Greek Cookery Class - 3 daytime classes Jan/Feb with Giouvetsi, Dolmades and Spanakopitta! Also Greekfoodlovers' Vegan Supperclub 2 March TO: 1 recipient BCC: You Show Details Message Body Dear friends and Greek food lovers, Greek Cookery Class runs another three-week course daytime, this time, on 23 Jan, 30 Jan and 6 Feb) with three full days of cooking and eating. Details are under Daytime Jan/Feb Greek Cookery Class Course below. Then we have a Greekfoodlovers' all vegan Supperclub on Friday 2 March, scroll down to that section if you're only interested in the dinner event. You can sign up for all/any of the events, just email back with your name to arrange for your booking on greekcookeryclass(AT)gmail.com Finally, there will be a semi-supperclub and semi food and wine tasting event in Feb, I just need to have the date confirmed. Daytime Jan/Feb Greek Cookery Class Course: In these 3 sessions on 3 Mondays in a row you'll learn how to cook three very popular dishes in Greek cuisine plus a lot of side dishes. Each session will last between 4-4,5 hours and be held between 12 noon - 4pm. We'll cook together and then have a meal together with the food we've made before each participant gets to take a portion home. The course will run on these Mondays: 23 Jan, 30 Jan and 6 February 2012. Each class will feature a main dish: Giouvetsi or kritharaki as it's also called (the rice shaped pasta cooked in tomato sauce with meat), Dolmades the stuffed vine leaves and finally at the last session you'll learn how to make Spanakopitta. The classes are hands-on and you'll get to learn the skills for cooking these classic Greek dishes that so many of you love and what ingredients to use to make each dish a success! Apart from the mains we'll also be doing a few different Greek sides/meze and salads in every class to pair with every main to create a meal and there will be other goodies to try out during the class as well, and dessert if you behave :) The cost for the full course is £195 per person for all three sessions. All ingredients, 4hr tuition, tastings and meal are included plus a doggy bag to bring some food home after every class. To book contact me via email to arrange payment for your space/s. The 3 week course can be given as a present as well. If you wish to attend one or two out of the three sessions the price will be £80/class, remember each class lasts for about 4 to 4,5 hours (eating included). Greekfoodlovers' all vegan Supperclub Fri 2 March 2012 menu, 7pm : The Supperclub is where I'll be cooking all the food and you'll be sitting down eating a feast of Greek vegan mezedes and Gigantes among other Greek delicacies. This is for meat eaters as well, don't be worried by the "vegan" label. A lot of Greek dishes are traditionally vegetarian and vegan as Greek Cuisine uses vegetables and pulses in cooking. We'll start at 7pm and finish the dinner at about 9:45pm when you can continue your Friday night around Shoreditch's many bars and clubs, if you please. So if you want to spend an evening with authentic Greek food and good company, this is the place where you can eat and socialize around the same table! The cost for the supperclub is £45 per person and you get all of the following on your plates: Meze for Starters: Fava Dolmades Aubergine dip Pereski (pontic Greek dish, potato and onion filling baked in fyllo pastry) Home-baked bread Kalamata Olives Main: Gigantes - butter beans served with Crispy fried courgette and a salad Desserts: Baklava and more sweet Greek surprises Portions are Greek and generous, all dishes are home made. BYOB! Only extra virgin olive oil is used, no margarines or other substitute fats!! Limited spaces so if you want to book for your party or just yourself, get in touch soon to arrange for your payment. Let me know of any food allergy upon booking, but at least 5 days in advance in order to arrange for an alternative. The menu is mostly gluten free as well, only the bread and the pereski contain gluten and the baklava, but alternative options can be catered for if necessary. Also the vegan menu is open to meat eaters and vegetarians, it's just a meal without animal products!! The course and the supperclub are held close to Liverpool Street/Old Street stations. Location details only to paying customers and closer to the date of each event. Pre-payment only. The course and the supperclub are informal, good fun and you get to meet people who share the love of food and cooking/eating together. To sign up, email me back with your name and anyone else you'd like to sign up on the email below. But it's absolutely fine to just book yourself in, as many people do join the events on their own! greekcookeryclass(AT)gmail.com First come first served, so please book early to avoid disappointment!! I also offer personalised gift vouchers if you want to give the class/course/supperclub as a present to your loved ones. For pictures and info and to get a feel of what we're up to visit us to see our previous 50++ classes and Greek Supper Clubs on: www.facebook.com/GreekCookery and check under photos or visit the http://greekcookeryclass.wordpress.com Looking forward to cooking together some of the best Greek food in London. Press and testimonials: Your chef Elisavet, devoted to Greek food, has received much acclaim for her traditional home-cooking style. Elisavet's food has been served at Riverside Studios in London for a Greek festival and she has been featured in Red Magazine (June 2010), Foodepedia and ITV’s Britain’s Best Dish where Michelin starred chef John Burton Race said her lagana bread is "absolutely first class" and the prawn dish she cooked live on ITV was "cooked to perfection!" Also Eating East has given her food and supper club 4**** stars out of 5 in their review: http://www.eatingeast.co.uk/2010/09/22/greek-foodlovers-supper-club-2/ Elle Decoration magazine (September 2011) recommends Greek Cookery Classes as the authentic Greek cuisine experience and Business Traveller US magazine lists both her Greek Supper Club and Greek Cookery Class among London's top alternative dining places. Elisavet is also the first cook to teach Greek Cooking lessons at Divertimenti Cookery and Leith's Cookery Schools in London and recently her piece on Greek food in Greece was published in The Guardian. Private events can be arranged as well, for your work, family and/or friends. Get in touch for separate dates and prices for bringing the Greek Supperclub or cooking class experience to your home or bringing your party to us, or hiring the chef for your private dinner party. Catering is another service offered for your special occasions or office meetings and gatherings. A thank you to Total Greek Yoghurt and Kenwood for sponsoring with their products. If you wish to unsubscribe or if you've been added to the Greek Cookery Class and Supper Club mailing list incorrectly, please email back so your e-address can be removed from the mail-out. --- Elisavet Reply to: Reply to Greek Cookery Class Send

