Recipes

Greek Idylls – Part One

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My then pre-K aged daughter Blondie and I lived in Athens from March 1983 to September 1985. It was a follow-on assignment to Hellenikon Air Base (now closed) to a year that I spent at Sondrestrom, Greenland, forty miles north of the Arctic Circle. All during that year of separation, I had promised her that we would go to Athens together, and live in a house on a hill, with lemon and olive trees all around and a view of the sea, and we would be happy.
We did, and we were, and these are the things I learned and remember.

Athens is a large and mostly modern city, 7/8th of it built up since 1945, with smog to rival Los Angeles and sheer noise to equal New York. All the neat old historic buildings are buried among the modern construction like one of those party favor balls made of crepe, which you unwind to find various little toys hidden in the layers. The park in the heart of the city is the Zappeion garden, lush and green, with a pond of ducks and a tiny children’s’ library. The Zappeion is full of cats, at which we used to marvel, as they were all so fat and tame. One afternoon when my daughter and I were walking back to catch our bus to the suburbs, we kept noticing the cats slinking out of the bushes by the dozen, looking expectantly at us. A young couple came into the gardens by one of the gates from Vassilias Amelia Avenue, staggering under the weight of three or four plastic shopping bags in each hand, and the cats gathered purposefully. The young couple set down the bags, took out can openers and began opening cans of cat food. They did this every other day, or so: the young man was English and worked nearby. He and his girlfriend came to feed the cats every day or so, having taken it over from an elderly Greek lady some years before, and the local ASPCA chapter (composed mostly of other expat English) worked to trap and neuter as many as possible.

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Finally!

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A truly important article from the NY Times:

That’s why, I’m sorry to say, if you want a truly great, hot, crisp doughnut, chances are you’re going to have to make it yourself. Like anything involving deep-frying, D.I.Y. doughnuts are a bit of a project, but they’re less work than you might think. And once you’ve mastered the basic recipe — this one is for fluffy yeasted doughnuts, as opposed to the denser cake variety — you can geek out to your heart’s content on the glazes, toppings and fillings.

Happily the NYT article actually links to some recipes.

My aunt has a great recipe for sufganiyot, which are a sort of jam-filled Israeli yeast donut that’s traditionally made for Hannukah, at least by my aunt. I ought to ask her for it.

Lori’s Amish Peanut Butter Cookies

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Continuing on the theme of recipes from my grandmother’s recipe box, today we have Lori’s Amish Peanut Butter Cookies.

I honestly have no idea why these are “Amish” – I guess Lori got the recipe from an Amish woman somewhere along the way.

First off, the ingredients:

1.5 cups shortening
4 tsp vanilla
2 cups crunchy peanut butter
2 cups sugar
5 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 cups brown sugar
3 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs, well beaten

There were no instructions on this card, so I just began mixing stuff together. I finally used my grandmother’s old standing mixer, pictured below.

I am guessing it is from the 60’s but don’t really know. It is a heavy beast – that much I do know.

As you can see from the ingredient list above, this recipe is GIANT. It barely all fit in the mixing bowl, and I needed to use my hands at times to prevent all of the batter from overflowing, but it all worked out in the end.

The card then said make loose balls with a tablespoon and flatten them with a sugared cup. Bake @350 for 8-10 minutes. I made mine a little larger and ended up with about 85 cookies. Here are most of them.

These are outstanding and will not last long.

Cross posted at LITGM.

Maxine’s Fresh Orange Squares

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I have mentioned before that my grandmother died a few years ago and one of the best things I received when we were cleaning out her house was a giant box of recipes. In the box are some recipes from her friends as well. Yesterday I tried Maxine’s Fresh Orange Squares and they came out pretty well.

I bought a giant bag of oranges from Costco last week and frankly, they are pretty bad. I hate wasting, so went to the recipe box to look up a recipe to try to use a few of them.

Ingredients:

1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
2/3 cup finely chopped peeled orange (about 1 large)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Orange glaze*

*Orange glaze: Mix 2 tbsp. grated orange peel, 1/3 cup sifted confectioners sugar and 2 tsp water until smooth

Heat oven to 350. In small mixing bowl, beat sugar and egg on high for 3 minutes. Stir in flour, orange and nuts. Spread in greased 9x9x2 pan. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown. While warm spread with glaze. Cool, cut into 1.5″ squares.

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Below is the finished product:

The squares were pretty dense. I substituted almonds for the walnuts because that is what I had laying around and it worked fine. The orange glaze is delicious on top. I imagine this would be even better with good oranges.

Cross posted at LITGM.

History Friday – At the Inn of the Golden-Something-or-Other

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(For a Friday, a little change from the usual – a post about traveling, history, and an insufficient command of French … but an appreciation for good food and small country inns. This is included my ebook “Travels With Blondie.”)

I have been flipping over the pages of my battered Hallwag Euro-Guide, attempting to reconstruct my hopscotch itinerary on little back roads across France, at the wheel of the VEV in the early autumn of 1985. I avoided the big cities, before and after Paris, and the major highways. For a foreign driver, Paris was a nerve-wracking, impenetrable urban jungle, a tangle of streets and roundabouts, and the major highways were toll-roads and expensive; much less fraught to follow the little-trafficked country roads from town to town to town. We ghosted along those two-lane country roads as much as a bright orange Volvo sedan can be said to ghost, the trunk and the back seat packed with mine and my daughter’s luggage, a basket of books, a large bottle of Metaxa brandy (a departing gift from Kyria Paniyioti, our Athens landlord) and two boxes of china and kitchen gadgets purchased from that holiest of holies of French kitchenware shops, Dehillerin in the Rue Coquilliere.

From Chartres and the wondrous cathedral, I went more or less south towards the Loire; the most direct way would been a secondary road to Chateaudun, and an even more secondary road directly from there to Blois, through a green countryside lightly touched with autumn gold, where the fields of wheat and silage had been already mown down to stubble. The road wound through gentle ranges of hills, and stands of enormous trees. Here at a turn of the road was a dainty and Disney-perfect chateau, with a wall and a terrace and a steep-sloped blue-slate roof trimmed with pepper-pot turrets, an enchanting dollhouse of a chateau, set among its’ own shady green grove. There was no historic marker, no sign of habitation, nothing to welcome the sightseer, and then the road went around a bend and it was out of sight, as fleeting as a vision.
Blois was set on hills, a charming small town of antique buildings, none more than two or three stories tall, and I seemed to come into it very abruptly late in the afternoon. Suddenly there were buildings replacing the fields on either side. At the first corner, I turned left, followed the signpost pointing to the town center; might as well find a place to spend the night. As soon as I turned the corner and thought this, I spotted the little hotel, fronting right on the narrow sidewalk. It had two Michelin stars, which was good enough for me (plain, clean, comfortable and cheap) and was called the Golden… well, the golden something or other. I didn’t recognise the French word; truth to tell, I didn’t recognize most of them, just the words for foods and cooking, mostly, and could pronounce rather fewer.

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