I have made this dish in other versions, with my favorite Ikarian pine honey and fresh orange juice. Petimezi, the subtle, sweet syrup made by cooking down clarified grape must, is one of the world’s oldest natural sweeteners. In this dish, it lends balance to the already earthy beans and it pairs beautifully with tomatoes […]
All over the north, from Epirus to Alexandroupoli, savory pies abound. Most call for phyllo, either homemade or commercially prepared, but many also call for a crust of cornmeal. They go by various names, can be found in similar renditions all over the region and were an easy solution for the daily dinner table, at […]
Omelet and sausage dishes abound all over Greece. Here, the omelet calls for one of Epirus’s flagship cheeses, metsovone, which adds a delicious, smoky depth to this otherwise simple dish. Serve this as an appetizer or easy main course, coupled with a healthy plate of horta—cooked wild greens. Try serving it for brunch with a […]
The flavors of Laconia are pared down and intense, characterized by health-giving simplicity transported on a constant flow of the region’s famed emerald green olive oil.
In Greece, people eat well over 300 edible wild plants, many of them weeds! We call them horta and they are nutritional bombshells, bursting with vitamins, minerals and all sorts of other great things. Today, in one of the main Greek papers, I read about the cookbook of recipes from Nazi-Occupied Greece, a time when […]
How to cook Greens (Horta) While it might seem odd to a non-Greek cook to boil greens until they are extremely soft, this is the way Greeks like to eat them. In Greek cooking, all sorts of greens, wild and cultivated, sweet and bitter, are boiled, typically in a big pot filled with salted water […]
Around this time of the year, I start to tally up the excesses of the holidays. Too much bread, too many sweets, cheeses, meat etc. Most of us get the picture. I also start to turn to the one thing that makes me feel really good when I eat it: greens. Called horta in Greek, […]
This Thessaloniki classic dessert is easy but also makes for an artful, dramatic presentation.
The combination of meats with nuts and dried fruits is a favorite in the contemporary Greek kitchen. This dish goes well with a glass of Northern Greek Xinomavro red wine.
In the cooking of northern Greece, baked rice dishes appear in several places and make for a regional specialty, since in few other places around the country are rice dishes prepared in the oven. This dish, called rithanathema in Greek, possibly traces its etymology to the Greek word for bird, ornitha, and that for food, […]