Fortunately, using it on a sunny Spring morning like yesterday was a treat and it seemed to me that quite a lot of people were there. I bumped into two old friends and went to all my favourite stalls, as well as discovering a new one. On the list of unmissable things are always the bakery stall and Eadles for yummy chickens and meaty pork sausages. Apparently we’re not allowed to call anything a Cumberland sausage now unless it’s made in Cumberland, so I will describe these as a Cumberland-style ¬sausage, solid and lean. Do Yorkshire puddings also have to be made in Yorkshire? What about Irish stews? Dundee cakes? Bath buns? And Jerusalem artichokes? I also bought, on impulse, some lamb’s kidneys, which can be grilled, fried or put in a stew. The stall selling smoked trout is another one I stop at automatically. No need to nibble their tasters - I know their products are delicious.

When did you last taste an apple pie or pudding that was really good? One that made you think, gosh, so that’s why people went to all that trouble planting orchards all over the place. Chances are, it was a frozen strudel and you bought it in a box.

You will find this recipe fun to do, in fact all the ingredients are available at your local Co-op or Waitrose. Adults Kitchen - Handy tip: Lamb Kofte Tagine Ingredients: 750g lamb mince 1 onion , grated 1 red chilli , finely chopped 1 tsp ground cumin 2 cloves , ground coriander leaves from a large bunch 1 egg olive oil 2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes or tinned cherry tomatoes 400ml chicken stock 1 cinnamon stick Spice paste a large chunk root ginger , roughly chopped 1 onion , roughly chopped 2 garlic cloves , roughly chopped 1 tsp ground cumin 2 tsp paprika coriander roots from a large bunch a couple of pinches chilli powder

A recipe from Abigail Rose at Headington's Blackboy gastro pub Adults Kitchen - Handy tip: As well as being one of the most unintentionally amusing-sounding things you can do to a foodstuff, spatchcocking is a very good way of making meat easy to portion and quicker to cook. It's also not nearly as complicated as you might have been led to believe.

TEA drinking in many households is an obsession, and getting a good cup sets people up for the rest of the day. Everyone drinks tea from Wallace and Gromit to the Prime Minister. The trouble is the art of making a good cup of tea is sadly being lost, as the number of American coffee bars has increased. This is a pity for those of us leading stressful lives, since sitting down in a comfortable chair with a fine cup of tea, a good book and biscuits is an excellent way to relax, as Poirot would say, ‘it helps those little grey cells.’

A few weeks ago, such a fluke happened to me; I went to stay with an old friend and discovered that behind his house was a neglected orchard in which three ancient pear trees were laden with fruit. The apple and plum trees had long ago fallen into decay, but pear trees can live and go on producing fruit for up to two hundred years. These venerable trees, overgrown, unpruned, and unruly, were weighted down with their bronze treasure, and more of it lay all around in the long grass. The pears were oddities by modern standards, funny shapes and sizes, but absolutely scrumptious.

A Google search says that there are 2,860,000 recipes for pumpkin on the internet alone. OK, so 2,000,000 of them are variations on pumpkin pie. That still leaves 860,000 ways to eat your Halloween pumpkin. Imagine that all those noughts are round, amber-coloured pumpkins, and beautiful gigantic vegetables like globes of sunshine captured to brighten up our autumn. Beginning to feel hungry?

For recipe suggestion Everybody with a garden should have a currant bush in it somewhere. Currants, which are at the peak of their season now, in early August, are ridiculously easy to grow, packed with flavour and vitamin C, and have no thorns or bad habits. All they need is a little space and a reasonable amount of sun. They don’t need a trellis, they don’t need to be pruned carefully, you don’t have to water them once they are established, and they don’t get too big.

Plums are part of the British culture, woven into nursery rhymes, proverbs, and folklore. We speak of a plum job, and a “plummy” voice”. Little Jack Horner pulled out a plum, because Christmas pudding was originally made with plums (not raisins or sultanas). And where would the Nutcracker be without the Sugar Plum Fairy?