Recipes related to holidays and special occasions
I want to wish everyone a safe, happy and healthy holiday season and New Year. We celebrate with season’s “eatings,” always with a Greek twist, a drizzle of olive oil and spoonful of honey and the scent of warm spices permeating so many holiday dishes. Holiday traditions culminate at New Year’s for Greeks, the day most people actually exchange gifts.
Chestnut trees grow all over Greece, especially in the mountains, which account for 80% of the Greek landscape. They are one of the traditional ingredients in the rice stuffing for the Christmas or New Year’s turkey. They often stud wine-braised pork dishes, also served on the holidays. Chestnut spoon sweets, chestnut puree and chestnut flour […]
My sister Koko, short for Konstantina, makes these delicious, traditional Greek Christmas shortbread cookies every year and this is her recipes. Share them with friends and family and give them as gifts. Try a Greek dessert wine, such as the sweet wine of Monemvassia, with all your holiday sweets. To find some of the artisinal […]
Greek-Style Vegan Hasselback Sweet Potatoes always impress company and they're easy to make, too! In this Greek-inspired recipe for Hasselback sweet potatoes, I like to use dried Greek sage tea leaves and fresh mint together. The pine nuts add crunch and a delicate flavor.
Inspired by the place sweet potatoes have both in the Ikarian and greater Greek kitchen, this savory-sweet appetizer is a great Fall and Winter dish. On Ikaria, sweet potatoes were the “dessert” in times of poverty, roasted and eaten as is, and remembered fondly! Sweet potatoes are cultivated on Naxos, too, an island famous for […]
Many traditional Greek sweets, especially during periods of fasting, such as Lent, call for olive oil instead of butter. An apple crisp isn’t exactly traditional Greek food. I’ve “hellenized” a classic American dessert by adding two distinct greek flavors, that of olive oil and the scented geranium, arbaroriza in Greek, which Greek cooks often use […]
I love a meltingly good grilled cheese sandwich and this one is exactly that. For years, I would gravitate toward the cheddar-tomato duo when it came to grilled cheese delights, but then I realized how limiting that was! There’s a whole world of grilled cheese ideas out there, and this Greek recipe for a Greek-feta-broccoli […]
This Greek recipe for a great vegetarian sandwich with braised mushrooms takes its cue from a classic Greek dish called manitaria stifado, or stewed mushrooms. I often serve that over a velvety bed of Greek fava, the classic yellow split-pea puree. Here, I’ve turned the combo into a sandwich befitting of the best that the […]
Who needs an Eton Mess when there’s a great Greek recipe for a mess — a mélange of broken meringues, Greek spoon sweets, toasted almonds and tangy Greek-yogurt whipped cream. This easy Greek dessert recipe is adapted from my last book, My Greek Table! Don’t worry about who will clean this mess up…you’ll lick the […]
Want a great cocktail with a Greek twist? This is it and I owe its invention to a good friend, Ilya Malahias, with whom I’ve sipped many a quaff while watching the sun slip into the sea on Ikaria.