RECIPES FROM MY TRIP TO TENNESSEE 2010
I have spent almost two months in Nashville (and suberbs) Tennessee visiting with precious friends and cooking, preparing, Greek food with everyone. I will try to post the recipes that you all!! experienced and liked hoping that you might want to repeat them and share the joy and rich flavours of Greek food.

I ommited to include the cooked editon picture of the stuffed vegetables. We look for a dry baking pan with only oil and tomato sauce left and a pretty dark caramelized look on the veggies.

This picture is taken while veggies are still in the oven.

As you might have guessed this was been the "stuffed stuff" week. Over the weekend I went to the farmers vegetable neighborhood..market and found that the eggplants were very fresh, plump, shiny and cheap..something like 1,20 euros per kilo...or two pounds. Interestingly enough they had all sizes both small and large. So the cook in me was inspired as to try to make both a variety of stuffed veggies, inlcuding eggplant as well as a Greek classic called Papoutsakia whcih means "little shoes". Down below you see the before and the after of the " little shoes". I will include the recipe if you want...let me know ...for both the dishes. Alexander's and Orestis's comments were most encouraging as they tasted both dishes. Please let me say in a very humble way..that I did congratulate myself as well. I will share with you a few tips that I tried for the first time and they contributed to the best of this recipe.

Overall view of the gemista before baked.

I tried a dirrent way to make the stuffed veggies today by dehydrate the filling before I added the rice. What happened is there was less liquid in the pan and resulted to the veggies more like "roasting" than cooking in the liquid itself. The expierement resulted to sweeter, more concetrated flavor in each different vegetable insted of all of them tasting the same following longer cooking in liquid.

For sure when making gemista have to be super generous with olive oil and sea salt. I will add more pictures as we serve the "expirement".