How to Roast a Lamb_ New Greek Classic Cooking - Michael Psilakis [20]
1 pound fingerling potatoes, scrubbed
½ pound (about 1¼ cups) Artichoke Confit (page 267), with some of the oil (or 6 halves oil-marinated artichokes from a jar, halved again)
6 shallots, halved and thinly sliced lengthwise
4 stalks celery, thinly sliced crosswise
cup small, picked sprigs dill
12 leaves fresh mint
¼ cup small, picked sprigs thyme
½ to cup Ladolemono (page 270)
Sea salt and cracked black pepper
½ lemon
½ cup feta or manouri cheese
Put the potatoes in a large pot of generously salted cold water and place over high heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer gently until just crisp-tender, 7 to 8 minutes. Drain and spread out on a plate. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, until chilled, and up to overnight.
Cut the potatoes into rustic, bite-size chunks. In a large bowl, combine the potatoes, Artichoke Confit (with a tablespoon of the confit oil), shallots, celery, dill, mint, and thyme. Toss the mixture aggressively, with clean hands, and drizzle with ½ cup of Ladolemono.
Season with sea salt and pepper and toss again. Taste and add a little more Ladolemono if you like. Squeeze some lemon juice over the top. Finish with a sprinkle of feta or manouri cheese.
Left to right: Psilakis family boat, the Georgia; family and friends, 1983; Costas Psilakis with his catch, a ten-pound bluefish, 1987
open water
Just as I awaited my father’s return from work on summer weekdays so we could tend the garden together, so too did I eagerly anticipate weekends spent on our boat.
Saturdays were full days on the boat, and we’d often have as many as fifteen people on board. The drill was always the same: mornings were spent fishing in peace, and the later part of the day was for swimming, cruising, and horsing around on the beach. Sundays were church days, so that meant only half a day on the boat. That was the day my mother would be most likely to join us, along with any aunts who wanted to come too. The women weren’t interested in being on the boat for a whole day but still enjoyed our time on the water. My mother was and continues to be terrified of the water, but the boat meant so much to my father that everyone came on board at some point during the summer.
The boat was not an inexpensive hobby and, considering that my father had fled a war-torn island (on the heels of World War II) in search of a better life and that he had arrived in this country with so little, it was an accomplishment. This one simple possession represented, to him, that he had overcome hardship, provided for his immediate family and many members of our extended family as well, and still had enough left over to afford this luxury.
Our first boat, which we got when I was about ten, was a monster. It was an old, beat-up wooden boat we painted white. It was forty-three feet long, and a dozen people could easily lie down in the front to take in the sun. There was a fly bridge on top where my father could always be found when we were under way. I was always my father’s first mate.
This behemoth had only one engine. That made docking in our narrow slip at the end of the day an adventure. My job was to leap, sometimes as far as five feet, to the dock with the rope in hand so I could manually pull the back end of the boat close enough to tie it up to the cleat. Then my father, done with the steering, would run down from the fly bridge to the front and throw me the other rope. I’d drag the front end in too and try to get the boat safely tied up to the dock without crashing into too many of the other boats nearby. If other people were with us, they’d stand along the sides of our boat with feet ready to push away from any other boat we were about to hit.
Some days my father would take just us kids out on the boat—my two younger sisters, Maria and Anna, and my brother,