Nothing says Happy Easter better than a Greek Feast

It's Orthodox Easter weekend, Kalo Paskha everyone! Something to do with the religious calendar and moon, that's why it's on now and not last week (to coincide with Catholic Easter).

My friends and I have been discussing taking it in turns to host dinners with the focus being on our cultural background.

It was time I got back to my roots. I pulled out the big guns a couple of weeks back and got the party started.

Welcome to Angie's Greek Feast.

What better time to share it than Greek Easter?! Six guests in total, six bottles of wine ready to be decanted and four courses served.

1. Hors D'Oeuvres: platter of olive tapenade, goats cheese and fresh organic sourdough bread
2. Entree: Organic zucchini and haloumi fritters served with Greek yogurt
3. Main: Lamb lemonato with chunky soft roasted lemon potatoes
4. Dessert: Galaktoboureko

Lamb is the perfect Easter meat.

I marinated that puppy overnight with lemon, dried oregano and olive oil. The oregano and olive oil were  both from my mama's farm in South Australia (sourced via care package on my last trip to Adelaide).

In Greece the season is spring, so lots of fluffy little lambs are primed for slaughter (after they've grazed pastures and hopped along wide open fields and pranced around mountains of course) and the Easter feasts.

The olives had been picked in the winter just gone and would have had plenty of time to marinate. For this olive tapenade, I used Kalamata olives from my mum's farm. Yeah baby!

During spring, the goat's and sheep's milk is also the best and tastiest, so although our seasons here in Australia are opposite, I used this as inspiration for serving the goat's cheese, making the haloumi and zucchini fritters and serving the yogurt.

The galaktoboureko is the perfect finishing off dessert, which is predominantly an egg, milk and semolina custard, with flaky filo pastry and a sugar syrup.

It cuts the extreme lemoniness of the lamb and potatoes deliciously. Plus its my second all time favourite childhood sweet (the first being walnut and honey cake) that my mum made, so I was determined to perfect it. Mission accomplished. Fuck yeah I rock.

Happy Greek Easter everyone, get it in ya!

The Ethics of Organic

Coles stock organic produce, they have for a while now. I'm counting on simple economics: buy more from them, create more demand and there will be more supply, driving the price down. Is that ethical? Is that local and sustainable? It's capitalism. It somehow feels wrong combining both those words together: organic and capitalism. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but when it comes down to the dollars, the organic stuff is cheaper there than other places I've seen. I'm happy to be proven wrong.

So I had organic zucchini to use up...but how?

I was leafing through my new French cookbook. Insert a guy holding a baguette and wearing a moustache, here. I can't help it, he's also mocking me in his heavy French accent in my head. So all that's happening and I'm trying to find a recipe which does not use creme fraiche or lots of cheese, or 10 tonnes of butter or more creme fraiche. I get inspired by a few ingredients: namely lemon and the combination of tarragon and chicken which I've been wanting to try for a while. Throw in the zucchini and I make up the following dish.

Lemon & Tarragon Chicken with Organic Zucchini
10 mins prep time, 30-35 mins cooking, serves 4

olive oil
small knob butter
plain white flour for dusting
3 chicken fillets cut into chunks
dried tarragon
fresh parsley, chopped,
½ lemon zest (carved off using a peeler) and juice

2 small organic zucchini, thickly sliced

¼ cup dry white wine

¼ cup water
2 small cloves garlic, crushed with the flat side of the knife and torn into chunky pieces
freshly ground sea salt and black pepper, to taste

1. Lightly dust the chicken pieces in flour and set aside.
2. Place the olive oil and butter in a pan and swish until butter is melted.
3. Add the chicken pieces and slightly brown on both sides.
4. Add freshly ground sea salt and black pepper, tarragon, lemon zest, lemon juice, white wine and water to the pan, stir.
5. Cook on low heat with a lid for approx. 20 mins until chicken is juicy and tender.
6. Stir in the garlic pieces and parsley. Place the zucchini pieces on top and replace the lid, cooking for a further 5 mins on very low heat, just enough to steam the zucchini. Turn heat off and ready to serve.

 I served this puppy up on stacked polenta, which I boiled, let set, cut into squares and fried.