Greek Gyros-spiced lamb with pumpkin rice.

Hello all.

It's time for something more traditional.

Greek gyros is meat that has spices infused to it. Usually it's set up on a rotating vertical spit and adjusting the heat from the broiler and the amount of fat in the meat is used to control how juicy the gyro is. It is usually sliced off and placed in pita with tzatziki and salad. It's similar to shawarma and donairs.

In this case, we do not have a rotating spit, so we made gyro cakes out of lamb meat. Foregoing with the tradition though, we had it with some pumpkin rice. Because hey, pumpkins are plentiful here so why not take advantage of their benefits?

And so, here is the recipe!

Ingredients (enough for 2 people, plus seconds)

• 1 kilo lamb minced meat
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp cinammon
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander powder
• 2 tsp parsley powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp oregano

Looks simple, right? The only thing you need to do is to mix the lamb minced meat (or any meat of your choice) with the spices above. And if you think there's another spice that would go, don't be afraid to add it!

Form it into lamb cakes and grill it or fry it. We put it in a skillet on very low fire and let it cook.
That was actually the most time consuming part. The actual cooking time was the worst, because you can smell the delicious gyro cooking but you know it's not done yet.

Pumpkin rice

• 2 cups chopped pumpkin (we used butternut squash)
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 tbsp soy sauce 
• 1 cup chopped asparagus
• 1 cup red bell pepper - chopped
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1tsp cinammon
• 1tsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 cup rice (your choice - we used basmatti)
• 1/2 water

We put all the ingredients in the slow cooker from the morning and left it to cook 4-5 hours until we ate.
It was really good!!

Give it a try guys!

I'll also post a recipe on how to make some good tzatziki and not that sour cream crap you find in stores.

Let me know what you think :)

Zucchini omelette

Hey everyone!

This is a quick little recipe, I've got a lot of them lined up for you people so keep an eye out!

This is perfect for any time of the day, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner.

 Just a plain zucchini omelet as breakfast is yummy.

This is pretty easy and delicious. It's not really an omelet, more like scrambled eggs. 

We put in:

• sliced zucchini
• leek/green onion,
• tomatoes
• red peppers
• dried pork loin (homemade Cypriot lountza) marinaded over a month in red wine.
• salt and pepper to your liking
• 1 egg per person (we had jumbo eggs so that meant 2 yolks per egg)
• feta cheese

Lightly fry the zucchini with the red pepper and then when it's sufficiently browned to your liking, add the rest of the ingredients and start mixing until the eggs are cooked and there's no visible uncooked egg-white around your pan.

Keep in mind to taste your omelet before you put in any salt. Feta cheese is pretty salty already, as well as the dried pork loin that we put in.

Also, for any Costco members out there, i really recommend the EPIROS feta cheese they sell. It's the best feta cheese I've had in Canada.

It's made of sheep's milk rather than cow's or a mixture of cow and sheep milk, it's authentic and much healthier. It's also the most popular feta cheese brand in Greece.

But if you want to make it a lunch dish, all you need to do is add some rice or anything else that is to your liking. Here we added black rice!

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And that's it! Enjoy :)