The Peinirli

Soutzouki and pastourmas have always been staples in my fridge in Greece. Here in Holland they’re impossible to find and even if I do manage to scare up something that resembles any one of them, their taste and quality is a far cry from what I’m used to.

One of the things I brought back with me from Greece, besides the good supply of chocolates, are these two delicacies. Soutzouki, as I’ve previously mentioned, is a spicy fresh sausage made nine out of ten times with beef meat, and pastourmas is seasoned, spicy air-cured beef.

The best way to eat these two is to simply slice them and serve them with a chunk of fresh bread and a shot glass of ouzo; they make the perfect meze on a warm summer evening. On the other hand, a wonderful way to savor them is adding them to a peinirli.

The Greek word Peinirli (Πεϊνιρλί) derives from the Turkish word Peynirli which translates to “with cheese” (peynir means cheese in Turkish). Peinirli is a boat- or rather canoe-shaped yeasted bread, similar to the Turkish pide but larger, with a dough that’s soft inside and beautifully crusty but not hard on the outside.

Peinirli is beloved by all Greeks, especially those whose families come from Constantinople and Smyrni as mine, but also Pontus. When Greeks from Pontus (the Greek name for the Turkish Black Sea south coast) arrived in Greece in the 1920’s after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, some of them settled in Drosia, an Athenian suburb, and opened restaurants that served their specialty, the peinirli. Till today, Athenians make the almost one-hour trip by car to Drosia to have the best peinirli in Greece.

One more thing that makes peinirli unique and delicious is its fillings, with the traditional one being the Greek kaseri cheese that sizzles in the middle of the risen baked dough, and the butter that needs to be added as soon as the little doughy boat comes out of the oven so it can melt gloriously on top of said cheese.

Peinirli can have various other fillings like minced meat, eggs, tomato, ham, sausages and many more. In my family, what constitutes a traditional peinirli is one filled with soutzouki or pastourma, cheese and tomato.

The pungent and spicy flavor of both pastourma and soutzouki paired with the rich cheese and fresh tomato make for a tasty treat. Both these delicacies are quite heavy when cooked though, so tread cautiously. Try not to eat too much.

No matter what kind of filling you end up using in your peinirli, I do hope you enjoy this classic Greek yeasted savory delight.

Peinirli

Peinirli is quite substantial fare and can be enjoyed as a main meal, much like pizza, or as a snack cut in smaller pieces.

If you can’t find soutzouki, you can use any other kind of sausage you want. Same with pastourmas, just substitute with another type of spicy air-cured beef.

If you have a pizza stone, then by all means use it to bake the peinirli. The result will be excellent.

Semolina flour is finely milled semolina (it’s not fine semolina but semolina that is so finely milled that has the texture of flour). In Greece, this flour is widely used for bread and all kinds of yeasted savory doughs. If you can’t find it, use strong bread flour.

Yield: 8 peinirli

Ingredients

for the dough
300 g all purpose flour, plus extra for sprinkling your work surface
200 g semolina flour (from durum wheat)
9 g instant dried yeast
1 tsp sea salt
½ tsp sugar
200 ml lukewarm water
150 ml lukewarm fresh whole milk
50 ml good quality olive oil, plus extra for greasing dough and bowl

for the cheese filling
Greek kasseri cheese or Swiss Emmentaler, grated
Unsalted butter, preferably sheep’s butter

for the pastourma or soutzouki filling
Pastourma, sliced
Soutzouki, sliced
Tomato, sliced
Greek kasseri cheese or Swiss Emmentaler, grated

Special equipment: box grater, stand mixer with dough hook attachment (optional), large baking sheet, baking paper, pizza stone (optional)


Preparation
In the bowl of your stand mixer or in a large bowl, add the flours, the yeast, sugar, salt (making sure it doesn’t come in contact with the yeast), the lukewarm water and milk, and the olive oil.

If you’re kneading in a stand mixer, attach the dough hook and knead for about 7 minutes, on the lowest speed, until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl, remains slightly moist and it is smooth and elastic. Empty it onto a lightly floured surface (use all–purpose flour for this) and knead it a little to see how it feels. It should feel a little sticky to the touch.

If you're kneading by hand, once you have mixed the ingredients together into a rough dough, take it out of the bowl and onto a clean surface and knead well. It'll take about 10 minutes. What you're aiming for is a soft and pliable dough that's sticking slightly to your hands and that remains moist but not overly so that you can’t knead it.

Note: Not all flours are the same, so if your dough is very wet, don't be afraid to add more flour (all-purpose flour). Add a little at a time though, testing the consistency of the dough. You don't want to end up with a stodgy, stiff dough. I find that with this dough, I always seem to add a little more flour so that it doesn’t stick too much (about 35 g more).

Shape the dough into a ball, lightly grease the bowl of your stand mixer (or a large bowl) as well as the dough ball with olive oil and place the dough inside the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place it in a warm place, allowing the dough to proof and double in size. It will take about 1 hour to proof, depending on how warm the room you leave it in is.
During the winter, I always leave my dough next to a working radiator. Not on top of it but on a chair and right in front of it.

