I went home this weekend and Meemah (my grandmother) bought be a cookbook! The book is called Pure Simple Cooking by Diana Henry. Just looking through the book got me very excited because so many of the recipes sound wonderful! The first recipe I made is as follows:
Greek Baked Chicken in Yogurt
4 large chicken breasts, skin removed
salt and pepper
olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
16 oz greek yogurt
2 large egss, beaten
2 tbsp all purpose flour
2 oz feta cheese, crumbled
2 tbsp chopped fresh dill
leaves from 2 to 3 mint sprigs, torn
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1. preheat the over to 350 degrees F. season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and quickly brown them in a couple of tbsp of olive oil over medium heat- you just want a good outside color, not to cook the chicken through. remove these and set aside. saute the onion in the same pan- ass a little more oil if needed- until soft and just turning golden.
2. combine yogurt, eggs, flour, feta, dill, mint, and garlic in a large bowl and mix well.
3. lay the onion and the chicken in the bottom of an overproof dish into which everything will fit snugly. spread the yogurt mixture evenly on top and sprinkle with parmesan.
4. bake for 45 minutes. the yogurt will have set, and the chicken should be cooked through.
This was a very interesting recipe to try. I love Greek food, so I was really excited to make some myself. First off, I used 4 oz of Feta, which I don’t believe made too much of a difference. The dish came out great. I will admit at first when I saw it I thought visually it looked gross. But when I and my friends dug in, it was surprisingly good! I am used to having Greek food with regular yogurt, not baked. The yogurt topping on the chicken gets a very interesting texture, which took me a few bites to get used to. Overall, I really enjoyed this dish and would make it again! As a side dish I made sauteed spinach which went great because spinach is used in a lot of Greek food!
CityCooker 