#blog12daysxmas Day 6 Μπριζόλες χοιρινές

Or in other words Greek pork chops. I love Greek grilled meat: souvlakia, chops,  meatballs. Usually I just prepare the meat by flinging it in some olive oil and oregano, maybe some garlic too. It sits for a while and it goes on the grill.

However, this year for Christmas someone gave me some Creaming Seeds Spice Co. Greek Seasoning. This consists of oregano, rosemary, garlic, sea salt, black peppercorns, onion, marjoram and lemon myrtle. So the flavour is a bit more complicated than my normal Greek grills. 

I tried it out with some pork chops and the result was delicious. I ate mine with salad and potatoes and ate the remainder cold for lunch over the next few days.

Ingredients

4 pork chops

2 tsp Greek seasoning

Olive oil

Mode

Sprinkle chops with Greek seasoning and splash on some olive oil

Leave to marinate for 15-20 minutes (or longer)

Heat the grill

Place the chops on the grill

Baste with the marinade

Grill both sides until cooked basting with the marinade from time to time

Enjoy with salad and potatoes

#blog12daysxmas Day 5 Vera's shortbread

This year was our second Christmas after my mother's death and just before Christmas I suddenly thought it would be nice to cook the shortbread she had always made and give some to my siblings.  

In the weeks leading up to Christmas every year my mother's kitchen was always a frenzy as she churned out Christmas cakes, mince tarts and shortbread for the three of us and our workplaces and friends and relatives. 

I was using her recipe which she had written down years ago when she had an old gas oven with no thermostat and her recipe didn't include many details such as how long the shortbread needed to be cooked. The critical things were the ingredients as she knew exactly what she was doing and how long it would take. 

I had made the recipe before, both with my mother and also by myself, but as I pondered how to write out enough details for someone else to understand the recipe so that I could blog it, I also fell to wondering if, as I thought I remembered, it had been her mother's recipe. I certainly remembered eating my grandmother's version of the shortbread.  Or it had been passed from even further back in the family?

Who would know? There was really only one place I could look. I have in my possession part of a hand-written recipe book that belonged to my grandmother's aunt, Lucy Agnes Collie. Would she have cooked shortbread using the same recipe and, more importantly, would it be in the part of her recipe book that survived?

Indeed the recipe was in Auntie Luce's recipe book and giving more detail than my mother's recipe did. But the interesting thing about the recipe was the name: "Vera's Shortbread". So it had not come down from generations ago but was a recipe from a generation after Auntie Luce from her niece Vera. Vera Hall was my maternal grandmother's sister. I am sure that my grandmother had also cooked this same shortbread as I remember having it. But she must have got it from her sister. So it was a recipe shared around the family at that time and like many others handwritten out in their recipe books.

I am sure the story is mainly of interest to the family, but I made a couple of batches of shortbread and how to make it came back to me once I started! I enjoyed making it and exploring its origins. You too can make "Vera's Shortbread" if you wish.

Ingredients

4 oz caster sugar

8 oz butter

14 oz plain flour 

Mode

Pre-heat oven to 150c

Cream the sugar and butter

Fold in the flour gradually

Butter baking tray

Turn out mixture onto floured surface

Roll like a roly-poly

Cut slices about 1/2 inches

Place leaving space between on the buttered tray

Press fork into surface to decorate

Cook in oven until just starting to change colour (15-20 minutes)

They should still be soft but will harden while cooling

Remove from oven and place to cool on wire racks

Lemon and orange chicken

Last week when with the help of a friend I was cleaning out and sorting a high kitchen cupboard where I store preserves I discovered I had a jar with some syrup from a jar of Stephanie's Spiced Oranges.  I have used it in the past for basting roast chicken and talked of doing that again.  However, this time I chose to cook some chicken Maryland individual pieces rather than a whole chicken.  And the result was delicious!

Ingredients

2 portions of chicken Maryland
1 dessertspoon citron salt
6 dessertspoons of spiced oranges syrup


Mode

Preheat oven to 210c.
Arrange the chicken in a baking dish
Sprinkle with citron salt
Roast for 30 minutes
Remove the chicken from the oven and spoon over the spiced orange syrup
Return to oven and roast for another 20 minutes.