We need an authentic Greek restaurant

We need an authentic Greek restaurant
                        

We’ve inadvertently immersed ourselves in ancient Greek history and culture at my house in recent weeks. The cause may seem silly: While filling time staying at home safely, we’re playing a vast, multi-layer video game most evenings that is set in ancient Greece with true characters and places mixed in with the fictional spots and impossible physics.

Today’s games are so extraordinarily well done, giving players a real-feeling, immersive experience, and it’s one of the things in our 21st-century world I know my dad would have been amazed by.

He brought home one of the early consoles for playing Pong and tapped the little dot from one side of the screen to the other for hours.

Naturally all this spectacular Greek island scenery and architecture makes me want to explore Greek food again, and I’m hitting the usual wall. There are literally thousands of cookbooks focused on the cuisines of every culture imaginable; you can spend a lifetime leafing through one Italian cookbook after another. But the food of Greece? Not so much.

Of the more than 100 cookbooks on our kitchen shelves, just one is devoted to this cuisine. Once you get past skewered meats, yogurt sauce, egg-lemon soup, gyros and a few fish dishes, there doesn’t seem much to be had, and that cannot be right. What am I missing? Did the ancient Romans appropriate Greek culture that successfully?

Well, locally, I’m missing Greek families. I have friends who are one or two generations removed from their Greek immigrant family members, but again, we’re talking grape leaves, feta and pita.

There has to be more. What we need is a good Greek restaurant. The last such place was Mama Greek’s carryout, but that closed up ages ago. The actual Mama Greek, and her restaurant, are missed.

The best Greek recipes I’ve found are still those from the Frugal Gourmet cookbook, “Three Ancient Cuisines, China, Greece and Rome.” There, you find seafood in a tomato sauce flavored with cinnamon and are advised to buy lemons by the bagful. It was my first exposure to Greek cooking.

If you have a good source for recipes, please share them with me. I’m hungry for Greek food.

I shared this recipe with you about five years ago, but it’s worth giving you again. I hope you’ll try this simple recipe for pita bread. It’s much better than the store-bought stuff.

PITA

3/4 cup water, 100-110 F.

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

2 1/2 to 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Pour 1/4 cup of the warm water into a mixing bowl and add the sugar and yeast. Stir together and allow to sit for about 15 minutes.

Add the rest of the water, oil and salt. Mix well and begin adding flour, one cup at a time. When you have a workable dough, turn it out onto a floured surface and keep mixing by hand, adding flour as needed. Be careful not to add too much flour so the dough is too dry. Don’t be afraid of a slightly sticky dough.

Knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. Place it back into your mixing bowl with a little more oil. Turn the dough all around in the oil to coat it. Cover the bowl with a towel and let it rise for a couple of hours, until at least doubled in size.

Turn the dough out onto your floured surface again. Cut it into two halves, then cut each half into thirds, giving you six pieces. Form each into a ball and place the balls of dough on a plate, covering them with a towel again. Let them rise another hour.

Preheat your oven to 500 F, placing a baking sheet on a rack in the middle of the oven.

Roll out each ball of dough until it is 1/8-inch thick. Bake each round by placing it onto the hot baking sheet for 5 minutes. It will puff into a pillow as it bakes. When done, place it between layers of a clean towel. Repeat with the remaining dough balls.

When the loaves have cooled and are flattened, store them in an air-tight container.


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