My Greek Dinner Party | My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas

I'm enjoying my morning coffee before heading out to the market to do some shopping for dinner. I've invited some friends over to my place later. I'm making roasted cabbage with pomegranate and herbs. Everyday ingredients for an extraordinary salad course. Whole baked fish with leeks. This is the beauty of simplicity. And for dessert, a Greek yogurt honey panna cotta. I'm impressed. This is delicious. Entertaining is a big part of my life. You're invited too. So join me on my Greek table for a dinner party Greek style. Cheers. I love to entertain. Gathering around a table is a deeply rooted part of Greek culture. The table is sacred. Shared meals, no matter how simple or festive, call forth the greatest attribute of the whole Mediterranean diet. The social connections forged or enhanced when people gather around a table to share food. Greek meals tend to be boisterous, rambunctious affairs, whether it's a gathering of friends or family or both. For me, the planning is just as much fun as the finale. I love open air markets and to check out whatever is fresh, local and seasonal. I might plan a meal carefully, but I always leave room for inspiration. That could be the daily catch or a harvest of nuts or something juicy like some fresh pomegranates. I also like to explore Greek wines, knowing that pairing them properly with whatever I'm cooking enhances the whole experience of the meal for everyone. Tonight, I've invited my closest Greek friends over. Ilia is a chef, Mary's an architect, Anna is an attorney, and Lizana is jack and mistress of many trades. Seamstress, designer and all around creative person. They all know each other and we've all shared many a table together. But no matter whether it's my closest friends or a more formal gathering, I always like to surprise my guests by transforming everyday ingredients into stellar and unusual treats. Entertaining sometimes stresses people out, but not when you take a page from Mama D's Greek dinner party book. I'm making a really simple, very elegant, healthy, delicious meal for my good friends. Starting with a roasted cabbage, one of the easiest recipes to make and also one of the most impressive. The first thing we do is cut the cabbage. I like to cut the cabbage into steaks. Savoy cabbage is a little bit fancy. You can also do this with a regular head of white cabbage, cutting it into thick wedges. I'm just going to place the cabbage rings on a lined baking sheet. If you have a few loose pieces like this, don't worry about it. You can just strew them around. A little bit of extra virgin Greek olive oil goes over the cabbage. I have two secret ingredients in this dish. And this is the first one, this smoked flaky Greek sea salt. It smells like barbecue. It's really delicious. I like to just rub it so that the pieces are a little smaller. There's an incredible array of really delicious sea salt and grease. A little bit of coarsely ground black pepper. There's always a salad course at a Greek meal. This is my salad course. We eat lots of cabbage salads, but this is really unique. This is going right into the oven. Under the broiler. That's going to take around 15 or 20 minutes to char. I'm going to turn it at some point. This looks awesome. I'm going to let the cabbage cool for a few minutes and get everything ready for the garnish and the dressing. A little bit of fresh rosemary first. Love fresh rosemary. I'm going to save one for garnish. Get this chopped. And a little bit of the dill. We do this for both flavor and color. And this cabbage is, it really is kind of a showstopper. People don't expect the flavor of roasted cabbage to be so unusual and so delicious. I'm just going to get that back into the bowl. The next thing is just to whisk together the balsamic vinegar and the olive oil. A little bit of vinegar first. Extra virgin Greek olive oil. I want to get a little sea salt in here. This smoked sea salt. It's very, very flavorful. And a little black pepper. Time to plate this. The pomegranate comes next. A beautiful Greek pomegranate. I'm just going to tap this so that all of the seeds come out over the cabbage. A little bit of the balsamic and olive oil. We don't want to drench this because the beauty of this dish is those charred leaves and kind of the texture itself. So I think we're good on the dressing. A little bit of lemon zest. I think we're good on that. And a little bit of fresh dill and rosemary. This is totally my idea of a stress-free vegetable course. Voila! Roasted Savoy cabbage with pomegranate seeds, lemon zest, olive