Orzo is an essential Mediterranean diet ingredient, at least in Greek cooking, and in Season 4 of My Greek Table, I use it to create this dish. We call it kritharaki, which means little barley, because of its shape, which resembles barley kernels. I serve this delicious Greek orzo recipe with a spiced roasted chicken. The orzo is cooked uniquely – not your typical boiled pasta with cheese and extra virgin Greek olive oil! It’s toasted first, so it turns a beautiful amber color and gets nice and nutty. Adding so many aromatic Mediterranean diet ingredients and classic Greek foods like Aegina pistachios, Corinthian currants or Greek raisins, and Krokos Kozanis – Greek saffron – this simple pasta dish becomes something delectable. It’s a perfect match for a great roasted chicken recipe but can just as easily be enjoyed on its own.
Ingredients
½ cup Aegina pistachios shelled and toasted or 2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
4 Tbsp extra virgin Greek olive oil
1 large red or yellow onion chopped
1 large carrot peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves minced
1 1/2 cups orzo divided
1 pinch Greek Krokos saffron
3 – 4 Tbsp Corinthian currants or seedless raisins plumped in warm water
Sea salt to taste
2 Tbsp chopped fresh mint and/or parsley
Find the full recipe here: https://www.dianekochilas.com/toasted-orzo-with-carrots-raisins-and-pine-nuts/
Hello everybody today we’re making a dish with orzo this dish has a little bit of an Eastern Mediterranean character and palette of flavors so we’re going to start with the carrots you want to be able to see and feel the carrot in the final dish so I’m
Cutting them into half Moons basically and I want to get the onion ready as well and let’s get started with our vegetables heating the pan and I’ve also got my garlic here which will be added to the the vegetables as
Well let me add olive oil to the pan we want to add onions and the carrots one little secret when you’re cooking vegetables and you want to get some color on them and you want to speed up that process a little bit
I just add a little bit of salt because that helps draw the moisture out of the vegetables this is going to take about 7 or 8 minutes maybe a little bit longer for uh for us to get a little bit of color especially on the
Onions in the meantime we just want to toast the pistachios lightly you always want to toast any kind of nut in a dry Skillet I’m starting to get a little bit of um kind of a nice color on the onions and now we’re going to add the garlic and right at this point
We want to add half of the orzo push the vegetables to the side um a little bit and keep that moving in the pan we’re not looking for color on the nuts we’re really just looking to warm them up so that all of their beautiful aromatic oils are
Released I turned off the nuts once the orzo gets a little bit of color we’re going to add hot water to this you could also do this with hot broth okay I think the Oro is
Starting to get a little bit of color this is kind of a critical moment because you want to be careful not to burn it so keep it moving we want to add um warm water to this hot water to it and as this absorbs the water I’m adding just
A little bit of saffron crocos kis as we say in Greek and a little sea salt Let’s uh get some salt salt in the water for the pasta the second half of the
Oro a little bit more wood in there if you wanted to get um a little more flavor in here you can also add some white wine let me just strain out the raisins even add a little bit of that raisin
Soaking liquid just get a little bit of sweetness in here [Music] so I just want to drain uh the pasta so I want to add it to this as soon as this is almost cooked and it looks like it is get the parsley finally
Chopped add the remaining Oro and we want to get the raisins the Corinthian Cur in here and these amazing pistachios this looks pretty exotic for something made with everyday ingredients parsley in here so this is my offering for today