Two Cool Greek Soups

Today’s column is inspired by Steve Silha’s request for more Greek recipes. Some of the best dishes we ever tasted were those we ate in small Greek restaurants, the kind with only three tables and the cook working at the back of the room or in her adjacent kitchen. There’s no menu posted or at table. The cook beckons you to come into her kitchen, look at the food she’s prepared and choose. It’s Greek home cooking as interpreted in Crete, and as I remember it from the winter of our year of Sabbatical. Our daughters were grown and gone from the nest, but our two boys traveled with us.

At Chersonissos Limen (translation: Peninsula Harbor), the Cretan village where we four spent  the winter, the meat shop was open only one day a week. The rest of the week, our Cretan neighbors ate beans, lentils, octopus, calamari, and fish. The market at Iraklion sold sheep’s milk yogurt, rich with cream (10% butterfat) and dipped from the earthenware bowls the proprietor made it in.

Tourists usually go to Greece in the summer, when it’s much too hot to bake moussaka or anything else. We weren’t exactly tourists. We rented a house and cooked most of our meals, but every day we took our boys on a field trip and ate out at midday. Below are a couple of recipes  we enjoyed in Crete and still enjoy at home. The first doesn’t even require you to turn on your stove. The second requires only that you bring broth to a boil.

Yogurt soup is cool and refreshing, and you will enjoy it on warm days to come. Except for the walnuts and milk it’s very much like the thicker Tzatziki, which can be either a salad or a salad dressing piled on lettuce.

   Yiourta Soupa
    Yogurt Soup
Makes 6 servings
½ cup walnuts, coarsely chopped or broken pieces
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
3 cups yogurt
1 cup milk
1 cucumber, peeled and cut into small cubes
Salt and pepper to taste
Minced parsley

Combine walnuts, garlic, olive oil and vinegar. Whirl in food-process or blender until smooth. Pour into a mixing bowl and stir in yogurt and milk, stirring until smooth. Add cucumber. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir. Chill in refrigerator until just before serving. Garnish with minced parsley.

    Avgolemono Soupa
      Egg Lemon Soup
      Makes 4 servings

 6 cups chicken broth
1 cup cooked rice
3 eggs
Juice of 1 lemon

Bring broth to a boil. Add rice. Beat eggs to a froth. Slowly add the lemon juice, beating as you dribble juice in. Add 1 cup of hot broth, drop by drop at first, then gradually increasing while continually beating.
Remove the pan with the broth and rice in it from the stove. Pour the Avgolemono sauce into the soup and stir gently until well combined. Serve at once, lukewarm.