Great Lent Gourmet: Day 23: Arakas - Peas with Dill and Tomato Sauce

Arakas is one of our favourite staple side dishes. It is a dish that we prepare on a regular basis. As we set out to include this recipe in our blog, we wanted to find a good source with a simple, tasty recipe. Usually, we don't follow a specific recipe for this dish, since it is one that we were taught by our parents and our grandparents. Many family recipes lack exact measurements, as does ours. However, many of our Greek food cookbooks had interesting recipes, and we also found on the internet thousands of recipes to make arakas.

There were many variations to how to make arakas -- some recipes included artichokes, some included potatoes, some had carrots or sugar. We wanted to make sure to have a basic recipe to which you could simply add your own variations. Many of the dishes that are "LATHERO" are easy to personalize with the addition of or omission of some ingredients. Lathero foods are inherently vegetables with a tomato sauce and very oily. If you don't see that layer of oil on top, you probably don't have enough oil in the dish. (or so my Yiayia would say...)

When you are choosing which recipe to use, it is imporatnat to know how much time you have, which ingredients you have, which ingredients you need, and if other people have reviewed the recipe. And, if you try several different recipes for the same dish, you will find the one that suits your individual tastes and then you can build from there. One of the most common one, alhtough not specifically for Greek foods, is Allrecipes.com If you want recipes that are Greek specific, then you may want to check out Kalofagas.ca or greekfood.about.com; or you can just stay with us and find out what time will bring to your plate!

So, back to the Arakas. The history of arakas, we took from kopiaste.org, and they tell us the folowing:

"The modern Greek word is arakas αρακάς. Mpizeli in Greek μπιζέλι (or pizeli as it is pronounced in Cyprus), comes from the italian word pisello - in latin pisellum pisum a name which originally was Greek from the ancient Greek pissos – pisson (αρχαία ελληνική πίσος ή πίσον (αντιδάνειο) and borrowed back from us. The word arakas is also from the ancient word «arakos – άρακος) probably from an ancient word of Asian origin."

We were going to use the recipe from Kopiaste.org, but neither of us like cooked carrots. Yes, we could have omitted them from the recipe, but the author clearly wrote that he used them to make the sauce sweeter. And, we could have replaced that with sugar, but it never seems quite right to put sugar in a dish with peas. That part was not of interest to us, since we are going for the tomato and oil flavours.

So, we found a recipe much like the ones we were taught growing up, in order to be able to provide you with amounts. We could write descriptions like, "...enough to fill the pot," or "until it looks like..." but that seemed to unspecific for a reader. Unless you have the hand motions to go with this kind of description, it is best to use specified amounts. This recipe for arakas comes from Recipes Wiki and has the most similarities to the dish we know and love. Here is the recipe, converted to U.S. standard measures:

You will need the following:

4 cups frozen peas (or fresh)
8 oz tomatoes, sliced thin if fresh (scant 1 cup canned)
1 large onion, sliced very thin
1/2 cup water
6 TBSP fresh dill, chopped
Salt, to taste
Olive oil, as needed

First, heat enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot you are using.
Saute the onions until they are soft and have a lightly golden colour.
Next, add the dill and the salt to the pan.
Allow this to cook for about two minutes to release all the flavours into the oil.
Then, add the tomatoes. Stir well and allow this to heat until all of the ingredients are hot.
Next, add the peas and the water to the pot.
Mix well so that the peas are fully covered with the tomato sauce, and all of the ingredients are well distributed.
Bring the mixture to a boil for about 10 minutes.
Then, cover the pot and simmer for 45 to 60 minutes. The peas will get very soft and the tomato sauce will thicken. Serve hot or cold.

We found this recipe to be tasty enough, but in need of a little salt on the final dish. The amount we put in the pot seemed to have been lost. The oil amount was "enough to cover the bottom of the pot" which I guess depended on how big of a pot we used. We tried this recipe in a small, 9 inch round pot with four cups of peas for four people. Then, we used a larger, 12 inch pot, and we doubled the amounts of peas, tomatoes, onions, and dill. When we started to pour the oil in the pot -- enough to cover the bottom, it seemed like the amount should have been a lot... but it was not really that much more than the amount we used in the smaller pot. The end result was the same -- we had that nice layer of oil on top of the tomato sauce, and it was quite tasty.

In the past, we have added various things to this recipe, and we have made the onion, tomato, dill sauce with different vegetables, such as green beans and artichokes. This is a safe, basic recipe to follow, and gives plenty of room for individuality. The end result is still the same-- a healthy, savoury vegetable dish. We would love to hear how this turns out for you, and if you found anything new about arakas to share. Let us know!