Oven Roasted Anchovies with Tomato and Oregano Brown Rice / Γαύρος Πλακί και Καστανό Ρύζι με Ντομάτα και Ρίγανη

I'm gearing up for my month by the sea. It starts this Friday. Hooray!!!. I can't wait but, in the main-time. there are so many things to be taken care of. Don't you just feel that the last few days before your vacation are always the most demanding, tiring and long?

This year, Georgie, Psipsini and I will be going to the place were I spent all my childhood and early adulthood summers, Fourka Beach, a long sandy stretch of beach in the middle of the west coast of the Kassandra Peninsula of Chalkidiki. To say that I just love this beach feels like an understatement. I feel safe and at home when I'm there and I can really let go and relax, enjoy the simple pleasure of an early swim in the crystal sea, a refreshing iced tea under the umbrella, a plateful of oven roasted anchovies. 

Fresh anchovies, I think, are a bit undervalued in the "west". Maybe because they are so small many home cooks think that they are bound to be difficult to clean. Rejoice! There is really no reason to clean them as thoroughly as with big fish. Just cut open their belly and clean the cavity of the insides and that's it. Don't worry about the bones. They are so tender, once cooked, you can actually eat the fish whole. At least this is how my mother taught me to eat them...

Fresh anchovies are a staple of the Greek summer table. They are cheap and quite versatile. Roasted with tomato and onions, grilled with lemon and oregano, fried coated in flour, marinated in vinegar and garlic, there are so many ways to enjoy them. I roasted mine with onions, peppers, capers and laurel and served them alongside a brown rice, tomato and oregano risotto. Brown rice doesn't have to be a blunt, wintery food. It can be transformed by adding a little bit of oregano, fresh tomato and onion and hey presto you have a light nutritious summer meal smelling and tasting of the Mediterranean sea.

Oven Roasted Anchovies with Tomato and Oregano Brown Rice
Serves 2
Ingredients

• 500gr anchovies, fresh or frozen (you can keep the heads and eat them whole because they are so tender)
• 2 yellow onions, sliced
• 2 small laurel leaves
• 2 green peppers, sliced
• 1 tablespoon capers, washed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

For the Rice

• 1 cup brown rice
• 2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 tomato chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Wash the anchovies and spread them evenly in a heat-proof baking pan. Mix in the peppers and the onion slices, the capers, laurel and olive oil - I mixed everything together using my hands so that the fish were covered with the olive oil. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

For the Rice

1. Cook the rice in the water until it is ready - about 40 minutes. Add more boiling water if needed.
2. In a pan heat the olive oil and lightly brown the onion, about 4 - 5 minutes. Then add the tomato and oregano. Add the cooked rice to the tomato - onion mix and heat through.
3. Serve and enjoy!

Ashtray Wednesdays: Island Life

It took me two weeks to write this post. The words would simply not come. It is just an ashtray, kinda ugly too, but it blocked me up like nothing else before. I bought it last summer from Syros, a rocky peak of an island, surrounded by the deep blue waters of the Aegean.

I really don't remember buying it, but Georgie reassures me that we did buy it together. It was a trip  I would like actually to forget. Nothing serious happened, but serious is such an objective word.

I didn't want to go originally but when I called my mother to tell her that we would like to spend our summer vacation in Fourka Beach she was not very happy with the idea (off course she wasn't she was still undergoing radiation treatment - I found out a year later). I confess I was a bit angry at her but I forgot about it quickly when I remembered that Georgie's parents own a nice, big house at Kini on the island of Syros. So there and then I decided we were going to spend half of August 2011 in Syros.

When we first arrived, I was mesmerised by the abundance of life on this small rocky peak in the middle of the sea. Everything looked bigger, brighter, full of colour, overflowing with the juices of life. I remember sitting out on the porch of our house and writing in my journal that this would be the best place in the world to live for the rest of my life...

