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).
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.
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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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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.
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.