Tsoureki french toast x 2

Hello everyone and Christos Anesti to my fellow Greeks!
I hope you all had a good Easter with lots of good food and company.

My Easter was filled with lamb, roast potatoes, eggs and salads of all kinds, with wine and tsoureki and koulourakia and the expected food coma that comes afterwards, when all you can do is lie on the couch, motionless.

The next day though, hunger strikes again, as it always does, and the leftover tsoureki (Greek Easter sweet bread) gets a second life. The act of making French toast ensues and that’s exactly what happened on Easter Monday.

My tsoureki was not that sweet, I added less sugar this year, so the addition of ripe bananas and nutella was the perfect thing to do. Besides, who can possibly resist the image of Nutella oozing out of two pieces of fried bread?

Needless to say, the combination of hazelnut, chocolate and banana is out of this world, but the mahlepi and mastiha in the tsoureki elevated this filled French toast to a whole new level of deliciousness. To make things even better (or worse, depending on who you’re talking to), I also added some Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur, in the eggs and milk mixture and it really brought out the nuttiness in the nutella, giving the French toast a lovely flavor.

Nevertheless, my all-time favorite way to eat French toast, or avgofetes (αβγοφέτες) as we call them in Greece, is simply by drizzling them with Greek honey, preferably thyme honey and dusting them generously with ground cinnamon. That, to me, is the quintessence of simplicity.
So take your pick and enjoy your left-over tsoureki bread or any other type of bread you have around the house.

Avgofetes Tsourekiou me Meli kai Kanela (Tsoureki French Toast with Greek Thyme Honey and Cinnamon)

My Politiko tsoureki is ideal for French toast because it retains its structure when it gets stale and has a well-browned crust and robust crumb.
You can substitute of course with other types of sweet bread like brioche or challah, or any other type of non-sweet bread. The staler the bread, the better it is as it will soak up more of the egg-milk mixture.

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients
2 large eggs
50 ml fresh milk, full-fat
8 thick tsoureki bread slices (or any other bread you have on hand, sweet or not)
Sunflower oil, for frying
Greek thyme honey or other runny honey of your choice, for drizzling
Ground cinnamon, for sprinkling


Preparation
In a deep and wide plate, add the eggs and milk and beat with a fork.

In a large frying pan, add enough sunflower oil to cover the base by about 1 cm and heat over medium heat.

Dip the bread slices in the egg-milk mixture, soaking them well on both sides and then add them one by one to the hot oil. Add as many slices as the pan fits. Fry them 2-3 minutes on each side or until cooked through and browned, and transfer them to a plate covered with paper towels to absorb the extra oil. Continue frying the rest.

Place the bread slices on a plate, drizzle with as much honey as you want and dust with cinnamon.
Enjoy while still hot.

Tsoureki French Toast Filled with Nutella and Banana

If you use tsoureki or any other sweet bread for this, choose a banana that is not too ripe, whereas if you use regular bread, choose a very ripe banana for extra sweetness.

Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients
4 thick tsoureki bread slices (or any other bread you have on hand, sweet or not)
2 large eggs
50 ml fresh milk, full-fat
1 Tbsp Frangelico or other hazelnut liqueur (optional)
Sunflower oil, for frying
Nutella or other hazelnut-chocolate spread
1 large ripe banana, sliced on the diagonal


Preparation
In a deep and wide plate, add the eggs and milk and beat with a fork. Add the Frangelico (if using) and whisk to incorporate.

In a large frying pan, add enough sunflower oil to cover the base by about 1 cm and heat over medium heat.

Using the 4 slices of bread, make two sandwiches by spreading as much or as little Nutella as you want on one slice of bread, top with banana slices in one layer and then top with the second slice of bread.

Dip the sandwiches in the egg-milk mixture, soaking the bread slices well and then add them one by one to the hot oil. Fry for 2-3 minutes on each side or until cooked through and browned, and transfer them to a plate covered with paper towels to absorb the extra oil.

Serve immediately while the nutella oozes out of the sandwich.

See also this Tsoureki bread and butter pudding with strawberries, vanilla and currants.

A favorite meal

The other day, I was craving fried potatoes with crumbled feta and dried oregano. So I made just that.

I peeled a couple of large potatoes I found hiding in my vegetable basket among some onions and garlic heads, I cut them into long strips and fried them in olive oil.

I dropped them in a large bowl, added some good sea salt and a couple pinches of dried oregano that I had brought back with me from Euvoia last October, and tossed them.

