World Cuisine: Mediterranean

Once again, it's been a while.
We actually finished with these recipes quite a while ago but home renos and job changes have kept us all busy.

The Mediterranean Sea sits nestled between the south end of Europe and the north end of Africa.
Many countries border this balmy sea, but this entry is about what we typically think of as 'Mediterranean': Greece and Italy.

Of course to start any good Italian meal you need an antipasto plate (from 'anti', meaning 'before; and 'pastus', meaning 'meal).
Typically this pre-meal course consists of cured meats, olives, fruit and cheese.

We included some gluten free bead sticks, pickled artichoke, prosciutto wrapped melon, figs, grapes, a variety of olives, marinated feta, and bocconcini.

Also for a starters we had caprese salad.

This simple salad consists of basil leaves, tomato, fresh mozzarella and olive oil.

There are countless ways to present and prepare this dish so probably no two restaurants our homes will be alike.

Some call for a delicately handmade balsamic reduction, some are chopped small and tossed, some are skewered, some are sliced.

All are bright and delicious.

A starter snack from Greece: Dolmades.

Dolmades are grape leaves wrapped around a savoury rice filling and steamed and dressed to a tangy deliciousness. I had high hopes of making my own, but these ones came pre-made from a deli.

Toby LOVED them.

For mains, we had a very hard time narrowing our choices down.

The 'holy grail' of Italian cooking grains are rice, pasta, and polenta (cornmeal). We had recipes picked out for all of these and more. In Greece there are a surprisingly huge number of dishes which are wrapped in phyllo, and as you may remember, gluten free equivalents either don't exist or are to difficult for this.

So, we narrowed down to the very basics of what you would expect from these countries.

First, from Italy, homemade Margherita pizza.

Again the simple flavours of basil, tomato, and mozzarella shine through here.

This pizza is said to have been made to honour Italian Queen Margherita in the cilours of the Italian flag (green, white, red), but there is debate as to the reality of that story.

My gluten free crust recipe called for psyllium husk to hold it together and it turned purple when I cooked it.... soooooo kind of kills the vibe we were going for but it still tasted ok.

Also from Italy: Homemade pasta.

I've mentioned before about my gluten free pasta recipe. It has proven to be versatile in many ways on this journey, but of course it still makes good old pasta.

I usually form the dough in the shells because it's easier to store in a bowl and then cook without falling apart too soon, but here we were trying for a traditional Bolognese with tagliatelle noodles (slightly wider than fettuccine). This dish is also the national dish of Italy.

We rolled and cut the noodles in small batches, and let them rest on a floured plate. I don't usually roll the dough this thin so a few fell apart, but I knew they would hold their shape once they were cooked.

A traditional bolognese is thick and meaty. We used carrots, celery, onion, garlic, beef, crushed tomatoes, and of course, wine. 

For Greece we started out with a nice simple Greek salad.

Like the caprese salad it's filled with clean fresh flavours and colourful veggies.
Tomato, cucumber, feta, olives, and a light dressing are all that's needed to make this an instantly recognizable Greek dish.

Another unmistakably Greek side dish is tzatziki sauce, often served as a dip with pita, or as a condiment. Dill, mint, cucumber, and yogurt are always a clean, fresh tasting combination, and one that I've always loved on pretty much anything.

The national dish of Greece is moussaka.

Moussaka is kind of like a sheppard's pie and a lasagna, but also not at all.

Like lasagna you have a meat sauce that is layered in a pan, expect instead of noodles you use fried eggplant slices. The meat sauce is beef or lamb cooked with onions, carrots, and celery - like a bolognese - but then flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg, and parsley.

On top of all this you are supposed to pour a bechamel sauce with egg so it puffs up like a creamy quiche.

Of course, I need to keep things egg-free.

So we tried using Vegan-egg as our substitute.

Vegan-egg is unlike other powdered egg replacers in that you can actually 'scramble' it in to something that resembles an egg breakfast. Toby loves it, and I've made some pretty amazing adjustments to my recipes by using this instead. I knew it thickened well while it cooked so we gave it a try.

The bechamel sauce itself was actually pretty amazing. It was thick and fluffy by the end and poured beautifully over our moussaka.

However, once it was in the oven, it turned back into a liquid instead of continuing to thicken.

The end result was creamy stew.

This is NOT how it's supposed to look, however it tasted very good.

Once it cooled COMPLETELY, like, to almost COLD, it sliced much better, but still not the same profile as it should be. I should have taken a 'before' picture because it did look quite good going in to the oven.

So since we were having such good luck with replacing eggs (HA) we decided to make a tiramisu for dessert!

I don't think I realized how many eggs were in this recipe until it came time to make it. I had found some gluten free lady finger cookies from Germany in our local health food store and just thought YES! We can make it now!

Tiramisu is layers of coffee soaked cookies or cake, with a thick egg, cream, and mascarpone cheese filling. None of these things we can eat.

Vegan recipes had complicated combinations of coconut cream or cashew cream and none of the photos looked like the traditional thing we were going for.

In the end we faked it.

Hardcore.

Apologies to Italian cooks everywhere.

But it turned out AMAZING.

We did the whole dipping of the cookies in coffee bit (decaf, because Toby's eating it and caffeine hates me).

The filling is vegan cream cheese (Tofutti brand tastes the best), icing sugar, vanilla, and a bit of cool whip to fluff it up.

It's layered all like a lasagna and sprinkled with cocoa powder.

It's then chilled for several hours until it gets firm again.

Amazingly it tasted and looked exactly like I wanted it to.

Definitely will make this again.

Going into this region I had a very definite opinion that Mediterranean food is my favourite food.

And while it still is up there, it's interesting to note what AUTHENTIC Mediterranean food is, as opposed to our Western view of it. It's a lot of seafood. It's a lot of cured meat. It's a lot of breaded items and creamy fillings and sides.

Pasta is still the best thing ever, but we've learned some things along the way.

Off to Spain!

Happy Eating!!