Gyros

Across the Sea



I think it was in 1971 that I drove, with one of my father's students, from Cairo to Alexandria. We were taking my family's VW minivan to Alexandria to load on a boat for the journey to Greece. The plan was for me to accompany the van to Greece while the rest of my family flew to Athens. I've no idea why I was going with the van, and in a recent conversation, neither do my parents. Apparently it seemed like a good thing to do at the time.

We do remember that the student was with me to handle language issues (I didn’t speak Arabic, a notoriously difficult language for Westerners) and probably also to keep me from doing anything terminally stupid. At any rate, we apparently arrived in Alexandria and got the van loaded without incident. I don't particularly recall the drive so I was either stoned (not likely), sleeping, or being a stupid mindless teenager. The latter gets my vote. But I do remember the boat journey.

The sun was already hot in June, but the breeze was cool, the smell of the sea innervating, and the water a blue so intense it made your teeth hurt.

The boat hauled freight, passengers were very much a sideline. I had a berth in steerage. It was a cabin about nine feet wide with six bunks in it, three per side. That was it. The head was down a passageway and was the sort of place one visited only when one's bowels were near the bursting point. There was no toilet, only a hole in the deck one squatted or stood over. Hitting the hole was apparently optional.

Steerage was not a pleasant place. Especially once we were out in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and some folks started getting sea-sick.

I was lucky, I had a few qualms the first day but nothing serious and was fine thereafter. And the weather was magnificent (more luck) so I stayed on the top deck. The sun was already hot in June, but the breeze was cool, the smell of the sea innervating, and the water a blue so intense it made your teeth hurt.

A half dozen or so of us quickly formed a clique and played cards, mainly Spades, for most of the trip. There was a middle-aged Greek guy with a quick smile and no teeth, a couple of young Danes traveling together who shared my berth, and a couple of others I don’t recall except as splashes of color. We'd sit in the mess playing cards, drinking beer, and smoking. When someone got tired they'd wander outside to stretch and breath and someone else would take their place.

And so we proceeded for three days from Alexandria, Egypt to Piraeus, Greece where I met my family and we offloaded the van.

We had dinner in Piraeus and to begin ordered a plate of fried calamari, the first I'd ever had and they were extraordinarily good, like eating candy. We polished off a huge platter and ordered a second one.

The next day we did the tourist thing and stopped in a taverna for lunch where I ate my first gyro — another amazing food experience and one I've tried on occasion to recreate here at home. Last week I came very close, close enough that I'm willing to publish the recipe, an honor none of my previous efforts earned. The texture isn't quite right, but that's a minor issue.

Gyros
Serves 4.

Meat mixture:
1 lb ground lamb
1/4 c minced red onion
2 cloves garlic — minced
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
Tzaztiki:
1 c Greek-style yogurt
2 cloves garlic — crushed
1 8-inch cucumber — peeled, seeded, and finely diced
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
Sandwich:
4 rounds of flat bread or pita.
lettuce
tomato — seeded and diced

Tzaziki:
If you can't find Greek yogurt, use ordinary yogurt but remove excess liquid from it by dumping it in a sieve lined with cheesecloth and letting it drain over a bowl for 4 hours.

Add remaining tzatziki ingredients, mix, and chill for an hour or so.

Meat mixture:
Thoroughly combine all ingredients in a bowl. Divide into four equal portions and shape into oblong patties about 3" wide, 6" long, 1/2" thick. Refrigerate for an hour.

Sandwich:
Grill patties over a hot fire for 3 - 4 minutes per side. Spread tzatziki sauce down the center of a flat bread round, add a lettuce leaf, add some diced tomato. Add the patty, fold the bread over the lamb, and enjoy. Note: wrapping in foil helps hold things together.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | gyros | greece | sandwich | greek

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Pastitsio

Food for Working



Jeez! "Food for Working" sounds like a white-collar pretension of blue-collar roots, doesn’t it? But I don’t mean it that way. We all have jobs. We all sometimes get up earlier than we wish. We have aspects of our jobs we hate (and, hopefully, aspects we love). We all feel we're worth more than we're paid. We all get tired and irritable. We all come home from our jobs to eat things that, in a more perfect world, we'd avoid but that are quick, easy, and require no thought. Food that satisfies nothing more than our need for enough nutrition to enable us to get up too early tomorrow and do it all over again.

I've eaten my share of such meals, and I would be the last to argue there's something inherently wrong with a TV dinner or stopping by a KFC (I don't know what a KFC is, but it tastes a little bit like chicken) on your way home or even ordering a pizza from Pap John's. I eat all those things, but not often. For me, they're almost treats (and it's definitely a treat when I get a pizza delivered) and I like it that way.

