Apple orange pudding (Πουτίγκα με μήλο και πoρτοκάλι)

At the moment, eggs are plentiful becuase they are in season. Go on, laugh all you like - during winter, hens don't lay so many, but as soon as the weather warms up, they do, and when it gets too hot, they stop again till it cools down, and they stop in winter. Last year, in one of Crete's coldest winters, I didn't get given many eggs. This year, in one of Crete's shortest winters (that wood fire stopped working at the beginning of March), I am constantly given eggs by friends and relatives, which means more omelettes and more desserts.  When you know the taste of real free-range eggs, you won't be able to go back to store-bought eggs in an omelette.

Although oranges are a year-round commodity, we notice that the summer variety (Valencia) is starting to ripen a little too quickly, again due to the good weather. So that's another seasonal commodity that needs to be used up creatively. Apart from fresh orange juice, orange can also be used a flavouring agent in sweets and savouries. 

We also had a lot of apples at home, due to the chidlren being given boxes of fruit at school under the asupices of the EU. They each brought home a box of fruit containing oranges, pears and apples. Unfortunately, the apples and pears were not in the best condition; they were OK under their mottly skin, but kids only notice the mottley skin. They went uneaten all through the week. 

In keeping with my frugal regime of using fresh produce creatively to ensure the family doesn't get bored with eating the same thing, I used our seasonal and abundant fresh produce and gifts, together with our own olive oil, to make a delicious dessert, based on a traditional recipe for English apple pudding.  

I recreated it in my Cretan kitchen, replacing (like I usually do) ingredients which I don't normally use (eg butter) with local produce (eg olive oil) in the batter (although I kept the butter in the syrup to make sure it congealed). Instead of milk, I decided to use freshly squeezed orange juice in both the cake and the syrup. The result was a heavily scented orange pudding, reminscent of the Greek portokalopita, a refreshing pie made with oranges which uses torn up sheets of filo pastry.

The syrup was poured out spoon by spoon over the pudding. What strayed to the bottom of the baking pan was eventually soaked up by the next day. 

This pudding made a fantastic breakfast to go with my sugarless morning coffee. All in all, it cost me a mere €1 to make. In this modern world, where we want to have more than we can afford but don't know how to do it without begging, stealing or borrowing, my thriftiness makes me feel that I can conquer the difficult financial hurdles that have been imposed on us. Since Thatcher's death, we are constantly reminded that the economy of a country cannot be run like a household:

Despite my dislike of Thatcher's policies, I could not help but have a regard for her commonsense attitude to good housekeeping, her wartime spirit of keeping the larder full of baked beans and dried goods just in case. Many economists despised this spirit, and warned her you couldn't run the country as you ran a household budget... (Guardian, 13/4/2013)

but at least I'm not trying to make my household go down the drain together with the country. And the country can be assured that I won't become Prime Minister.

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Apples (Μήλα)

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples are full of vitamins, they are light in calories, they have beneficial effects on the digestive system; if fruits can be classified in the same way as colours, then apples must be one of the primary fruits. My earliest apple memories are those I lived in Wellington: the Tory St fruit and vegetable market, truckloads of red and green apples, rolling off the carriage, being weighed on the largest scale I've ever seen, then sorted and packed into plastic bags each containing five kilos of apples. The Tory St market is probably more mechanised now and the sorting process isn't as romantic, but such nostalgic memories cannot be erased from my memory. The deplorable state of market apples in Hania has stamped my mind forever with images of firm juicy apples beyond my present reach.

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Most apples sold in Crete are invariably imported from other areas in the country, mainly from the region of Zagora in Mount Pelion of Central Greece, one of the most beautiful forested areas in the country. Many of the buildings located in Pelion are perched on mountain sides with panoramic views of the peninsula. Apples do grow in Hania (mainly the firiki variety), but only in the more mountainous (ie colder) regions of the island, and their bounty (or taste) does not fulfil the demand in the local market.

