One of those recipes is the renowned recipe “Ladokouloura Kranidi” (a type of wheat rolls made with olive oil). I have to admit I had forgotten all about this recipe, until I had a greek coffee on an early rainy morning some time ago, in a traditional “kafenio” (coffee shop) on the southern square in Kranidi, behind the Town Hall. It is a well-preserved coffee shop, made of stone, it has rooms with high walls and old wooden doors with latches (zebereki) instead of handles. I also came across an old classmate of mine from High school, whom I had not seen for more than ten years. Along side with the coffee served in the traditional coffee pot (briki), the owner offered fluffy and sweet smelling ladokouloura on a plate: odorous and tasteful. So, I decided to share with you this recipe, so that you can prepare it and enjoy it.

This is a recipe prepared during the time of the olive grove harvesting, namely in autumn and in winter, using the fresh olive oil squeezed from the oil mill. Of course, one can prepare this recipe at any time of the year, bare in mind however, that the olive oil will not be very fresh.

So, let me present the recipe.

Ingredients

1 kg of white, all-purpose flour. If you prefer, you may also use traditional type wheat flour in the mixture in 2 equal parts. In this case, you mix all the other ingredients with the white flour, you combine them gently, and then you add the wheat flour.

1 ½ kg of extra fresh, virgin olive oil, such as mellelaion.

½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon and cloves. It is best if you grind them together in a mortar, and not use them in powder form, so as to release more of their aromas

½ teacup of cognac

6 teaspoons of baking powder

baking soda, not more than 1 ½ teaspoon

1 ½ teacup of sugar

1 ½ teacup of warm water to avoid having a crumbly flour mixture

Preparation Method

Gently combine the fresh olive oil and the sugar in a basin. Then, pour into the cognac, in which you have already added the baking soda, and the water. You may add some grated zest of orange or some fresh orange juice. Stir until all the sugar has dissolved, and then add the ground cinnamon with the cloves.

Then, start adding, little by little, all the white flour with the baking soda, until they are combined. If you have both white and traditional, wheat flour, mix the white flour with the baking soda first, and then add the traditional, wheat flour. In both cases, however, kneading is important until your dough becomes soft and malleable. Once you knead your dough, cover the basin with a cotton towel and let the mixture rest for 20 minutes.

Then, preheat the oven to 180 degrees, put some olive oil in your hands and start forming small dough U-shaped rolls or thick plate-shaped sticks as the ones in the photo. You may choose any of the two you prefer, but I ought to admit that the U-shaped rolls are the most preferred ones by the lady cooks in Kranidi.

Finally, place the cookies to an oven pan, and bake them for about 20 minutes until they turn gold. The cookies smell heavenly, they are delicious, crusty, and they melt in the mouth while eating them.

Enjoy them at this time of year, when it is cold, by the fire, as an assortment with your morning coffee or a hot, “wild” mountain tea with honey. Note that, in order to preserve your cookies fresh for a longer time, you would better keep them in jars or boxes that are tightly sealed against humidity.

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The recipe is quite simple, but it awakens the soul, mine at least, through tastes and warm odors, which bring back memories of the past, everlasting memories kept in our minds… I am describing this recipe to you, as I have learnt it watching for years my late grandmother prepare it every time she made bread and fried wheat dough pies. I remember I couldn’t wait for the daybreak when I knew from the previous evening that “grandma” had mixed some flour with yeast to prepare the first dough (prozymi) in order to make bread the next morning. I remember waking up very early in the morning to “help” her and get my generous reward, lots of fried wheat dough pies! I am afraid, however, that I was more of a nuisance to her than of any help at all, the way I used to be around her.

But this it all too wordy, let me get to the point and describe the recipe:

Once my grandmother had kneaded the dough into a firm mixture, she would cut the dough with a knife into pieces the size of a round bread loaf (karveli). I wonder, how many of you remember this sensation of the knife cutting through the dough. Then, she would place the pieces into the «pinakoti» (a wooden, rectangular tray with square partitions, where the hand kneaded dough pieces were placed, which was usually laid with a clean, cotton, checked tablecloth), cover it with blankets, put it in a warm place in order for the dough to become puffy, and then bake it in the oven.

She would then take the dough leftovers, before they became puffy, and fry them to make wheat dough pies. This is the authentic wheat dough pie, the one that is made of the hand-kneaded dough leftovers. Nowadays, various restaurants and tavernas serve as a gourmet course, wheat dough pies made of puffy dough, which are sometimes stuffed with feta cheese. This is not the authentic recipe, however, but a mere variation.

If you don’t make your own hand-kneaded bread at home, don’t worry you can always prepare some dough for your fried wheat dough pies.

Ingredients

For 10 fried wheat dough pies

1 kg of white, all-purpose flour (feel free to experiment, using a different type of flour, and share with us the results)

1 teaspoon of salt

Not more than 3 small teacups of extra virgin olive oil

Warm water, in a quantity proportionate to the flour, that is, 1 kg of flour – 0,5 or 1 litres of water

You will be able to tell whether the quantities are appropriate by kneading the mixture and feeling its density, the dough must be soft and thick at the same time. You mustn’t pour in hot water, because the dough will become crumbly.

Kneading the dough

Put the flour and the teaspoon of salt in a plastic basin, combine them, and form a crater-like hole in the middle. Keep aside a generous handful of flour, which you will use later, adding it little by little, during the kneading. On the other hand, if you used too much water initially, you will need the extra flour to absorb it. Keep combining the mixture with your fingers open, by gradually pouring the warm water into it. Don’t pour all the water into the mixture from the beginning. The flour must absorb the water gradually, as this will prevent your dough from becoming a pap. The idea is to have an easy to shape, thick mass. Remember, you are making wheat dough pies, not doughnuts.

