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Correspondence acquaintance with the ancient Greeks will not only enrich you with the understanding that everything new is a well-forgotten old, but will also encourage you to go to the homeland of gods and heroes. Where, behind the ruins of temples and the ruins of history, our contemporaries live with the same joys and problems as their distant ancestors millennia ago. An unforgettable experience awaits you relaxation, thanks to the most modern infrastructure surrounded by virgin nature. On the site you will find tours to Greece, resorts and hotels, weather. In addition, here you will find out how and where it is issued visa and find Consulate in your country or Greek Visa Application Center.Property in Greece
The country is open to foreigners wishing to purchase real estate. Any foreigner has the right to do so. Only in border areas, non-EU citizens need to obtain a purchase permit. However, the search for lawful houses, villas, townhouses, apartments, the correct execution of the transaction, the subsequent maintenance is a difficult task that our team has been solving for many years.Russian Greece
Topic immigration remains relevant not only for ethnic Greeks living outside their historical homeland. The forum for immigrants discusses how legal issues, and the problems of adaptation in the Greek world and, at the same time, the preservation and popularization of Russian culture. Russian Greece is heterogeneous and unites all immigrants who speak Russian. At the same time, in recent years, the country has not justified the economic expectations of immigrants from the countries of the former USSR, in connection with which we are seeing a reverse migration of peoples. fifteenwinter kaleidoscope 28.01.2019
Dear readers, our blog contest is coming to an end. Let me remind you that it runs until January 27, 2019. And I publish the latest competition articles. We will sum up soon. Follow the news.
Today Elena Meteleva from Greece is with us. We meet her article, which participates in the nomination "New Year's and Christmas Sweets". This is her second competition entry. The first article received a huge response. And today Lena will tell us about how kurabye is prepared in Greece. I pass the floor to Lena.
Dear readers, we continue to join the Greek holidays. As promised earlier, in this article I will talk about other traditional Greek sweets. Let's start with the recipe for New Year's kurabye.
For some reason, they are also baked only during the Christmas and New Year holidays. At other times of the year, these cookies are rarely seen. It is no less fragrant than melomakarona, but in its own way.
Recipe for Greek Kurabye (Κουραμπιέδες)
For the test we need:
- 250 gr. butter,
- 150 ml. vegetable oil (any, I take our olive),
- 150 gr. almond,
- 2 doses of vanilla powder,
- 1 stack powdered sugar
- 50 ml. ouzo (Greek aperitif)
- 1 tsp soda without a slide,
- About 1 kg of soft flour,
- Powdered sugar at the end for sprinkling.
Remove the butter from the refrigerator in advance so that it warms and softens. Then mash it with a spoon and start pouring vegetable oil, whisking the mass with a whisk or mixer until smooth.
Brown the almonds in the oven at 160 degrees. It is enough if it becomes golden, you do not need to fry it strongly. Then chop or mash into large pieces.
Add to the oil powdered sugar vanilla, a shot of ouzo and soda mixed in a small amount water.
Here everyone will scream - but where can I get you an ouzo and what is it in general? Ouzo is a Greek grape aperitif flavored with sweet anise. It gives freshness and sophistication to the aroma of cookies. If someone is worried about alcohol, it will evaporate, leaving only the aroma. But in the absence of ouzo, you can take some kind of strong liquor or just cognac, mastic liqueur or tincture is well suited.
Gradually add the pre-sifted flour to the butter mass and knead soft dough. Lastly, add the toasted almonds.
Further, everything is quite simple. Bring the oven up to 180 degrees. Place cookies on a sheet or baking sheet covered with baking paper. You can simply sculpt it with your hands, making small balls. Or just roll out the dough about 1 cm and cut out the kurabye with any mold, traditionally it is a crescent moon, I once made stars and other figures.
Bake for approximately 20 minutes, until light golden brown. You can check the readiness of kurabye very easily. Take out one cookie and break it in half with a fork. When it is ready, it lends itself easily and will crumble.
Leave cookies to cool slightly after baking. Greek housewives, before rolling kurabye in powdered sugar, sprinkle cookies with rose water, it is specially sold in supermarkets. I do not do this. It is convenient to put powdered sugar in a bag, adding a little vanilla there, and “bath” 2-3 cookies in powdered sugar. So it is evenly covered with powder.
Then beautifully lay the kurabye on a plate and it will create a festive mood in your home! And there will always be something to treat guests to tea.
Once upon a time, our relatives, after slaughtering a pig, gave us a jar or two of melted fat. I must say that he perfectly replaced the butter in the kurabye recipe! The perenya had a different aroma, but no one guessed what was wrong.
Lenten chicken. Recipe
And now the recipe for kurabye in lean execution.
- 250 ml vegetable oil,
- half a glass of red wine
- 5 tbsp Sahara,
- zest of 1 lemon,
- 0.5 kg. flour with baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 vanilla,
- lokum a few pieces,
- powdered sugar for sprinkling.
Sift the flour into a bowl. In another container, mix oil, sugar, zest, wine, spices. My mixture of olive oil, spices and red semi-sweet exuded such an aroma that I understood why my niece calls these cookies “monastic”.
Gradually add flour and knead the plastic dough, it is necessary that it is well molded.
Lokum is a sweet that looks like marmalade in powdered sugar. In Greece, a wide variety of its tastes, you can take any. But if there is no Turkish delight, it's okay - take thick jam, or you can stuff kurabye with almonds or raisins to your liking.
Insert the pieces of Turkish delight into the center of the cookie and form a ball. Bake in the same way as in the previous recipe, and sprinkle with powdered sugar in the same way.
Finally - the recipe for the Greek holiday pie Vasilopita.