Once the dough has proofed, take it out of the bowl and knead it for a couple of seconds just to deflate it a bit. It should feel smooth, pliable and soft. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces (around 115 g each) and shape into balls. Oil the balls (so they don’t stick to one another) and place them in the bowl after you oil it again. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place it in a warm place, allowing the balls of dough to proof until almost doubled in sized. It will take 30-40 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 225 degrees Celsius / 435 Fahrenheit.
If you have a pizza stone, place it on the lower rack of the oven to preheat as well. If not, prepare your baking sheet by lining it with baking paper.

Once the dough balls have proofed, take each one and place it on a floured surface and flatten it into an oblong shape (about 26x13 cm). Take the bottom edge and fold it (see photo below). Then take the upper edge and fold it (see photo). Seal the two pointy ends by pressing them together (where the two folded parts overlap). If it’s difficult because of the flour, add a little water with your fingertips between the two pieces of dough and press them together to seal. You will have a boat-shaped dough with elevated sides that’ll keep your filling inside.
Continue with the rest of the dough balls. My oven is small so I can fit only three at a time. While the first batch is baking I shape the rest.

Place the shaped peinirli onto the prepared baking sheet (or onto the pizza stone that you have sprinkled with a little flour), prick the inside of the “boat” (where you’ll later add your filling) with a fork so it doesn’t puff up and place on the lower rack of your preheated oven. Bake for 10 minutes, until they begin to color. Take them out and lower the heat to 185 degrees Celsius / 365 Fahrenheit.

Fill the peinirli with the ingredients of your choice. If you’re using cheese, add a generous amount in the middle. If you’re using the soutzouki or pastourma, add a couple of slices of tomato at the bottom, followed by a couple of slices of soutzouki or pastourma and then some grated cheese on top. Be careful not to overflow the boat, no pun intended.

Return the peinirli in the oven and bake for a further 10 minutes, until the cheese melts but doesn’t brown. It shouldn’t form a crust.

Take them out of the oven and if you made the cheese peinirli, add a couple of knobs of butter on top to melt.

Serve immediately.

Fresh chamomile cupcakes

There are many desserts I haven’t made before in my life. Doughnuts, tarte tatin, black forest cake, are just a few of them. What I have made many times is cupcakes.

I’ve told you about this before, I don’t get wildly excited about cupcakes, why go small when you can go big, right? Having said that, there is the time and place for a cupcake or two in my life and, when I was in Greece a couple of weeks ago, an opportunity to make and eat them presented itself.

Sometimes individual portions have a certain allure, especially when they come in the form of a fresh chamomile mini cake with a “anthomelo” (Greek flower honey) glaze.

I found fresh chamomile at the farmer’s market in Greece and I was extremely excited about it. Really, I began jumping up and down when I spotted it. People were staring, but I didn’t care one bit. I just love the stuff.

I began thinking about all the things I could make with it and I concluded that I wanted, nay needed, to use it in dessert.

I considered a simple pound cake flavored with the sweet-smelling flowers, then I thought about ice cream but my mom doesn’t have an ice cream machine and then, out of all the people, my grandmother came up with a perfect idea as she asked me to make cupcakes for her. I remembered Joy’s chamomile cupcakes, found in her book, and that was it. Cupcakes it was.

And they were divine, both in appearance and in flavor. It was the first time I had ever used fresh chamomile in a dessert and even though I was scared that it was going to taste grassy or too intense, it was the complete opposite. The chamomile flavor was subtle and paired harmoniously with the floral accents of the Greek flower honey I used.

The small cakes were fluffy and soft, the glaze was silky smooth and sticky in all the right ways, and they were devoured within a few hours which is the best kind of praise a baker can get.

P.S. The use of edible flowers reminded me of this dish with dried lavender that I make all the time and that’s one of my favorite chicken dishes. I actually made it again today.

Fresh Chamomile Cupcakes with Flower Honey Glaze
Adapted from Joy the Baker Cookbook

The original recipe calls for dried chamomile which you can also use, but I find that the fresh chamomile is so much better tasting. I also omitted the baking soda as I don’t particularly enjoy the flavor it imparts to desserts.
I found that the amount of icing sugar in the glaze was a bit too much for my liking, so next time I will add a little less sugar or add less glaze on top of each cupcake.

Yield: 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

for the cupcakes
120 ml fresh whole milk
1 large egg
½ tsp vanilla bean paste (or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract)
60 g unsalted butter, softened, cut into small pieces
150 g granulated sugar
125 g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
3 Tbsp finely chopped fresh chamomile (flower heads only, not stems)

for the glaze
165 g icing sugar
1 Tbsp flower honey (must be clear and runny)
75 ml (5 Tbsp) heavy cream, full fat (35%)
Pinch of salt

Fresh chamomile flower heads, to decorate

Special ingredients: stand or hand-held mixer, a 12-cup cupcake pan, paper liners


Preparation

for the cupcakes
Line your cupcake pan with paper liners.
Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius / 325 Fahrenheit.

