Category Archives: snacks

Porkchops and Applesauce…okay just applesauce

February 11, 2018

Did you guys ever watch the Brady Bunch as a kid?  Do you remember the episode where Peter starts imitating Humphrey Bogart and telling everyone they were having ‘Porkchops and applesauce” for dinner?  Click here to see what I am talking about.  LOL.

Have your ever had pork chops and applesauce?  I never have.  Is it a good pairing?  My mom just slow braised pork chops in lemon juice and white wine and oregano until fall apart tender.  But that’s not what this blog post is about!  I can fill 100 blog posts about all the things my Greek-American girlfriends and I never tried as children that all of our regular American friends indulged in.  You have never heard so many sad tales of “I never got to order off the kids menu as a child, I had to have a t-bone steak!”  Can you imagine?  A 5 year old with a t-bone steak in front of her?  Yeah, that was me.  FWP (first world problems).  LOL.

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program…you guys, how did I not know that applesauce is so good?  How have I been living unaware of this fact for so long?  Okay, truth be told I wanted to make some applesauce for Miss Magdalena since she is starting solid foods now.  But I tasted some and was like “whoa!”  I found out it was so super good and I had to share this simple little sweet treat.

What else can you do with applesauce?

  • a side to pork chops
  • latkes and applesauce
  • use applesauce in your baked goods like muffins and cakes
  • topping for your oatmeal

Now I am all, “I can’t wait for fall to go apple picking!”  Get ready Michigan road trip!  Apple picking and apple cider doughnuts.  Alas, it’s only February!!!  It’s snowing like crazy in Chicago.  We probably got 8 inches on Friday and another 5 inches Saturday night into Sunday morning.  It’s a slow motion snowpocalypse…never ending snow. Heavy, wet, slushy snow.  Actually the slush reminds me of applesauce, but golden and cinnammon-like…ok, never mind.

Applesauce…try it.

I like to top vanilla ice cream with a  few spoonfuls of warmed applesauce and a little caramel sauce and it’s heaven!  So here is my husband and baby approved applesauce.

Cinnamon Applesauce – makes 4 x 8oz jars

Ingredients:

4 lbs of apples (I like gala or braeburn)

1.5 cups of water

2 sticks of cinnamon

Directions:

Peel, core and slice your apples

Place in a big pot and add water and cinnamon sticks.

Bring to boil, then turn down and simmer for 25 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Mash or puree or waz it up with a fancy immersion blender,

Eat with a touch of cinnamon or nutmeg or use in your favorite recipe for baking or top your vanilla ice cream, or top your oatmeal, or just enjoy plain.

Enjoy!

-Kallie

It’s a Tomato Extravaganza!!!

August 19, 2017

Hi everyone, it’s summertime, so I am going to talk about summertime things.  Ready?  Summer always reminds me of the beach.  And the beach always reminds me of my favorite place to vacation, Greece.  And Greece always reminds me of my favorite Greek island, Santorini.  And Santorini always reminds me of tomatoes.  Wait.  What?  Yep, I said tomatoes.

This magical island with an honest to goodness active volcano is known for its little tiny tomatoes or domatakia.  Apparently the volcanic soil on this island is the perfect place to grow sweet little tomatoes, dry them in the hot sun and store them in olive oil.  Forget the sun dried tomatoes you used to know.  A jar of Santorini tomatoes is like eating a mouthful of candied sunshine.  Yes, I did just say that.  I know in my heart that if you could taste the sun it would tastes like a sweet, little tomato.

I have been to Santorini many, many times and I will probably go again and again and never tire of it.  The island has to be the most architecturally beautiful and geologically unique place I have ever visited.  Red beaches, black beaches, and white beaches.  

(By the way, if you ever go to Santorini, go to red beach.  And if a little old man pulls up to the shore in an old wooden boat yelling, “White beach, white beach!” Do yourself a favor and get on his boat, survivor style, backpack over your head wading through the water and let him take you to white beach…you won’t regret the adventure.)

Back to our regularly scheduled program…

Every town on Santorini has those traditional white-washed cave homes, perched precariously on the lip of the volcano’s caldera looking like hundreds of little sugar cubes just waiting to slide down into a coffee cup of blue Mediterranean water.  Too much?  I don’t care!  It’s a remarkable place.  I can’t possibly do it justice with words. I want heaven to look like this island.  Pictures don’t capture the scale of its beauty.  You just have to go and see for yourself.
So tell me, what kind of person are you?  Do you like to vacation to a different place every time you travel?  Or do you love going to the same place over an over again?  Me?  Sure, I like different places, but I am notoriously loyal and known for going to the same place over and over again and exploring more and more of it.  I just want to absorb a place I love.  Know it like the back of my hand.  Be a regular at the local taverna.  I want to go where everyone knows your name.  What?  Wait, never mind.   Anyway, I am like that with Santorini.

