First lady fuses healthy cooking with foreign flavors in Tuesday class
As it turns out, USC President Harris Pastides is something of a “pizza connoisseur” — at least Patricia Moore-Pastides, his wife, thinks so.
He samples the pies in all of the cities he visits, she said, and he’s yet to find one that rivals the ones he found in New Haven, Conn.
Still, Moore-Pastides has come up with a recipe of her own that puts a healthy spin on his pizza cravings.
Her suggestion: Whip up a batch of feta saganaki, a sauce that combines olive oil, chopped tomatoes, oregano and feta cheese, and use it, with rosemary growing on campus, on some grocery store pizza dough.
The sauce also works well with pasta, and Moore-Pastides showed a group of students in the Maxcy Presentation Kitchen Tuesday afternoon that making it isn’t too difficult — and it’s healthy.
Try out Moore-Pastides' feta saganaki recipe:
Ingredients:
2T olive oil
2 large ripe tomatoes, chopped small
2t dried oregano
1 8 ounce piece of feta cheese
Directions:
Heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add chopped tomatoes and oregano, and cook for several minutes tossing occasionally until tomatoes soften soften and liquid is released. Lower heat to medium, and cook until about half the liquid is evaporated. Break cheese into several small chunks, and add to pan. Cook just a few minutes until the feta is well blended with the tomatoes and beginning to melt.
Transfer to a bowl, and serve with crusty bread as an appetizer, or use as a pasta sauce.
Serves 6.
—Source: Patricia Moore-Pastides