Preparing Greek Meals with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
I
put together a lot of lunch and dinner parties when I lived in Wisconsin, so my
daughter Florence could learn how to make ethnic food and learn to appreciate
and dance to music from different lands.
When
my big sister Kathy and my big brother in-law Tony came to visit us, I made a
Greek meal for them. Florence helped
prep everything. She was very good at
slicing feta cheese and washing vegetables.
We
began our meal with a starter of marinated artichokes and a country Greek
salad, which is made without lettuce by Greek families.
For
our main dish, I made a roast chicken stuffed with feta cheese, chopped
tomatoes, mushrooms, and scallions. (I
clipped the recipe from Saveur magazine.)
I
soaked the chicken the night before in the refrigerator in a brine to draw out
blood and hormones. I am not Jewish, but
blood does rot quickly. I know why the
Jews want meat without blood in it.
Chicken flesh prepared this way almost tastes sweet.
To
go with the chicken, I grated some nutmeg into sautéed spinach and made sheet-pan,
baked potatoes.
And,
for dessert I made lemon-flavored rice pudding.
In
addition to Saveur magazine, I was able to make all of these dishes using The
Art of Greek Cooking by the Women of St. Paul’s Orthodox Church. Church cookbooks are a treasure for keeping
recipes that help deal with feast or famine situations in the community or
rites of passage.
I
do not see my sister often, so I wrote up our menu and framed it. She has a copy, too. Old family menus go in a family meal
journal. This is an old European custom,
but I like it.
Other
Greek cookbooks that might interest readers include:
-The
Foods of the Greek Islands: Cooking and Culture at the Crossroads of the
Mediterranean by Aglaia Kremezi
-The
Food and Wine of Greece: More than 300
Classic and Modern Dishes by Diane Kochilas
-How
to Roast a Lamb: New Greek Classic Cooking by Michael Psilakis
-Around
a Greek Table: Recipes and Stories Arranged According to the Liturgical Season
by the Eastern Church by Katerina Whitely
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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| Ruth Paget Selfie |
