Eggplant "Keftedes"

Hello to my loyal readers (loyal enough to remember me, since yesterday was my first post in 11 months)-

My apologies for my absence, but I have been busy with some other things.  Notably, things like this traditional Greek-abandoned-train dance I'm demonstrating below.

In case you have been reading this blog and thinking, "Gosh, they keep posting these damn recipes I can make myself and ALL I WANT ARE SOME REVIEWS OF GREEK RESTAURANTS IN PARIS," I bring good news: L'Olivier, which I mentioned last year, has completely redone the interior and also has received a Michelin star.  Boo-ya-ka-sha.  

I have also found new exciting and not-too-stuffy Parisian places that we'll have to talk about another time, although those who know me will be stunned to learn that they're all rive droite (horror!).  But they're all reaaaaly fun and realllly good:

• Jaja 
• le taxi jaune--specialist in horse meat, which sadly my soon-to-be-30 diet prevented me from having (because who doesn't say "I'm going to be 30 in a year and therefore I will abstain from eating Mr. Ed?), but the fish and ratatouille were also awesome
• Autour d'un verre, which is really Brooklyn, except for (1) the menu that is only on the chalkboard (ChefKefi, RN editor note--please excuse my brother who has lived out of the country for a decade and does not realize that this is what EVERY restaurant in Brooklyn did four years ago/still does), (2) no one's speaking English, and (3)  THE WINE.  Amazing wines, all chosen by the waiters when you describe what you want.  And all the wines are 'new' French
• And, finally, Au Coin Bio, which is perfect for a Sunday brunch if you're walking through the Marais and want to eat at makeshift tables in an outdoor market

(ChefKefi, RN editor note: THANK THE LORD that now when people google "gluten-free pumpkin recipes with Parisian restaurant reviews, my blog will come up first!)

Ok, so onto the food. Keftedes are great Greek meatballs.  If you're Greek-American and a bit health conscious, however, you make them vegetarian. And if you're Greek-American, health-conscious and a bit creative, you bake them as a casserole rather than frying them. And then they look like this:

The 2nd full dish from the left.

They are a little labor intensive but so worth it. Best if made the night before so the flavor comes together.

JetSet Kef's Keftedes

 

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggplants
• 2.5 tomatoes
• 1 Red pepper
• 1 Green pepper
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp fresh basil or spearmint, finely chopped
• 2 sweet onions
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
• 150(ish)g good feta cheese
• 1c flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Assembly

1a (do in parallel with steps 1b and 1c). Peel the eggplant and soak in salted water for 30 mins. Grate or dice very finely.  Then you need to get all the water out of the eggplant.  This part is fundamentally not fun.  The best thing to do is put a few tablespoons of eggplant into a potato ricer at a time and squeeze all the water out.  (You can only do a few tablespoons at a time, though -- don't go crazy otherwise you won't get the water out.  And getting the water out of the eggplants and the tomatoes is one of the tricks here.)  By the way, if you don't have a potato ricer, get one.  Game changer.  Also if you don't have a potato ricer, you can squeeze the water out bit by bit with your hands (if you have 4 hours).

1b. Peel the tomatoes.  Then cut into quarters and squeeze them like lemons to get rid of the seeds and a lot of the water.  Then dice them. Now put a paper towel into into a sieve and put the tomatoes on top of them.  Add some salt to the tomatoes and let them sit for a least an hour while you're getting other things ready.  When it's done, the tomatoes should be much drier and should peel away from the paper towel pretty easily.

1c. Dice the peppers, onions, garlic and herbs. Everything should be nice and small otherwise you will be eating baked wannabe-ratatouille

2. Place the eggplant and the tomatoes into a large bowl and all the peppers, herbs, garlic, egg, vinegar, baking powder and salt and pepper. (NB: you only need red peppers to add some color to the final product ... otherwise it comes out a not-so-appetizing brown-ish grey.  If you really hate red peppers and you like brown food, feel free to skip them).  Stir gently; add the cheese and the flour.  Add the flour slowly -- you don't want these to get too floury.  As you add it, you can test the consistency by putting a bunch onto a teaspoon; if it slides off, it's too watery, and if it sticks, it's too dry.  You want it to be like thick honey:

Even JetSet Kef gets a sous chef sometimes--meet Khalid Kef!

3. Put all of this into an olive oiled baking pan and cook for 30+ minutes on 350.  Let it cool and serve.  You'll know it's done when there's not water cooking up on the sides anymore (another reason why you really need to get the water out of the tomato and the eggplant before you start cooking).  The cheese should have melted and it should be nicely warm all the way through.  It often takes a good 45+ minutes for me -- so just make sure to start monitoring it after 30 mins.

