‘Tsilihourda’ from Corfu

“The Corfiot countryside offers an abundance of herbs, wild greens, flowers and tender shoots successful the springtime. Lamb and goat are well raised and well fed. Cooked together, they marque the traditional Corfiot tsilihourda,” says cook Aristotelis Megoulas, a autochthonal of the Ionian island.

“There is nary single recipe, but variations from 1 portion of the land to another: some adhd tomato paste and reddish pepper, others adhd spices, some see atom and some decorativeness it with an egg-lemon sauce. The communal thread, however, is the use of herbs. It’s not a soup similar magiritsa, but cooked down until it forms a wonderful condiment that, arsenic locals say, tin beryllium eaten with a fork.”

“After 40 days of fasting, the stomach couldn’t grip thing heavy,” Megoulas explains. “People would take a reddish ovum to church, devour it and hide the shells successful the fields for blessing. They would sip some of the warm cooking broth. The wood-fired oven was lit for Easter breads similar colombina oregon fogatsa. At midday connected Sunday, astir preferred a cooked crockery oregon soup. The hearth burned each day, and the cookware was filled with lamb, beef oregon chickenhearted for lunch, and tsilihourda for the evening. True enthusiasts would adjacent grate a small cinnamon implicit the dish.”

Chef: Aristotelis Megoulas

Prep: 40’

Cooking: 2.5 hours

Ingredients

(serves 4-6)

• 1 lamb pluck, 800 g to 1 kg

• 1 acceptable of lamb intestines

• 200-300 g sweetbreads

• 2 leeks, thinly sliced

• 10 spring onions, finely chopped

• 1 reddish onion, finely chopped

• 4 greenish ail stalks (or 4 ail cloves), finely chopped

• 200 ml good-quality retsina oregon adust white wine

• 1 kg mixed wild greens (such arsenic chicory, chard, beet greens, nettles, sow thistle, wild mustard etc), cleaned, washed, dried and finely chopped. Or, alternatively, 1 ample clump chard and 1 ample caput lettuce

• 1 ample clump mixed herbs (wild fennel, dill, mint, coriander, caller oregano, parsley)

• 2 eggs, yolks and whites separated, astatine country temperature

• juice of 2 lemons

• 100 ml olive oil, positive other for serving

• salt, freshly crushed greenish pepper

Method

Bring a ample cookware of water to boil. Once it reaches a rolling boil, adhd the lamb pluck and blanch it for 5 minutes, counting from the infinitesimal the water returns to a boil. Remove and transfer to a ample bowl. Blanch the sweetbreads successful the aforesaid way, followed by the intestines.

Let everything cool, then chopped into small pieces astir 1 cm successful size utilizing room scissors. Combine each the chopped ingredients successful a ample bowl.

Wash and adust the pot. Add 40 ml of the olive oil, some kinds of onions, the leek, the ail and a small salt, and navigator implicit debased to mean vigor until the ingredients soften and mildly sweat, astir 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, vigor different cookware implicit very precocious vigor until it is lightly smoking. Add the remaining olive lipid and saute the blanched offal successful batches until lightly browned. Transfer each batch to the cookware with the softened vegetables.
Once each the offal has been added to the large pot, summation the heat, play with brackish and pepper, and stir for astir a minute. Deglaze with the wine and fto it navigator for 1-2 minutes until the intoxicant evaporates.

Add capable water to afloat screen the ingredients. Reduce the heat, play with a small much salt, and skim for a fewer minutes, until the broth becomes wide and clean.

Cover the cookware and simmer mildly for 1.5 hours. Uncover, slightly summation the heat, and navigator for a fewer much minutes until the liquid reduces, forming a thick, cohesive sauce. Add the greens and the citrus juice, stir and screen the cookware again. Cook for 10 minutes, until the greens merchandise their flavorful juices and soften.

Set speech a fewer herb tips for serving, then adhd the remaining herbs to the pot. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally, and region from the heat.

In a abstracted bowl, whisk the ovum whites into a stiff meringue, then adhd the yolks 1 astatine a time, mixing well. Gradually ladle successful some blistery broth from the pot, stirring constantly, until the substance is well warmed. Pour it into the cookware and shingle mildly to incorporated it into the sauce. Keep the crockery warm – bash not instrumentality it to the heat.

Serve successful heavy plates, garnish with the reserved herbs and decorativeness with freshly crushed greenish capsicum and a drizzle of olive oil.

This story archetypal appeared successful Kathimerini’s nutrient supplement, Gastronomos.