Saturday night my Greeks, as well as my Ecuadorian and my Utahan, came over for dinner.  In honor of my Greeks, I planned a Greek-inspired meal.  I baked pita bread using the recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible.  This book rockz!  The pita recipe was easy and delicious.  I did it a little differently than instructed by Beranbaum—whereas she instructed to cook the bread for 3 minutes without browning it, I baked it for about 6 minutes to brown it a bit.  The bread was very well received.

Along with the pita, I served a dish that I made up . . . I'll call it a roasted Greek salad . . . feta, green and black Greek olives, Greek roasted red peppers, grape tomatoes and oregano—roasted in the oven with the baking pita at 475 degrees.  Normally, I would have roasted it at a lower temperature . . . but I don't yet have my dream multi-oven kitchen . . . in fact, I don't even have a kitchen . . . just a little kitchenette . . . so it all had to happen in the same oven and it turned out fine.  I've been told there are similar traditional Greek dishes, but nothing quite the same.  It's always risky toying with Greek food and feeding it to Greeks . . . they're a traditional bunch and they more or less think they've already invented anything worth inventing!  But I pulled this one off, probably because I stuck to simple, high quality Greek ingredients.  My Greeks loved it.

I had decanted a couple of bottles of E. Guigal Côtes du Rhône 2004, which we began drinking with this course.  It's a well-balanced blend of Syrah, Grenache, Mourvédre grapes . . . berries and spice and a little smokey.  A great $11 bottle of wine that went well with this course, but even better with the next.  Keep reading below if you're interested in the second and third courses.