oil, smoked sea salt, some herbs. Everyday ingredients for an extraordinary salad course. I have a really nice recipe coming up. Very simple, very dramatic. A beautiful whole roasted grouper with leeks, lemon, and white wine. Let's get started. I'm going to start just by prepping the leeks. And we want to get the leeks into pretty thick diagonal pieces. This is a pretty traditional dish originally from Crete with a few of my own tweaks to it. Roasted whole fish, baked whole fish. That's a totally stress-free option for any kind of dinner party. My pan is nice and warm. I'm just going to add a little extra virgin Greek olive oil to that. And get the leeks into the frying pan. We do this basically to soften them. I have quite a number of leeks here, so I'm going to do it in batches. So while that's happening, let me get a little salt over that. And while the leeks are cooking, I'm going to season the fish. And what we have here is this beautiful, what we call in Greek, spherida. Beautiful grouper. You could use any whole fish for this. I'm just going to get a little bit of salt over the surface. A little bit of white pepper over the top as well. You always want to add some sort of seasoning. I'm using fresh oregano and fresh thyme. You could add celery to this if you want. Maybe some fennel. Almost any kind of gentle herb works really nicely inside the fish. And we just do that for flavor. A little bit of extra virgin Greek olive oil just over the surface of the fish. And also around the pan a little bit. Let me check on those leeks. I'm going right into the pan. We've got some good color on that. This is looking good. It's got the color that we want. Okay, let me get this second batch of leeks into the baking pan. Beautiful. This is the beauty of simplicity and that is really what Greek food is all about. Very few ingredients, really good quality, super fresh and simple techniques. Just adding a few lemon slices to this because in Greece fish and lemon are a natural combination. And it also just looks really beautiful. A little white wine just to lubricate the leeks and the pan and the fish. This is going off to the oven. This is about a four and a half pound fish. You need about 10 minutes a pound, so 45 minutes at 375. I love to take the Greek classics and reinvent them. And in this recipe, I'm taking a perfect Greek couple, yogurt and honey, and making a panna cotta with that. The first thing we want to do is soften up the gelatin with a little bit of milk. So I'm just going to sprinkle the gelatin over this. We want to let it bloom a little bit, let it soften. It doesn't need to be stirred or anything. Get that off to the side. That's going to sit there for about 10 minutes. I'm going to heat the milk next. And next the cream goes in. And we want to heat that very, very gently. Next in some orange zest. I'm going to use two pieces of orange zest. I just love the flavor and the aroma of orange. Goes right in. And a little bit of Greek honey. And I'm using my good Icarian thyme honey for this. Look how thick and viscous and golden this is. So I just want to get that honey dissolved into this. I'm about to add the gelatin. I'm going to do that by taking the pot off the heat first. And we want to put that together and we are going to strain it in a second just to get any clumps that might be in here out. We want a nice smooth and velvety yogurt panna cotta. Ready to strain this. You can see those clumps. The fine mesh sieve is catching exactly what it needs to catch. This is beautiful. It's nice and silky which is exactly what we want. And I'm going to add vanilla bean yogurt next. We're adding two cups of vanilla bean yogurt. I'm going to whisk this together to get it nice and smooth. You want to do that gently to keep it from splattering. I'm pretty much ready here to get this into the cups. I can see how beautiful and creamy this is and I just want to show you the consistency. It's really thick and creamy and you see how it coats the back of that spoon. That's what we're looking for. I want to fill this about two-thirds of the way up. These take about an hour to set. You can just as easily do it a day before. I'm going to move this over to the fridge. While the panna cotta is setting, I'm going to make the topping. I'm just making a little bit of a very Greek topping which is walnuts, raisins, some apple, cinnamon, and a little sugar. We just want a rough chop on the walnuts. We want some nice texture. I'm going to toast the walnuts. It's the first step in making the topping. The frying pan is already warmed up. We want a little heat on the walnuts. That helps bring out all their