It is curious how a salad called ‘horiatiki’ became such a hit in Athens and all over the country. The term may be translated as ‘from the village,’ or ‘peasant,’ a welcome suggestion today as it brings to mind authentic good-quality foods, but when it was first introduced –probably in the 1960ies or early ‘70ies– the country was desperately trying to shed its agricultural, Eastern Mediterranean past, and become urban and European. It was common to dismiss a garment or a conduct as ‘horiatiki,’ not modern and worthy of the new urban middle class.

Obviously, whoever first combined these basic ingredients created a salad delicious enough to be copied, improved upon and even exported and become a household dish all over the world! (more…)

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This is my variation on the renowned English Summer Pudding. It was originally created and tested for my book, but was omitted, along with other desserts, to make room for more savory recipes and also for the gorgeous Penny De Los Santos’ pictures.

It is neither Mediterranean nor an old and traditional British dessert.  It seems to have been invented at a health spa at the beginning of the 20th century. (more…)

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Greeks love pasticcio (or pastitsio), a dish of ground meat cooked with onions in a cinnamon-scented tomato sauce which is mixed with macaroni, cheese and béchamel, then baked topped with more béchamel. It is our version of Macaroni and Cheese, a comforting filling dish that mothers bake for their kids even when they are grownups… 

Although its name is Italian (it means, literally, “a mess”), pasticcio as such does not exist in Italy, but its roots are in the elaborate old timbales—pastry-enrobed pasta, meat, vegetable and egg pies prepared there for special occasions. When I first visited Kythera, the island at the edge between the Aegean and the Ionian Sea, which divides Greece and Italy, I asked around about local dishes; the standard answer I received was “You must find the recipe for the Venetian Pasticcio”. Pasticcio, of course, is a dish prepared all over Greece and if you have visited the country, you have probably seen it listed on the menu of a tavern or restaurant.

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This is an unusual dessert from Provence where chard leaves are the main ingredient, complemented by pears and raisins or currants, soaked in Pernod, the anise-flavored liquor. The pastry has yeast, olive oil and eggs, and is scented with lemon zest.

My recipe is based on the Tourte de Blettes posted by Camille Oger. In her very interesting blog Le Manger she collects recipes from France and from Asia. She is an anthropologists interested in the roots and history of the dishes. Her introductions to the recipes are often fascinating, but unfortunately only some of them, the ones from Asia, are also in English while those from France are only in French.

Chards are used in sweet pies or turnovers in Catalonia and also on the Greek island of Tinos. In my book The Foods of the Greek Islands I have a recipe for the delicious Seskoulopita, the fried chard turnovers. In my head-note I write: “Cooks on the island of Tinos use the leaves of Swiss chard the way Westerners use rhubarb, tucking them into these festive turnovers. Traditionally made for Christmas, these turnovers are fried and sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.”

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Octopus, cuttlefish, and calamari replace meat during the forty days of Lent preceding Easter giving us one more excuse to enjoy our beloved cephalopods!

Schools close for two weeks for Easter in Greece, which we celebrate on May 1^st this year. But when I was growing up Easter was the most frustrating ‘vacation.’ Theaters and cinemas were dark during holy week, except for the few that showed the Passion of Christ and other biblical-Hollywood films, which we ended up seeing repeatedly.

Most were low budget black and white movies, which my friends and I identified with code-names. One we called “the merci” because, although dubbed into Greek, Mary Magdalene in one scene thanked Christ in perfect French.  In another of those movies, dubbed ‘the bicycle,’ an anachronistic two-wheeler was clearly visible traversing the background of the frame during the climactic crucifixion scene. (more…)

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We still have quite a few jars of perfectly delicious marmalade and various jams from years past, I realized as I was arranging in my cupboards the new pots of Seville orange marmalade I made last week. Besides offering to friends, using it as an ingredient –instead of sugar—in cakes and breads, I thought that maybe I could use these leftover marmalades to make some kind of fruit ‘cheese,’ or a locum (Turkish delight). These intensely citrus-flavored pastes would surely make bites infinitely more interesting than the usual colored rose-water, I thought.

Looking up recipes, I was sure somebody else had probably thought of thickening a jam to create fruity bites, but I didn’t find anything on the web, so I decided to improvise, starting from the basic recipes for Turkish delights. (more…)

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Ground meat, from the local free-range veal of the island, is something that I use a lot. The dark red meat is delicious, but quite tough and stringy, and for that reason I prefer to choose a nice piece, usually soon after my butcher has slaughtered an animal, and mince the meat somewhat coarsely. Unlike most of our neighbors, I rarely make Keftedes, but sometimes I do make my kind of burger, mixing the minced meat with bacon, onion, herbs and plenty of breadcrumbs or ground rolled oats.

Spicy Ground Meat is one of the latest all-purpose sauces I try to have in my fridge or freezer, divided into cups. (more…)

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I have almost forgotten the last time I thought of a dish first, and then went to buy the necessary ingredients.

The radish seeds we planted in January grew tall, lush leaves but no radishes. ‘There was some problem with the seeds,” said our friend at the nursery when I asked him if the reason was my putting too many in a small space. “Take them out and throw them to the neighbor’s sheep,” he said, offering to give me new, guaranteed radish seeds. But the greens were wonderful, tender, crunchy and somewhat spicy, so I braised them with garlic, adding slices of the delicious, smoked local sausage I got from Petros, the butcher at the port. I complemented the dish with some of the half-cooked wheat berries or farro (see the Note HERE) that I keep in the freezer. We loved this dish of greens and grains, flavored with pepper flakes and turmeric, and drizzled with lemon juice.

I probably will never be able to make it again, though, as I doubt that I will be able to grow this kind of mock-radish greens anytime soon.

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Lately I have moved from rengosalata –smoked herring or kipper spread— our family’s traditional Kathari Deftera spread, back to the common taramostalata –carp or cod roe spread.

Fortunately, we can now get good quality carp roe, a far cry from the salty and tasteless, red-dyed one, that was the basic ingredient for the iconic meze. I guess my mother had chosen to make the more time-consuming smoked herring spread because she couldn’t stand the pink, salty, yet flavorless taramosalata that the majority of taverns and homes served.

She prepared rengosalata using the roe of smoked herring (kipper) carefully choosing a herring with swollen belly to make sure it had enough roe for the spread. In the turn of the 20th century wealthy Athenians used Russian caviar, or avgotarraho for the iconic, elegant Kathari Deftera meze. (more…)

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