Vasilopita's Festive Pie
Actually, this is almost an ordinary cupcake and there are a million recipes for vasilopita. But it is always round, lush and very tasty, and without it in Greece New Year do not meet.
I give the recipe more as an example, this year I baked vasilopita according to it.
- 300 grams of butter,
- 400 gr. Sahara,
- 3 eggs,
- 150 ml. orange juice
- 150 ml. milk,
- 350 gr. flour,
- 100 gr. chopped almonds,
- 50 gr. crushed walnuts,
- 20 gr. lemon zest,
- 20 gr. orange peel,
- 20 gr. baking powder,
- 2 gr. salt,
- 25 ml Amaretto liqueur.
cooking vasilopita
Sift flour into a bowl and mix it with loose ingredients - nuts, zest, salt, baking powder.
Beat softened butter with sugar in a mixer. While continuing to beat, drop in the eggs one at a time. Then pour in the milk and juice, and then gradually add the flour. At the end, pour liquor into the resulting mixture and beat a little more.
Pour the dough into the prepared form with a diameter of about 26 cm. Bake in an oven preheated to 150 degrees for about an hour.
To make the cake become a vasilopita, after 35-40 minutes after the start of baking, take out the cake and put fluri in it - a lucky coin wrapped in foil. If this is done at the beginning, then the coin will sink to the bottom.
The finished cake should be left to cool and then decorate to your liking. I had it ready chocolate glaze and the remaining almonds, which I laid out 2019.
AT new year's eve by 12 o'clock in the Greek house everything is already eaten, and everyone is waiting for midnight. Exactly at 12 in the house the lights are turned off for a minute, and then they congratulate each other on the new year, hug and kiss. At the same time, we can hear the sounds of fireworks on the street - one of the neighbors will definitely start funny lights.
After that, the owner of the house, according to tradition, cuts the cake, having previously made a cross on it with a knife. The first cut piece is for Christ and the Mother of God, then for the house and fields, then for the owner of the house, the hostess, the children, and in turn for all the guests. Whoever finds fluri in his piece will be lucky all next year!
Kourabiedes is the most delicate almond biscuit that the Cypriots bake and eat at Christmas.
The name comes from a Turkish word and a similar cookie called kurabye.
A distinctive feature of Greek kourabiedes from their Muslim brothers is that they are abundantly sprinkled with powdered sugar, and a clove stick is inserted into each cookie from above ( γαρύφαλλο
).
This tradition has religious roots and symbolizes one of the gifts of the Magi to Jesus. Well, at the same time, the clove flavors the courabiedes and gives them charm.
Kourabiedes
Composing a sweet Christmas couple with, courabiedes repeats the same approach to cooking. Very little sugar is placed in the dough itself, but after baking, the cookies are well crumbled in powdered sugar. The result is an unusual nutty sweetness.
There are a lot of recipes, as always, and here are the ingredients you can choose to your taste:
First, butter. It may be regular cow's butter, but sheep's butter will give you the authentic taste of the liver.
Yes, it happens.
Sheep butter In the original of nuts, preference is given to almonds ( αμύγδαλα ), but there are recipes with walnuts ( καρύδι ) and with pistachios.
As an alcoholic drink, you can take both cognac and brandy or rum. Or maybe you like the aroma of mastic liqueur or ouzo.
From spices, you can add vanilla, cloves and cinnamon.
If you find rose water, you will get just like the Cypriots.
Rose water (secondary distillate, rose hydrolate) - an aqueous solution of rose essential oil components; cosmetic and aromatic product with a pronounced smell of rose flowers. Rose water is obtained by steam distillation from essential oil hybrid varieties of roses (Rosa damascena Mill., Rosa gallica L. and others) and is a secondary product in the production of rose essential oil.
Allow the cookies to cool slightly before dusting them, otherwise they may fall apart in your hands.
You can form both balls and flattened balls, as well as various other shapes to your taste.
Like melamacarona, courabiedes can be stuffed different fillings. There is no need to limit your imagination here.
Recipes
Stavros adds olive oil and lots of spices
Akis, this time cooking in Greek and using sheep's butter
Well, the video is in Russian
Princess Amidala loves almonds.
Kourabiedes is a traditional sweet, which for the Greeks is a symbol of Christmas and New Year. Kourabiedes is prepared in all parts of Greece, so there are many options for preparing this sweet. We offer the recipe for Nea Karvali (a town in the north of Greece, founded by Greeks who migrated from Central Asia), which is considered to be real. This recipe is easy to prepare because it requires less ingredients than other recipes. However, the ingredients needed for that recipe must be of excellent quality if we want to get a good result.
Ingredients:
800 gr. flour
500 gr. butter (not margarine!)
150 gr. powdered sugar
a little vanilla
150 gr. peeled unsalted roasted almonds
powdered sugar for sprinkling
Cooking method:
We take the butter out of the refrigerator in advance, it should be room temperature(about 25 degrees). Beat the softened butter in a mixer for 5-6 minutes at high speed. The oil should be white color. While continuing to beat, gradually add the powdered sugar. Beat for 5-7 minutes until a homogeneous mass is formed. Add vanillin to the mass and gradually flour, continue to beat in a mixer.
We should get a plastic dough that does not stick to our hands.
Divide the dough into balls the size of a large Walnut. We stuff each ball with whole almonds, about 2 pieces. Let's shape our courabiedes.
Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or oiled.
Bake in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for about 35-40 minutes. Ready kurabiedes should acquire a golden color.
Take out of the oven and leave for 1-2 hours. Because of the butter, the courabiedes are soft, so you need to wait until they harden a little.
Sift the icing sugar on the dish, lay out the curaedes, sprinkle with icing sugar on top.
