Happy August! Can you believe my daughter went back to school this week? It seems so early, but the school district is trying out a new schedule this year. School starting means I have more time to cook and blog!
The French Fridays with Dorie administrators decided to make this week a make-up week to give everyone a chance to catch-up a bit. This couldn’t have come at a better time for me since the last few weeks of summer are always busy, and I missed a few of the weekly recipes.
I had big plans to catch up on all the recipes I missed the last few months, but unfortunately my oven is out of commission so I could only make the dishes that didn’t require baking. Don’t worry – the heating element of my oven burnt out, but a new one has been ordered and should arrive any day now!
The two FFWD recipes I made this week were Tzatziki and Dieter’s Tartine. Let’s talk about them one at a time.
Tzatziki
You may be thinking to yourself that Tzatziki is a Greek dish, not a French one. You’re right! Apparently Greek foods are fairly common in Paris.
Tzatziki is a very simple dip or condiment made from Greek yogurt, cucumber, lemon juice, garlic, and some herbs and spices. When I was thinking about how to serve this, I was inspired to make a full-on Greek feast!
I made the Greek-marinated lamb kabobs from Tom’s Big Dinners and a Greek salad from Greens Glorious Greens. I had hoped to also make some roasted, smashed potatoes, but I needed my oven for that. It was still a wonderful meal!
The next night, I stuffed leftover lamb, tomatoes (from the garden!), lettuce, and Tzatziki into pitas for some yummy sandwiches.
Dieter’s Tartine
A tartine is basically an open-faced sandwich. This light version is apparently popular with Paris ladies for lunch. I purposely skipped this recipe a few weeks ago, waiting for our garden tomatoes and cucumbers to be ready for harvest.
It doesn’t get easier than this tartine: toast some crusty bread, spread it with fromage blanc, season with salt and white pepper, and top with fresh tomatoes and cucumber. To turn this into dinner, I served it with Zucchini-Basil Soup, one of my favorite ways to use up a glut of summer squash.
While I enjoyed the overall meal, we didn’t love the tartine. My husband thought it was too fussy to eat (too messy to pick up, but not easy to use a knife and fork). I didn’t love the flavor of the fromage blanc with the fresh veggies. It was fine, but not good enough to make again.
Have a great weekend! I hope to be back next week with a working oven and more “make-up” recipes!
From Scratch 
All of your plates of food are so bright and colorful!
The zucchini basil soup sounds really good, I am going to have to check that one out.
It seems crazy that its back to school already – hope her year goes swimmingly 🙂
Two great (and pretty!) summer dishes!
You made two gorgeous summer recipes! Perfect!!!
Hi Karen,
When I made the tartine I forgot about the “dieters” part and used goat cheese and drizzled it with EVOO and some sea salt. It was still messy but it was delicious.
I bet it was wonderful with the goat cheese!
Did you use the tzatziki for tartines? Yum. I made it for my make up too. Just seemed wrong to let this one go by without making as it was so easy.
No, I didn’t use the Tzatziki for the tartine, but that sounds good! I may have liked the tartine better if I had done that.
I’m salivating over your full Greek feast and the leftover sandwich! I have Tom’s Big Dinners, so I’ll check out the kabobs so I can make that meal myself! Looks great! Hope your oven is back in action soon. It’s amazing how you can take something like that for granted until it isn’t working… Have a great week.
I made most of the Greek feast from the book a few years ago and it was all good! I love the smashed potatoes.
Good luck with that oven. The tzatziki sounds great!
Sorry the tartine wasn’t a hit. I made mine a little easier to eat by just slicing the veggies. And the green spread which you asked about was a mashed avocado.
Wow your Greek meal looks awesome! And it just doesn’t get any better than cooking and eating produce from your own garden.
Your Greek meal and the gorgeous leftovers look fantastic. Got major rumble in my stomach from just seeing them. Great double catch-up, Karen! 🙂
What a great week of Greek Dining – everything looks wonderful. Love how you used the Tzatziki so many different ways!
Nice job on the make up entrees. I would love to enjoy one of the marinated lamb kabobs right about now too 🙂 I had big plans for lots of make ups but was happy to find the ingredients for Clafoutis sitting in my pantry so that was my late Thursday night catch up. Even better that we loved the results ~ Tricia
it all looks SO amazing!!! I’m going to have to copy your greek salad idea for lunch today! yum! … i’m secretly in LOVE with pitas – aren’t they just delightful? I think I’m going to have to add making my own pitas to my to-do list…