Greek week

By Liz on February 6, 2015

Well, Greek end of the week anyway…

…and my own American version of Greek flavor… longtime reader Margaret can take me to task if I’ve misused any terminology :) !!!

The story really starts on Wednesday, which was sunny and warmish and beautiful and with the forecast after being not so great, I took some time to run to town for a few items and also to enjoy being out and about while it was nice! It meant a longish day as I worked into the evening to make up for the town run and so started Thursday thinking about a treat to get me going.

I had Feta and Kalamata olives: both with country of origin = Greece! I have no love for the American brands of Feta with the Greek sounding names as they just taste WAY too salty and the ingredient list says only “milk”, not “sheep’s milk”. And the Greek originating Kalamata olives are packed in red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil vs the canola oil that some American brands use. I make NO apology for being a feta and olive snob.

Tomatoes. Well. This time of year it can be tricky to find anything fresh that actually tastes like a real tomato. I typically buy grape tomatoes from Mexico and they are usually good, but this year…not so much. However…cut in half, drizzled with olive oil, garlic and oregano…and slow roasted (225 oven until they shrivel…2 hours or more) – they sweeten and become wonderful.

Much as I enjoyed the Feta and Chive Sour Cream Scones several weeks ago, the scones have a fair amount of butter and are a bit of a splurge. On occasion, I’ve made a Quick Foccacia (not using the pizza flavor/spices or cheese powder…subbing my own herbs of choice) and decided to see what would happen if I adapted that recipe to include feta, olives and roasted grape tomatoes…

Success!!! – SO good and much easier than the scones and no butter or sour cream so less of a hit calorie-wise with no sacrifice in flavor. As this did so well, I am sure that other adaptions of the recipe would be scrumptious also.

I simply eyeballed a mix of feta, tomatoes and olives that looked to fit into the dough. And I make 1/2 of the linked recipe using a standard bread pan vs the specified 9 x 13 pan.

Thursday.

After the sun of Wednesday, Thursday did an about face and got damp, gray and drippy…a fire was going…

And soup with toasted focaccia for lunch!

The toasted focaccia was wonderful with just a wee drizzle of olive oil.

The tomato soup is a blitz of roasted tomatoes, jarred tomato puree, oregano, garlic, cumin, a little curry powder and a puree of white beans to make it creamy. Using the white bean puree with just a smidge of heavy cream makes for a creamy soup with mostly no cream!

On to Friday.

It was time for a loaf of bread and I had so enjoyed the tomato-feta-olive mix that I decided to try a Greek-ish version of the Meyer Lemon Rosemary bread.

I added enough olive oil to a mix of tomatoes/olives/feta … enough to make a slurry – and put that in a well of the dough for my boule.

Wrap the dough around the mix, turn it over and shape it…

…give it an “asterisk slash” and bake.

Like the Meyer Lemon Rosemary bread, the slurry rises up and the result is an almost “pull-apart” bread.

…but sliceable!

And it worked with a soft boiled egg for my breakfast and as cheese toast for a side to another bowl of tomato soup for lunch.

It was a Greek (-ish) end of the week!

Nothing Greek here, but with the warm and all…some ground is showing…ground not seen for over a month! The chairs say “Hello” to the ground.