An apple orchard in northern Greece; an apple tree in Therisso, Crete, fenced off by its owner to keep away passersby; an apple orchard in the winter in the Omalos region of Hania, Crete.

Zagora apples are often picked before they are ripe at the end of summer; apples ripen off the trees and store better, away from insects and diseases due to temperature variations and climatic conditions. They are then kept in cold storage (ie refrigerators) and transported around the country. The longest journey a Greek apple makes is, of course, to Crete. The apples are then distributed in the market and onto the shelves of the groceries and supermarkets - away from cold storage, where they ripen more quickly, not being able to make the adjustment required when changing environments. The result: softened fruit, lack of crispiness, sour taste, excessive browning, in combination with bruising; in effect, bad apples.

Apples sold at a roadside market in Pelion, Central Greece; 5 euro per 3-kilo bag.

During our summer holiday this year, we were lucky to spend a night in the Pelion region as we made our way further north.

The Pelion region of Central Greece offers amazing views, ranging from seaside towns to islands to forests. It is a favorite Christmas resort with a ski-field located nearby. The closest Greek town to Pelion is Volos.

You can only understand our excitement after biting into our first apple for the season if you know how many bad apples we've eaten over the last few years; Crete is not an apple lover's paradise. We bought a three-kilo pack of both red and green apples, topping up our supplies at the central market in Athens before we left the mainland.

How much apple can you see in the cafe and kiosk versions of apple pie?

My apple pie is based on Sam's recipe, a self-crusting pie that doesn't involve making dough and rolling out pastry.

My apple pie is based on Sam's recipe, something in between a cake and a self-crusting pie that doesn't involve pastry rolling. The same recipe can be turned into muffin-sized cakes.

Talking about apples makes me think of apple cake and apple pie, especially now that it's autumn. Apple pie is symbolic of American cuisine, and I still believe that the best apple pies are made outside Greece. It is amazing that, despite our ancient history being laden with apple stories, we are not well known for our apple pie making skills. Milopita (apple pie) is a popular bakery snack in Greece, but it is usually made badly, using more puff pastry than apple, which is usually stewed into a mushy syrupy mess. Apple pie connoisseurs will surely be be up in arms at the desecration of their beloved dish.

Baby potatoes and white beans? Never seen these before in Crete!

I mustn't forget to thank the lovely grocery store owner in Thessaloniki who presented me with an apple as a present after my husband chatted with her about the different fruits and vegetables available between northern and southern Greece - there are quite a few items of fresh produce that never make it down to the south, white beans and baby potatoes, to name two. Her generosity was very representative of the city as a whole, as we had many instances of such kindness right throughout our stay in the north of Greece.

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Plum crumble with hibiscus flower preserve (Γλυκό με βανίλιες και άνθος ιβίσκος )

We used to have an endless supply of plums (called 'vaniles' or 'tzanera' in Greek) from our tree in the garden of our house, but it started to show signs of drying up and unfortunately we had to cut it down in the end (making more way for zucchini). They are an interesting fruit; their deep colour makes you think they are ripe, but when you pick them off the tree and eat them, you may find that they are a little too firm, not sweet enough, and too orangey-yellow inside rather than a deep plum red. We're not great fans of them; they're not the kind of fruit you can eat loads of (like watermelon) without feeling a little sick afterwards.

I was given a bag full of plums recently (the owner of the tree probably felt likewise about the fruit). I would eat more of them fresh if there wasn't any luscious juicy watermelon to dive into. Plum crumble is just as popular in my house as the fruit. Who am I making this for? I ask myself. Me, of course, because I love crumble desserts, in the same way that I like rain in the summer, large bookstores, well-stocked libraries, Chinese stir-fries, bitter chocolate, moist carrot cake, and so many other things that seem so foreign to the people closest to me.

