Sea bream " a la Spetsiota"

SEA BREAM "A LA SPETSIOTA"

For this dish I use fresh or frozen sea bream.

This dish is appropriate for formal gatherings.

It is beautiful served on a platter, decorated with different colors of chopped vegetables.

Ingredients

1 sea bream 1.5 kilo

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 large dry onions

4 large carrots

3 medium potatoes

6 small or medium size zucchini

A few sprigs of celery

300 g. prepared or homemade mayonnaise

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon powdered mustard or regular mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Soup

50 grams of rice for soup

The juice of one lemon

3 sprigs of rosemary

1 piece of hot red chili pepper in the size of a watermelon seed

Instructions

First recipe

Clean the vegetables and put them in a bowl with water.

Scour the fish from the scales and offal.

Put in an oblong casserole 2 liters of water.

Cut each onion into four pieces.

Pour the onions into the casserole.

Place the casserole over high heat and wait for the water to boil.

Cut the zucchini in half, carrots in cylindrical pieces 3 cm long and potatoes into 4 pieces each.

Pour the onions into the casserole.

Let the onions boil for three minutes and then pour the potatoes, the carrots, the celery, the zucchini and 3 tablespoons of olive oil.

Add analogous salt and pepper.

Let the vegetables cook until tender.

Remove them with a slotted spoon and put them on a platter.

Place the fish whole in the casserole.

If the fish is longer than the casserole, cut it in two pieces.

 Boil the fish about 15 minutes.

Take care not to over boil it because it will dissolve.

Doff it carefully, so as not to dissolve completely and put it on a griddle.

 Put it aside to cool

Keep the broth of fish to make the soup.

Carefully remove the skin and the bones of the fish leaving its flesh completely clean from any of this.

Be very careful not to leave any bone buried in the mass of the fish.

Put the cleaned fish in a bowl.

Put salt, little pepper, coriander and mustard powder on the fish.

Mix everything with a fork gently.

Drain half cups of fish broth and add it into the bowl with the cleaned fish.

Pour into the bowl the juice of one lemon, 1 tablespoon olive oil and 3-4 tablespoons of mayonnaise.

Mix gently with a fork, until you achieve a uniform mixture.

Try the taste of the fish mixture.

If it is too dry, add a little more drained broth.

Correct salt and lemon, adding more if necessary.

Place the fish mixture in an oblong serving platter and give to it the shape of a fish.

Cover all the surface of the fish that you made with a thin layer of mayonnaise.

Your fish will seem to have mayonnaise skin.

Stick to the head of your fish two small slices of carrot, instead of eyes.

Make the tail of the fish fork.

Use half of the vegetables boiled in the beginning, to decorate the fish.
Put the other half of the vegetables into the soup.

Cut cooked zucchini into small pieces and put them on the fish over the mayonnaise as scales.

With vegetables also form the side fins of the fish.

Second recipe

 You can prepare the fish in another way too.

Buy bream and wash it well.

Smear it with oil, as a whole, without cleaning it.

Wrap it well in grease-proof paper and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for one hour.

Purge from the bones, intestines and skin.

Put the cleaned fish in a bowl and continue as above.

Garnish the fish with pickled vegetables.

Soup

You can accompany the fish with soup or to offer it alone.

When you want to offer soup with the fish, you must make it.

Get a clean pot and strain within the broth of fish.

This is necessary to remove any small fish bones that can be found in the broth.

Put the pot over medium heat and wait for the broth to boil again.

Rinse the rice and pour it into the broth.

Stir with a ladle and leave it to boil for 10 minutes.

When the rice is tender, pour into the pot the cooked vegetables that are not used in the decoration of the fish.

Boil with rice three minutes.

Stir to avoid sticking.

Pour into the pot a little salt, little red pepper, a sprig of rosemary.

Pour the juice of one lemon.

Try the taste and if it is right turn of the heat.

If you want, you can knock the soup in a food processor and make it a homogenous batter.

This recipe makes 5-6 soup plates and it is enough for 5-6 people.

The snapper is not always accompanied by soup.

At banquets it is served as a dish without fish soup.

Orange pie (orange cake)

ORANGE PIE ( ORANGE CAKE)

Ingredients

250 ml olive oil

300 g. sugar

500 g. all purpose flour

5 large eggs

20 g baking powder

1 teaspoon grounded mahleb (spice)

1 teaspoon mastic

260 g. mashed boiled oranges

Black glaze

Ingredients

200 g. baking chocolate 52% cocoa

80 ml whipping cream 35% fat

2 tablespoons brandy

Instructions

Place 3 whole oranges in a pot and cover them with water.

Put the pot over high heat and boil them until soft.

When ready, remove them from the pot and leave them to cool.

Cut each orange into four pieces.

From each piece of orange remove its spores and the white fibers that there are at its center.

