Greece

Greece is the land that makes some sweets that will leave you melted on the floor in extacy with your salivary glands causing a stream of drool to dribble out of your mouth creating a pool on the ground(but maybe that's just me). While I was there I found myself obsessed and searching for the recipe for melomakarona (their Christmas cookies) for over a year.  Much of the cuisine is meat based so i didn't lean so much directly. Once in a while a friend would bring some leftovers from their grandmas that was vegitarian, and WOW! some of them grandmas can cook. So I got some recipies second hand about a couple of things but never got to see the real deal.

Melomakarona: Do you know what it took me to get this recipie??? Hun? Do you!!?? I first tried these cookies in Crete and amazed and went arround asking for someone who could get me the recipie. One normaly reliable friend promied to ask her mom for it. She never came through, so i found another person who promised to get me the recipie but i was leaving so i gave her my email, left and never heard a word. One year later I found myself in Cyprus which is kind of like being in Crete. It was Chrismas again and I rediscovered these wonderfull cookies. I asked a friend who's aunt had made the cookies to give me the recipie for my birthday... she never showed up, so i asked her older more responsible sister, however she too failed to come through. Summer was comming arround so I left cyprus distrut with out the recipie, but with my eyes set on returning to Crete, so i still had hope. Two weeks later I was in Crete hunting down the recipe. I met up with a friend who said her grandma made wicked Melomkarona. So I pestered her for about a week strait but she said that it would take hours to get from her on the phone. But she brought a old Greek cook book... however it was written in...not modern greek, not anciant Greek, but middle greek. At this point I was starting to feel like there was a conspericy against me, maby the agency was in on this. Where the measuements were not in grams and kilograms but in drams and another measurement i don't remember the name of. It took another day or two to find out what the modern equivilents of these measuements were. I bought all of the ingreedients which included beer and orange juice which made me a little bit werary of the recipie. That night I was preparing to cook the cookies at a friends house. My friends roomate said her mom makes the cookies and she could call her to get a second recipie to dobble check the middle greek one. The recipie she came up wtih didn't include beer. I tryed it out and it was a sucsess. So here it is... Ingredients: Cookie dough - 9 C Flower - 3 C Oil - 1/2 Orange Juice - 1/2 C sugar - 1/2 C Koniak - 2 t spoons baking powder - 1 t baking soda - 1 t soda - 1 t chinamon - 1 t clove - crushed wallnuts Surip 1 C sugar 1 C honey 1 C water -Mix the wet and dry ingreedents seperately, setting the wallnuts aside. Then mix all of them together. -Make the dough into elptical shapes and bake at arround 375 f untill they brown. -Let cool. -Mix surip ingreedients and bring to a boil in a sauce pan for 5 min. -Drop the cookies into the surip for 10-30 seconds so they absorb some of the surip. -Sprinkle crushed wallnut over the top. -Thees cookies are quite hard just after you make them. After a day or two they soften up and are perfect.

Baklava: mmmmmmm baklava sweet, gooey, rich, chewy, easy to spend all the circus money on these tasty morsels!  So HIGHLY addictive you may end up staying in Greece or Turkey forever (like F.U.N.).  This stuff will take you to outer space lickity split mmmmmmmmmm...  I usually buy one for all my friends and then end up eating ALL of those sweet, succulent bits before I see any them.  We highly suggest going to the Greek island of Crete and heading straight for the city of Hania and hitting the zaharoplasteio (greek pastry shop.)  You betta' get some and get some quick!!!! Ingredients Baklava - 200 grams Almonds, or wlanuts, or pastacios - 150 grams butter - 15 grams cinamin and clove - 1.3 kg filo dough Syrup - 200 grams honey - 300 grams sugar - 200 grams water - aroma (rose water) -Heat almonds in water, dry in a towel and crush with cinamon and clove. -Brush bottom of pan with butter, place two filo ontop brush with butter. -Put on a layer of almond mixture -Then another filo brush with butter. -Continue layering untill you finish off the almond mixture -For the final layer put 3 filo brush with butter. -With a sharp knig. Cut into pieces but don't cut into the last filo sheet on the bottom of pan.  -Bake at medium for 1 1/2 hours -let cool -when almost cold poor in surip

Ralaktompoureko:When asking arround for recipies I would always ask what is your favorite. Overwhelmingly their response was for this. It is also my favorite... but I haven't been able to duplicate the quality of the better zaharoplasteios yet. Ingrediants Cream - 1.3 Kg Milk - 35 grams semolia - 6 eggs - 60-75 grams butter - vinilla or lemon or orange zest - 18-20 sheets filo - 3-4 T rose water Surip 300 grams sugar 600 grams water (2-3 cups coniak) if desired - Bring milk to a boil in a sauce pan - At the same time, in another sauce pan, cook suger eggs vannila 2 handfulls of semolina - When milk boils add to sugar, slowly making sure to avoid getting lumps by adding just a little milk at a time, and adding the rest of semolina. - Bring to a boil and stirring untill smooth. - Place 8-10 sheets of filo in pan brushing each with butter - Poor most of the cream ontop. - Put all excpt one of the remaining filo on top - Put on the rest of the cream to make the filo wet - Put last filo on top and brush with butter - Cut dimond shaps just into filo, not into the cream. - Bake 40-45 min - Before finished poor surip in corner and finish cooking