Read More

A Moveable Greek Feast

Paris. To some, the City of Lights. To me, the city of cheese, foie gras, charcuterie and … Greek food. 

Here’s a travel secret for you: Paris got Greeks. The problem is, when you think of the Greek restaurants in Paris, you probably think of either the omnipresent ‘Sandwich grec’ stalls that sell fantastic hangover cures (aka greasy street meat) or of men throwing plates at tourists in the Latin Quarter (on a street that a friend once affectionately coined ‘Bacteria Alley’).

Allow me to change your perception.

On a recent trip to Paris, I gathered together a group of Frenchies and hit L’Olivier Restaurant, just off Place de la République. Those who know me know that I don’t set a foot on the Right Bank if I don’t have to, but I am gastronomically bound to ChefKef and I wanted to avoid Paris’s most famous Left Bank Greek restaurant, Mavrommatis.

Mavrommatis is good by all standards, but also traditional and stuffy—not the kind of place that lends itself to an incredibly witty review published on prestigious pages like these. L’Olivier (‘the olive tree’), on the other hand, is small, young, hip and part of France’s ‘le fooding’ movement (once featured by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker). It’s the kind of place that avoids mousaka and octopus and instead favors what L’Olivier calls “inspirations from traditional cuisine." Plus, it allowed me to reference Adam Gopnik, which keeps Chef Kef happy.

In addition to all Greek-sourced oils and cheese, L'Olivier offers a 40€ 7-course chef’s tasting menu that looked like it might be good enough to change a life or two--but considering JetSet Kef’s upcoming 10-year high school reunion, the group decided to go in a different direction. In a display of sex-solidarity, the guys all chose the same appetizer and entrée, while the girls did the same. If this were the battle of the sexes from the local NY radio station I stream from my office in Dubai (shout out to Terry Donovan), the guys would definitely have won.

Round 1: an amuse-bouche for the table that was all about the cheese. A bit of sweet cheese between two pieces of toast with an AMAZING goat cheese mousse and a little bit of cream on the side. Imagine something sweet, tangy and light all at once--impossible to eat it in less than one mouthful, sadly. WINNER: TIE.

ROUND TWO: The girls’ appetizer, I must say wasn’t so exciting. Tiropitta (cheese pies) with honey. Sure, it tasted good – excellent fresh feta from Epirus and a great honey from somewhere in Crete – but not something JetSet Kef needs to take a 6-hour flight to eat. Delicious, yes; exciting, no. Basically – exactly what I was trying to avoid.

… Which is why I was so happy about MY appetizer. Pumpkin velouté with Greek yoghurt.

Let me tell you – if the Greeks get one thing right (it’s certainly not international finance), it’s seasonal dishes. Thick soup with a pumpkin purée base, with a tablespoon of Greek yoghurt right in the middle to offset the sweet of the pumpkin and the consistency of the soup. And to make it perfect? A little mousse from the left over pumpkin on the side. Divine.  

WINNER: BOYS

ROUND THREE: THE MAIN COURSE. The girls ordered a sea bream over a croustillant of chic peas, herbs and a hint of spinach. Everything about this was technically well done: the fish was cooked just right, the croustillant was cooked just the right amount, but here’s the problem: sea bream is a boring fish and chic peas are a bit boring as well. I mean, the first few bites you think to yourself “Wow, this is nice!” but by bite number four your tastebuds are already thinking about how much more stimulating the appetizer was. (Especially if you had the tyropitta first. Sorry, girls, bad pairing.)  

The picture speaks a thousand words here: it looks nice, but even the plating is a bit dull.

The boys' dinner, on the other hand, was AWESOME. Leg of lamb, barley mixed with greens and a bit of Greek yoghurt. Ba-bam. The lamb was incredibly fresh and tender, cooked to just the right level (clearly more than rare but not quite medium rare) and seasoned perfectly. The barley-greens combination totally did it for me, especially as the little bit of olive oil in it, coupled with the excess lamb juice on the plate, made every bite hearty and delicious. The sweet tangy – and even thicker than usual – yoghurt at the end rounded off the course perfectly.

ROUND FOUR: DESSERT. Now, before I tell you about this course—I need you to know that anything yoghurt sends the powers of the Holy Spirit right through me and I instantly begin speaking in tongues. True story. So get ready for this: three kinds of yoghurt. 

One regular yoghurt mixed with a little bit of honey. One ‘oreo cookie’ of yoghurt: two barely sweet wafers, with cold yoghurt and some citrus – mostly orange, but with a hint of lemon too – compote inside. And then frozen yoghurt: no, silly American – not in a cone, but literally, yogurt shaped into a ball and then kept in the freezer – served with a little bit of cinnamon for dipping. As if that weren’t enough, the server instructed us that the frozen one was to be eaten ‘with our hands.’ We follow instructions well.

Read More