Grecian Garden Vegetables with Chef Michael Psilakis at Anthos

Daviae: Hi. I’m Daviae Cognani and we’re here at Anthos. We’re taking a trip to the Aegean to taste some upscale, modern Greek cuisine. So let’s go behind the burner and meet the chef. I am here with Chef and owner Michael Psilakis. What are you making for us? Michael: Well, we’re making a big kind of Greek salad. We play it around with Greek here at Anthos. We’re going to take all of these, we’re going to toss it together with a traditional vinaigrette or red wine vinaigrette. We’ve done two things with the vinaigrette. We’ve added a little bit of yogurt to this one so it’s a red wine vinaigrette that’s been emulsified with some sheep and goat milk yogurt. It’s a fantastic product coming out of Canada. So instead of taking the Feta cheese crumbling it all up into the vinaigrette like my mother would have all the natural juices of the vegetables to kind of melt with the vinaigrette and the feta cheese to give you that wonderful creaminess that we know that defines the Greek salad. We’re pulling it apart a little bit so we need to get a little bit of that creaminess in there and that’s going to happen with this yogurt just on the bottom of the plate. We’re going to just start by just taking some vegetables. We have cauliflower radishes and some baby leaves. We just go on and pouch off a little bit. Daviae: So pouching meaning what? Michael: Just blanching it up. Daviae: So blanch, you mean you put it in boiling water, you pull it out and put in ice? Michael: Right in water to stop the cooking and keeps the color of the vegetable really, really bright. Daviae: And keeps the crispiness. Michael: Yes. It’s wonderful with really thin slices of various radishes here. We used a mandolin, a fantastic piece of equipment for the home. These are really great things that people throw out. It just settle your hard leaves. Daviae: Of course. Michael: And these have so much flavor and they’re really, really tender. Now, these are not the leaves that you put on top of this. You really have to open it up and they’re really, really tender and we saved all of them. These are really beautiful, beautiful things. They add so much flavor. Daviae: And that same ingredient that people never really use. Michael: They never use it. It’s like a byproduct of something that you would use for a soup or 1:57 of some sort. And all of the sudden, you get these little tiny beautiful leaves let’s say sea crest. We keep them in water so they stay nice and crisp and they’re just wonderful thrown into any type of salad. They’re eve garnished in fish. You could do so many different things with them. You know, just take the things that you kind and this is just a fun salad. It’s almost like a cu d’etat, kind of mixed up with a little bit of great flavor and it’s a lot of fun. We’re going to take now—this is just the Greek yogurt that I was talking to you about with the red wine vinegar. And we’re going to do like what we call a swoosh which is a really, really simple thing. We’re going to get a big dollop of it, we’re going to take our spoon and we’re going to just take it from one end and don’t stop in one quick motion and do one of those. Now, we’re really being fancy. Daviae: We are. Michael: We have an even fancier platter that we would serve it on. We’ll wipe our plate down just so that nobody sees… Daviae: Perfectionist. Michael: So we did it. We came back out here and we made our famous Anthos Greek Salad. We took all these wonderful vegetables that we have. A ton of root vegetables in here, wonderful carrots, white asparagus, there is artichokes, we have all different types of radishes. We have heirloom tomatoes and we have heirloom eggplants and we have three different types of lettuces and we have obviously the big ingredient here, Feta cheese. Daviae: You cannot have a Greek salad without feta cheese. Michael: I don’t think so. And we just toss it all with a red wine vinaigrette that we’ve emulsified with a little bit of yogurt and we dressed our greens with some lemons and extra virgin olive oil and I think we’re ready to eat. Daviae: It’s salad time. Michael: I think what’s fun about this salad is that we get to pick what we want to eat and you could fold in some of these feta cheese as well and you can see how… Daviae: The feta cheese is just tangy. And you have the citrus kind of pungentness of the lettuce. And then here, you just have this kind of mild vegetable, fresh, light vegetable flavors. Behind the Burner members can enjoy this exclusive opportunity to purchase Michael Psilakis’s favorite medley of garden fresh vegetables. Stay tuned to Behind the Burner where we give you the tips, tricks and techniques that are lighting the culinary world on fire.