Lahanika Lathera (Vegetables in Olive Oil)

I have been on a Greek kick lately. In a previous post, I described the chicken in yogurt and onions I made. I served the chicken with this as a side dish.

This isn't so much a recipe as it is a method. I got it from a cookbook I bought at a Greek Festival in Atlanta, GA about 20 years ago. The title of the book is "The Grecian Plate." It was put together by the Hellenic Ladies Society at the St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church in Durham, NC and published in 1988. It is a simple, paper bound book- but it is packed with authentic (at least as far as I know) recipes.

The book provides a list of vegetables you can use with this method, one of which was potatoes. I made a rookie mistake and parcooked them in the microwave (a step I took out of the fear they wouldn't cook all the way in the recipe and would be crunchy). I won't do that again.

Here's the method:

Lahanika Lathera

1 pound fresh vegetables
1 medium onion, chopped
1/4 c. olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and Pepper to taste
Fresh herbs and spices (I used garlic, fresh oregano and fresh basil)

Wash the potatoes and slice them thinly. In a dutch oven, combine all ingredients in just enough boiling water to keep from scorching. Cover and simmer until tender.

The potatoes broke apart and almost disentegrated by the time I served them. But the flavor of this dish was out of this world. Just enough lemon to know it's there, and the onion and garlic were perfect.

I will most definitely be doing this again soon!