My Dad's Gioulbasi - Γκιούλμπασι

In the early seventies my father made a couple of times a dish called Gioulbasi. The name seems Turkish but I am not sure. My father used to compare this dish to λουκούμι, Turkish delight, because the meat was so tender. My dad would make several slits in the meat and insert a garlic clove in each. Then he would wrap a whole leg of lamb in several layers of wax paper and finally wrap that package using newspapers. He would cook it for 2 1/2 hours in the oven. This dish was mostly used as μεζέ, snack when friends and relatives would visit us.

There are several different meats you can use for this and I chose to use a combination of pork and round cubes.
I removed the wrapping material, washed and dried the pork. I used a sharp knife to cut the meat into small pieces.

The round was already cut into small pieces.

This was exciting because I was going to use my Dutch oven. Yes!

Here is my locally grown garlic.

Here is the list of ingredients (left to right):

Stuffed Vegetables - A Hellenic Favourite

I was just a young lad living in Nea Smirni, Hellas being pampered by my mom, enjoying being a... mammoni. I don't know why my mom spoiled her kids so much but it's just history now. My mom would cook all these delicious foods, yelling at me that I was "all skin and bones." I was a 30 waist then. Ahhhhhh the good old days.

This is momma Toula's stuffed vegetable recipe. Keep reading.

The ingredients are as follows:

• 1 1/2 lbs of lean ground beef. 
• four tomatoes (large but not huge, soft but not falling apart)
• three carrots (I added them because they are so sweet and tasty)
• five peppers
• five small-ish potatoes
• 1 cup rice
• one cup of chicken stock
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• some additional olive to be drizzled into the vegetables
• some additional olive to be drizzled into the pan(s)
• ground pepper
• (you could add salt but I don't due to my high blood pressure)
• some feta cheese

The tools for the job are:

• food mill
• vegetable peeler
• a small ice cream scoop or a sharp spoon (I had neither)
• one or two pans to fit all of the ingredients

Also, what in the world is that glass full of beer doing in this picture? Some day I will rant about all the pretentious youngster that surround me that know nothing about beer and the American blue collar worker.

Weekly Menu - Solved by Mathematical Induction

I am sick and tired of asking/answering the age-old question, "What are we eating tonight?" I don't know about other households but in ours we ask this question seven times a week.

I will try to change this by creating some structure around this chaotic sequence of random decisions. In essence it is a problem of mathematical induction (Ref 1, 2, 3, 4) where a natural number n holds for all values of n. The case of mathematical induction holds true in my kitchen too because if I plan to cook good food the first week, say W, then the next week, W+1, the planning of good food will also be true too. But I digress.

Here is how it will work. Every Friday I will create a weekly menu. The "week" will start on Wednesday and will end on Tuesday. Why this weird configuration one might ask. It all stems from the fact that ShopRite holds its senior citizen discount every Tuesday and Adams holds its customer appreciation day on Wednesday and I am frugal (cheap according to some relatives of mine).

The menu items will not be listed specifically by day because I would not want everyone to know that, for instance, on Tuesday evening I will not be home but instead it will list seven lunches and seven dinners to confuse the local thieves.

Perfection!

The Meatball Competition - 2013

My daughter Diane and I have been trying to settle a long standing dispute dealing with each other's meatball recipe. My claim is that my meatball recipe is the best in the whole wide world and I believe that her's is just a meatball recipe. In this blog entry I will describe the infamous meatball competition and I will introduce several new html9 version tags. The tags are identified by the < and > characters.

I believe that competing is partly psychological and for this reason I have established a strategy that is based on trash talking. I tried to intimidate her by saying the following:
<trashtalk>

• It will be like a walk in the park;
• It will be like taking candy from a baby;
• I will have one hand tied behind my back;
• It will be like shooting fish in a barrel;
• Like falling off a log;
• It will be easy as pie; 

</trashtalk>

She and I had been talking about it for several months and finally my wife and I visited Diane in Seattle. We set the date for the main event as well as the date to go food shopping for the ingredients. Needless to say, I was at a disadvantage because I didn't have my precision cooking tools and instruments and not to mention: 
<whine>

• the difference in climate; 
• the three hours differential between east and west coast;
• the increased humidity due to the proximity of the sea;
• the distracting siren sound from the nearby firehouse; 
• my daughter's vicious cat;
• and the fact that because we didn't rent a car we walked a lot and I was always tired.

</whine>

Clearly I was at a disadvantage BUT I had to go on with the competition.

Let me start by revealing the secrets behind my recipe that make it so yummy-yummy-down-my-tummy. The primary secrets are: 

• the way I incorporate the onions in the meatballs and the sauce;
• AND the fact that I use mint in the meatballs and the sauce.

The big secrets are finally revealed here! <secret>Typical recipes incorporate the onion in either diced or minced form but I find this distracting when eating the meatballs. I incorporate the onion by grating it. This way you have the onion in a form that it is equally incorporated into the meatballs and the sauce. As you grate the onion you get the meat of the onion AND the juice that is produced by it. I love using mint in the meatballs because mint has such a nice flavor and aroma. My mom always used fresh mint in the meatballs and she got it from our garden.</secret>

Visiting Friends

Recently my wife and I were invited to have pizza made outdoors in a wood fired oven. SWEET! having my own outdoor oven is a dream of mine. I was going to see a real pizza oven in person. I was excited.

Once we arrived at their house the oven was already lit for a three hours and the temperature inside the oven was about 700 °F. They had built the oven themselves!

The oven structure had three parts: the exterior decorative brick, the interior made with fire brick, and in-between those two they placed a steel drum. This way the heat generated inside the oven wouldn't escape easily. They also cut a window (to insert the food etc.) and they also made a door to prevent the heat from escaping.

The whole oven structure was vary impressive and I kept wiping my mouth because I was drooling from envy. 

The logs had become charcoal and the temperature was high.