Thalassina me Manestra: Shrimp and Orzo Casserole, Inspired by a Great Day at the Greek Festival

It's a good thing that Brie of Brie le Grand Fromage did a fun post about her local Greek festival last month. If she hadn't, I would have completely forgotten about my own local festival. Pure tragedy!!

If I hadn't remembered the Greek fest, Poppa Trix and I wouldn't have been able to eat this:

That's Greek beer (hic!), spanakopita (yummy spinach pie), green beans (nice and garlicky), and  taramosalata, a pungent dip of salty carp roe. So good! We also wouldn't have had any of this:

This tray of deliciousness consists of tiropita (cheese pie), a really big glass of Greek wine, and a pile of saucy shrimp and feta over rice. This was some seriously good festival grub.

Getting full and sleepy. ... Note the empty glass of wine.

But there's nothing like a little sugar to wake you up, here in the form of galaktobourikos (on the left), which is filo dough filled with custard and drenched in honey, and kataifi, shredded filo filled with nuts and topped with syrup:

But hands-down, the very best discovery at the festival was this cookbook, Greek Home Cooking in America, a collection of recipes from the parishioners of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in Baltimore:

 

This is just the sort of thing I love: local, personal versions of recipes grounded in a traditional cuisine. There are so many recipes in this book, in fact,  that when I got the book home and started looking through it I didn't know where to start.

But, as it turns out, I couldn't get that shrimp and feta dish out of my head, so I decided on the thalassina me manestra. It's actually supposed to be  a seafood, shrimp, and orzo casserole, but I only had shrimp so I adjusted accordingly.  This is a wonderful one-skillet meal - it's fragrant with fresh oregano, tangy with feta, and sweet with tomatoes.