Mystery Greek Food was RE: [Sca-cooks] Moussaka?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 11, 2006, at 3:11 PM, Guenievre de Monmarche wrote:

> While we're on the subject of Greek foods, I had a dish in a Greek
> restaurant once that was wonderful... and then the restaurant closed.
> Unfortunately, the one person I know who was raised in Greece says  
> she's
> never heard of anything like it.  It was basically torn up pieces  
> of pita
> bread, and hunks of gyro-style lamb, layered in a baking dish and then
> covered in some sort of yogurt based sauce (maybe with egg? It was  
> kind of
> custardy), topped in more pita and baked - the top bits of pita get  
> crusty,
> the rest are bread-pudding-ish). Has anyone ever had anything like  
> this, and
> can tell me what it's called, or even better does anyone have a  
> recipe for
> something like this?
>
>
> Guenièvre

Not offhand, but the first thing that came to my mind is one of the  
period  family of Islamic dishes where you cook a stew (sorta-kinda)  
then use something starchy to soak up the liquid and make a pilaff-ey  
dish. Some call for grain, some for pasta, and some for either  
breadcrumbs or coarser bits of torn-up bread. One of the ones with  
torn-up bread also calls for yogurt, IIRC.

See this page in Cariadoc's online Miscelleny for some examples of  
the kind of thing I'm talking about:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/ 
andalusian8.htm

Look in particular at the tharid recipes...

It seems to me that if you made something like a tharid, then topped  
it with the standard Greek egg-and/or-cheese-custard stuff, and baked  
it till brown on top, it might resemble what you're describing, and I  
wouldn't be at all surprised if this ancient family of dishes has  
survived in some little Greek village where your restaurant chef's  
grandma was born, and remains unknown elsewhere...

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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