But island life is not for everyone. The idea of being confined on a floating piece of land, depended on the whims of the wind and sea gods fills me with unbearable anxiety. Last summer, amid the beautiful island scenery anxiety spiralled out of control, triggered by the the slightest change in brain chemistry and the strong August wind.

The ashtray itself, is nothing special in terms of aesthetic and artistic achievement. Plain clay and colour pigments. The memories and feelings it brought with it were strong and somewhat overwhelming. The mind is a powerful weapon. It can build the strongest of defences to protect, but it can also destroy, faster and more efficient than anyone or anything. It does not take much. A random event, a smell, an image, the slightest change of our fragile mental equilibrium and some people find themselves pulled down a bottomless, swirling abyss. Panic and depression are your only loyal friends when you enter and are never inclined to leave you find the exit on your own. I sought help and got it and after a little while I was able to distance myself from the devastating feelings that blocked my mind and impaired my rationality. Because that's what it is all about feelings and our ability and willingness to process and experience them.

This post might not make sense to a lot of people. No, strike that...this post will not make sense to anyone other than me. I apologise for the time you wasted reading it. I am sorry I cannot reimburse you for that. It was something that had to be written and published, so that it became permanent and alive, a testament to the destructiveness we all hide inside us and the power we have to turn it into a force of life and creation.  

Chocolate Berry Pudding - Σοκολατένια Πουτίγκα με Φρούτα του Δάσους Χωρίς Ζάχαρη

(Συνταγή στα Ελληνικά στο τέλος της σελίδας)

A few days ago, I discovered a blog named Chocolate Log Blog, a quite appropriate name, I think, since it is all about chocolate. Hundreds of cakes, biscuits, tarts, puddings all containing some form of chocolate. Choclette together with Chele from Chocolate Teapot run a very interesting monthly cooking event called We Should Cocoa.  I was intrigued by the idea of making a chocolate dessert every month, without any restrictions, save one, the use of a special ingredient picked by Choclette every month and so I decided to give it a try...

I recently bought Sarah Wilson's "I Quit Sugar Cookbook" and I have already made a few really nice fructose free recipes, so I scanned through it and came up with some very interesting cocoa recipes. I chose to make the Choc Berry Mud because my freezer is full of frozen strawberries, blueberries and blackcurrants, a perfect fit for the We Should Cocoa challenge since this month's special ingredient is blackcurrants. The "mud" (as Sarah calls it) came together instantly by blending all the ingredients. It is an easy, fuss free and refreshing dessert for every season.

Chocolate Berry Pudding

Adapted from "I Quit Sugar Cookbook" by Sarah Wilson

Serves 2 - 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup frozen berries (raspberries, blueberries, blackcurrants)
• 1 large soft avocado, cleaned, peeled and de-seeded
• 1/4 cup raw cacao powder
• 1 cup almond milk (or less if you want the consistency to be thicker)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder
• 1 teaspoon stevia

Instructions

1. Blend all the ingredients in a blender. Pour into bawls and serve immediately.

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Σοκολατένια Πουτίγκα με Μούρα Χωρίς Ζάχαρη

Από το βιβλίο "I Quit Sugar Cookbook" της Sarah Wilson

Για 2 - 4 άτομα

Υλικά

• 1 φλιτζάνι κατεψυγμένα φρούτα του δάσους
• 1 μεγάλο ώριμο αβοκάντο, καθαρισμένο χωρίς το κουκούτσι
• 1/4 φλιτζανιού κακάο
• 1 φλιτζάνι γάλα αμυγδάλου (ή λιγότερο αν το θέλετε πιο πικτό)
• 1 κουταλάκι του γλυκού σκόνη βανίλια
• 1 κουταλάκι του γλυκού στέβια

Εκτέλεση

1. Βάζουμε όλα τα υλικά σε ένα μπλέντερ και αναμειγνύουμε. 
2. Σερβίρουμε αμέσως. 

