Focaccia in Spiral Shape

Spiral Focaccia, this very delicious Italian bread does not stop surprising us with its shapes, textures and flavors. Here it is stuffed with a spicy red sauce and adorned with juicy and tasty cherry olives and tomatoes, which end up on the Fokacha Strip.
Really beautiful, crisp exterior but with soft bread crumbs spicy stuffing.
An irresistible appetizer of flavor. This Fokacha is a really perfect recipe.

A tribute to Italy and to all the people who live there. And of course to everyone in all the rest of the world to stay safe, to stay at home!

work: 1h:30′

time: 12h:00′

medium:

Lemon & Lime Marmalade-DIY

Lemons and limes combine to create a fantastic flavor and a beautiful color and clarity to marmalade to the stretch onto our bread and biscuits or use it in other sweet concoctions in our Kitchen, as cakes, tartes, tortes, refrigerator sweets, sweet pies etc… At the time when lemons are in abundance we make and fill jams with lemon marmalade, where many of these become gifts for friends.
Lemons, high in pectin and acid, make a great marmalade although the actual flavor of fruit and its color varies.
We use only three ingredients to make this marmalade. Lemons, sugar and water. Without having to add pectin or other perfumes. Although the recipe is simple, it takes time to carry out, but the end result is worth it!
Yours!

work: 2h:00′

time: 1 ημέρα

easy:

Black Grape Spoon Sweet

Spoon sweet of black grape, with very special blue-purple shades, deliciously tasty and very aromatic with the addition of spices, star anise and cardamom, which make the syrup sweet.
The ATTICA grape variety is a black, non-seed variety of table grapes, with a long-grained sapless berry, maturing at the end of July or early August. The grape itself is one of the most delicious edible grapes without seeds.
At the end of the article there are detailed instructions for sterilization and preserving products whose lifetime we want to prolong and to ensure that they will not be altered.
Follow them!

work: 30′

time: 24h:00′

easy:

Peach Compote & Jelly

This year our peach production was small. Some of these we enjoyed fresh and cool and some were made compote to keep them as long as we can and have them for various pastry preparations I had in my mind.
Basically the story behind this compote recipe was to make an ethereal blancmange (from the French blanc-manger). In retrospect, I realized the huge range of sweets, where we can use our hot or cold compotes. From the simplest dessert, such as on a velvety cream or yogurt, to something more complex, such as on or inside a fridge cake.
Today's suggestion is peach compote and jelly. Once the fruits have been prepared and made compote to become jelly it was the simplest dessert we could make and enjoy.
Yours!

work: 10′

time: 15′

very easy:

Aromatic Pickled Caper

We meet the plants of Caper to grow freely in nature. It is a magical plant that grows in places full of sunshine and hot to very hot summers and in very poor soils almost without water. But it insists on being and giving its little flowers -her immature buds- to become the Golden Apple of Discord among humans, birds and ants.
In order to make pickles, we collect, with respect to the plant, its flowers when they are small before they are blooming, its tender leaves and its fruits, and those small, tender, crisp, which are created after the flower is fertilized & inside there are the seeds of the plant.
Yours!

work: 1h:00′

time: 2h:30′

very easy:

Picking & Drying of Fresh Oregano-DIY

Oregano.
Ladies & Gentlemen, the Greater Oregano!
Native, perennial aromatic plant, medicinal, industrial, excellent flavor, and great bee-keeping plant, known since antiquity. Who knows if it is fresh and blooming, how many have collected and dried it, how many we use it, or how much it is unknown?
Rhetorical inquiries about the oregano in order to make an effort to approach the matter and see how we can harvest, drain or even cultivate -why not- our own oregano, not least the Greek village tomato salad with feta cheese and Oregano is our gourmet ambassador around the world!
And here I am going to tell you a secret… if you are near mountains, hills, and slopes go out and meet her. If you are urban, you can not have a balcony, a sunny window will be there, then cultivate your oregano and then everything else that smells like a oregano will never be yours anymore!
Its therapeutic properties, look for them and you will find, here today we learn to gather, dry it, scrub it to show its aromas and to put it in jars to taste our food and our mood!
Yours!

