Lagane, Eggplants, and Zucchini
We started the morning off with a fantastic breakfast at the hotel. There was a buffet of homemade food including pastries, quiches, fresh fruit, tartes, and more. The food was incredible but the view was spectacular! After breakfast, we would head to Costas and Algaia Kremezi's house where she would teach us the art of making lagane (traditional flat bread).
Their home was so cute and quaint with a huge outside entertaining space. Costas would eventually take us on a tour of their property, showing us their olive trees along with their olive press and garden area. A lot of the ingredients they use in their cooking actually came from their land which I thought was really awesome; you don't see that a lot anymore. Next, we would gather around the outside cooking area to begin making our dough for lunch.
On the menu for today's lunch:
- Lagane topped with tomatoes, cheese, and herbs
- Stuffed eggplants
- Charcoal-roasted zucchini
- Fig leaf wrapped cheese
The dough we would be using ended up being a thin crust for the pizza. Ingredients including tomatoes, green bell peppers, rosemary, and mozzarella cheese would be the toppings for the dough. It was a very simple dish to prepare and cook. When the pizza came out, although it took just as quick as a normal pizza would take to make, I was surprised to find that it didn't taste like an ordinary pizza. The crust was incredibly crispy and had those wonderful burn pieces on the edges that added a charred flavor as though it had been baked in an old stone oven. The pizza definitely didn't taste like a pizza you'd make a home and my guess for that would be because of the lagane dough.
Next, we stuffed eggplants, one of my favorites! Inside was a mixture of onions, tomatoes and tomato sauce, bell peppers (green and red), garlic, pepper flakes, walnuts, and pecorino cheese. Of course, this was one of my favorite parts of the meal because eggplants had become my new found vegetable. All the ingredients melded perfectly together to make a balanced mediterranean dish.
Following the stuffed peppers was charcoal-roasted zucchini. I was pleasantly satisfied with all these wonderful vegetables being incorporated into our meals in contrast to the enormous intake of carbs and pasta that we ate while in Italy. You couldn't really mess up this dish but the smokey flavor really did enhance the natural flavor of the zucchini.
Finally, we ate our cheese wrapped in fig leaves. This wasn't a favorite of mine because the sheer thought of just eating a block of cheese wasn't something I could get into. The task of wrapping the cheese up was a fun activity though!
For dessert, we were brought protokalopita, an orange pie, with mastic ice cream. This was so good! I love anything orange flavored and paired with ice cream was just a double win in my book. Mastic ice cream is made from goat's milk and I think made a big difference in the flavor. The ice cream was naturally sweet tasting. My only comparison would be to think of how strawberries taste sweet from their natural sugars versus something that is clearly artificially sweetened to mimic the flavor of a strawberry.
What an incredible meal that we prepared and a filling one at that! Dinner would be just as much a treat as we would visit Magazes restaurant.
I ordered a chicken and orzo dish that was really good, but I couldn't even make myself eat a whole lot of it since I was still full from the huge lunch we'd had earlier. I ended up eating some of Paige's calamari which was a better move to have made. The pasta was just too heavy of a meal to order after we'd eaten so much just a few hours ago.