I divided them between two plates, I took a piece of feta from the fridge and crumbled it on top, adding another pinch of oregano.

On the side, a bowlful of boiled kale left-over from the day before, dressed with olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

We ate our meal as the warm rays of the sun were coming through the window.

Greek Fried Potatoes with Crumbled Feta and Dried Oregano

This has been one of my favorite meals ever since I can remember myself. The side of boiled greens (kale, Greek wild greens like zohous or vlita , spinach, chard) is essential.

Ingredients
Floury potatoes
Olive oil (or sunflower oil), for frying
Feta
Greek dried oregano

Boiled greens with olive oil and lemon juice, to accompany the potatoes

Preparation
Peel the potatoes and cut them into strips.
Add oil in a large, deep pan (fill it halfway up) or in a deep fat fryer, heat it to 175°C and add the potatoes. Fry until crisp and lightly browned. It takes about 12 minutes in the deep fat fryer and a little longer in a pan.

Empty the potatoes in a bowl and sprinkle with sea salt and a couple pinches of dried oregano. Toss and serve into plates. Crumble as much feta as you like on top and add another pinch of dried oregano. Serve with the side of boiled greens.

Spring cooking

I love the fact that it is still light out at 19:30. The days are getting so much longer here and natural light is back for good. This means that I can shoot just before we eat our dinner which gives me more options to share with you all.

Like this pasta dish. This happened the other day when I came home with a bagful of vegetables, a fresh head of romanesco among them, and a large loaf of sourdough bread.

Romanesco is the kind of vegetable that makes me want to just sit and stare at it rather than cook it. It’s so cute and weird with its intensely green color and its little spiky florets; it’s like the prettier, more exciting sibling of the common broccoli and cauliflower.

So after I photographed the hell out of it, I decided to roast it with garlic and serve it in a pasta dish together with homemade sourdough croutons, black Kalamata olives and sun-dried tomatoes, topped with some freshly grated parmesan.

It made a delicious and fulfilling dinner for S and me, with the garlicky, nutty flavor of the romanesco, the briny olives, the crunchy croutons and sweet sun-dried tomatoes, with a nice variety of textures and clear, distinct flavors that paired together in a harmonious way.
Everyday cooking gets much better in spring doesn’t it?

Pasta with Roasted Romanesco, Sourdough Croutons, Kalamata Olives and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Romanesco has a slightly bitter and earthy flavor that is a little milder than broccoli and nuttier than cauliflower. You can treat it just like you would broccoli and cauliflower.

I used a type of pasta called boccole (not a very widely known type of pasta) which looks like shorter rigatoni but you can use any other smallish-shaped pasta you have on hand like farfalle, penne or fusilli.

By omitting the parmesan you have a perfect Lenten dish.

Yield: enough for 2 very hungry people or 4 small portions

Ingredients
2 thick, dark sourdough bread slices (about 100g), cut into cubes
1 head romanesco, broken into florets
4 garlic cloves with skins, smashed once with the blade of a knife
5 Tbsp olive oil plus extra for drizzling over the top
12 black Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped in half
6 sun-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
250 g dried boccole rigate pasta
Parmesan, freshly grated, to your liking

Special equipment: large baking sheet, baking paper, large wide skillet or shallow wide pan


Preparation
Preheat your oven to 200°C.
Line a large baking sheet with baking paper and scatter the cubed bread in one layer. Place on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes or until the bread is crispy and browned. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and transfer croutons to a plate.

Turn the oven down to 190°C.
In a large bowl, toss romanesco florets and garlic with 2 Tbsp of the olive oil, a little salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Line the same baking sheet with a different piece of baking paper and add the romanesco florets and garlic. Roast for about 16 minutes, until the romanesco has slightly softened and lightly caramelized. Remove from the oven and let romanesco sit in the baking sheet.

In the meantime, boil the pasta in salted boiling water until cooked al dente (to the tooth) or to your liking, stirring often so they don’t stick to one another.

In a large skillet or wide pan, add the remaining 3 Tbsp of olive oil and heat over medium heat. Take the garlic cloves from the baking sheet and squeeze the flesh out of their skins and into the skillet along with the croutons. Sauté for a couple of minutes until golden, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon and being careful not to burn the garlic.
Add the olives, sun-dried tomatoes, the balsamic vinegar and a little pepper, and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the roasted romanesco and the drained pasta to the skillet and toss well to mix.
Drizzle with a little extra olive oil and serve immediately in individual plates.
Top with freshly grated parmesan and enjoy!