I just wanted to make a quick announcement that I am back. I can’t believe it’s been since last November since I posted here. It’s embarassing. But, I plan to make ammends by offering you some great content and recipes so that you can learn all about Greek cooking.

This blog will cover fun things such as the cuisine of the different parts of Greece, exploring common ingredients in Greek cooking, history, etc. I may also start reviewing Greek restaurants but there aren’t many in my area so I am not sure if that’s worth it. If anyone wants to do a Greek restaurant review as a guest post, just leave a comment and I’ll be in touch to discuss the details.

Regular posts will resume over the next few days and I am not going to ignore this blog anymore.

Kourabiedes, or Greek Butter Cookies are my all time favorite Greek dessert cookies. They are known as the “celebration” cooking and are on the table whenever there is a special event such as a wedding or Christmas. I personally like to make them whenever I want! (But never, ever serve them at a funeral - my mom learned this one the hard way).

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The Mediterranean Diet has been getting a lot of press as being one of the healthiest diets in the world. In fact, much of the initial studying took place on Crete. When people first learned that the Mediterranean Diet was so healthy, they based their iinformation on those initial studies.

Of course, now the diet has been studied even more and we understand things about the diet that we didn’t at first. Here are some of the things that make the diet so healthy:

• Olive Oil
• Moderate consumption of wine
• Fresh fruits and vegetables
• Limited consumption of meat
• Higher consumption of fish and seafood
• Cheese and yogurt are eaten on a moderate basis
• People enjoy their meals with family
• Physical activity levels are fairly high

If you follow the basic guidelines of the Mediterranean diet you will be setting yourself up to have a healthy life. Just remember that eating to excess will get you into trouble so it isn’t just the foods that make it healthy. It’s the lifestyle. Be sure to lower your portion sizes and get enough exercise and you’ll be on your way to better health.

Some of my greatest Greek dishes have come from inspiration, not purpose. I believe that every good chef needs to learn how to cook a dish based on a recipe. However, with Greek cooking, recipes are not always needed.

I learned how to cook with my yia yia who almost never measured. It drove my mother crazy - mainly because she wanted to document everything. The family is glad that she did this - otherwise a lot of my grandmother’s recipes would be gone.

In order to learn to cook Greek food, yes, recipes and amounts are important. However, as you become confident or you realize that you need to start changing the recipe around a bit, the recipe becomes less important. The first few times I made dolmades, or stuffed grape leaves, I measured everything. Now I just eyeball it and they come out great. In fact, I am known for these grape leaves - my parents declare it my signature dish. I’ll share the recipe with you as soon as I write down the amounts.

So when you follow my recipes - I urge you to do it as exact as you can the first time around - especially if you don’t have a lot of experience cooking Greek food. Write down the adjustments you’ll make for next time. Do this each time you cook until you get the flavors right. Then the dish will be “your own” and you’ll soon be on your way to having your own signature dish!

This fruit salad is light and refreshing. You can use any Greek wine you can find. However, I reccommend Mavrodaphne. It is a dessert wine and very sweet - this makes it better suited in this fruit salad. The fruits that were chosen were available in Ancient Greece - at least their ancestors were. The fruits that are available now may be slightly different than they were back then.

You can basically use any fruit you want. I just included these as guidelines. Also, the almonds add crunch and are a tradtional Ancient Greek food. You can, however, also use almonds. Try to find raw orange blossom honey if you can to try to get the flavor as close to the Greek honeys as you can.

Ingredients:

1 cup cubed honey dew melon

1 cup cubed cantalope

2 peaches, pitted and sliced

2 cups grapes, any variety (golden is best, however)

1 cup Greek wine

2 tablespoons honey

3 tablespoons chopped almonds or walnuts

Instructions:

Add chopped fruit to a large serving bowl. Pour wine and honey over fruit and toss to incorporate the flavors. Let sit for thirty minutes. Garnish with almonds or walnuts and serve. You can serve this in pretty dessert cups. Be sure that each serving gets a splash of the wine/honey dressing.

I’ve been fascinated with Ancient Greek Cooking ever since I read The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines: China, Greece, and Rome. In that book the author argued that these three cuisines were the most influential in terms of importance on Western food. It was very fascinating.

So I’ve been intrigued by the cooking in Ancient Greece ever since. Did you know that there were “celebrity chefs” in that culture? The elite would hire expert and coveted chefs to prepare meals for them. The leftover foods were sold on the streets. Ancient Greek chefs could also “patent” their signature dishes.

A good place to start if you want to learn the art of Ancient Greek Cooking is that book. There are also some great places online to go. Bear in mind that it is almost impossible to replicate a dish exactly. Kitchen tools were different back then as were some of the ingedients. However, you can get a fairly close approximation in your modern kitchen.

So what lures me to this ancient cuisine? I simply would love to know where some of my favorite foods originated. I believe that in order to understand the modern elements of a particular cuisine, it helps to understand where the traditions, ingredients, and the recipes first started.

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If you want to learn how to cook Greek food the right way, you may want to take a Greek cooking class. I had the benefit of learning how to cook Greek food from my yia yia and mother. I believe it really is best to learn how to cook Greek food from someone who really knows the cuisine and the food. To me, the food isn’t necessarily about the ingredients and what to do with them, it’s about the stories and the tradition.

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Feta cheese is the iconic standard that goes into Greek salad. It seems wrong to chomp on fresh tomatoes and cucumbers seasoned with oil and vinegar without at least  a little feta to add some salt and flavor to the mix. I love ordering Greek salads in restaurants. I also love making them at home.

The beauty to making a Greek salad is that the ingredients don’t need to be rigid. Sure, you can follow the recipe I am going to give you. But if I were you, I’d follow that recipe only once and each time you make it, do something different. A salad, afterall, is pretty much impossible to mess up.

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I went out to eat at a Greek restaurant last night. I recognized some of the dishes on the menu. Their spanakopita that we had as an appetizer, for example, was tasty - just like I remember it. But I’ve visited Greece within the past few years and I know that my standard favorites do not necessarily represent the cuisine as a whole. Greek food is just as dynamic as any cuisine and as such is susceptible to food trends. So what’s hot in Greece right now?

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Every mom has that one meal that is usually inferior when trying to eat it elsewhere. With my mother it is her Greek spanakopita recipe. She learned how to do it from her family but changed some things to appeal to our tastes. She often uses lower fat versions but fills the pita with flavor using dill and scallions as the main seasoning. I have yet to make a version that is as good as hers, but I always try.

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Since I grew up learning all the Greek cooking recipes my family had to offer, it took me a while to realize that my family cooks only a subset of what the cuisine has to offer. So I had to find the best places to go in order to find the best Greek foods possible.

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I learned about Greek cooking at a young age by helping my mother and yiayia in the kitchen. I marked the seasons, days. and holidays by what we were cooking. Sweet bread at Easter, Baklava at Chrismas, Greek Avgolemono soup (Greece’s answer to chicken soup) meant it was Sunday

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