Greek-inspired lamb koftas with yoghurt and seeded flatbreads

As the summer sadly draws to a close, I was flicking through some holiday snaps from our family jaunt to Corfu in June, and got all nostalgic. Of course this made me hungry, so what could I do but turn out some greek-style comfort food? I love love love everything about Corfu – a most misunderstood place, mainly because people associate it with trashy bars, package holidays and crowded beaches. To be fair, this would not be an inaccurate way to describe certain parts of the south of the island, but most of Corfu is just beautiful, unspoilt, surprisingly green with the famously azure seas to rival any other island. The food is also great – if you know where to look. This recipe here is a particularly loose interpretation of greek cuisine, but I feel it does what Corfiot cooking does best, bringing different styles and tastes, Mediterranean with Middle-eastern and of course, abundant portions and lots of fresh vegetables.

Ingredients

400g lamb mince

4 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

3 tbsp oat bran

1 egg, beaten

1 onion, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

Grated zest of 1 lemon

Handful coriander, finely chopped

Spices

-1/2 tsp sumac

-1/2 tsp smoked paprika

-1/2 tsp mustard seeds

-1/2 tsp carraway seeds

-1/4 tsp allspice

1. Preheat the oven to 200C. Put all the spices into a dry frying pan and toast for 1-2 minutes. Pop in a pestle and mortar and crush.

2. Sweat the onion and garlic in 1/2 tsp olive oil until translucent.

3. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Leave for 30 minutes, then shape into small patties (about the size of a table tennis ball) and flatten slightly. Place on a baking tray.

4. Cook in the hot oven for about 15 minutes.

Seeded flatbreads

-200g plain white flour

-1 tsp salt

-1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

-150 ml warm water

-5-6 tbsp mixed seeds

1. Add all the dry ingredients to a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the oil and warm water.

2. Make the mixture into a soft dough and turn out onto a floured surface. Knead for 5-7 minutes then return to the bowl.

3. Leave to rest for at least 20 minutes. Shape into a large oblong, and cut into 8 pieces. Roll each piece out as thinly as you can – use your hands to stretch it if needs be.

4. Heat a large frying pan (no oil), and cook the flatbreads one at a time, turning after about 1 minute. Dark spots on the bread will show you when to flip.

Yoghurt Dressing

-2 tbsp thick greek yoghurt

-1 tsp za’atar (or sumac)

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

This recipe is for those days that all you want to do is curl up in a ball on the couch. This is my favourite type of baking, because it requires so little effort, while the returns are huge – I would make these biscuits just for the way they make my kitchen smell. There are just 4 ingredients; butter, flour, sugar and ground almonds, in the basic recipe, but you can doll them up with orange zest, lemon zest, vanilla extract (not essence!), orange blossom, cinnamon or whatever tickles your fancy.

Here, I sandwiched half of my cookies with a very posh jar of gianduja (chocolate and crushed up hazelnuts from the Piedmontese region) that I brought back from Florence, but Nutella would work also.

Ingredients

-8 oz butter

-8 oz cream plain flour

-8 oz caster sugar

-4 oz ground almonds

1. Preheat the oven to 190 C. Cream the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl.

2. Add the ground almonds and combine, add the flour gradually. Do not over beat the mixture, when you have a nice smooth dough, stop mixing.

3. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll the dough into cherry sized balls, and place them on the baking sheet, leaving enough space between each cookie.

4. Place in the centre of the oven, and bake for 7-10 mins. You want the cookies to look golden brown, but not dark in colour. Leave to cool for at least 15 mins on the baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. When completely cooled, liberally slather with gianduja and sandwich together.

Roma: Pizza da Baffetto

In an 8 day trip to Italy, not stopping south of Rome, it would be foolish to claim to have scratched the surface of the foodie delights the country has to offer. Countless Italians have told me that nothing north of Naples is worth talking about in terms of Italian cuisine, and though Rome has its own treasures, it can’t touch the regional styles of other areas. All of this aside, we ate incredibly well over the week, and even lay claim to stumbling across some of the finest pizza in the Eternal City.

 

Pizza da Baffetto was strongly recommended to us by some good friends, but we had kind of forgotten to look up its location or anything. It was more by serendipity that we wandered past, and it was hard to miss given that a queue stretched out the door, down the street. Following my rule of thumb from Paris (follow the queues), we joined the back of the snaking line.

The street, Via del Governo Vecchio, is not far from the magical Piazza Navona, and was buzzing at 9.00pm on Thursday night. The queue moved quickly enough, and we were hustled briskly to a table around the corner, almost on top of an Italian couple already enjoying their pizza. We had a cute jug of house red, but the pizza was the reason we were there, and did not disappoint.

In Roman style, the pizza base was wafer thin, and irregularly shaped – no concessions to form were made here. While in the queue we got a good look at the chef churning out pizza, and most excitingly, the beautiful wood burning oven that they shoveled pizza in and out of at an alarming rate. Incidentally, we had been warned prior to our trip that one of the worst tourist faux pas in Italy is to order pizza for lunch. Italians would never do this, for several reasons, but the most pertinent being that the wood burning ovens take a long time to heat up, and depending on when the restaurants light them, are at their prime cooking temp late in the day.

We shared 2 pizzas, one with salame, and one with grilled aubergines and courgettes. In reality, there is probably no beating a simple Margherita – anything else is gilding the lily. The pictures were rushed – we feared provoking the wrath of the waiters. It seemed like the customers were more of a hindrance to their art of pizza making than much else. Don’t expect to linger – this place turns tables at a rapid tempo.

http://www.pizzeriabaffetto.it/default.asp