RECIPE: The ULTIMATE Spanakorizo for spring
A classic Greek recipe using seasonal ingredients, served up by Yiayia Soula
Kalimera from Athens one and all!
After a week’s sojourn in Italy cooking up dishes with Nonnas for my next book, Mesogeio, I’m back in Greece and needing a good mid-week recipe to see me and my family through for the next few days.
So, gather up your lemons and go. This spanakorizo recipe calls for a zingy finish and puts to use any spinach and leeks you might have lurking in the fridge.
Spanakorizo is a kind of Greek risotto but in true Greek style, the vegetables are the star of the show and it’s much less fussy to make than a traditional Italian risotto. An entire bunch of dill added into the pot brings a fresh meadow aroma to my kitchen as I cook. I picked this one up a few weeks ago from Yiayia Soula in the Peloponnese, who serves it with a hefty chunk of feta and a wedge of zesty lemon.
Wild flowers were in bloom over a lush blanket of grass when I arrived in the Peloponnese to cook with Yiayia Soula. We headed past neatly preened olive groves to the local laiki market to grab the ingredients for our spanakorizo and I could tell right away that Soula is a force to be reckoned with.
She had no issue being photographed at the small village market, posing for the camera as locals gawped at the sight of me and Marco the photographer, snapping away while Soula surveyed the veggies. When people inevitably asked what we were doing, she was the first to explain that she’s being featured in my next cookbook.
Back home, we cooked spanakorizo in the dappled shade of the orange trees in her garden. I found Soula’s method of washing the spinach - in an enormous vat with a hose pipe - hugely entertaining and will be trying this at home in Corfu this summer.
Lots of people aren’t aware that spanakorizo - the spinach and rice dish that we make here in Greece - is a very interesting combination and not just because it tastes good. Spinach is difficult for the human body to digest but the rice and lemon that we add to it in this recipe helps the body to absorb the iron. My mother was an excellent cook and she told me this many years ago.
I lived in America for most of my adult life but have returned to Greece for the weather and the good produce. I like to go to my local laiki (farmer’s market) every Thursday and that’s an outing that happens ritually every week. I tend to also go for walks in the surrounding olive groves every day, leaving my brother, whom I live with, to sleep in while I get out and about to catch up with friends or start on the day’s chores.
I find that what is most important in life is to keep moving. Even when things get tough, we must put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. I am a mother who lost her son and that was the most difficult thing I have ever had to endure. Somehow, I still manage to smile, make jokes and approach life with lightness. I have eight grandchildren and I have kept myself happy for them. I think being grateful for what you have is so important. We can’t control what will happen to us but we can control how we conduct ourselves through it.
Soula, 1946, Peloponnese
The Recipe: Yiayia Soula’s Spanakorizo
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