Heart & Parcel Session #8 – Making Tiropitakia

Dimitra has been coming to our sessions since we started Heart & Parcel and loves cooking as much as we do. She moved to the UK with her husband and two young boys around 10 months ago. She was a hairdresser back in Greece and wants to continue work over here once she is happy with her level of English. She speaks Greek, Albanian and a good amount of Italian and is now starting her journey of learning English here in Manchester.

She tells us that she likes living here because of the people and that her sons are happy at school here. However, she does still miss certain aspects of Greece: the food, her family; mum, sister…. and the balconies out there. Why? Because the clothes dry much more quickly that way.

We asked Dimitra if she would like to lead our next session in English, and she happily agreed. It was a great session, where Dimitra demonstrated to the other mothers from

Dimitra’s Greek Parcels (Tiropitakia)

Dimitra showed us how to make two different kinds of parcels. Her husband really loves eating these.  We have decided to show you just one parcel (Tiropitakia) and the filling as well but we will also give you the Spanakopitakia filling too so you can have a choice.

Heart & Parcel ESOL Session #5

Levenshulme Inspire. Photo by: sams-art.co.uk/gallery

For our fifth session we were really excited to come to our local community centre, Levenshulme Inspire to meet women from migrant communities around Levenshulme.

Inspire was a united reformed church redeveloped in 2009 to become a community centre owned and loved by the people of Levenshulme. It has a great cafe, business suites, spacious rooms for venue hire and many, many community groups that come through its doors every day of the week. For us it was no question as to where we would run our sessions.

涼拌乾絲 liang ban gan si – shredded tofu salad

One of our sides to go with our boiled Jiaozi at the end of the Supper Club was this salad. It is a hit with veggies, vegans and meat-eaters as taste is so fresh and tangy. We adjusted our flavours to fit a South Western Chinese style salad (like Thai cuisine, with lots of lime, chilli, coriander and sugar). 

拍黄瓜 Pai Huang Gua (smashed cucumber salad)

By popular demand from our guests at our April supper club, we are releasing our recipes for our salads that accompanied our dumplings. Starting first, with ‘pai huang gua’ or smashed cucumber salad.

Clare first found this recipe at a chain noodle restaurant just next to Changchun train station in the North of China.