Sweet Influence

Happy Easter to all our Greek friends, today is their Easter Celebration.  Everyone with the family gets together for the occasion.  I could see the beautiful, vibrant and plentiful spread of their feast from my home.

The lamb on the spit is going and attended by the gentleman in the family while all ladies are preparing festive food, from savouries to sweets.  Most food preparations are done a few days before as they like to serve their speciality meticulously and beautifully.

Delicious appetisers are served: Dolmathes, Tiropitakia (small cheese pies), Keftethes (meatballs) Tzatziki (cucumber dip), Fish Rou Dip (Taramosalata), just to name a few.

I could imagine, the slow roasted lamb on the spit is served with a variety of salads; Salata-Greek salad: mixed fresh vegetables with Greek Feta cheese, black olives, anchovies fillets dressed in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and fresh herbs.  Also tomato salad, rice salad and many more.

I love their cakes, biscuits and sweets. The cakes and desserts are decadently rich, but you can enjoy them with confidence as they are made out of all fine ingredients.  The coconut cake (Keik Me Karitha) is so light and luscious because of the syrup.  Other sweets are custard slice (Galaktoboureko), Baklava (sweet nuts pie in delicate pastry soaked in syrup), and of course the honey puffs (Loukoumathes).  Biscuits are so beautiful too, the almond shortbread ( Kourmbiethes) is my favourite. Last but not least is the Easter bread (Tsoureki), it is a rich sweet bread which is inserted with coloured boiled eggs, then baked until golden.

Of course, they would have a lot more dishes, they are very generous people who know how to party and feast.

Cheese Pies are very often baked in my kitchen, this is one of them
Cheese and Spinach Pie in Susy water pastry

Our Easter Eggs are influenced by
the Greek cooking, only I love
using herbs for the colour

My cooking is influenced a lot by the Greek cuisine, I love the flavours, the way they cook them and more so my family enjoy the dishes.  The pies are the winner: spanakopita (spinach pie), tiropita (cheese pie) and prasopita (leeks pie).  The pies have crisp and light pastry (Philo).  I fell in love with the dish straight away, and I was lucky enough to learn how to make homemade pastry from Sophia.  She was so generous sharing the family's recipes with me.  Now I make my composition of the pastry as Susy water pastry. I bake the Greek pies very often, they are excellent for lunches and even dinners.

My Cooking Based on The Greek Dishes

Honey Puff ((Loukoumathes).  Delicious to be served hot or
room temperature.

A sliced of Leek and Feta Pie ( prasopita ), one of my savouries
of the Greek cooking

Freshly baked baklava rolls with almond cake in the centre are ready to
add syrup.

The baklava rolls are soaked in the syrup.
It is my way to have baklava; however, I have seen a similar cake somewhere
only. I don't know how to do it properly.  It is my interpretation, but it works

Mini coconut cake in syrup.  The cake is based on the (Keik Me Karitha)

 Serving The Sweets

I wish I could show the photo of my slow roasted leg of lamb, that took me more than four hours to cook.  It was so tender and succulent with special mixed herbs flavour.  I forgot to take a photo. Next time I will share the recipe and show you step by step how to prepare it.

I am sure today is a great day for the Greek community in Australia.  Here today is a perfect day to do outdoor cooking, on that note I believe that everyone had a fantastic celebration of Easter.
Happy Easter To You All.

The sweet influence of Greek cooking will be with my family always.  Thanks to Sophia and her family.


Until Next Post
Susy