Greece

Cooking alone tonight, Derek was at his boxing club, so I had my friend Ailise keep me company and eat half the food.

I had originally wanted to do Spanakopita, a spinach and feta filo pastry pie, but we couldn't get filo pastry anywhere. I managed to pick up some nice looking lamb cutlets on my lunch break and keeping my fingers crossed that I had feta in the fridge, I picked a hungry Ailise up from work and headed back to my house for our Greek dinner.




Lemon Garlic Roast Potatoes

Ingredients

500g potatoes (I used waxy baby new potatoes, straight from my garden... not to brag or anything...;-)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 lemons, cut into small segments
3 cloved garlic, chopped finely
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp thyme
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp onion salt
1-2 tbsp pine nuts

Method
Cut the potatoes into medium sized pieces. Toss with oil, lemon, garlic, herbs and salt in a roasting dish. Place in a preheated at gas mark 7 oven and roast for about 25 mins. Add the pine nuts and cook for a further 5 minutes.



Lamb Cutlets

Ingredients

4-6 medium lamb cutlets
1-2 tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 Lemon, juice
1 tbsp Thyme, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Salt & pepper

1/2 pack feta cheese
small bunch parsely
small bunch mint

Marinate the lamb in the oil, lemon, garlic and herbs, ideally it should be at least a couple of hours, but I had no time to do that and the flavour was still quite good.

Place the cutlets on a very hot griddle pan and cook for about 5 mins on each side.

Roughly chop feta, mint and parsley and mix together. Crumble over lamb to serve.




Creamy spinach
(not particularly greek - but went very well with the lamb and potatoes so I thought I would include it here)

1 kg bag baby spinach
1 tbsp ricotta
1 tbsp soft goats cheese
1 tbsp finely chopped dill
2 scallions/spring onions
salt and pepper

Put spinach in a pot over a medium heat and cook for a couple of mins until wilted. Strain water from spinach. Add cheese, herbs and onion and combine. Simple as that!