Fried Perch Fillet With Chickpeas And Spinach

This dish should be the picture front for the definition of light dinner. It’s subtle, light, flavorsome, super easy to make and a nice sight on the table. I used perch for this dish because I had it in the fridge, but feel free to substitute it with any fish at your convenience, be it fattier or not -  the side dish packs enough lemony, tangy taste to overcompensate for some salmon, for example.

The amount you use totally depends on how many people you plan on cooking for. For the side dish: chickpeas (for 4 portions I used around 100-130 grams of beans), 1 fennel bulb, 2-3 garlic cloves, lemon, 100 grams of baby spinach leaves, 1 chili, 1 tbs of sugar, salt, pepper, olive oil.

Boil the chickpeas, it helps if you keep it in water the night before. Remove the beans from water and put them aside. Slice the fennel, dice the garlic, slice the chili and pop them all in pan with some hot olive oil, cook on medium heat until the fennel softens. Add the chickpeas, sugar, salt, pepper and mix well to make sure the beans get coated in melting sugar. Add the juice of 1 lemon and, again, mix all the ingredients together, cook until all the liquid from the citrus has almost evaporated. You can now choose to mix the spinach leaves for a minute with the chickpeas still on the heat, thus mellowing the greens, or just mix them off the heat, keeping them crunchy (I prefer it that way). Sprinkle some more olive oil and lemon juice to the side dish if you feel the need to. 

To prepare the fish, just fry in it a pan with a couple tbs. of olive oil until cooked (the time depends on the type of fish and its thickness). Sprinkle some salt and pepper and place the fish on top of the chickpeas.  

Enjoy,

Parsnip Soup

Winter is coming! And not only in Game of thrones, but also in real life. You know, real life, that kind of stuff you read posts about on Facebook. Anyway, with summer fading away so did our beautiful vacation in Thassos (if you haven’t read about it you should. It’s illegal not to. Where, you ask? In your country, go figure), and so I decided to bring a touch of autumn in the YOUVEGOTMEAL! kitchen with this parsnip soup. 

You can find many varieties of this dish in the great world of Google, but, in case you didn’t know this about me, I tend to get lazy sometimes… maybe a lot. So I just clicked the 1st search result which was a Jamie Oliver variation of this soup.

I liked what I read, and, with a few changes from the Naked Chef, things went like this, ingredients wise:

• 1 big onion                                            
• 4-5 cloves of garlic (use a sweeter variety if you can)
• 1 piece of ginger, thumb size
• About 750 grams of parsnip, cleaned
• A couple of bacon strips
• 1 red or orange chilli (optional)
• 750 grams of milk
• About 1 l of vegetable stock
• Nutmeg, turmeric, cumin, green pepper and salt
• Olive oil 

The beautiful thing about a cream soup is that you don’t really have to bother to chop your veggies finely and this is not an exception. Chop everything roughly, anyway you feel like it. Heat up the oil and pop in the onion, garlic, ginger and spices. Gently fry the onion on a medium low heat until it softens. Add the parsnip and coat it in the aromatic onion-garlic mix. Add the liquids and cook the vegetables on medium heat until the parsnip softens. To test it just try and put a toothpick through it, if it goes in easily you have a winner. Remove from the stove and blitz the soup. Taste for more salt and pepper.

You can serve it like this, but for a more elaborate approach finely slice your chili, fry a strip of bacon, break a couple of parsley leaves (or coriander) and sprinkle that on top. I have nothing but love for you veggie lovers out there, but I can’t just say no to bacon. It just makes things better, like wine, you just need to know when to stop.

Enjoy,

Oven Baked River Trout With Peas, Carrots And Yoghurt Sauce

This recipe is an incredibly easy one to make and prepare as it uses some very interesting ingredients that you just mix together for delicious results. It doesn’t take much time and you can prepare the side-dish and the sauce while the fish is cooking, making this a life saver when you’re  short on time.

• For 2 fish, about 250 grams each, I used 
• 1 lemon, cut into slices, 
• some thyme branches, 
• salt, pepper and olive oil. 

Clean and gut the fish, then place inside it some lemon slices and thyme branches. Place the trout in an oven tray with some ovenproof paper and sprinkle on top of the fish salt, pepper and olive oil. Let the fish cook on high heat for around 12 minutes.

The sauce really elevates this whole dish and it’s ridiculously easy to make. You’re going to need about 300 grams of creamy yoghurt (I used a combination of cow, sheep and buffalo cow with 10% fat), 3 cloves of garlic, crushed, 3 tbs of chopped mint, 3-4 small radishes, sliced thinly, salt, pepper and olive oil. Mix all the ingredients together and leave the sauce in the fridge.

For the peas and carrots I have to admit that I cheated and bought a can of pre-boiled veggies. That only needed one minute to heat up in a pan with some olive oil, no other fuss required.

Enjoy,

Thassos, Greece- Day 7

We have reached our last day in Thassos and I feel sad even when I am writing this, is like my vacation being over all over again.

This will be a pretty short post, because we went to Thassos City, Limenas for the second time, to be done with the shopping.

We did have  a lot more time to visit it than the previous time, so we started with shopping and then walked around and had some early dinner.

We bought some other gifts and mor of the stuff we previously liked a lot, like pine and orange honey, dried olives and some fig candy.

We relaxed a bit on a pier, also looking for a restaurant, then decided to visit the old theatre. You are supposed to climb a lot of stairs to reach it and it was pretty exhausting.

Unfortunately, on our way, we discovered a sign, saying the that the theatre could not be visited because it was being restored. Ironic, but we kept climbing hoping we would still get to see something.

We got a pretty nice view, but that was it. No ruins, no old theatre, just some heavy machines and some stay-out-signs. :)

So we got back and went to look a restaurant that we read about on most reviews about Limenas, Muses.

It turned out the restaurant was really ok, the food was good and the service, as usual, really ok.

This was the view from the tavern. The atmosphere is greek, the decor is very traditional and you have the sea so close to you. You can find Muses (or Mouses) right next to the harbour, where you take the ferry.

We had some traditional oven baked Greek meatballs with tomato sauce and a salad with peaches and sesame.

The complimentary dessert was delicious, a gorgeous chocolate cake.

By now, everything got sad. The next day, we woke up, took all our bags out and waited for a bus to take us to the ferry.

I hope you enjoyed reading our daily vacation stories, I hope you find them usefull, I do encourage everybody to visit Thassos, it was so much fun and relaxing.

Goodbye Greece....