A very simple and fast to prepare Kritharaki. Thanks Chrissy for the recipe.

Ingredients

• 400g beef
• 3tbsp oil to fry
• 2 onions
• 500g kritharaki noodles
• 1tbsp oregano
• salt to taste (ca 1 tsp to start with)
• 100g tomato pase (TODO check the g!)
• 650g broth (I used beef but chicken will work as well)
• 150g feta cheese
• 200ml sweet cream

Instructions

Chop the onions. Heat the oil in a big pot and fry the beaf. Once it gets colour add the onions. Add the tomato paste, oregano and kritharaki noodles. Mix well and add the stock.

Heat everything up and bring it to a simmer. In paralell preheat a baking form in the oven to 180 degrees.

Do stir constantly, the noodles do stick very easily to the bottom. Once the water got absorbed and the kritharaki got a bit softer (still have a good bite to them though) fill everything in the preheated baking form. Cut the feta into cubes and add them into the mass. Top everything with the sweet cream and bake it for 30 minutes at 180 degrees.

Tips

• I did not have sweet cream and used a vegan substitute instead. Taste wise there was not much differene, though it did look quite different, especially after it cooled down. In those cases mixing in a bit of cheese might help to build a nice stable crust
• I used beef broth but chicken or vegetable broth will work as well
• out of the oven the pieces did not hold their forms, though after cooling down a bit they did. Maybe letting it sit in the warm oven for another 15 minutes will halp with that.

Next time…

• try to blend a gyros spice mix and use some of that
• this might be a recipe where soja granules could actually be a great substitute for meat. Adding ground shitaki mushrooms to the water when soaking it will add good base flavor. Texture wise it should be fine as well as the pasta does have nice texture and the soja should fit in nicely. Worth a try!