essential oils and the nuts are much more flavorful that way. I'm getting really nice walnut perfume here. A little bit of olive oil goes in next. And the apples. Stir that all around. It might seem more intuitive to add butter to the apples, but we use olive oil a lot in Greek baking and Greek sweets. The raisins go in next. These are actually Greek currants. You can use any dark seedless raisin. A little pinch of salt. Some brown sugar. Get that stirred. The apples will start to release their own moisture and this is going to be nice and syrupy in a few minutes. And one last thing, another very Greek spice, especially with walnuts, a bit of cinnamon. So this is a little bit of apple pie meets Greek yogurt panna cotta. And the beautiful juices in the apple with the brown sugar are going to caramelize and we're going to get a really luscious topping. The apples are looking really good. You want to keep this moving in here because you don't want the sugar to totally caramelize. You don't want apple candy. You want it to be juicy. The apple topping is done. The panna cotta is set. And it's time to introduce it to our little apple pie topping here. I love to cook for my friends. Really one of life's greatest pleasures for me. And I try to do different things each time I have people over. I think this looks really pretty. The next thing is a little bit of Greek honey right over the top. I've got a little bit of a carrion thyme honey here. It's really thick. Thyme honey is a little bit lighter than pine honey, for example, which is also popular on the island. And it's very, very aromatic. And just a little bit of garnish. Just some fresh mint. A little bit of contrast. The dessert's ready. And you know I'm going to taste this before I serve it to everyone else. I'm impressed. This is delicious. The yogurt has just a hint of sweetness. The contrast with the topping, the crunch, the juiciness of the raisins, the apples. It all works really, really well together. I'm just making a very quick little appetizer or mezevaki, as we say in Greek. And this is halloumi cheese. Just going to take a few minutes. Some of this beautiful carrion pine honey. And I like to add some pink peppercorns, just for color. And just some thyme. This is one of my easy go-to mezevaki, a little appetizer, that I often serve when I'm waiting for friends. They're here. Hello, darling. Help yourself. I got some sparkling ksino mavro. Very nice. I made a little halloumi. Help yourself. It's delicious, Diana. Is it? Really good. I love the pink pepper. That's a great addition. Oh, delicious. Cooked a nice dinner. I have some fish and that roasted cabbage that I've made for you many times. And nice little dessert. I'm hungry. I know. I'm hungry, too. I've been working all day. Let's sit down. I got a sfirida, a big wild sfirida with leeks, which is a recipe from Crete. Ilia, I'm going to ask you to do the honors of carving that fish. I'll pour some wine. Well, this dish is from a very traditional Cretan recipe, so I thought it would be nice to serve a white Cretan wine, which is the vitiano grape. Let's serve the cabbage, too. This is a very low-calorie meal. Thanks for having us, Diana. It's really amazing. The leeks are, wow, amazing. The fish is juicy. Yes, very nice cooked. We have always a great time at your house. When you take care of us. Well, you take care of me, too, so. Delicious. I think this wine is really nice, too. It's very nice. It has a lot of, like, floral aromas. What do you think of the cabbage? Amazing. Normally, I prepare it fresh, but cooked the first time. Very nice. I love the charred flavor of the cabbage. It's really easy. You have to give us a recipe and try and make it. It's really easy. It's really great. True to form, like all Greeks, when we're around the table, we're talking about foods. Dessert. So I made panna cotta with vanilla bean Greek yogurt and honey from Ikaria and walnuts and apples and raisins and cinnamon. Okay, dig in. Enjoy. I hope you like it. Excellent. Oh, it's so good. I think the yogurt balances the sweetness. But it is very good. Bravo. Thank you. Anytime. I'm free next week. Are you free next week? Yes, yes, yes. Cheers. And how did you make this, Diana? By heating cream and milk. And adding some gelatin that I had dissolved. Then mixing that with this vanilla yogurt. Put it in the refrigerator, a little bit of honey. And then the topping is very easy. It's an apple cut up, walnuts, raisins, a little brown sugar, a little pinch of salt. It all caramelizes and gets juicy. And you put it on top and it's easy. And you could add any fruit. Doesn't have to be apple.