Keith Floyd - Floyd Around the Med

In most of the recipes in this book, quantities and timings are approximate. The style of cooking in the countries around the Mediterranean is completely different from that of northern Europe. People tend to live in extended families, and so they cook for eight to ten people. There is not a cook in the Mediterranean area who would give you a recipe for, let’s say, moussaka, or beef stifado, for four people. They simply make up a pot of the stuff, with enough ingredients to go round. Any left over would be reheated and served the next day.

It is important to note that the recipes in this book are not ‘dinner-party dishes’. Although they are all prepared with love and the freshest ingredients, they are a casual, everyday part of Mediterranean life. Family or guests invited to a birthday or a Sunday family reunion will not be expecting a formal four-course meal followed by coffee and mints. Right, having said all that, I will repeat myself, just to be on the safe side: common sense must be applied to the quantities, cooking times and serving of these dishes. Finally, every time a recipe requires olive oil, this means olive oil. There is no substitute for it if you wish the dish to taste authentic – except where I suggest peanut, sesame or walnut oil!

There is much more to Greek cooking than moussaka, stuffed vine leaves, greasy kebabs stuffed into pitta bread pockets with chips, salad and mayonnaise, and the ubiquitous Greek salad with a slab of feta cheese sprinkled with dried oregano. This may be what most of us encounter on our Greek holidays but if you search around a bit you will discover some very fine dishes indeed. Take the aubergine, for example. It’s essential in a moussaka but there’s much more to it than that. You could write a whole book about cooking aubergines the Greek way. They can be made into a wonderfully refreshing salad, or stuffed with minced mutton or lamb and roasted in the oven, or deep-fried in batter, or fried in olive oil and served cold with a marinade of lemon juice, finely chopped garlic and parsley, coriander, fennel or dill. Courgettes can be given the same agreeable treatment as aubergines, and vegetables à la grecque (cooked in a lemon and olive oil marinade) are really most enjoyable. Baby vegetables such as leeks, onions and artichoke hearts can all be cooked in the same way as mushrooms à la grecque.

In Greece they love to cook with fresh herbs, such as coriander, dill, parsley, mint and spring onions, combined with lemon juice (I swear that Greek lemons produce some of the finest juice I have ever encountered). They like to use coriander seeds and cinnamon to flavour their dishes, and occasionally cumin. At its best, Greek cooking is light, refreshing, tasty and tangy – for example, lamb stewed with Cos lettuce or green peas, flavoured with a wonderful lemon sauce, is an exquisite dish. Stuffed vine leaves don’t have to be briny, vinegary things with congealed rice inside. Like cabbage leaves, they can be stuffed delightfully with a mixture of rice, fish or meat, maybe pine nuts, sultanas or currants.

In this dish, which is really a simple chicken cooked in tomato sauce, we can see the influence that the Moors have had on Mediterranean cooking by the use of fruits and spices.

Joint the chicken, bones and all, into manageable morsels. In a large, shallow sauté pan or a deep frying pan, heat up some olive oil. The pan needs to be big enough to hold all the pieces of chicken in a single layer. Fry them on both sides until golden brown, then add the onions and garlic and brown them very lightly. At this stage, if you have the giblets from the chicken, add them and fry them too. Now pour in the wine so that it half covers the chicken and boil furiously until it has reduced, then add enough tomato sauce just to cover the chicken. Keep on cooking for a few minutes, then add the lemons, cinnamon, raisins, thyme and cloves. By now, since the chicken went into the pan, it will have been cooking for about 25 minutes. Stir the whole lot together and let it simmer gently until the chicken is tender and you have a fragrant, spicy, lemon-tanged tomato sauce.

I am not the kind of cook who offers (quote) serving suggestions (unquote!). It is up to you, but I think pasta, rice, vermicelli or salad would be good with this. Because, you see, this kind of dish, which is cooked with vegetables and fruit, just doesn’t need a plate of carrots, green beans or similar, next to it. A few chips and olive oil might be quite nice, however!

As a general rule, branches of dried herbs such as thyme and rosemary work best when barbecuing and grilling because they are cooked into the overall flavour; they are also very good in casseroles and stews that require long cooking. However, when the herb is used as an edible garnish (i.e. not cooked) or only cooked very lightly, fresh herbs are essential.

Egg and lemon sauce, known as avgolemono, is served with vegetables, meat, chicken and fish throughout Greece. Since this is a spring dish it is essential that the lamb is young and fresh, not frozen. Throughout the Mediterranean, this fricassée would be prepared with milk-fed lamb at best and, at worst, meat from a very, very young sheep.

Cut the lamb off the bone into nice bite-sized pieces. Melt half the butter in a cast-iron, copper or other heavy-based wide casserole and fry the lamb pieces until they are browned on all sides. Because it is spring lamb it will not take very long to cook, so just brown it lightly. Then stir in the leeks and cook for a few minutes to soften them a little. Throw in the roughly torn up lettuce, then the frozen (yes, still frozen) peas and fresh herbs. Add one or two cups of water and the remaining butter, then season with salt and pepper. Stir the whole lot round so everything is combined, put the lid on and simmer gently for about 30-45 minutes. Inspect and taste the dish from time to time to make sure that the peas are defrosting, the lamb is cooking and all the juices are amalgamating.