How to Roast a Lamb_ New Greek Classic Cooking - Michael Psilakis [3]
At the Greek table, appetizers are rarely served on individual plates, and there is never just one. Instead we serve meze, morsels of stand-up finger food that promote a relaxed flow of friends and family around a table of tempting variety.
For main dishes (or any dishes meant to be eaten hot), I suggest you warm your plates before serving.
ABOUT THE INGREDIENTS
CAPERS
Capers are the pickled, immature buds of a plant related to nasturtiums, and are ubiquitous in Greek cuisine. Most capers are packed in brine, and for the recipes in this book require draining, but no rinsing. Occasionally you can find salt-packed capers, which are larger and meatier, with a more pronounced caper flavor. However, they are often very salty and should be well rinsed, well drained, and, depending on the dish, roughly chopped to a size similar to that of brined capers (most commonly the small French variety known as nonpareil, which means “without equal”).
CHEESE
Substitutions can be made as follows, if you don’t live near a market that stocks a good selection of cheeses:
Graviera: Gruyére
Mizithra: Ricotta salata
Manouri: Ricotta salata
Kefalotiri: Pecorino Romano
Ricotta: Supermarket ricotta just isn’t going to cut it. This is one of those places where you have to try very hard to get the best ingredient, because otherwise whatever you make will be too wet. The first choice is very fresh (preferably sheep’s milk) ricotta. Try an Italian grocery, an artisanal cheese shop, or the cold counter of a really good market. On the Internet, you can get excellent frozen ricotta from Italy.
Feta: Shifting boundaries in the eastern Mediterranean and Balkans make it difficult to trace the origins of this beloved cheese: at one point, half of Greece was Bulgaria and half of Bulgaria was Greece. It is believed that the Greeks have been making a fetalike cheese since the twelfth century, even if it was called something else. While Greece is home to several other wonderful cheeses (like mizithra, graviera, kefalotiri, and kasseri), in northern Greece at least, any and all “cheese” is assumed to be feta. Traditionally, feta is made from 100 percent sheep’s milk, which yields the creamiest, richest product, but sheep don’t always produce enough milk, so regulations permit up to 30 percent goat’s milk. Feta can be sold at the age of two months, but many enthusiasts prefer a cheese between six and twelve months of age. Younger feta is often eaten alone; the mature cheeses are perfect as a component of salads and other dishes.
Feta deteriorates when not stored in brine, so try to buy it in brine and, if at a service counter, ask for a little more brine to be ladled over your cheese. Or you can make more brine at a ratio of 1 quart water to ¾ cup kosher salt, dissolved. If you buy feta in bulk and store it in brine, keep your fingers out of the container to avoid introducing bacteria; retrieve what you need each time with a clean pair of tongs.
I recommend using Greek feta wherever feta is called for in these recipes. However, if you can’t find Greek feta, you may substitute French feta. French feta has become widely available in the U.S. (the business evolved as a way of using the excess milk from Roquefort production); it tends to be moister and milder in flavor than Greek feta. American-made feta lacks the characteristic tang and can be squeaky on the tooth.
OIL
At Anthos, we use extra-virgin olive oil for every application except deep-frying. At Kefi, where it is important to keep costs down, I use blended oil. (If I used extra-virgin for every application at Kefi, I’d have to add a dollar to the price of each dish.) If you like, use extra-virgin olive oil wherever