The Go Greek Meal

JK: As I mentioned previously, we kept this a meatless meal. I fixed the meal this evening using the following recipes from the Barefoot Contessa's Go Greek Meal:

* Easy Tzatziki with Toasted Pita Crisps
* Greek Salad
* Dinner Spanakopitas

Comments: I had never used Greek yogurt before - I liked the texture. But, I don't care for unflavored yogurt, so I'm not a good judge of this flavor. Interesting, tho. I'm also not a cucumber fan, but a little of this at a time, as a dip/spread with the pita, is rather tasty. I wouldn't make it again just for me - but for another Greek themed meal, this would definitely be on the menu.

Comments on the Greek Salad: Very good. There's quite of bit left over, so I've drained the veggies to remove the excess vinegar/oil. Don't want it to get too soggy or marinated. Yes, I'd do this one again.

Comments on the Dinner Spana- kopitas: OK I was hungry. I ate two. If I hadn't had the salad plus the Tzatziki & pita, I might have had 3 spanakopitas.

Overall, I enjoyed preparing the meal -- it just took me a lot longer than the recipes' suggested prep times. I'll blame that on my tiny kitchen with very little counter space. Also enjoyed eating the meal :-)

Dinner Spanakopitas UK Style

D: Ican safely say that these are delicious!!! They were quite easy to make but it helped having seen Ina Garten making them on TV while I was in the States, especially when it came to folding the parcels. I don't have any experience of flag folding so just following the instructions on the recipe might have been a bit difficult.

I decided to open the pack of spinach to see if that would give me an idea of how to weigh the correct amount. Good job I have a metric/imperial conversion magnet on my fridge. In total I needed 20 ounces of spinach so I worked with the conversion of 10 ounces being the same as 275 grams and doubled it to make 550g. Then I halved the pack of spinach which gave me 500g then compared a block of spinach with a ounce weight (25g) and added two more blocks of spinach. Squeezing the excess water out of the spinach was fun.

The recipe was easy to follow but I decided to have as many ingredients as possible ready prepared in bowls so I could add them when needed. This created more washing up but made combining the ingredients at the right time a little easier.

The main problem I found was that the sheets of filo(phyllo) pastry I had bought were not the same size as American ones. This made my parcels smaller and I have a bowl of the filling left over which is making my fridge smell of spinach!! I'm not sure what I am going to do with the left-over filling at the moment.

The spanakopitas cooked in thirty minutes and tasted really good. Just a word of warning - don't try and eat them too quickly as the filling is quite hot when they come out of the oven!

Preparations

D: After two trips to my local supermarket I now have all of the ingredients to make Dinner Spanakopitas tomorrow. I have been unable to find Kosher salt so I will replace that with rock salt. However I did find Maldon salt. When I saw this recipe being made, I was concerned that I would not be able to find frozen spinach in the UK but I was in luck. All I need to do now is work out how to measure the correct amount as the spinach came in a 1kg bag!!!

Gathering Ingredients

JK: We'll be doing our "Barefoot Contessa's Greek Meal" next weekend using recipes are from her Go Greek program. (But, we will skip the lamb kebabs.) I've purchased some of the ingredients, including the Greek yogurt suggested in the recipe for the Tzatziki: Fage. Sometimes it's difficult here in the rural Midwest to find ingredients that are more common in large cities, but I was happy to find Fage in the health food section of the grocery store.

The recipes call for a total of 20 oz of Feta cheese. I can find (and have used) the crumbled type, but had never noticed solid Feta. A few days ago, I just happened to browse the refrigerated units at the nearby (and locally owned) dairy shop, and was very surprised to see blocks of Feta! I'll purchase that mid-week.

The one ingredient that is New to me is "flaked sea salt." So, I searched the Internets and found this helpful web site: Salt Information. I didn't find this at my local grocery, but I'll try a couple others this week. If I don't find it, I'll use Kosher salt. By the way, I found a few blogs about these recipes that might be useful/interesting: from Annie's Eats, and Lisa is cooking.

The Beginning

JC and her daughter D from the Midlands UK visited JK and her daughter M in the Midwest USA during July/August 2009. The four of us went to see the film/movie "Julie & Julia." We were inspired by the idea of learning new cooking techniques and recipes.

D: The following morning we were writing a shopping list to buy ingredients for a Barefoot Contessa recipe that we had seen and wanted to try, when we realised that we did not have enough time to make the dish before two of us return the UK. This led to a discussion about us all trying the recipe on the same weekend and emailling each other with our thoughts and comments. As all good ideas do, this developed into the idea of trying the same recipes and blogging our photos, comments and questions. We aim to try out recipes from the USA and the UK. Our challenge will be making the same recipes with ingredients that we are unfamilar with, called something different in each country or not available.