Greek Heritage Cooking Simplified...with a fish
There is a style of cooking in the Greek Heritage Kitchen called Plaki. It can be applied to vegetables or to fish. There are a few basic ingredients and the cooking is done in the oven. My mother made Psari Plaki with whole red snapper. She layered the sliced vegetables, one overlapping the other and baked it all until your nose told you "I can't smell this anymore! It's time for your mouth to take over and begin tasting all of the aromas that I've been smelling."
It doesn't sound like much, but it takes quite a bit of time to thinly slice onions, tomatoes and potatoes and wait until everything is fully cooked and about to melt. So, needless to say, I make it only once a year during our time at the beach. This year there is no beach for us due to Covid, but I sourced fresh whole Pompano about an hour from where we live and I simplified the method for cooking whole fish Plaki style, so in May alone, I prepared this dish twice! Same ingredients. Different method. Same great flavors! I am so pleased with myself. By the time the fish is ready you've enjoyed a nice cocktail and caught up on all of your social media posts and responses.
If you'd like to give this a try, click here for a printable recipe. If you'd like a recipe for the simple green salad that I served with this, check back in next week, but you don't really need it. This is a complete meal. Great for family and great for entertaining...just make sure everyone's appropriately distanced during these trying Covid times.
This is an interesting greek food. I never tasted it. I'll ask my greek friend if he knows this one. He introduced me to Mediterranean foods, particularly, Greek foods. The last time, we had a dinner at El Greco and it was so good. We ate authentic greek foods like greek salad, rotisserie chicken, pita wraps and kebabs. They even gave us huge discounts.
ReplyDeleteHi, Henry, and apologies for my delayed response. This style of cooking is very popular in Greece and can be applied to all kinds of vegetables and fish or shrimp. The iconic dish is made with red snapper and is covered in onions, tomatoes and potatoes. Soooo good.
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