Can you think of a more delicious way to spend a holiday than in a Greek kitchen? In this hands-on, full-day workshop, Greek food enthusiast, talented cook and cookbook author Peter Minaki will walk you through a variety of authentic Greek specialities, from starters to mains, sides and desserts. The class will cover techniques such as making phyllo pastry and loukoumades from scratch, and includes a gourmet lunch, a coffee break with homemade Greek sweets, and whole spiral cheese pie to take home.
Phyllo from scratch!
The class starts with making dough for phyllo (or filo), the delicate paper-thin sheets of pastry (from the Greek φύλλο for leaf) have been a Eastern Mediterranean delicacy for hundreds of years. This dough needs to rest for a few hours to completely hydrate in order to have the elasticity needed to be stretched very thin.
Lamb Giouvetsi
While the dough is resting, we’ll start to prepare lunch, a traditional giouvetsi of lamb and orzo (a rice-shaped pasta). As a time-saver, Peter will demonstrate how to create incredibly tender, flavourful lamb in a fraction of the time using a pressure cooker.
Loukoumades
While the lamb cooks, you’ll prepare the soft dough for loukoumades, one of the all time favourite Greek desserts! These crispy bite-sized sweets will be fried and soaked in a honey syrup and garnished with walnuts and cinnamon in time for the afternoon coffee break, but first the dough needs to rise.
Lunch
The cooked lamb is then combined with veggies and orzo in traditional terra cotta dishes and baked. While it bakes, you’ll prepare a crisp, refreshing salad of romaine, scallions, dill, sprinkled with wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Piping hot out of the oven, the giouvetsi is topped with shredded Greek cheese and lunch is served!
Καλή όρεξη! (Kalí óreksi!)
Paximadia
After lunch we will prepare paximadia, a crunchy Greek cookie similar to a biscotti, studded with figs, star anise and walnuts. Into the oven they go! Time to fry up the loukoumades.
Strifti (Spiral) Tyropita (Cheese Pie)
Next up it is time to prepare the delicious savoury cheese filling for the spiral cheese pies). We can then stretch out the phyllo dough and each participant gets to prepare their phyllo into a cheese pie to take and enjoy at home.
Greek Coffee Break
After popping the kichi kozanis in the oven, Peter will brew up some authentic Greek coffee to enjoy with your fresh paximadia & loukoumades while your pies are baking.
At the end of the class, participant get to take their fresh kichi kozanis home to eat or freeze, along with any leftover paximadia & loukoumades.
This event will run from 10 am to about 5pm.
$125 +HST
Family Day Special: Bring kids for ½ price!
Book Now
http://thedepanneur.ca/
