Dave Smith wrote:

It's tzatziki. It's usually made with drained yogurt, but I
have had variations of it made with yogurt and sour cream,
which gives it a little more substance. It is also important
to drain the grated cucumber because the water in the
cucumber will be extracted from it and make the sauce watery.

**********
Thanks, Dave. The wife and I looked through a few cookbooks
at Borders today and discovered the tzatziki thing, but it
didn't have your hint about squeezing all the liquid out of
the cucumbers. We're going to give it a shot Sunday evening.

We pretty much settled on how we're going to do the gyros.
We're also going to make hummus, a greek salad, and an Artemis
cake. For the first time ever, we're going to serve something
flaming, saganaki. WAHOOO!! Right after the grocery shopping
tomorrow we should probably pick up a fire extinguisher from
the hardware store.

Michael

Zspider wrote:

> Dave Smith wrote:
>
> It's tzatziki. It's usually made with drained yogurt, but I
> have had variations of it made with yogurt and sour cream,
> which gives it a little more substance. It is also important
> to drain the grated cucumber because the water in the
> cucumber will be extracted from it and make the sauce watery.
>
> **********
> Thanks, Dave. The wife and I looked through a few cookbooks
> at Borders today and discovered the tzatziki thing, but it
> didn't have your hint about squeezing all the liquid out of
> the cucumbers. We're going to give it a shot Sunday evening.
>

It's an important step if you grate it or do it in the food processor. I
used to whip up small batches of tzatziki just ahead of dinner and just
finely chopped the cucumber very fine with a knife. I didn't have a real
recipe and was making it out of my head, though it turned out to be
remarkably close to the real thing, except for the chunky cucumber. The
first time I followed a recipe and grated the cucumber I didn't drain
the cucumber well enough and ended up with a sloppy mess.

> We pretty much settled on how we're going to do the gyros.
> We're also going to make hummus, a greek salad, and an Artemis
> cake. For the first time ever, we're going to serve something
> flaming, saganaki. WAHOOO!! Right after the grocery shopping
> tomorrow we should probably pick up a fire extinguisher from
> the hardware store.

IMO mo Greek meal is complete without some deep fried calamari. It's
easy to do, even easier if you can pick up some cleaned squid. Just
slice it into rings and soak it in milk for a while, dry it off and toss
it in a mixture about 3 parts flour to one part corn meal. Deep fry or
pan fry it for * 2 minutes *. Overcooking it will make it tough and
rubbery. Season with salt (and pepper) as soon as it comes out of the
oil and sprinkle with a bit of lemon juice.

For a good hearty Greek dessert try making a batch of galaktabouriko
<sp?>, a hearty sweet custard with lots of eggs and fortified with
semolina baked in a pan lined with and covered with layers of phyllo and
then drenched with honey syrup. The last time I made it there was way
too much for the two of us so I sent some to my mother, some to my
brother and his family and the rest to a few friends. Within a few days
I had 5 phone calls to thank me for it and all saying it was one of the
best things they had ever had in their life.

Zspider wrote:

> We pretty much settled on how we're going to do the gyros.
> We're also going to make hummus, a greek salad, and an Artemis
> cake. For the first time ever, we're going to serve something
> flaming, saganaki. WAHOOO!! Right after the grocery shopping
> tomorrow we should probably pick up a fire extinguisher from
> the hardware store.


Not much to Greek "cuisine" - the main ingredients are grease and salt (as
in all Balkan "cuisine"). Why do you thing Greeks have customarily owned
greezy spoon diners? All that greezy crap is not so different from the food
they grew up on...

In any case Greeks are just Jew wanna - bees but they are mostly too dumb
to aspire to anything better than running cheapo dirty diners serving greezy
swill...

--
Best
Greg