Monday, January 31, 2011

Olympic cooking

I'm not sure why, but I appear to be on a Greek recipe tear.
Well, I suppose two meals and a steady stream of hummus doesn't constitute a tear, but that's a lot of Greek food in a month.

First, in an attempt to rid myself of excess yogurt, I made Greek Bifteki. It's just a seasoned hamburger stuffed with feta. Not my favorite, but Sean loved it. I was in a hurry and threw them on the ol' George Foreman grill. The meat cooked too fast to melt the feta inside, so I think they might be much tastier cooked on an actual barbecue grill.


The next dish was one that reinforced my anxiety over trying new things at restaurants: Pastitsio.
My Big Fat Greek Restaurant described it as Greek lasagna, which didn't sound scary or remotely yucky. But they use cinnamon to season the meat, which reminded me of Skyline Chili - possibly the grossest thing I've ever eaten.
The new issue of Cook's Country features a recipe that looked like it could be yummy by omitting the cinnamon.
The sauce is really good and would work well on pasta without the bechamel.


It looked so good right out of the oven that Sean and I took a few bites of it. Turns out that was a very good thing because had I judged the flavor while eating it for dinner at work, I probably wouldn't have been impressed. Pastitsio does not reheat well in the microwave. The creamy pillow of bechamel became crumbly and dry. The taste is OK, but not as good as it was fresh.
This is often a problem for me as I must cook most of our dinners before I go to work and reheat it. Sometimes it works out great. Other times, yuck.
I'll give it another shot to see if having grabbed a piece before it was properly set was the problem.
Know of any microwave friendly meals or microwaving tips? I'm sick of the microwave sucking out all the moisture and flavor, leaving me with something reminiscent of the Griswold family Christmas turkey.
No thank you.

1 comments:

samantha said...

i don't know if you like that chili I make, but it is one of those recipes that only gets better with time. Very microwave friendly.
I also do fajitas and pretty much every dinner we make. I dislike any recipe that doesn't yield leftovers as I don't mind cooking but don't want to do it every day.