If we're not willing to settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn't settle for junk food. ~ Sally Edwards

But when I come home from work (or, these days, knock off from work at home) I want something packed with flavor and goodness. Something that can make up for a bad day or celebrate a good day equally well — and in my years of eating and cooking I've found that nothing serves so well as peasant food.

What is peasant food? It's the native food of a culture. It's what the poor people, the working class, ate. In this country it's what the immigrants ate before they got hooked on Kraft Mac-n-Cheese and Burger King and frozen dinners and forgot how to cook. And I guess, to that degree, the idea of peasant food is pretentious — even condescending. But, again, that's not my intent.

Although I don’t come from a blue-collar background, I did grow up on a farm and have hauled more hay, dug more post-holes, and weeded more corn than I like to remember. I've also made a living refinishing furniture, making pizza, checking stock, playing music, and a few other things. My life as a well-paid white-collar worker was relatively brief — and even then my preference was for lamb daube from Provencal, masallah from India, Cornish pasties from England, and fried chicken from the South. It's not food well-suited to our sedentary life-styles, but it's food that makes you glad you were born with a set of functioning taste buds.

Some of these peasant foods are now regarded as haute cuisine. Fondue? Invented by Swiss herders. Bouillabaisse? Whatever the fishermen in Marseilles couldn’t sell. Cassoulet? Beans used to make a bit of leftover meat go further. Pâte? It's just meatloaf with the added advantage of making liver more palatable.

Then there are the wonderful things like stew, chile, homemade pizza, and barbeque that remain un-apologetically low-brow. And they are foods that take cheap ingredients and make them deeply satisfying. For instance two 12-inch pizzas from Papa John's cost about $25, but I can make two superior pizzas for $8.

Whatever their origins, such foods are simple to make, packed with flavor, and a satisfying end to a long day whether you were pruning grape vines, managing a shop, or debating an ordinance at city hall. They just aren't "fast." But many such foods are better the second or third day anyway — so make them when you have time and regard the leftovers as a bonus. Something to be looked forward to, not avoided. Something to make a really good dinner completely painless, at least half the time. Something for those nights when you get home tired and hungry. Something to replenish your body and your soul.

And if tonight is such a night, Pastitsio, a Greek meat and pasta pie, is a perfect example. It's best with lamb, but beef also works. Pastitsio is rich and savory — a genuine "rib-sticker" as we say in the South — and is at least as good as leftovers as it is the day you make it. Don't let the nutmeg and cinnamon scare you off — you'll never know they're there, but the dish is poorer without them. Enjoy it with a hearty Zinfandel or Malbec.

Pastitsio
Serves 8.

1/2 pound penne pasta
1/2 pound shredded mozarella

Lamb mixture:
1 pound ground lamb (or beef)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion — diced
2 large cloves garlic — minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup red wine
1 can finely diced tomatoes (15 oz)
4 ounces feta cheese — crumbled

Sauce:
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
2 egg yolks — lightly beaten
4 ounces kefalotiri (or parmegiano) cheese — grated or shredded
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Cook penne according to package directions. Drain, rinse with cold water to eliminate sticking, and set aside.

Lamb mixture:
Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium high heat. Brown lamb in two batches, seasoning with salt and pepper. Set lamb aside and pour off excess grease.

Reduce heat to medium and add onion. Cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Cook another minute. Add wine and deglaze pan. Reduce wine to about 1 tablespoon. Stir in tomatoes, including liquid, and lamb. Season with additional salt and pepper. Simmer for about 15 minutes. Stir in feta cheese and cook another 5 minutes.

Heat oven to 400F.

Sauce:
Heat milk in the microwave on high for 1 1/2 minutes. Melt butter in a sauce pan over low heat. Whisk in flour and cook, stirring constantly, for four minutes. Slowly pour in hot milk, whisking steadily, and cook until thickened. Slowly whisk in egg yolks. Whisk in kefalotiri (or parmegiano) cheese, cooking until melted and thick. Stir in salt and pepper.

Assemble:
Toss pasta with shredded mozzarella. Layer 3/4 of pasta in the bottom of 9 x 13 casserole dish. Layer meat mixture on top of pasta. Distribute remaining pasta over meat. Pour sauce evenly over pasta.

Place casserole in middle of oven and cook for 25 - 30 minutes until top browns.

Technorati: Food | recipe | lamb | pasta | greece | greek | pastitsio

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