Plum crumble (or any type of crumble) is probably unknown in the Cretan kitchen. Basically, we don't eat cooked fruit. With the influx of Northern Europeans buying property in Crete, you'd think it might become more popular as a light dessert on the island. I'm hoping that an 'authentic' British restaurant will open its doors on the island some day, and I'm sure this recipe will be on its menu (along with curries, stir-fries and all manner of foreign food that the British have adopted into their cuisine); no doubt it will be very popular too. I like to use muesli in the crumble mixture for an extra crunchy taste, another non-traditional food in Crete.

I'm visiting a food historian today who knows just what to do with plum crumble. She bought out some vanilla ice-cream and a jar containing a special something: hibiscus flower preserve. Hibiscus flower is known for its vitamin C content. Although hibiscus does grow in Greece, the flower (in its dried form) is imported into the country and turned into a syrupy spoon sweet, a refreshing dessert Greece is quite famous for: figs, bitter orange peel, pergamon, even cucumber and aubergine (all of which must be at the pre-mature stage) can be turned into the most tempting sweet dessert, usually served on their own with a glass of cold water. (Lulu recently made some with figs.) The hibiscus flower sweet, while lacking aroma, was a superb accompaniment, served as an ice-cream topping for this simple but very tasty pudding, after which we all enjoyed a lemoncello so tangy and refreshing that I had two glasses.

I've made plum crumble before, and if you want the original recipe, you can find it at the Waitrose site. A dusting of cinnamon (my variation) reminds me of autumn and cooler weather, as does the deep red colour the plums take on once cooked, the kind of colour I'd want a velvet dress to be made of, which alas has no call for here in Hania now that central heating and air conditioners have become somewhat the norm, making the temperature uniform right throughout the year. The plums can also be replaced with apples and the wild blackberries that grow on thorny bushes in Hania, although hardly anybody picks them here. Any soft stone fruit in season would also work well instead of the plums for this dessert. And don't forget the ice-cream.

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Simona from Briciole.

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Apple cake a la Amrita (Κέικ με μήλο)

Maybe it is a bit of nostalgia that makes me turn to my old New Zealand recipe books. But that's not all. Now that I am far away from my birthplace, I realise how ahead of the times NZ was, despite its lack of ancient culture its now highly globalised New-World society. While a student at Victoria University, some of my fellow students were vegetarian. Their motivation was mainly humanitarian, in that they were against animal cruelty, they expressed an aversion to eating dead animals and they had a heightened awareness of their existence in the world, way ahead of their Old-World counterparts. Like all good Kiwi citizens, I showed interest in what they had to say, and even tried to apply some vegetarian principles in my daily diet. What didn't occur to me at the time was that in our house, since my mother strictly observed all the Greek Orthodox Church fasting periods throughout the year, we actually were vegetarian at various times of the year: 50 days before Easter, 40 days before Christmas, 15 before the Assumption of the Virgin in August, as well as some single days of the year to respect a saint or a special event in the Church calendar (eg St John the Baptist, commemorated on August 29).

In the Wellington of the '80s, vegetarianism and an interest in healthy eating were propagated by all sorts of institutions. I remember the Meat Board advertising trim pork, leaflets with recipes using tofu, and Victoria University's Salient magazine with recipes like "Tomato Walnut Casserole". Who will forget the Mt Victoria Cafe (I lived up the road from it) with their queues extending round the corner up Queen St to eat barley rice pilaf, vegetable cottage pie and macadamia beans? There were columns written in the newspaper about how to get started in vegetarianism; here's what Anne Doornekamp has to say about it (from an article in the Dominion - found among the bits and pieces of yellow-aged newspaper clippings I carted with me when I moved to Greece):

... find out where your nearest health food shop is. Spend time browsing among the shelves at the different kinds of beans, grain and seeds... buy a simple recipe book... decide when you want to try your first vegetarian meal... find a recipe that appeals... choose a recipe which is simple, as your future confidence depends on the success of your first attempt."