Many years ago, when I was still single, I went to Santorini with my then friend and now koubara, Despina. We stayed in Fira town, the capital and did all the crazy things you are supposed to do on this island. We walked up and down hundreds of steps to get to the old port. We took a schooner around the island which stopped at the volcano, which we then walked on. We saw air vents that let out hot steam. We worried about said volcano blowing.  We had lunch at Thirasia eating donatokeftedes, tomato fritters.  We climbed up more stairs in Oia while avoiding a pack of donkeys who were also climbing the same stairs. We went for a wine tasting and drank ALL the wine.  We watched the sunset with a thousand of our closest friends. True story. And then we shopped for what they are known for, vinsanto and capers and domatakia. Oh and really expensive jewelry.  By accident.  But that’s a story for another time.  Eeek!  Back to the tomatoes. I couldn’t get enough of those domatakia.

So here is how you can make some of your own and get a little bit of “island candy” for the summer:


Domatakia – Oven Dried Cherry Tomatoes

A pint of cherry tomatoes

Olive oil

Salt

Slice washed cherry tomatoes in half.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle with salt.

Bake at 250 degrees F for 2-4 hours (depends on size of your cherry tomato)

Pop them in your mouth like candy.  Or put them in your salads or pasta.  Or put on top of your avocado toast, if you’re in to that sort of thing.  (There is an avocado shortage by the way…something about too many hipsters photographing avocado toasts on Instagram!!!  LOL)

Enjoy.

-Kallie

 

 

 

 

 

Soda Water – A Magical Baking Secret, oh and How to Make a Lazy Girl’s Tiropita.

January 17, 2017

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about my summers in Greece. I would venture to guess it’s the experience of any person with Greek roots. You just got shipped off to grandma and grandpa for the summer and marinated like an olive on a salty Mediterranean beach. I know, terrible right? Total FWP (first world problem). It couldn’t be helped. This was our lot in life, but these times were probably the funniest, most ridiculous and most memorable times of our lives. And many of those memories are punctuated with amazing food.  

So if you are not Greek, I am almost 100% sure you probably had similar experiences as a kid, be that if you spent your summers in Michigan, catching smelts or in Romania on the Black Sea. I want to you to tell me about them in the comments below. I like to find out about my readers.

So back to summers in Greece…as a child, my uncle, who was a farmer by trade, was always up at the butt crack of dawn. As such, it was my good fortune that he was able to make it to the local bakery first thing to get me a tiropita, a cheesy, buttery, flakey little package of yum. I would wake up and find a tiropita on the kitchen table waiting for me. Man was I spoiled.

This memory has stuck with me, as my love of tiropita. But making tiropita can be such an ordeal. And there is so many different ways to make them. Some people make little triangles, which takes forever to make. You can easily spend your life making an endless army of over 100 little cheese filled phyllo triangles. And if you choose to make whole big pie, you can be sitting there stressing over the right ratio of flour, milk, butter and eggs to make a béchamel sauce. Bechamel! Come on! I don’t have time for that.

What’s a modern girl, with traditional food tastes to do?

Well stress no more folks. I have a secret. Soda water. No not to drink, although you may want to mix it with some vodka and ice to celebrate how easy this recipe is afterwards…soda water is the secret ingredient to this lazy person’s tiropita. Your friends and family will think you slaved over this dish. Made your kitchen sink a disaster of measuring cups and dirty pots. Covered your floors with flour. But no. We will not tell them that you made a “no-measure needed” recipe. We will let them believe you are a hardcore, cooking traditionalist. Ha!

So how do we make this? Here we go:
Tiropita with Soda Water

Ingredients

1 lb package of phyllo dough

1 stick of butter melted

8 oz feta cheese, crumbled

8 oz kefalotiri, grated

6 oz gruyere cheese, grated

6 oz emmanthaler, grated

6 eggs

1 can of soda water, 12oz.

Salt/pepper

Directions:

Start with prepping your cheeses, crumbled your block of feta, grate the other cheeses. Too much work you say? Get your kids to do it. Enlist a friend to help you grate. This will be done in less than 10 minutes together.

Now, if you can’t find kefalotiri, add more gruyere or emmathanler. Just don’t stress, any combination and ratio of cheese will work. I like a mix because they do different things, feta is tangy, kefalotiri is salty, gruyere is creamy, and emmathanler which is basically Swiss cheese, is mild but savory. But doesn’t it sound fancier as Emmanthaler, so say that instead! So gourmet! When your cheeses are ready, melt your butter and set aside.  

