Five loaves and two fish - with a Greek inspired new potato salad

The oven repair guy was due yesterday afternoon. All the different delivery companies and home services always give these really unhelpful time slots like between 8 and 2pm or 10 and 6pm which means your whole day is screwed. They always turn up 5 minutes before the end of the slot or they don’t turn up at all and when you then call them they say, oh yes, we didn’t manage to get to you today, we will come tomorrow between 10 and 6pm. So you have spent your whole day waiting for the doorbell not even daring to take a shower or boil the kettle in fear of missing the doorbell.  And they never call half an hour before as they are supposed to.

So yesterday afternoon as eager as I was to get the oven door finally fixed it was really annoying that we’d just made it to the local pub’s beer garden and I was taking a picture of my white wine glass to post in Facebook (a pleasure shared in social media is a pleasure doubled), when the guy called, not to say he’d be with us in 30 min which would have given me enough time to finish my wine and make it back home, but that he was at the door. So I left husband in the beer garden and ran back home.

As the oven dude was just finishing the work and I was getting ready to return to my wine I got a message from husband that he’d called a friend of his and he’d come to drink my wine and also could I barbecue some nice food for them. So not only did the guy drink my wine, he was also going to eat my fish. I had two lovely Greek sea bream in the fridge for us for dinner, which I now had to make feed all three of us. Not really the same as Jesus with 5000 people but still, with no celestial superpowers I thought it’s worth a blog post at least.

I always love to cook for people, so I was actually really pleased although it was unfortunate that I only had two fish. But I had a bag of nice big shrimp in the freezer which I defrosted under warm water and drizzled with oil, seasoned with salt, pepper, a dash of Tabasco and fresh oregano ready to be skewered and grilled.

I boiled some new potatoes for a feta and olive warm potato salad and made a green salad with chickpeas. I seasoned the sea bream and filled the cavities with lemon slices and dill. And while I was finishing the salads and laying the garden table, husband and his friend barbecued the fish, shrimp and some pitta bread for us. Husband's friend also wanted to try some or our Finnish oddities, so I served moose samosas and smoked reindeer soft cheese to spread on his pitta. No one left the table hungry.

Recipe: Greek inspired new potato salad with feta and olives

500g new potatoes

125g feta cheese

20 kalamata olives

Handful of capers / chopped gherkins  (optional)

3 spring onions

1/3 -1/2  cup of fresh dill

Oil

Juice of half a lemon

Salt

Pepper

Boil the potatoes and cube to whatever size you like. Add chopped spring onions, cubed feta, sliced olives , capers or gherkins and chopped dill. Drizzle with oil, squeeze over the half of lemon and season with salt and pepper. Mix and check the taste.