Greek Prasorizo - Leek and Rice

This was my dad's most favorite dish and my mom would make it very often for him. The recipe is very simple and easy to follow. Because leeks are grown in sandy soil, the most difficult part is washing the leeks.

The ingredients are few and can scale easily.

• One cup of rice.
• Two leeks, cut lengthwise and then cut roughly.
• One large diced onion.
• Two cups of vegetable broth.
• Salt and pepper to taste.

In this recipe I make a quick vegetable stock and use it instead of using water to make the rice. The vegetable stock adds a new dimension to this dish. Please stay away from store-bought stocks.

I made a nice YouTube video of the whole process and I think you'll enjoy it. 

This is such a wonderful dish that can be eaten as a meal or as a nice side dish.

Enjoy!

Greek Style Green Beans in Instant Pot - Φασολάκια Λαδερά

In Greek, this dish is called Φασολάκια Λαδερά (Beans in Oil) – pronounced fah-so-lah-kia la-deh-ra. It is a very simple recipe and it seems much more like a "stew" to me.

The ingredients are:

• 1 1/4 lbs green beans with two ends cut;
• 3 1/2 large tomatoes grated;
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste;
• 6-7 large mushrooms sliced;
• 3 large potatoes cut in large pieces;
• 3 medium onions sliced;
• 1/4 cup olive oil;
• 1 tablespoon sugar.

To Serve:

• Feta cheese, feel free to exclude this to make this a vegan dish;
• Bread.

To cook this delicious dish I used my Instant Pot, my newest acquisition. I remember my mom using her pressure cooker back in the 1960s at our home in Nea Smirni, Greece (1, 2). My parents had friended a family, Mr. and Mrs. Koutelaki, that repatriated themselves from Istanbul, Asia Minor to Nea Smirni, Greece. Mrs. Koutelaki taught my mom how to use the pressure cooker. We didn't call it "pressure cooker", though, instead we called it "Düdüklü", a Turkish name, that's what Mrs' Koutelaki called it. The pressure cooker reduces the cooking time by a lot. If you are not using a pressure cooker you should cook this dish for about one hour, with the pressure cooker, though, you only need to cook it for 20 minutes. 

I created a YouTube video that shows the complete process. Here it is.

Happy cooking!

Oven Baked Beans - Fasolada sto Fourno - Φασολια Πλακι στο Φουρνο

A few years ago the family went to Hellas for a month long vacation. While there, we visited a beautiful island, Syros. Every day we would go to a different beach where we would stay there for several hours, swim, sunbathe, have lunch, sunbathe, swim, take a nap, swim, and go back to the hotel. Rough life I tell ya. Rough!

There was one restaurant there that cooked oven baked beans, fasolada, that was to die for. They had the beans in a huge pan, 20" x 50" that would only fit in an industrial oven. The beans were about 2" high and they were in a thick tomato sauce. Yum! I remember staring at the pan, salivating like Pavlov's dog.

In Hellas they use giant beans for this dish but I am having great difficulty finding these beans in the USA. So, like the versatile Odysseus that I am, I improvised and bought the beans that you see below. I followed the directions listed on the package to prepare the beans. HOWEVER, since in the end I wanted to bake the beans I followed the recipe to the final point where it stated that I should cook the beans in a pot for 1.5 - 2 hours. I cooked the beans (against their recommendation) for 1 hour only.

 This recipe has three steps:

1. Prepare the beans,
2. Prepare the sauce,
3. Put the beans and sauce together and bake.

STEP 1

Here are the beans soaking in water for one hour. This was the first step as I read it on the package.

Hey man, I am Cooking Weed

I had to buy two pounds of dandelions to complement our dinner last night, I just could not resist the temptation. In Hellas when you go to a restaurant to eat you always order a plate of weed. Yum! When I saw dandelions at the supermarket I bought two bunches of it.

You will need to cut the bottom of the weed about two inches high. Here I am using my middle finger to point because my index finger has...a Hanzaplast.

After I cut each bottom I add the weed in a bowl because you need to wash the leaves very well. There is a lot of dust and dirt that needs to wash away.

I used the dish drainer to set the clean weed to dry. 

Χόρτα βραστά με λεμόνι - Boiled Grass With Lemon

This recipe is included in my Spaghetti Alla Pouttanesca entry but I would like to re-blog it here for search engine reasons. This is a GREAT side dish that you will love. It is very simple to make and you can find this type of grass just about everywhere. If you choose to pick your own grass you must go to a virgin field and not your back yard or a field or a property where people will have added fertilizer or weed killer.

About 23 years ago my parents were visiting from Hellas. My wife and and I had just purchased a nice house in NY and we were trying to make it our home. It was summertime and my wife and I were outside working in the backyard, pulling weeds and putting them in garbage bags. Sometime later I turned and looked towards the house and I saw my parents standing behind the sliding door knocking on the glass trying to get my attention. I knew something was wrong and I ran towards the house to see what was wrong. As soon as I opened the door my parents yelled at me because they couldn't understand why I was pulling the grass from the ground and putting it in plastic garbage bags. To make the long story short, they told me that I was throwing away good food.

Fast forward many years to...yesterday, May 26, 2013, at the farmers' market in Rhinebeck, NY, I purchased two bunches of grass, a.k.a. χόρτα or ραδίκια. From now on I will refer to them as "grass" because it is just a generalization.

Here are the two bunches of grass I purchased. This grass MUST be washed thoroughly because it is just full of dirt.