Next, unpackage your phyllo dough carefully and place a wet paper towel over it to keep moist and prevent it from drying out as you work. I use a 12 inch round aluminum pan, but you can use a 9×13 inch rectangle also…whatever works kids, this is easy, no stress tiropita.

Begin by brushing melted butter all over your pan and lay down your first piece of phyllo dough. Brush butter on that layer and add the next. Keep doing this, butter, phyllo, butter, phyllo, until you have 6 layers. Then scatter half the grated and crumbled cheeses your prepared earlier over the phyllo dough. Salt and pepper lightly. Repeat the butter, phyllo layers 6 more times. Add the last half of your cheese combination, salt and pepper again and top with the final 6 layers of phyllo dough and buttered layers. It’s important to butter each sheet of phyllo dough. This will ensure a nice flakey crust. Don’t cry to me about butter. Life is too short. It’s good for you. Julia Child once said, “With enough butter, anything is good.”

Next, trim the excess pieces of phyllo dough that are hanging over your pan. You can also choose to fold them under the pie, but why? LOL. In the end you are trying to minimize the excess dough. Then score your cheese pie with a knife into even serving sized pieces.

Finally, I reveal the secret. Beat 6 eggs and add a can of soda water to them. Pour this concoction over your tiropita. Yes! Just do it. Let it soak in, in between the layers everywhere and then bake at 375 for about 50-55 minutes.

Your pie will puff up, brown nicely and amaze you. Trust me, this is the easiest cheese pie you ever made. I am not sure how this magic works, but somehow the soda water and eggs transforms the phyllo dough and the cheesy layers into something amazing that reminds me of those mornings in Greece when I had a bakery tiropita from the village.  

Enjoy.

-Kallie

 

The Cubs, Magical Popcorn and the Great Pumpkin too!

October 29, 2016

It’s almost Halloween you guys and as a tradition, I watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” every year.

I love how Linus and Charlie Brown argue about if the Great Pumpkin or if Santa Claus are real.  Very astutely Linus states, “If it’s one thing I have learned never to discuss: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.”

I adore Linus, not just because of his clever one liners, but because he represents innocence and unwavering hope, no matter what.  Don’t we all need that sometimes?  A little hope and belief in our dreams?

Like the hope that the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series.  If you’re in Chicago tonight or Belize…yes, I said Belize you are watching Game 4 of the World Series tonight.  Hoping and believing, like Linus.

So the Belize thing…apparently in the 1980s, Belize managed to pirate the signal from the Chicago television station, WGN.  A whole generation has grown up in Belize with an almost spiritual reverence for the Cubs and they are going nuts now!  Did you know that?

Come on Cubs!  The people of Chicago and Belize are depending on you!

Finally, I have this unwavering hope and belief that you are going to love this recipe I have for popcorn today.  I too promise you a real spiritual experience.  It’s buttery, nutty, sweetened with honey and just enough salt to make it all come together like magic in your mouth.

It’s the brown butter that’s the sexy little secret making this popcorn so special.

Oh, and why say “brown butter” when you can say “le beurre noisette”?  Doesn’t it sound better in French?  You have heard me say things like this before, here and here.  (Foreign languages are fun.)

Anyway, call this popcorn what you wish.  I call it “le popcorn avec le beurre noisette et le miel” but you can say “brown butter with honey” and it won’t matter.  It will be amazing.  It will be what you turn to, to sweeten up movie night or watching the Cubs, LOL.

So how do we make this religious batch of popcorn?


Brown Butter, Honey and Salt Popcorn

Serves 2 (or one person having a spiritual experience)

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons popcorn kernels

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup honey

2 teaspoons sea salt flakes

Directions:

First pop your popcorn in an air popper.  This will take less than 5 minutes.  Set the fluffy white popcorn aside.

Next, carefully begin melting your butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Watch it carefully as it melts…slowly it will begin to bubble and you will see the milk solids separate.  It’s these milk solids that will start to brown.  You want to swirl your pan slowly as this happens until the milk solids have turned into a nice nutty color.

Once the butter browns, turn off the heat and add your honey to the butter and stir.  You should now have a light brown liquid.  Pour it carefully over your popcorn, add a teaspoon of salt and stir to coat.  Finish by topping it off with the final teaspoon of sea salt flakes.

Turn on the Cubs game or “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”.  Eat, pray and watch.

Enjoy!

-Kallie

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