Ingredients for 20- 25 meatballs
500 grams
ground beef, min 10% fat
1 onion
1 handful
parsley
3 eggs
½ cup long
grain rice (separated into 1/4)
Salt and
pepper
¼ cup olive
oil
1 lemon,
juiced
1 tsp.
cornstarch
Mix meat, onion,
parsley, 1 egg, 1/4 cup rice, salt and pepper, and mix well with your hands.
Roll into walnut-sized balls (about 20-24 pieces) and rest in fridge for at
least half an hour. In large soup pot, add oil and heat to medium high. Gently
add meatballs and cook lightly on all sides until holding together well. Add
hot water and bouillon or stock enough to just cover the meatballs, and add the
remaining 1/4 cup of rice to the soup as well. Simmer for 20-30 minutes or
cooked though based on size of meatballs. Turn off heat and prepare the Avgolemono
sauce, or if you prefer the soup alone mix 1 tsp. cornstarch to 1-2 ladles of
soup and add back to soup to thicken broth.
Avgolemono sauce
In a medium bowl,
whisk the remaining 2 eggs and add the lemon juice and cornstarch slowly until
fully incorporated. The mixture should be light and somewhat foamy. Slowly,
while continuously whisking, stream in 2 ladles of stock from the soup. You
want to make sure the soup isn't too hot that it breaks or cooks the eggs, so
add stock slowly and whisk vigorously. Once you have tempered the sauce, add
slowly to the soup and stir well to incorporate.
Spanakopita
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Ingredients for 10 portions
115g plus
15g unsalted butter
454g baby
spinach
227g Greek
feta, crumbled (not Danish feta)
½ teaspoon
freshly grated nutmeg
10 (17- by
12-inch) phyllo sheets, thawed if frozen
Melt 1 tablespoon butter and cook spinach
over a medium heat, stirring, until wilted and tender, about 4 minutes. Remove
from heat and cool, about 10 minutes. Squeeze handfuls of spinach to remove as
much liquid as possible, then coarsely chop. Transfer to a bowl and stir in
feta, nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
Preheat oven to 180C.
Melt remaining 1 stick butter in a small
saucepan, then cool.
Cover phyllo stack with 2 overlapping sheets
of plastic wrap and then a dampened kitchen towel, best to keep the phyllo in
the fridge until you need it
Take 1 phyllo sheet from stack and arrange on
a work surface with a long side nearest you (keeping remaining sheets covered)
and brush with some butter. Top with another phyllo sheet and brush with more
butter. Cut buttered phyllo stack crosswise into 6 (roughly 12- by 2 3/4-inch)
strips.
Put a heaping teaspoon of filling near 1
corner of a strip on end nearest you, then fold corner of phyllo over to
enclose filling and form a triangle. Continue folding strip (like a flag),
maintaining triangle shape. Put triangle, seam side down, on a large baking
sheet and brush top with butter. Make more triangles in same manner, using all
of phyllo.
Bake triangles in middle of oven until golden
brown, 20 to 25 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool slightly.
Kourambiedes
(Greek Christmas Cookies)
(Greek Christmas Cookies)
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Ingredients for about 60 cookies
600g butter
400g
blanched almonds, chopped coarsely and roasted
½ teaspoon
baking powder
200g icing
sugar, plus extra for rolling cookies
50g brandy
1200g plain
flour
Firstly,
chop the almonds coarsely, you can do this in a processor but make sure they
are not reduced to crumbs, we want them to be small pieces that you will taste
and crunch in the almond cookie recipe.
Next dry roast
the almonds in a frying pan. Taking great care to stir them until they
just start to take colour, then remove them from the heat and place on a plate
until needed. Be very careful as they can burn extremely quickly and then are
of no use as they will give the sugar cookie a burnt flavour.
Beat the butter and
sugar together in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer until soft and
fluffy. The more you beat it the lighter the Kourabiethes will become. Sieve the flour and baking powder into the butter mixture.
Take a small handful of the dough in your hand and roll it into a ball.
Next, taking one sugar cookie at a time, roll it all around in the sugar until it is completely covered.
Repeat with each cookie.
Fold the flour gently
into the mixture using a metal spoon, until only just combined.
At this stage you may
need to knead it a little with your hands to make a dough that sticks together.
Place it on a greased
baking tray and then flatten the ball slightly.
Place baking tray in a
preheated oven of 180C for 15 - 30 minutes, you need to check them to see when
they are just taking a colour, then they are ready, be careful not to overcook
them as they will become hard.
Remove from the tray
and let the Kourabiethes cool down completely.
Take a plate and pour
a good thick quantity of icing sugar over the plate. Roll each cookie, individually in the icing sugar, until you get a nice thick coating. Place cookie on a tray for serving and repeat, until all cookies are coated.
