he most American of all meals. It Wass born in the wide fields of Texas at the back of Church wagons to feed and nourish hungry cowboys. It is also Marian because the conditions were right and ideal for such a meal to be born. 

Greek lemon chicken is the most recognizable meal in Greece. It works perfectly in its simplicity and the ingredients balance is phenomenal. Next to a greek salad with red ripped tomatoes, this meal will just a summer in Greece.

No wonder the pressure cookers are so extensively used. Modern iterations of pressure cookers are even more efficient and usually can do more than one thing. With all these benefits  it’s a wonder that pressure cookers aren’t even more popular. The most notable characteristic of these pots show much they cut down cooking times, making it possible to cook tough cut of meats, whole grains, hearty vegetables, beans, in less than an hour. 

This past summer Starbucks rolled out a new drink, cold foam cold brew coffee. And although cold brew is not new, the cold foam is. Cold foam milk is a great addition to the cold brew, not only due to the contrasting flavors (sweet and buttery milk with bitter-ish coffee) and textures (velvet smooth foam and the contrasting fluidity of the coffee) but also due to the great visual contrast: black and white. Also being greek I loved cold foam as it is an integral part of the greek coffee culture as part of the iced cappuccino called Fréddo cappuccino. I always wanted to make some at home, alas my efforts were futile. The foam no matter how good it was falling apart leaving me with a soapy looking foam in a milky coffee in matters of minutes... but I finally cracked the secret. Venture with me in the science of making a great cold foam while understanding the basic science.

The summer is around the corner, or maybe where you live it is already there... or it has always been there. The botom line is that the hot, steaming cup of coffee is not appetizing during this time of the year. You need something to wake you up and refresh you. The last 2-3 years a new caffeinated beverage joined the market. It is the "Cold Brew". It is a welcome alternative to the hot coffee and it is not iced coffee, hot brewed coffee that was chilled and served over ice.

The last post on this blog (before this oneI mean) was posted in March 18th 2015 and it was a cocktail (A Tsikoudia Cocktail: Bloddy Mario). Since then two years went by without any posts or updates. As a matter of fact the website went down for months before I figured out that there was a problem. Why? Well life happened. My job became much more demanding and the time required for the updates is not there any more. A recipe takes pretty much the whole day just to make it and shoot it. After that it is all the writing and editing. It is a two full days of work. Sharing my time between Boston, where I work, and New york, where my wife lives (yes! I also got married) really leaves not time for new recipes.

One of the most classic cocktails in the history of bar drinks is the Bloody Mary. It is a divine combination of ingredients not regularly found in cocktails and spirits that compliment the flavor and the textures. What are those ingredients? It is tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce with the clear and neat spirit of Vodka. It is one of the very rare savory cocktails that are combined to give a fulfilling taste. Vodka being clean taste companies with everything sweet, sour and salty.But it is not the only spirit that can be used. Tequila for example has many qualities that make it savory. We actually did the salsa shots a while back that identifies and compliments that particular quality of the Tequila. The substitution of Vodka with Tequila is actually called, brilliantly, Bloody Maria. Today we are combining another savory drink the Tsikoudia (raki) that is also savory and combines excellently with flavors like tomato and cucumber. The name of it? Bloody Mario, the Cretian nickname of Maria.

If you follow the international food scene, probably you have come across the name Ferran Adrià. He is the chef of the restaurant "elBulli" that was the epicenter of the new gastronomic movement. elBulli (Catalan pronunciation: [əɫ ˈβuʎi]) was a Michelin 3-star restaurant near the town of Roses, Catalonia, Spain, run by chef Ferran Adrià. The small restaurant overlooked Cala Montjoi, a bay on Catalonia's Costa Brava, and was described as "the most imaginative generator of haute cuisine on the planet." The restaurant played one of the most important roles in the movement of molecular gastronomy. And yet the when you get his cookbook you are in for a surprise. The person who dazzled the world with the most elegant and sophisticated play of textures and flavors is presenting a very humble cookbook.

First date. Always makes you both nervous and excited at the same time. And always the same questions comes up: Where to go,what to do, what to say, how long to stay… But eventually no matter how you see it, it seems that dinner, either as "just dinner" or as an event that follows or precedes something else (eg drinks or movie), is the most popular first date choice. And for a good reason too. It has several advantages: brings you close, you get to spend time doing something familiar to both and has a very specific duration 1-1.5 hrs. Deciding, however, on dinner as first date does not mean that you are done. Now actually comes the tough part. Where to go, what to eat, what to say. I am not a date coach or a dating expert. I am a foodie. Over the years I developed a set of rules that makes dining-out from a necessity to an experience.

The white substance that it's flavor has been coded on our DNA as the most desirable flavor, the last few years it has been blamed for every dietary disease. I am talking of course about sugar. The crystallized molecules of sucrose, that carry with them not only the sweetest flavor, but also the most densely packed energy. Energy that once was essential for survival, now is converted to undesirable fat in our waist and hips. In the vast world of diets, and nutritional information, many alternatives have been suggested as a healthier sweetness source. I am not talking about the aspartame, or the Splenda. Those chemical options taste horrible. I am talking about raw sugar, molasses, brown sugar and many more.