Ingredients
Vegetable garnish:
- 400 g celery stalks
- (weight: cleaned and peeled)
- 150 g peeled onion
- 2 tbsp. olive oil
- salt
- coriander leaves
Potatoes:
- 350 g scrubbed small potatoes
- 4 tbsp. olive oil
- pepper, salt
- 100 ml red country wine**
Shall we once in a while go back in time for a ‘greener’ menu? After all, for a long time it was completely normal to have no meat on the table. Not only because of the costs, but also because of the periodic prohibitions of some churches. A tradition that made people inventive. Here a Cypriot dish Patates antinachtes Kyprou, which I found in a cookbook by Marigoula Kokkinou and Georgia S. Kofinas: The Festive Feast, Greek meatless cooking in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (1993). Meant for the weekly fasting days Wednesday and Friday and during the fasting before Easter. Not intended for Good Friday, then you really don’t eat anything. ‘Today wine and oil’ mentions a Dutch Orthodox calender on certain fasting days, on others also fish is allowed, but no meat or dairy.
Kokkinou and Kofinas quote encouraging statements such as this one by Abbot Hyperechios:
“It is better to eat meat and drink wine rather than to eat the flesh of one’s brother by gossiping about him“. So there is always a way out …
- Vegetable garnish. Peel the celery with a parer. Cut into finger-length pieces. Keep the peeled carrots whole.
- Gently fry everything with the finely chopped onion, cover with water, put on a lid and boil for 25 minutes or until soft.
- Potatoes. Dry the scrubbed potatoes well, cover with a cloth and crush with a wooden mallet or tent hammer*. Fry lightly in the oil, preferably in a non-stick pan. Sprinkle the coriander seeds over it, fry briefly. Season with salt and pepper, put the lid on. Fry for about 20 minutes until done (depending on the size). Shake regularly (antinachtes means ‘shaken’). Then add the wine. Stew again without lid until the wine has almost been absorbed.
- To serve: Drain the vegetables well. Place the celery on a warm dish, puree the onion and carrots with a hand blender, season with salt. Spoon next to the celery, garnish with coriander leaves. Add the potatoes.
*This is the way it is done in Cyprus, The festive feast just peels the potatoes.
**The festive Feast speaks of red wine brousko, a memory of the time when Venice controlled the wine growing on some Greek islands. It means ‘brusco‘, rough, ordinary country wine. Any simple red wine is good for this dish.