At Anna’s Kitchen Table

I have a confession to make. I seriously coveted this book after seeing Ilana blogging about it. It sounded like just the kind of book I would love.
Disaster though, it wasn’t even listed on Amazon, how could that be?
My angel arrived in the shape of Francesca who kindly sent me the book, and I must say, I LOVE it.
My ancestral island Cyprus, whilst being a Greek Island, is so Eastern, that it’s almost, but not quite, Middle-Eastern. To me, Cypriot food has more in common with Israeli food than it has in common with Greek mainland food, which in turn seems to have more in common with Eastern European countries.
I love Cypriot cooking, the liberal use of cinnamon in sweet and savoury dishes, mastic, tomatoes, onions, lemons….
I often laugh with my Mom, because everything we cook seems to start with ‘fry a chopped onion until darkly golden before adding a tin of chopped tomatoes’.
So when I did finally lay my hands on this wonderful book thanks to Francesca, I seemed to instantly bond with it, it was just the book I’d been searching years for. And I mean years. Always buying Greek cook books and putting them down. THIS was the book I was meant to own.

1. Jewish pretzels – I made these last night, and boy were they GOOD. It seems to be the addition of full-fat milk powder which makes a huge difference. Oh, I also doubled the sugar in the recipe from 3 tablespoons to 6 – and they were JUST right.

2. Chicken and vegetable ptitim casserole – A delicious one-pot dish. When my store of ptitim runs out, I’m going to be making this with orzo, I don’t think the taste will be discernably different. The whole family enjoyed this dish, which is an achievement in itself.

3. lamb patties with tahini sauce. We have grown up eating tahini ‘salad/sauce’ (by that I mean tahini mixed with water, lemon juice, plenty of garlic, salt and topped with flat leaf parsley) So I was instantly drawn to this recipe. It was so easy to make, the only thing I’ve never tried before is actually baking the tahini sauce after it’s been made.

A big thank you to Francesca for this wonderful book.