine Adventure would be complete without me trying out one or two chicken dishes. Chicken really is a crowd- and family-pleaser. It certainly was with Monday night’s dish: Chicken Souvlaki served along side tzatziki and pita bread. The chicken may look plain and undecorated, but it was surprisingly packed with so much flavor. By leaving the chicken in a potent Greek marinade for hours, the recipe says you could even leave the chicken in the marinade overnight, you allow the flavors to develop and make for an excellent dinner experience. I also made a quick Greek salad to go alongside the chicken and it was killer.
Tuesday followed up with another tasty trip. On Tuesday, I cooked traditional fasolakia. Fasolakia means “green beans” in Greek. The most authentic way to cook this humble green vegetable is in tomatoes, of course, aren’t we talking about the Mediterranean? While not the hardiest dish by any means, this fasolakia was super fresh and unbelievingly addicting. It struck me as a Greek version of French ratatouille, except less of a hassle as there’s just fewer vegetables to deal with. This Tuesday dish was a much-needed upgrade to the fasolakia I’m used to getting with our Greek takeout, which is often watery and flavorless.
The flavor train carried right into Wednesday with the least authentic, or maybe just the least commonplace, dish of the week “Fried Feta with Sesame and Honey.” Feta and honey are biblically a great combination of ingredients (“milk and honey”, anyone?), so when one of my followers suggested I try this dish out, I was more than happy to oblige. Crunchy, sweet, rich, creamy, and oozy, this side hit all the right adjectives. Just make sure you have enough sesame seeds when trying this recipe, the feta was absorbing them like nobody’s business.
The flavor train, however, stopped abruptly on Thursday with the avgolemono soup recipe I tried from a blog called Jo Cooks. Lacking spices, seasonings, and flavorful chicken, this avgolemono soup was not what I was looking for at the dinner table. I did get to practice my Sous Vide skills with the chicken for the soup, so that’s a silver lining.
Of course, I saved the best for last. The baklava dish from America’s Test Kitchen was addicting. Great flavor from walnuts, honey, lemon, pistachios, almonds, and warm spices, this baklava ended up smelling and tasting like apple pie somehow. But that’s not a bad thing in my book! I also learned the most from this recipe. I became confident in handling filo dough and clarified butter for the first time. I won’t be making this dish all the time, though, as it took me the good part of the day to make these cute diamonds. If I ever have a good five hours on a weekend, this baklava will be at the top of my mind. Another reason I’m not making baklava everyday, each piece is over 200 calories, so there’s that.
As with any Cuisine Adventure, there were some recipe highs (literally all of them) and some recipe lows (except the avgolemono soup, unfortunately). I also loved the food photography for this week. The pictures danced with reds, yellows, greens, and even blues, which certainly improved my Instagram feed. Looking forward to what cuisine I get to learn from, experiment with, and, of course, taste next week!