Vegetarianism must have been a kind of "nouvelle cuisine" in the mid-80s, judging by comments such as those! My favorite progressive vegetarian outlet was the Organic Food Co-op, located at the time in a rundown area of Wellington, close to the red lights district. I even became a member of the co-op, working once every two months as a volunteer, I told my parents about the idea behind the co-op, but as usual, they simply scoffed at the new age thinking their daughter was propunding in the household: whoever heard of anyone who can survive their whole lives without eating meat? They needn't have worried about their daughter being seen in a forbidden district, as it was a Greek no-go area. I never came across any of my fellow Greek Wellingtonians whenever I was in the area. Which led me to think: "Am I the only weirdo?"

One of my friends had baked an apple cake for one of the Linguistics Department social nights (from which you can imagine the revelry our academic interest group imparted) and I asked her for the recipe. She gave it to me, and, as all good academics, she refered me to the source of the recipe: the AMRITA cook book, AMRITA being the first vegetarian restaurant in downtown Wellington. I bought the book - 100 pages, hand-written, each page illustrated in a unique way - and tried a great many recipes from it. The restaurant eventually closed down, but Wellington still abounds in vegetarian-interest cafes and eateries. One recipe became a firm favorite with my family: Christine's apple cake, which I'm making for a family friend tonight. It's just one more positive way (as for apple pie) to use those bad Greek apples that we buy here ...

You need:
1 1/4 cups brown sugar (you can use white sugar equally well, but use LESS than the stated amount - it is sweeter and heavier)
2 eggs
1/2 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large apples diced
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinammon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Beat the sugar, eggs, oil, vanilla, cinammon and nutmeg together till well blended. Add the apples, and mix them into the batter. Aift in the flour and baking soda. Mix well. Baked in an oiled tin. I used a ring tin, the very same one we used to use to make this cake in New Zealand (it's travelled a long way!) because this is a 'heavy' cake, so it tends not to cook in the centre. I lined the ring tin with baking paper to be on the safe side, as apple pieces tend to stick to the bottom of the tin if it is not greased well.
This post is dedicated to CV.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.
MORE CAKES:
Banana cake
Brownies
Chocolate cake
Simple cake
Carrot cake muffins
Chocolate muffins
Vasilopita
Walnut cake
Halva
Tsoureki

Apple pie (Μηλόπιτα)

Right up until I left New Zealand, there was a fresh produce market on Tory St, Wellington. When I was young, my parents would often shop for fresh produce from there. I couldn't really understand what attracted them to an open-air market, when they could be shopping inside a comfortable supermarket in one of the shopping malls that were sprouting all over the city at the time. It was only when I came to live in Greece that I realised why they liked the open-air market: it resembled the laiki, the open-air mobile street markets that take place every day of the week in different parts of every city in Greece. A flash of images of the Tory St market inundate my mind: the smell at the fishmonger's, lamb carcasses hanging off figure-of-eight hooks, Pacific Islanders selling large root vegetables which my mother would peer at out of curiosity, and then back away as if she'd seen a mouse when the smiling stallholder said: "Yes, please?" I vivdly remember truckloads of apples being rolled off into some kind of vat which had a door on one side. The operator would lift this hatch and the apples would pour out into plastic bags marked "New Zealand Apple and Pear Marketing Board", each weighing 5 kilos. My favorite variety was the grannysmith. I really miss New Zealand apples; here in Crete, apples never seem to taste crisp and juicy, and worst of all, they are even sold bruised in the supermarket. My husband says it's because apples are stored inappropriately. In any case, apple trees thrive in cold climates, and the island of Crete is just too warm right throughout the year to make it an ideal place to keep apples for a long time. New Zealand apples can be found in Crete, but I’d be defeating the purpose by buying them, being mindful of my carbon footprints (I’m much more tempted by New Zealand Zespri kiwifruit).