In a small bowl, add the milk, the egg and the vanilla and using a hand whisk, mix the ingredients together.

In the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a large bowl), add the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and chopped chamomile flowers and beat, using the paddle attachment (or with your hand-held mixer), on medium speed until you have a mixture that resembles sand. It will take 4-5 minutes.

Pour half of the milk mixture into the flour mixture and beat until just incorporated. Pour in the rest of the milk mixture and beat on medium-high speed until well blended, for about 1 minute. You will have a creamy and slightly runny batter.

Empty the batter into the lined cupcake pan, filling each cup by 3/4.

Place the cupcake pan on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake for 17-19 minutes or until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove the pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack. Once the cupcakes have slightly cooled, remove them carefully from the pan and onto the wire rack to cool. They need to be completely cool before you frost them, otherwise the glaze will melt.
Cut the pointy tops of the cupcakes off if necessary.

for the glaze
In a medium-sized bowl, add the icing sugar, honey, cream and salt and using a hand wire whisk, whisk until you have a smooth glaze.

Glaze the cupcakes and decorate with a couple of fresh chamomile flower heads.

You can keep the cupcakes for a couple of days, covered, at room temperature. If you don’t plan on eating them straight away, don’t decorate them with the fresh chamomile.

Octopus the Greek way

Many people, when they come to Greece, wonder why our food is so delicious even though it is made with simple and quite few ingredients. They are convinced that we’re hiding something, that we keep the secrets to our cooking well so they don’t leak out into the rest of the world.

That is certainly not the case. There is no secret, no tricks or obscure ingredients that we slip into the dishes behind backs or under tables. The only thing that separates Greek cuisine from any other cuisine in the world, is the land on which our food grows. That blessed land that produces such amazing ingredients that no alchemy is needed for them to give any dish their unique taste.

Olive oil, oregano, lemons, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, onions, dill. All these and more, taste so much better in Greece. It’s not chauvinism, don’t get me wrong, I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world and I do realize that, other places, especially in the Mediterranean, have similar quality in fruits and vegetables, but man, if you taste our wild thyme honey, our artichokes, even our meats, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. That is why everyone loves Greek cooking.

What I would like to see some day, is someone like Jamie Oliver who is crazy about Italy, to be crazy about Greece and convince people that they don’t need to go to Tuscany for mushroom picking but also to Grevena. That they can buy not only the Italian Bottarga but the Greek Avgotaraho (PDO) from Mesolonghi.

But let’s get to the recipe, to the octopus. This is something that we Greeks consider simple and unassuming fare. I understand that for many, octopus is a weird beast, sometimes perceived as exotic, others as frightening. This one was prepared and cooked by my grandmother. She is the master of making every single thing she touches taste absolutely divine.

Sweet, succulent octopus, with that distinctive, ever-so-slightly chewy texture and rich flavor. Prepared with just a few ingredients, the success of the recipe depends solely upon their quality and mainly that of the octopus. Fresh would be ideal but frozen can work as well. You don’t need to wait to find yourself in a Greek seaside taverna to have this meze. You can make it yourself.


See you again soon. I have so many recipes to share with you!

Htapodi Ksidato (Greek Octopus with Vinegar, Olive oil and Dried Oregano)
Recipe and execution by my grandmother

You can read a tutorial in this post on how you can clean and prepare a whole octopus.

When there is no need to keep the juices that the octopus releases while cooking, it’s best to boil it in water. This way the octopus also remains juicy.

Yield: 6 meze (appetizer) servings

Ingredients
1 large octopus (about 1½ kg), fresh or frozen
Extra-virgin olive oil
Red-wine vinegar
Dried oregano
Salt


Preparation
Clean and cut the octopus according to the instructions in this post.

Fill a large pot with water halfway and place over high heat. Once the water boils, add the octopus and simmer over medium-low heat, with the lid on, for 50-60 minutes, depending on how tough the octopus is, until tender. Check it after 30 minutes because not all octopuses are the same. Some cook quicker than others, especially frozen ones. Even though you would never want your octopus to be tough and rubbery you most certainly do not want it to be mushy. It's even worse that way.

Once ready, remove it from the pot and place it onto a dish to cool. If you wish, you can remove the skin with your hands. It will come off easily. I rarely remove it and when I do so, I remove only the skin around the top of each tentacle where it is thicker.

Cut the tentacles and sac into small, bite-sized pieces and arrange on a serving platter. Pour olive oil on top (every piece of octopus should be well coated), vinegar (not too much but much like you dress a salad, and a little more) and oregano. Give it a taste and if you think it needs salt, add some. Octopus is usually salty on its own.
Serve.

You can keep it in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, for 2-3 days. This dish is served cold or at room temperature.