Salud! at Whole Foods - Greek Easter Feast

Last Wednesday I was back down to Nashville for another class at Whole Foods (Green Hills) cooking school Salud!. This time it was a hands-on class called "Greek Easter Feast" taught by Merijoy Lantz Rucker.

Oh my!

We did a spring greens Greek salad, avgolemono soup, roast lamb stuffed with greens and feta, roasted potatoes with garlic, lemon & oregano and a cheese & honey tart.

First course was the Greek salad. Merijoy explained in Greece they are all about seasonal cooking and the early greens of this time of year are a special treat.

Next we did the avgolemono soup. This is one of the reasons I took the class! It's one of my all around favorites and I wanted to learn the trick to making it.

This is the trick... you have to "temper" your eggs with hot broth to slowly bring up their temperature without ending up with 'scrambled' eggs.


Then you stir and stir and stir.

Next we observed the preparation of the lamb

First was the stuffing. Here someone is trimming and slicing the 'rainbow' Swiss chard.

The all the greens are sautéed until tender.

The lamb already stuffed and being tied to go into the oven.

A little bit later and the beautiful roast is done. Merijoy is slicing after letting it rest about 10 minutes

And here is the roast, with the stuffing and a pan juice reduction for a sauce. SO good!

With a side of roasted potatoes (recipe follows).

And dessert was the tart. It's not a sweet dessert, which I enjoyed. It would be really good with fresh seasonal fruit. We made 2 types of tart.

One was a large tart using a tart pan.

The other was individual tarts with hand shaped crusts.

I preferred the large tart as there was more filling. But these small ones sure are cute!


Roasted Potatoes with Garlic, Lemon, and Oregano

3 pounds baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
1/2 cup good olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
Kosher or sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup chicken stock
3 Tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Place potatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toss with oil, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Roast the potatoes for 15 minutes. Add the stock, toss and roast for about 10 minutes more, or until the potatoes are golden brown, crispy and cooked through.

Sprinkle with fresh oregano and serve.