Inspired by some great restaurant Greek meals in nearby Astoria, Queens (NYC's Greektown), as well as an expected bounty of fresh dill from our friend Marisa, I decided to make some of my favorite Greek dishes at home this fall.
I settled on three recipes – Milk Street's version of gigantes (large white beans), a combination approach to lemon potatoes, and a leek-dill rice.
My favorites of the three were the gigantes and the lemon potatoes. The gigantes had a sublime tart tomato flavor that was offset by the fresh dill, onion, and crumbled feta. I halved the recipe, which in hindsight was my only mistake – I should have made the full amount! The recipe was extra simple by using canned butter beans, and I omitted the tomato paste to make it that much more simple.
I similarly halved the lemon potatoes recipe (from the NYT portions), but I ended up following the Allrecipes preparation approach by baking the lemon potatoes in a small casserole pan. The result was not as super roasted / crisp as I probably would have gotten from the NYT recipe, but much less clean up to not directly bake the acidic broth on a rimmed baking sheet.
I used vegetable broth instead of chicken, and I wonder if that's what resulted in the slightly more tart potatoes than I generally get in restaurants? So for some who may be particularly adverse to tart foods, slightly reducing the fresh lemon juice may be appropriate.
The dish I liked least, though may still make in the future, was the leek rice. I ended up using basmati rice instead of arborio, and less leeks (approx. .65 pounds). The modification to basmati rice meant I basically just cooked the leeks, added the rinsed rice, and boiled the dish together while covered. The fresh tomato/dill topping was the star of the dish for the textural and flavor contrast. Otherwise the rice itself was a little too oily, dense, and with one-note flavor of the oily leeks.
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