Our cookbook of the week is Aegean by London-based chef Marianna Leivaditaki. Over the next two days, we’ll feature another recipe from the book and an interview with the author.
To try another recipe from the book, check out: Baked potatoes stuffed with shrimp and smoked salmon mayonnaise .
Growing up in Crete, Marianna Leivaditaki developed a taste for carob. Her godfather would perch her on his shoulders and take her to a carob tree, telling her they were going to get chocolates. Lifting her up even higher, he would instruct her to grab the pods weeping with honey.
“I would eat them and I would be like, ‘Oh my god, this is so much better than chocolate,'” remembers Leivaditaki.
Today, she regularly incorporates carob in her cooking — adding molasses to salads such as this one, and making breads or cakes with carob flour: “It adds this chocolatey, aromatic taste to things.”
Used in places including Crete, Cyprus, Malta, Turkey and Egypt, carob molasses is made by steeping carob pods and reducing the fragrant liquid to a syrup. Find it at Middle Eastern grocery stores or online (e.g., Bakkal Online and Turkish Mart ). As Leivaditaki suggests, grape or date molasses make good substitutes.
To ensure a “sweet but punchy” beet salad, choose freshly picked roots. “If you can find beetroot with leaves, and you touch them and they’re really firm and hard, those are the ones you want,” says Leivaditaki.
Yogurt-laced beet salads are common in Greece, but she puts her own spin on them by favouring fresh mint and almonds instead of the typical dill and walnuts.
“It’s a very refreshing and delicious salad,” says Leivaditaki. “And what I love about this is that it keeps. You can make a Tupperware, and you can put it in your fridge and have it there whenever you want it for the next three or four days.”
BEET SALAD WITH YOGURT, CAROB MOLASSES AND ALMONDS
6 medium beets
1 handful of fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 tbsp (15 mL) chopped dill
3/4 cup (100 g) raw almonds, soaked in boiling water for 1 hour
1 garlic clove, crushed to a paste with a bit of salt
3 1/2 tbsp (52 mL) carob molasses (grape or date molasses will also work well)
2 tbsp (30 mL) good-quality red wine vinegar
2 tbsp (30 mL) olive oil
1/2 cup (100 g) Greek strained yogurt
Sea salt
Step 1
Boil the beets in a pan of water until soft. Drain, allow to cool, then peel and slice into thin wedges. Put the beets in a serving bowl, along with the herbs and almonds.
Step 2
Make the dressing by shaking the crushed garlic, molasses, vinegar and olive oil in a jar; pour over the beets and mix. Season with salt, to taste.
Step 3
Add the yogurt to the salad and mix slightly. The colour of this is amazing if you don’t fully mix in the yogurt.
Serves: 4–6 as a sharing plate
Recipe and image excerpted from Aegean by Marianna Leivaditaki. Published in 2020 by Interlink Books. Used with permission from the publisher.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2021
