Greek Summer Salad and a Photo Board backdrop for better blog photos

I want to tell you about a salad that I made and also a great product I found that will make taking photos for your blog or Instagram better straight away. But first the salad...

We went to a friend's barbecue yesterday which was lovely - my little girl enjoyed laying on a blanket in the shade and watching everything that was going on and meeting some of my friends for the first time. Here's a little photo of her for no reason other than she's cute!

My friend asked us to bring a salad and I decided to make a sort of Greek salad - it was very simple and doesn't really need a recipe! Simply half some cherry tomatoes, cut some feta cheese into cubes, slice some black olives and remove the stones (I actually used ready sliced ones from a jar) and tear some fresh basil leaves. Toss with a glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper for a simple but tasty salad.

I'm really pleased with this photo which I think is called a flat lay in style (i.e. a birds eye view). It was taken on my kitchen table which is made of glass - so it's a terrible surface for photograph and I usually put a mat or table cloth or something on it when I want to photograph food, but my table cloths always have creases and none of my mats are very big.

I came across a company called Photo Boards that makes backdrops for taking photos against. They use 'texture reproduction technology', whatever that is, so the boards look more three dimensional and not like a photo of a piece of wood - I think they actually look like you are using a piece of wood, rather than a large flat piece of PVC. They are lightweight and wipe clean which is great when you are photographing food, come in two sizes (I bought the 60x60cm one, the larger size) and a variety of designs and shades that look like you are photographing against wood, marble, linen etc. They are not cheap at £30 each so I only bought one, but I already want another!

Grilled Fish on the BBQ and Greek Pasta Salad

I visited the Greek islands three times in my 20s when a holiday to me meant sun, sea, sand and a bit of sightseeing – but not too much. My first ever package holiday was to the Greek island of Rhodes – it was also my first holiday with my ex boyfriend. I remember going into a travel agent one day during our holidays from university, asking what cheap deals they had, and booking something that left the very next day! Accommodation was “allocated on arrival” which meant we knew nothing about where we were staying, but as a broke student I didn’t really care. We ended up being very lucky having a two-centre holiday, spending a week in Pefkos and a week in Lindos. The accommodation itself wasn’t great – and it was so hot some days, we couldn’t even sunbathe and just lay in our room under the ceiling fan (nothing as fancy as air conditioning for us!).

Crete

Since then I’ve also been to Crete and Santorini – the latter is absolutely beautiful, and the location of the iconic Greek island photo you see all the time in books and on television – even in a recent yogurt advert. Santorini was partly destroyed by a volcanic eruption many centuries ago, creating an underwater caldera (crater); the towns of Fira and Oia sit on the cliff top overlooking the caldera providing a beautiful spot to watch the sunset (if you can get a space amid all the other tourists!).

Santorini - my holiday snap

It's such a shame now to hear about the situation in Greece and I hope that the country is able to get itself back on a surer financial footing - and tourism will no doubt play a part in that.

One of the highlights of my trips as well as the sightseeing – the Santorini sunset, the acropolis of Lindos, the Colossus of Rhodes, a winery tour in Crete - was the food. We would sunbathe all day, go back to our room around 7 and get ready to go out for a late dinner. Every night we ate at a different taverna or beach-front restaurant; the food was cheap and delicious and I ate fresh fish as often as possible.

One day during our trip in Rhodes - at least, I'm pretty sure it was Rhodes but this is going back 15 years - we went on a boat trip that included lunch of freshly grilled fish. It was delicious, so when I was asked by Jet2 Holidays to choose a country from the list and come up with a recipe, with the weather here so hot at the moment I immediately thought of my Greek island holidays.

Rhodes - acropolis at Lindos

This year we bought a Weber gas barbecue and it's so easy to cook on. I bought a whole sea bream from the supermarket as the closest fish to what I remember eating in Rhodes; it was already gutted and I wanted to keep the flavours simple so stuffed the cavity with wedges of lemon and rosemary from my garden. You need to remember to oil the fish on both sides, and preheat the barbecue or grill.

Cook the fish for about 5 mins on each side until you see the flesh turn white. Turn with a metal fish slice.

It didn't take long before the fish was cooked to perfection - it tasted absolutely gorgeous with the rosemary and lemon flavours coming through.


A dish like this takes centre stage but it's nice to have an accompaniment. As the theme is Greece, I made this Greek pasta salad. The dressing is particularly good; I based it on one I found online but is my own recipe

  

Greek pasta salad

To serve 4-6  as a side dish, you need:

About 400g pasta; orzo is a popular pasta in Greek cuisine but is too small for this dish so I used fusilli. If you can get hold of a specialist Greek pasta though then do use it!

Salt for cooking

Half a cucumber, cut into chunky slices and each slice cut in half

300g pack of cherry tomatoes

Half a red onion, thinly sliced

200g olives – black olives would be more traditional but I liked the look of stuffed green olives for an extra punch

200g feta cheese, cubed

240g bag baby spinach leaves

Fresh basil leaves (optional)

For the dressing:

2 tsp Dijon mustard with honey (or regular Dijon mustard)

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

4 tbsp olive oil

Pinch of salt and pepper

Cook the pasta according to pack instructions and allow to cool.

Mix together the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl.

Toss the salad with the other ingredients, pour the dressing over the top and toss again.

Thanks to Jet2 Holidays for covering the cost of the ingredients for this recipe.

Pastitsio - Greek pasta bake

 

 

The theme for this month's global cooking challenge, hosted by Chris at Cooking Around the World, is Greece. I'd already made these prawn enchiladas with feta cheese, which is a rather tenuous link to Greece perhaps, so I wanted to see if I could think of something else. Then I remembered a dish that I've made before, but not for a long time; it's easy to make and good for this time of year. Pastitsio, or Pasticcio, is a Greek pasta bake that has a layer of minced beef, a bechamel sauce and pasta on top.

 I found a recipe online and adapted it to suit ingredients I had and also gave it a healthier spin by using fat free Greek yoghurt instead of cheese in the sauce.

 

Serves 4

You need:

Fry Light

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

500g beef mince

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 beef stock cube

400g tin chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp. dried oregano

400g pasta - macaroni or penne

50g ricotta cheese

200ml fat free Greek yogurt

50ml milk

50g grated parmesan

grated cheese to sprinkle on top (optional)

 

First fry the onion and the mince in the Fry Light until browned. Meanwhile cook the pasta in a pan of boiling salted water and preheat the oven to 180C.



 

Add the garlic, cinnamon, stock cube, tin of tomatoes and oregano to the beef and simmer until the sauce has thickened.

In a small bowl, mix the ricotta, parmesan and Greek yogurt then carefully stir in the milk.

Drain the cooked pasta and stir in the cheese sauce.

Transfer the mince to a large ovenproof casserole dish.

Spoon the pasta on top and sprinkle with cheese.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the cheese has melted.

Serve with green vegetables - this makes a great lunch or dinner.

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for his Greek challenge this month.