The problems with first recipes

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something." Henry David Thoreau

I suspect the above quote is irrelevant really, but it's the only quote I could find that came close to what I felt I was doing. Which is cheating on my first recipe writer's block strategy that insists I pick the first recipe in the next book on my cookbook shelves and ramble around it.

In recent times I have found this to be sometimes difficult as most cookbooks, especially the older ones, tend to have the same organisation and so you begin with a recipe for stock or soup, or boiled eggs. or a classic sauce. Something basic anyway. It becomes a bit repetitive. Maybe I should switch to last recipe - although that would most likely restrict me to sweet things.

In this case the first recipe was tomata peltes - Greek tomato paste to you and me, which I suppose is a bit different but what can you say about it?. But before I go there, let me take a step back to the book itself.

Today's book is this one. It wasn't my first Middle-Eastern cookbook - that was Claudia Roden's classic, but having been inspired by Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle-Eastern Food which was one of those revelatory cookbooks you come across now and then, I was so inspired by the food therein, that I began looking for more recipes from the region, and this was one of the first that I found. The author, Tess Mallos was Australian, the daughter of Greek immigrants from the island of Kythera who settled in NSW. She was not a chef, but wrote many cookbooks and worked as a food consultant.

Anyway she begins this encyclopedic book with her parents' homeland, and continues through, Cyprus, Turkey, Armenia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, The Gulf States, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan and Israel, which is a pretty comprehensive list, and I should probably have another look at those that don't get a lot of attention elsewhere at least - the Gulf States, Yemen, Armenia and Afghanistan. I still use her recipe for baklava and have, admittedly, long, long ago now, made many other things.

However, when I looked at that first recipe my heart failed. I mean what can you say about tomato paste? A few things, actually I now realise, which I shall come to shortly. At that moment, however, I was so uninspired that I set it aside for a few days. Then I looked at it again and thought that perhaps I could just go to the next one - Saltsa Avgolomeno (Egg and lemon sauce). Well I've been there and done that - probably more than once. Mayonneza (mayonnaise) - that too. Mizithra (cottage cheese) and that. Now I'm on to the next page and we have Eggplant dip, Tiropita and then three different kinds of Spanakopita. Well all done in some form or another before.

Now if you knew nothing about Greek food you would find all of the well-known dishes here, and so when I first bought this I probably experimented a fair bit. Because I have moved on, should I now throw it out, because of it's slightly dated appearance? No, in spite of that - only a few full page photographs of some of the dishes - good though they are - and its non experimental recipes, it is still a valuable resource for certain classic dishes. Besides, as I said, I still make my baklava from her recipe. The next generation can turn to a vast number of choices when it comes to Middle-Eastern cookbooks, and besides Claudia Roden's last book Med is only a very few years old.

I, however, don't need to, as Tess Mallos and Claudia Roden between them tell me more or less all I want to know about Greek food in particular, and a lot of which I know about the rest of the Middle-East, although that is a huge, developing field. I do like Greek food, but not so much that I want an exhaustive collection of Greek cookbooks. For example I recently looked a this book Greekish by Georgina Hayden - a Guardian columnist - enticed by the '-ish' added to the Greek, and therefore anticipated interesting twists to classic recipes. So I flicked through it in my local Readings, but honestly could not justify it. It didn't look very '-ish' to me. Not enough to entice anyway. Maybe I'll have another look sometime.

Besides, as I said, Tess Mallos covered a long list of countries at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, as well as Greece.

So today I picked my first recipe book up again and that first recipe and checked what Google had to say about Tomata peltes. Well a little bit more.

It seems that the best, well most famous Greek version of tomato paste comes from the island of Milos, where they grow a specific type of cherry tomato - the Santorini or Russian tomato. I'm assuming it grows on Santorini too. According to Milos Greece, it's the volcanic soil of the island that makes the tomatoes special. Once picked they are then dried in the sun for a few days. Then they are mashed and the skin and seeds discarded before once again drying the remaining pulp in the sun - with just a little salt. And that's it. Do what you will with it, even just spread it on toast.

'Skin and seeds discarded'. A few words for what is probably a lengthy and tedious process. Others, including Tess Mallos have other methods, most of which do not involve sun-drying at all, and which remove the skin and seeds in various different ways. But then does anyone make their own tomato paste these days? We can probably buy hand-made tomato paste from the island of Milos somewhere, but we probably all go for whatever supermarket brand we prefer. Maybe we should all be made to make some the traditional way, just to see if it tastes any different. It's so everyday now though isn't it? We had Heinz tomato sauce as a child, but didn't know about tomato paste.

Vale Tess Mallos. She died in 2012 having become a respected publisher of books on Greek and Middle-Eastern food. This book is considered to be her magnus opus. It is still in print having had 45 editions, been translated into German and Arabic and sold around the world. Where would Australia be without its immigrants?

Maybe I should make her baklava again for the Easter bunny's visit on Sunday, although I'm currently thinking I might have a go at this Baklava cheesecake from Coles.

YEARS GONE BY

April 15

2024 - Nothing

2023 - Stewing - when, how, what?

2022 - Good Friday and the lamb of God

2021 - Nut butters

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Quote(s) of the day - part one

2017 - Orange boat on blue water