The Greek Food

Category: Chicken

  • Chicken wrapped with aubergines

    Chicken wrapped with aubergines

    Sometimes I come to think about how all the foods have similarities and are kind of the same. You don’t need to have any special knowledge rather than huge imagination to change the ingredients and from one dish to create a whole new one.

    For example I remember when I did that recipe with the towers of aubergines and I realise how similar to the following it is.  You add one ingredient and maybe…re-arrange the others and you have a completely new dish.

    Aubergines are always popular to Middle East and so in the following recipe play an important role even if the chicken helps also a little bit…

    So the basic idea is to create some small wraps with aubergines that we can add inside the chicken or whatever we can…

     

    Sizzle the pieces of chicken in a pan and add Salt and Pepper. In the same time slice the aubergines as thin as you can and add them in a pan on the oven while you have sizzled them with olive oil. Leave them in the oven for a bit to become softer.

    As the chicken is cooked then remove the aubergines from the oven and try to make the small wraps, using a toothpick. Pour the tomato juice on top and add any seasoning  you would like and place them back to the oven. Ready!

    *On some of them when I was preparing them I added pieces of feta cheese which made it even better.  Be creative and try more!

     

     

  • Okra with chicken

    Okra with chicken

    Cooking Okra was a no-no to our house in London for a couple of years as my brother was never really fond of them. Cant understand the reason to be honest but on the other hand when i was younger the only thing i could eat was stakes or souvlakia.

    Okra, when you cook them fresh they usually remove a slimy liquid which was exactly what my brother didn’t like. Other rumours say that he was just bored of them as my mother was cooking them all the time during summer months. My father on the other hand really loved them as they had exactly what he liked.

    A good combination of vegetables and meat with a lot of sauce so he could use his bread and mix it with the sauce.

    Continuing with our recipe, at one point I managed to cook that dish as I missed it –as many other greek traditional dishes that my mother used to cook. So, even if I didn’t managed to find fresh okra around here and I got frozen ones, I think it they were really tasty.  Basically, i think it was the reason why my brother loved them again as they were not releasing the same kind of slime, as the fresh ones.

    Obviously, for me, okra as with any vegetable its better to have them fresh.  Nevertheless, if you don’t then you go with the next best option.

    Okra with chicken casserole Recipe

    Our chicken casserole with okra in red sauce
    Our chicken casserole with okra in red sauce


    INGREDIENTS

    • 300-400gr of Chicken breast cut in cubical parts. (or whole chicken if you want..)
    • ½ kilo of okra
    • 1 onion finely chopped
    • 2 cloves of garlic
    • 1 tomatoe juice can
    • Salt/pepper
    • Olive oil
    • 1 vegetable stock cube

    METHOD

    Ideally if the okra’s are fresh, you need to cut the top hard part from the okra, but..as we said allready… we are lazy and we have bought frozen okra’s so we skipped that part. In a big bowling pot we put a bit of oil and we add the onions and garlic until they get a bit brownish.

    Add the chicken breasts and stir continuously. Add the tomatoe juice Continue stirring Add salt and pepper

    Add the okra and fill it with water until it covers all the ingredients. Add the vegetable stock cube

    Let them boil for 35-40 minutes. Always be careful that the water isn’t vaporized completely. When the okra’s are soft then remove them from the heat.

    You can serve them with a bit of parsley if you want. The same dish can be done without the chicken and it can be a really tasty vegetarian food.

  • Antonis Turkey Breast with Rice and mushrooms

    Antonis Turkey Breast with Rice and mushrooms

    This is one of those recipes that are created in an instant…and for some reason they have great success. A really good way to cook Turkey but also chicken I am guessing. (By the way I didn’t knew how to name it  so i took the chance to claim the recipe name…)

    Well, it all started when my brother came and told me that he needed to change his diet in order to manage and get his blue belt in Kick Boxing as he had to go through a 3 hour grading. After giving me a 10 min lecture about the types of food that we should eat … he added turkey to the foods we should eat as its much healthy.

    No problem then…we will cook something with turkey inside. Nope…we won’t do a Christmas turkey…but something different.

    As always after that …family talk…   went to Sainsbury’s in London and bought 700 grams of Turkey breast for the oven I did the most sensible thing that a Greek 30 year old would do before he started cooking… I called my mom…

    So ok…I wanted to try to cook turkey but nothing came to my mind…Luckily my mom never gets out of ideas. After 10 mins of extensive questioning on the phone (which means an increased mobile bill for me..:(.. ) this is what happened:

    INGREDIENTS

    • 500-700 grams of turkey breast. (alternatively im guessing you can use chicken)
    • A small teaspoon of Paprika
    • 1-2 lemons
    • Mustard (English?)
    • One Cup of rice
    • One red onion
    • Salt and Pepper
    • Mushrooms cut
    • A small bunch of parsley and dill (if you have fresh even better)
    • Olive Oil

    METHOD

    You take the turkey breast and slice it in pieces. Not too small but not too big so it won’t take too much time to cook it. If it has the skin, then leave it on top. Add the salt and pepper

    Take an oven pan and place on top of it aluminium foil and on top Baking foil. The baking foil will help protect the food from aluminium not to touch the food but also the aluminium foil will keep all the heat inside as the food is being cooked. The food should something like this: You place the turkey in the middle and add on top of it the mushrooms that are already cut, and the onions.

    After that…here comes the magic… In a glass you add, olive oil…. Two fingers J , one spoon of Mustard, a little bit of paprika, and the juice from the 2 lemons adding reaaaaaaaaally little water…just a zip. You pour the mixture on top of the food being careful that it is not too much and spills outside of the foil. When you are done, you carefully seal the food closing it from all sides and making sure that the mixtures is being kept inside.

    You should add water on the sides of the baking pan. So as you place it in the oven, the water outside the food will start to boil and help the turkey to cook and so will the mixture inside the foil where it will release all those nice flavours. (I sound like Jamie Oliver now..)

    Let it cook for 1 hour at least in 200-230c adding water on the pan from time to time Check it after 1 hour and if you feel it needs more time continue for 20-30 mins more. As the turkey is being cooked in the oven prepare the rice as you please and place it in the plates adding some parsley and dill on top. It should look more or less like this 🙂

  • Fast Recipe: Chicken with potatoes

    Fast Recipe: Chicken with potatoes

    Well, anyone wants to make a reaaaaally good impression on a first date, and you know what they say… love must to pass first from the stomach. So lets imagine the following situation…you promised your loved one food… and he or she is coming in 45 mins to 1 hour ….Aw…how unlucky…you don’t have anything in the fridge… You need something fast that will leave you time to do other things in the mean time… shower…clean up the mess in the house… etc etc..

    Ok lets get down to business!

    /rocky music playing on the background

    INGREDIENTS

    400grs of Chicken (any part you like)

    2-3 big potatoes cut in various sizes

    1 glass of olive oil

    1 spoon of mustard

    Salt and Pepper

    METHOD

    Easy Peasy.

    In a big oven tray. Add the chicken and the potatoes.  In a glass, add the olive oil, the mustard, salt and pepper and stir well.  Pour the mix all the ingredients.

    Heat up the oven and  cook it for around 45-1 hour in high heat.

    Open up a beer!