Although I don't normally store apples in the fridge, I found four lurking in the back part of one of the vegetable compartments. But these were bought some time in June, and since apples tend to go soft and brown in hot weather, I thought I'd store them in a cooler place. Because of the great variety of fruit available in summer, the apples did not get eaten. When I cleaned out the vegetable bin, seeing the apples just gave me the winter blues, because I felt I'd wasted good money on something no one wanted to eat, but I didn't have the heart to throw them out. I decided to make apple pie with them. What I can't believe is how delicious the pie is, despite using last season's apples! (Another way to use up 'bad' apples is to make a delicious apple cake with them.)

I always thought this was a difficult dish to make, what with kneading dough and shaping pastry cases. I don't believe in wasting time in the kitchen, as I spend more than enough time in there in the first place, so my recipes must be quick and easy. I made the first recipe I came across in a google search from dltk-teach; it really was quick and easy. I used a mixture of white and brown flour for health reasons. For the pie dish that i was using, 4 apples were more than enough. The aroma of cooking apples sharpened my maternal instincts; my children's faces made me melt as they came into the kitchen and the smell hit them.


For the filling, you need:
1/3 to 2/3 cup sugar
a fistful of all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
4 large apples
Peel, core and slice the apples. Try to keep the size of the slices even. Mix sugar, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt in large bowl. Stir in apples. Heat oven to 425 degrees.

For the pastry, you need:
2 1/2 cups white flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cold butter, broken into small pieces (use only margarine for lenten fare)
5 tbsp. cold margarine
8 tbsp. cold water
Measure the flour, sugar and salt together. Stir to combine. Add the chilled butter pieces and margarine to the bowl. Cut them in with a pastry cutter or knife. Don't over mix them. Add the water. Mix until the dough holds together (add a bit more water, if necessary). Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, knead it together, then divide in half. Flatten each half into a disk, wrap in saran wrap and chill for at least half an hour. Roll out one of the disks on a lightly floured surface until you have a circle that's about 12 inches in diameter. Put the circle in a 9" pie plate, trimming any extra dough from the edges. Pour the apple mixture into the pastry-lined pie plate. Dot with 2 tablespoons margarine. Cover with top crust and seal the edges. Cut slits in the top. Cover with aluminum foil to prevent too much browning. Remove foil during last 15 minutes of baking. Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE PUDDINGS:
Brownies
Bougatsa
Chocolate cake
Chocolate pancakes
Walnut cake
Apple cake
Tiropitakia
Halva
Fruit crumble
Sfakianes pites

Plum crumble (Γλύκισμα με βανίλιες ή τζάνερα)

We have an endless supply of plums (called 'vaniles' or 'tzanera' in Greek) from our tree in the garden of our house. We're not great fans of them; they're not the kind of fruit you can eat loads of (like watermelon) without feeling a little sick afterwards. I decided to try making plum crumble, an English pudding, with our excess crop. The original internet recipe comes from Waitrose.

You need:
1kg English plums, stoned and quartered
175g unrefined demerara sugar (2/3 cup)
1 tbsp lemon juice
175g plain flour (1 1/3 cups)
150g firm, slightly salted butter, cut into pieces - use margarine to make this lenten fare
50g porridge oats - I used a muesli mixture because we don't use rolled oats on their own in our house, and ready muesli contains mainly rolled oats with various other natural products such as raisins, sunflower seeds. It made a crunchy alternative.

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Scatter the plums in a 1-litre shallow ovenproof dish and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of the sugar, the lemon juice and 1/2 cup of cold water. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until it look likes chunky breadcrumbs, then stir in the remaining sugar and oats and mix them in until the mixture begins to cling together. Tip the crumble over the plums, spreading it almost to the edges of the dish. Bake for about 45 minutes until the crumble is pale golden brown.

I dusted the crumble with cinnamon for an extra autumny aroma. It was absolutely delicious. This dessert goes really well with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. The plums can also be replaced with apples and the wild blackberries that grow on thorny bushes in Hania, although hardly anybody picks them here. Most soft fruits in season will work well instead of the plums.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE PUDDINGS:
Apple pie
Brownies
Chocolate cake
Chocolate pancakes
Walnut cake
Apple pie
Tiropitakia
Halva
Bougatsa