{"id":4559,"date":"2013-04-11T12:35:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T12:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.victoriahislop.com\/?p=4559"},"modified":"2016-09-15T17:42:42","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T17:42:42","slug":"my-big-fat-greek-dinner-as-tweeted-by-nigella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/my-big-fat-greek-dinner-as-tweeted-by-nigella\/","title":{"rendered":"My Big Fat Greek Dinner (*as tweeted by Nigella!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>Nigella Lawson<\/a> came to dinner last night – and then tweeted a rather glorious picture<\/a> of my food to her billions of followers – I am rather proud… so have scribbled out the recipes for my ideal\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026GREEK DINNER<\/h2>\n

For me the essential flavours of Greece are feta, lemon, olive oil and fresh figs – here are some of my favourite dishes that make use of these ingredients.<\/p>\n

FAVA<\/h3>\n

this is very popular dip – specially in Crete – and is extremely simple to make.\u00a0 Everyone in Greece has their own way of making it.\u00a0 This recipe was scribbled down one night in a rebetika bar in Thessaloniki by my lovely Greek publisher, Costas Papadopoulos.\u00a0 It is very simple but works perfectly.<\/em><\/p>\n

Serves 6<\/p>\n

175 g of yellow split peas
\n2 roughly chopped onions
\n1 large lemon
\n2 whole cloves of garlic
\n4 fl oz of Greek olive oil (use no other!)<\/p>\n

Bring the peas to the boil and remove the foam.\u00a0\u00a0 Add salt, garlic and half the onions then continue to simmer for approximately 40 minutes.\u00a0 Remove from the heat and mash\/sieve when cool.\u00a0 Stir in the lemon juice and olive oil, caramelise the remaining onions and serve – with vegetable sticks or bread.<\/p>\n

CUCUMBER SOUP<\/h3>\n

– this is a perfect chilled soup for warm evenings (and best of all requires no cooking)<\/em><\/p>\n

Serves 6<\/p>\n

3 big cucumbers
\n12 big leaves of mint (plus 6 pretty ones for garnishing)
\nMild feta
\nSalt & pepper<\/p>\n

Peel cucumbers and roughly chop.\u00a0 Put in food processor and whiz for a few seconds (not too long as you still want some texture).\u00a0 Finely chop the mint (by hand) and add to the cucumber then add salt and pepper to taste.\u00a0 Crumble the feta and put a spoonful in the bottom of each soup bowl.\u00a0 Pour on the cucumber, then sprinkle a little more feta on top, along with a single mint leaf.<\/p>\n

CHICKEN WITH OLIVES<\/h3>\n

Serves 6<\/p>\n

100 ml of olive oil
\n12 chicken thighs
\n6 chopped shallots
\n3 chopped celery sticks
\n3 sliced carrots
\n1 lemon
\nPlenty of pitted black olives (I like at least six per person)
\n150 ml of water
\n150 ml of white wine
\nSalt & pepper<\/p>\n

Brown the chicken thighs in a pan with the olive oil and seasoning and put in an over proof dish.\u00a0 Saute the shallots, celery, carrots until they are just softening then add water, wine and lemon juice.\u00a0 Simmer for ten or fifteen minutes, then pour over the chicken.\u00a0 Cover the dish and put in oven at around 190 degrees c for an hour.\u00a0 Add the olives and put in for a further 30 minutes.\u00a0 To garnish, sprinkle with a handful of chopped coriander.<\/p>\n

Serve with thick golden fingers of potato tossed in olive oil and roasted in the oven, and a green salad.<\/p>\n

FIGS IN FILO PASTRY<\/h3>\n

Serves 6<\/p>\n

Filo pastry
\n10 figs (cut into quarters, wedge shaped)
\n80 g of flour
\n80 g of granulated sugar
\n4 eggs
\n350 ml milk
\n1 tsp of almond essence<\/p>\n

Line a dish with the filo pastry and place in the figs, fleshy side up.\u00a0 Mix flour and sugar and beat in the eggs, milk and almond essence.\u00a0 Pour this on top of the figs and bake in the oven for 50 minutes at 180 degrees c (put a piece of aluminium foil over the tart to prevent the filo pastry burning).\u00a0 Remove from oven and serve warm, dusted with icing sugar and with thick Greek yogurt.<\/p>\n

\u039a\u03b1\u03bb\u03ae \u03cc\u03c1\u03b5\u03be\u03b7!\u00a0 (BON APETIT!)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigella Lawson came to dinner last night – and then tweeted a rather glorious picture of my food to her billions of followers – I am rather proud… so have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4563,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,147,446],"tags":[268,148,149],"class_list":["post-4559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greece","category-greek-food","category-news","tag-greek-food","tag-nigella-lawson","tag-twitter","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}