Then, add the 2 small teacups of extra virgin olive oil, and start kneading your dough, with your feasts closed, for about 15 to 20 minutes. If you think it is needed, add the third teacup of olive oil. Your dough will be ready to fry when it does not stick to your fingers, and at the same time, it is so elastic that once you gently press it with your fingers, your fingerprint fades away and the dough regains its initial form.

Frying

As soon as kneading is over, take a large, shallow, round plate, and use your palms and fingers to stretch one handful of dough at a time, cut off from the whole mass. If the dough is too sticky, spray some olive oil on the surface of the plate. You need to have a pie that is as large as the size of the frying pan that you will use.

In the meantime, put some olive oil in the frying pan, and heat it. When the oil is quite hot, but not too hot as if burnt, place the wheat dough pie in the pan and fry it alternatively on each side until it turns “pale” but not golden! and a crust is formed. Repeat, and fry your wheat dough pie again for about 3 minutes on each side, until you see it becomes golden-browned. Then, remove it from the frying pan, and repeat the same procedure with the rest of the dough.

I would advise you to take your pan off the heat for about 1 minute before you start frying the next pie. This will reduce the temperature of the olive oil and will prevent your wheat dough pie from getting “burnt”.

Caution: it would be best if you put fresh olive oil in the pan, or refresh the previous quantity after having fried two pies, before you continue. This will keep your olive oil from going rancid or have a taste of something burnt. Also, use extra virgin olive oil exclusively, because with other kinds of oil you will miss the pleasure from this tasteful journey.

Seasoning

Once fried, you can enjoy your wheat dough pies with sugar or honey.

I would suggest that you add a handful of feta cheese and some traditionally prepared olives, and start your tasteful journey. Or, if you are willing to wait a little, fry a couple of eggs in fresh butter from sheep milk, and “dive” your bread in the egg’s yolk.

I will say no more, but remember this, it will be pure bliss for the palate, and you will never have enough of those homemade pies.

I will be looking forward to your comments, once you’ve tried the recipe.

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All olive varieties can be prepared as table olives, not only the ones that belong to edible varieties.

How to harvest and separate

We harvest olives in October, the green ones or the black ones too, directly from the tree at the time of harvesting. The olives must be solid and healthy, that is they should not be hit or have a disease or be with rot, because otherwise, once you put them in the water, all olives will rot.

De-acidification (sweetening) of your olives

We put our olives in water, in order to make them sweeter. If you wish, with green olives, we have the option to make three notches on each fruit from top to bottom, before putting them into the water. This will render them sweeter more quickly. You should never proceed likewise with the black olives. You simply put them into the water.

The overall process of de-acidification lasts 8-10 days, but make sure that you change the water every 24 hours.

How to preserve your olives

After de- acidification is completed and your olives are sweetened, place them in a jar of the appropriate size, fill in the jar with water, enough to cover the olives, and add salt, equal to the 15% of the water that you poured. For instance, if you used 10 liters of water, add 1,5 kg of salt. This mixture of water and salt is what we commonly call as “armi” or “almyra” or “salamoura”. Provided that you follow all those steps, and your olives are solid and healthy, they can be preserved for a long period, more than a year.

When the salt has infiltrated the olives adequately, which usually happens about a month later, you may start eating them. You may also season them to your liking, with some fresh olive oil, vinegar, oregano or thyme or garlic or any other herb. Enjoy!

Olives preserved in a jar

In order to have table olives prepared and ready to be eaten at any time, I recommend without hesitation the following well-known recipe: olives preserved in a jar. Once the previous procedure is completed, which means that the olives have been soaked in the mixture of water and salt at least for a month and have been de-acidified, follow the next steps:

Strain the olives from the mixture of water and salt (make sure that you do not use water to wash them off!!) and put them in one or more glass jars, depending of the quantity of the olives. It doesn’t have to be a small jar, it can contain up to 1 or 2 kilos of olives or even more.

As you put the olives in the jar, add every after handful, some grated oregano or savory or dry sticks of thyme. They are all natural conservatives and odorous herbs at he same time. If you feel like it, and you like its taste, you an also add a couple of garlic cloves, however, if you choose to season your olives with garlic, you’d better add oregano alone and not any other herb.

Then, add plain vinegar in the jar, 1/3-high.

Tip: Don’t use more vinegar, as this will render the olives rather sour, unless you are fond of this particular taste.

Then, fill in the jar, top-high, with extra virgin olive oil from the latest year’s harvest, until all the olives are covered. Don’t use seed-oils or old oils stored for years, because your whole effort will go to waste. Seed-oil, on the one hand, gives no taste, as for the old olive oil, it passes its bad odor into the olives.

Finally, place the jar in your kitchen cupboard, and remember to capsize it every once in a while, and shake the olives. Be careful not to open the jar as you move it, and make a mess of your kitchen.

After 15 days or so, your olives are ready to be consumed. I suggest that you eat them with toasted bread, some feta cheese, tomato and the other assortments, and, trust me, you will be licking your fingers.

NOTE: You can also prepare this recipe, “the recipe of the jar”, with olives bought in bulk from any retailer or super-market. This will give them some taste, because, otherwise, they are uneatable, at least to my liking. Try this recipe, and I am looking forward to your comments.

The post How to make and preserve your own table olives first appeared on Mell-Elaion.