Do not remove the pith of the orange.

Chop the oranges, put them in a food processor and mash them.

Weigh 260 g. mashed oranges and put them in a bowl.

Put the sugar in the mixer’s bowl.

Pour an egg into the sugar and beat on low speed for a while.

Add one by one all the eggs while beating.

Increase the speed of the mixer to medium and beat all these ingredients together for 5 more minutes.

Pour into the bowl with the mashed oranges, the olive oil, the mastic and mahleb.

Beat with a whisk these ingredients to blend well.

Pour the orange blend into the eggs.

Mix the flour with the baking powder and sift it over the egg mixture.

Mix with the whisk until your mixture is homogenous.

Add into the porridge 70 g. of chocolate drops.

Grease and flour a form of cake.

Pour the batter into the mold.

Preheat the oven at 150 C degrees.

Place the form in the lower rack of the oven and bake at 150 C degrees for an hour or more if necessary.

To check if the cake is cooked, skewer a knife into its mass.

Remove the knife from the cake and check if it is clean or if it has porridge stuck on it.

If the knife is not clean, the cake needs longer baking.

If the knife is clean, the cake is properly cooked.

Remove it from the oven and leave it to cool completely.

Once cooled, turn the form upside down on a serving platter.

Remove the form and leave the cake on the platter.

The cake is ready to decorate it with black chocolate glaze or white chocolate glaze.

 Chocolate glaze

Put in a small nonstick pot the whipping cream, the baking chocolate broken into pieces and cognac.

Place the pot over very low heat and heat up these ingredients.

After a while the chocolate begins to melt.

Stir constantly until chocolate melts and becomes thick glaze.

If the glaze it too thick, add little cream to dilute it a bit.

If the glaze is too dilute, it does not stick upon the cake but it rolls and leaves.

Decoration

Drop onto the upturned cake the chocolate icing and make waves and any kind of shapes you prefer.

Leave it to cool and then put over it a few teaspoons orange marmalade.

Vine leaves stuffed with rice and minced meat

VINE LEAVES STUFFED WITH MINCED MEAT

Ingredients

600 g. ground beef

140 g. rice Carolina
4 large dry onions

1 bunch dill

350 g. fresh vine leaves or preserved in brine

The juice from 1.5 large lemons

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 ground coriander

Salt and pepper to taste  

1 piece of hot red chili pepper in the size of a watermelon seed  

180 ml olive oil + 60 ml olive that you will put into the meat

Instructions

Wash the vine leaves and strain.

Put into pot 2 l water. Place the pot over high heat.

Split the washed leaves into three parts.

Place the first batch of the leaves into the boiling water and leave them there for two minutes.

The green color of the leaves becomes light brown.

With a slotted spoon remove them from the boiling water and place them in a bowl.

I continue in the same manner with the remaining leaves.

Let them to cool in the bowl.

Stuffing

Peel the two onions in a food processor and mince them.

Put salt over the minced meat and knead it so the salt goes everywhere.

Pour 60 g of olive oil into the minced meat and knead again.

Pour the chopped onions into the meat and knead again.

Scour the dill and wash it.

Finely chop the dill into the minced meat and knead again.

Thoroughly wash the rice with water in a colander.

Let the rice drain and put it into the mince. Knead all the ingredients together.

Wrapping

Stretch a vine leaf over the palm of your left hand and open it.

Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of the leaf.

Fold the leaf left and right and cover the filling.

Fold at one end the leaf again and then wrap around the stuffing and form a cylinder. .

Place those cylinders in a pot one next to the other.

Continue this way until you finish all the stuffing.

If you have left over leaves, suffuse them over the dolmades as a lid.

Cut the remaining two onions into rings and place them into the pot over the leaves which cover the dolmades.

Place a ceramic plate into the pot over the dolmades.

The weight of this dish presses the dolmades and helps them to maintain their shape.

Add boiling water into the pot until the plate submerges into it.

Pour 180 g of olive oil into the pot.

Add some salt and the small piece the hot chili pepper.

Boil dolmades for half an hour over medium heat.

Add the juice of 1.5 lemons and boil half an hour more.

Put one of them in a small dish and leave it to cool. Try it to see if its taste is right.

If you think it needs correction, correct it.

You can offer the dolmades as they are or with an egg and lemon sauce over them.

Egg and lemon sauce

Break 2 eggs into a bowl and beat them with a wire for 2 min.

Pour into the eggs the lemon juice little by little beating continuously with the wire.

With deep ladle take boiling broth from the pot with the stuffed vine leaves and pour it into the eggs.

Repeat this two more times.

Mix constantly the eggs with the wire.

Remove the pot with vine leaves from the heat.      

Pour the egg and lemon sauce over the stuffed vine leaves.

Shake the pan left and right so the sauce goes everywhere.