work: 1h:00′

time: 1 εβδομάδα

very easy:

Vine Leaves Maintenance 2-DIY

In an earlier post we saw a dry way of Vine Leaves Maintenance. Today Kitchen Stories suggests another way to boil the leaves and then freeze them.
The season of fresh leaves is in May and June, depending on which area we are talking about. Find and cut your own fresh spring vine leaves, the first ones that Greek vineyards make or buy ready-made cuts from your neighborhood and prepare them to get into your cupboards so you can use them at any time. And do not forget the best leaves are gathered when they are still tender only by the climates of the Sultanina variety or Debina variety.
The suggested method is simple and very easy. Packaged this way, they will keep perfectly in your freezer. Yours!

work: 45′

time: 45′

very easy:

Homemade Mandarin Liqueur-DIY

Fine fragrances, delicate flavors, yellow color and very easy to prepare in the house, without effort or particular difficulties. Allow time to work -it needs time to get ripe- to become a digestible aromatic liqueur with extracts of mandarin and clove.
Ripe fresh tangerines -winter is their season- organic farming with vibrant, juicy flesh, which will give the liqueur the necessary ingredients to make delicious tasty with subtle notes of alcohol.
Serve as an aperitif before a meal or as a digestif after a sumptuous meal!
Cheers!

work: 15′

time: 1 μήνας

very easy:

Flavored Extracts-DIY

Flavored vanilla, mint and citrus extract.
So cute, both practically & as welcome gifts for friends and relatives for Cooking, Pastry & Cocktails. We can we make them from time to time, they are so easy and we use them so often in our Kitchen!
Make a series of transparent bottles or jars of various shapes and decorate your kitchen shelves. I find it beautiful and create pleasant mood.
Extraction is a natural process by which a substance is transferred from a first ingredient in a liquid solvent. Extracts are made the same way from many other ingredients such as: Coffee, Chocolate, Mint, Lime, Rosemary, coconut, almond, bitter almond, various Berries etc. Choose whatever you like.
Yours!

work: 15′

time: 15′

very easy:

Dough for Everything DIY-Pizza

Miracle dough for everything: How we make a unique dough, which we can use to make pizzas, calzone, peinirli, breads, focaccia, soft croissant, stuffed with sweet or savory, cheese pies or personal twisted pies, breadsticks etc. In short everything! Matures and is maintained in the refrigerator for a long time and every time you remove it from the freezer begins after a while to swell and become soft and velvety.
In the current proposal we make a delicious, homemade pizza in just 15', ie much less time than the time it takes the delivery. Separate pizza with inflatable dough and stuffed with what we like.
Yours!

work: 15′

time: 40′

easy:

Cretan Sweet Cheese Mini Pies/ Kalitsounia-DIY

Doing these Cretan Sweet Cheese Mini Pies today I recalled in my memory stories of my childhood. I remembered our grandmother doing these in her Kitchen. Cheese Pies are made with a thin sheet of dough filled with cheese (traditionally filled with myzithra or anthotyro), and then fried. They become light and fluffy like a soft pillow!
Classic, traditional and popular sweet mizithropitakia, popular delicacy for rural but also urban Crete, which the housewives made and make in many aspects of social life, and especially in the Easter celebrations with the Cretan Cheese Pies savory and sweet.
A simple dough rolled out in a phyllo machine -for an easier process- fresh local mizithra cheese and served with thyme honey or powdered sugar and cinnamon.
Yours!

work: 1h:30′

time: 2h:00′

medium:

French Crepes Savory & Sweet-DIY

Simply Crepes
The recipe for crepes is easier to do than what you think, follow the analytic process and enjoy!
The crepes are considered as French pancakes and can be disguised in sweet or savory depending on the filling. Whatever tasty fillings you choose you will enjoy as in France, where they welcome them with enthusiasm any time of day, at breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea or dinner.
So, Bon Αppétit!

work: 1h:00′

time: 1h:30′

medium:

