Sauces in Greek Cooking
The ancient Greeks had a decidedly more complex palate when it came to sauces than do their contemporary heirs. In today’s Greek kitchen, sauces and dressings tend to be relatively simple and easy to prepare. Avgolemono. This is the fundamental Greek sauce-liaison, used to flavor all sorts of dishes, from soups to stews to stuffed, […]
Eggs in Ancient Greece
In ancient religions, eggs (but not necessarily hen’s eggs) played an important role in the fertility rites held during the spring Equinox at the end of March. Eggs were used symbolically in the orgiastic worship rituals held in honor of Dionyssus, as well as in the rituals surrounding the worship of the ancient fertility goddess […]
Eggs in Greek Cooking
One of the most curious sights at the Athens Central Market and at itinerant farmers’ markets are the egg-vendors, erstwhile entrepreneurs who sell nothing but…eggs. If anything attests to the importance of the egg on the Greek table it is this commercial specialization. (That’s not to say, of course, that you can’t find eggs in […]
Greek Sweets Basics
SWEETS IN THE GREEK KITCHEN Seasonal fruit is the dessert of choice among traditional Greeks, a custom maintained to this day both at home and in tavernas. But the Greek sweet repertoire is nonetheless large and diverse. Generally they fall into several categories: spoon sweets; whole-pan baked sweets; creams; fried and honey-drizzled sweets; cookies and […]
Flavors of the Aegean Islands
Greece’s sun-soaked islands are home to some of the country’s most unique foods. Nothing conjures up the dreamy images of Greece better than the Aegean, home to countless islands big and small and to cooking traditions as old as Homer. Islanders have their unique existence, defined by the deepest bond to place and familial roots, […]
The Wines of Rhodes
By the 7th century b.C. Rhodes was a noteworthy producer and trader of wines. The island’s wines reached every part of the ancient world, so important an export they were. Broken amphorae with the Rhodian indication of origin have been found in many disparate parts of the Mediterranean. Even under the Ottomans, as trade from […]
Flavors of Rhodes
The scene was as incongruous as it was endearing: One fine spring day just as we were walking along the outskirts of the old city of Rhodes, a Chinese bride and groom Chinese– dressed in full nuptial regalia and with an entourage of friends and family, were having their pictures taken. In the distance along […]
The Cretan Diet
The Cretan Diet has become synonymous with the Mediterranean Diet, which has gained so much attention as one of the world’s most healthful. Crete was one of the original places observed in the now famous, and still ongoing, Seven-Countries Study begun by Dr. Ancel Keys in the late 1950s to document the rate of heart […]
Crete for Food Lovers
It was a driving trek of heroic proportions up the dirt road from Rethymnon, the historic seaside fort city on the northern coast, to the tiny village of Potamous, on one of those dusty Greek-island dirt roads that are less daunting than they seem but nonetheless make every passenger but the driver look like they […]
Apples: A Greek History
If there were a king of the garden, an everything to everybody sort of fruit, that would be the apple. From time immemorial, it has been a symbol of good and evil, of magic, of love, more important in religion, superstition, folklore, history and medicine than any other fruit. To the Pythagoreans and to many others after them, the […]
Greek Regional Pasta
In this nation of bread eaters, the subject of regional pasta is, ironically, vast. There are, indeed, dozens, if not more, different traditional Greek pastas, and certainly dozens of ways to cook them. Some are truly unusual. A Little History Pasta has always been part and parcel of the Greek larder. Common belief has it […]
Grape Must, a Natural, Ancient Sweetener, in Greek Cooking
Grape must is the vine’s utilitarian child. Obviously as old as the vine itself, the unfermented juice of the grape has found a place in the annals of gastronomy from earliest times, in ways which have changed surprisingly little over the centuries. The tart juice of unripe grapes, for example, was used by the ancient […]