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Crepes with Marinated Beef and Olive and Basil Tapenade / Κρέπες με Μυρωδικά και Μαριναρισμένο Μοσχάρι και Πάστα Ελιάς με Βασιλικό

Yesterday was not a good day for my cooking. It was a great day for my kitchen floor though! It got a pretty good taste of the Olive and Basil tapenade I was preparing for my French Fridays with Dorie entry and claimed the life of one of my favourite Delimano frying pans. They sure are earth and health friendly but they are not at all floor friendly.

Today, I woke up determined to change my bad karma in the kitchen. I burned some incense, planted a new basil plant next to the one I trimmed yesterday, and went ahead to sacrifice some grass fed beef to appease the angry carnivorous spirits that inhabit my tiny kitchen. 

French Fridays with Dorie - Salmon with Basil Tapenade

This has not been my week. Clearly. I can see it, you can see it, even my cat can see it - by the way it has not been her week either, after a visit to the vet, two shots in the backside, complete four paw pedicure and a bath, I am pretty sure she is devising a plan to chock me in my sleep !!

"Sea of Poppies"

I don't know if it happens to you, but sometimes I buy a book and let it rest on my bookshelf for years. I look at it but don't dare read it, as if I knew that when I start there will be no going back. I would be swept away by the narrative and the characters to an alternate reality, a universe where I'd be controlled by them.

This is exactly what happened with the "Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh. For days now I've been moving back and forth between the mundane present and enchanting world created by Ghosh's ability to create fascinating art with words.

French Fridays with Dorie - Blueberry Marscapone Roulade

From the 10 basic ingredients required for today's recipe I could use "guilt free" {see millions of food intolerances in previous post}only...one. The blueberries! So I kept the blueberries, but made two versions of the rest.

Let me explain...{make a cup of tea and eat a slice of your roulade, it's going to take some time}

Dubrovnik in July...

Churches, Tiles and Boats

...is breathtakingly beautiful, suffocatingly crowded and truly one of a kind. Shiny stones and yellowish - orange roof tiles; steep, high, impregnable walls; frightful looking rocks frothing from the never ending mania of the sea; and blue, all shades of blue and green, everywhere...

Ashtray Wednesdays: A Stone Fort by the Sea

Given the mind-bruising, word-baffling recent events, I am not really in a wordy mood today. Still, there is a handmade, super sweet and cute ashtray from Dubrovnik waiting to be show-cased on Ashtray Wednesdays. And its been waiting for two weeks now.

This one was given to me by Georgie. He bought it for me in July '09. It is the second he brought back from Dubrovnik. The first broke while he was travelling. So in July '09, and while I was recovering from my first discus hernia operation in Zagreb he went for a business trip to Dubrovnik and was on a mission to find the exact same ashtray that broke. He even claims that he almost missed his plane home and I believe him. Because this my Georgie, sweet and considerate but really, really stubborn.

A Secret, a Castle and Three Songs

"I don't know" This has been my answer to all questions for the better part of the past week. 

My mother came to visit. I saw her for the first time in two years. At the airport she seemed the same as I remembered. At home she acted the same way I remembered. We talked about this and that and she mentioned that she belongs to a new club...the Recovering Breast Cancer Patients Club!

Two years, not a word. Two sessions of chemotherapy, not a word. Two sessions of radiation, not a word. One breast missing, not a word. 

How do I feel? I don't know. I have no words.

She assures me everything now is gone, eliminated, defeated! I don't know...

She said nobody knew, it was best that way for her. I don't know...

She asks me not to be angry, emotional, scared. I don't know...

How do I feel? I don't know...

What do I feel? I don't know...

She wants to forget everything and continue from where she left off,  two years ago. That I know..

So from now on only new experiences. 

Like going to a three-day rock music festival with lots of mosquitoes, music, beer and walking for miles and miles because we lost our way and then lying on the grass and getting covered with ants but loving every minute of it, even the hideously green fluorescent wristband.

Like visiting a castle and climbing the wooden stairs to experience the magnificence of nature and the glory of man.

Like going to Dubrovnik next Thursday...

As for the songs...

They are for me...

Because if there is one thing I know is that I love music...

Just as I love my mum.