Pizza Dough-DIY

Pizza dough, with simple step by step, in an easy DIY and with a small amount of dough.
The easy and quick to prepare the pizza dough are always tempting when in a hurry or when bored. But a dough, which inflates with yeast and takes the necessary time to climb up and mature is always a most delicious dough, softer and more inflated in cooking.
For all of you, beginners or not, that like the anxiolytic engagement process with the yeast.
Yours!

work: 20′

time: 1h:20′

easy:

Candied Cherries

Candied cherries, like Italian Amarena or French Griottines, in small quantity and in an easy and quick preparation, as will be used for making ice cream and which will soon show you.
It is not the known version of candied fruit, such as Orange Peels and others, which we use in cakes etc. It is semi-candied cherries. I chose the cherries to be cut in two and not remain intact in order to be incorporated into the cream and in which our tooth only will meet.
It is not jam nor sweets, we make for the winter. It is something between these two. Their syrup is more dense and flavored with whole lobe vanilla and lime peel.
Yours!

work: 10′

time: 30′

very easy:

Dough for Pies & Pie-Pocket-DIY

The phyllo opening in the house for pies and small pies is a time consuming process, few deal with it. The result, however, of our efforts is always better than anything you can buy for several reasons.
It's up to you!

work: 1h:00′

time: 2h:00′

medium:

Tomato Sauce

Tomato Sauce, classic, delicious and for varied uses, flavored with oregano and basil. An easy sauce that accompanies perfectly meat and vegetable dishes. But also pizzas, bruschetta, sandwiches and of course pasta, any kind of pasta, where it takes off with its presence the flavor of the dish.
Tomatoes are rich in flavor, have high liquid content, have very soft flesh which breaks down quickly, and are a suitable composition to thicken in the sauce when cooked. All these properties make it ideal for a simple and attractive sauce.
Auguste Escoffier ranks it among the five basic sauces (mother sauces) of French Cuisine with:

• Béchamel
• Spanish Sauce
• Velvet
• Dutch sauce

work: 15′

time: 45′

easy:

Kernels Cherry Liqueur

Fragrant liqueur, amber clear color and light scent of bitter almonds and cherries. Drinking, either as an aperitif or as a digestif is sure to leave you with very good impressions. A liqueur that gladdens the eye and the palate.
The process is simple. Put the kernels of cherries in alcohol and wait a few days. Time will work in favor of its creation.
Yours!

work: 20′

time: 4 weeks

very easy:

Vine Leaves Maintenance

There are several ways to maintain vine leaves in order to have them for the whole year, without the cooling devices of our time. The drying, the bottles, the brine, the jars. Since ancient times yet, since they stored them in small clay pots, covered with olive oil since they did not have refrigerators, until our days with freezing.
The best time of harvesting the leaves is the months of May and June. The vine is preferably sultanas, which has the most tender and delicious leaves, and of course not sprayed.
Today's maintenace is called dry maintenance and is simple and quite easy. Prerequisite: the leaves are completely dry, otherwise you risk to make black spots from moisture and spoil.

work: 30′

time: 30′

very easy:

Ciabatta No-Knead Bread

«Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the courtiers who surround the king». So today we make the king of our table!
The easiest, most impressive and the most delicious bread you've ever tasted since it's made ​​from your hands and without kneading! Crunchy outside, fluffy crust, soft crumb inside. Real taste and flavor of bread.
If you enjoy this delicious Italian bread-bread Ciabatta - Build it and enjoy it, with any companion, sweet or savory, you prefer. Cheese, olives, tomatoes, fish roe salad, garlic sauce, chocolate spread, jam and more! Want my preference? Drizzled with a few drops of olive oil.
Yours!

work: 20′

time: 19h:00′

very easy:

Watermelon Rind Pickles

Peel sweet watermelon in spicy pickle!
It's very simple to do, using the peel of watermelon, which we throw.
Is very special sweet and spicy at the same time because of the spices with a little bite of chili pepper in the aftertaste.
If you are interested in new dimensions in taste, dare to try even a small amount, just to test!

work: 40′

time: 3 days

easy: