plate 31: greece

Lamb, lemons, feta, filo ... lots and lots of filo ... It was AJ's birthday last week and Greek is probably one of his most favourite cuisines. Being a massive ancient history buff, he's been to Greece twice so he knows a fair bit about the food, too. Needless to say I was a little bit nervous cooking a Greek meal for him. What was scarier still was that it actually turned out to be big fat Greek feast: I wasn't only cooking for him, but I was also feeding his mum, dad, grandma, sister, almost-brother-in-law and two friends. I had to pull out all the stops.

The first course was easy to settle on: spanakopita. Spinach, feta and herbs cooked between layers of golden, crispy filo. It was also easy to make and, as you can imagine, very very easy to eat. Spinach and cheese anything is a winner in my book, and apparently in everyone else's books, too - everyone went back for seconds.

I knew the main would involve some kind of lamb and my original plan was to get a whole animal and roast it on a spit in the backyard. Hiring the spit proved a little too costly, but AJ's work mate Michael, who's Greek, came to the rescue and kindly told us about a recipe his family loves: lamb kleftiko. The history of the dish is almost as wonderful as its taste - almost. The name is derived from the Klefts - the Greeks who became rebels living in the mountains when they fought against the Turks in the 1800s - who would cook lamb for hours in a hole in the ground to conceal the smell and steam so their position wouldn't be given away. The modern hole in the ground is sheets of baking paper that you wrap the lamb in, which locks in the juices of the meat, making it unbelievably tender.

To prepare, all you need to do is brown off a shoulder of lamb in a frying pan, then place it on the paper in a roasting tray, stud it with lots of garlic, sprinkle over rosemary or oregano, pour over fresh lemon juice, season with salt and pepper (lesson learned from last week) then douse with olive oil and wrap over the paper to enclose it. The parcel goes in the oven and all you need is about 40 minutes to cook it. There was one bad bit: the half an hour resting time after it came out of the oven. It was torturous - all we wanted to do was rip open the paper to reveal the magic, but we were patient and it was worth it. It carved like a dream, the taste was incredible and the meat was moist and juicy.

The kleftiko's plate partner was, of course, Greek salad. If I do say so myself this was the best-looking Greek salad I'd ever seen. The colours were so vibrant and instead of crumbling the feta through it, I did as the Greeks do - just turned the feta out of the packet and plonked it on top. This makes it easy, sure, but the presentation is awesome. Ta da! See what I mean?

Friend Sal - who I must give credit to for at times being Chief Researcher for Destination Degustation - suggested the dessert this week: galaktoboureko, which is sweet milk custard baked in filo pastry. I was going to try this recipe, but decided to go with the one from Michael's yia yia's (Greek for grandma) 1970s cookbook: Cooking from Cyprus by Nearchos Nicolaou. By now you'll probably know I'm a dessert fiend, so I was mighty upset when this didn't turn out. Making the custard was relatively easily, assembling the filo caused me no problems and making the clove and lemon infused syrup didn't seem to trouble me either. But the end product was, sadly, a sloppy mess. (This pic isn't of the end result, but it's close to it!)

You should be able to cut this into pieces and serve, but all we could do was spoon it from the baking dish and serve bowls of runny, lemony custard. Taste-wise it wasn't altogether a distaster, but it certainly wasn't how it should have been. I believe I may have had to let it cool down quite a bit to set a little before cutting, but doing this 24 hours later proved it still wasn't as firm as it should've been. Thankfully AJ's sister Serena made a supreme white chocolate cake with white chocolate and cream cheese frosting that was brilliant. Lucky, because no meal is complete without dessert.