Greek Cuisine

Its unique tastes are some of the things which set Greece apart. You are in for pleasant culinary surprises while in this country. Contrary to common belief you will soon discover that Greek cuisine does not solely consist of mousaka, souvlaki and horiatiki salata.

Greek cuisine has a great variety of dishes and can be an extremely satisfying culinary adventure for both meat-eaters and vegetarians. It could not be otherwise in the country that gave birth to the symposiums and the Epicurean philosophers. It was, in fact, Archestratos in 330 B.C., who wrote the first cookbook in History and let us not forget, that cuisine is a sign of civilization. Greece has a culinary tradition of some 4,000 years. Nevertheless, like most national cuisines, the Greek, has both influenced others and embraced ideas from its easterly and westerly neighbours.

The Olive
The ancient Greeks ate the ripe black olives and believed they were good for one's health, perserved in vinegar and seasoned with fennel as they still are today. For someone to say that they don't like olives is like saying they don't like candy because once they ate one that had orange rinds in it and they have an aversion to orange rinds, like me. There are just too many varieties and too many different flavors of olives for there not to be one that you will like. Green olives are unripe. Black olives are ripe. Between these two main classifications there are all sorts of olives which are usually named after the areas they come from. The most well-known are the Kalamata olives which come from the area around the town of Kalamata in Messenia in the southern Peloponessos. When you order a Greek salad in the USA, that one olive sitting on the tiny pile of crumbled feta is most likely from Kalamata. They are just as popular in Greece where everyone has their favorite olives.

Favorite are the big round juicy olives from Amfissa just northwest of Delphi. My wife likes the cracked black olives which are marinated in salt and can be found in many places in Greece, especially on the islands. These can be seasoned with olive oil and oregano to make them taste even better. The cracked green olives are known as tsakistes and these are made like the black olives, though picked earlier. The olives are hit with a stone, not too hard because breaking the pit makes it bitter. They are then kept in water which is changed regularly which supposedly gets rid of even more of the bitterness. Then a brine is made from salt where the olive is kept throughout the year. In Aglia Kremezi's book The Foods of Greece she tells of her father putting in a raw egg and when a part of the egg the size of a 10 drachma piece was visible above the water, then the amount of salt was right. The 10 drachma piece is no more but its about the size of a quarter. Wild fennel stems and lemons are then added for flavor. The largest olives I have ever seen came from Galata, across from the island of Poros and were grown by Takis and Zefi, the owners of the Saga Hotel. These were the size of a small potato (photo). As you travel in Greece you will find restaurants that serve olives from their own area while some buy theirs at the supermarket. If you want to try the local olives ask for elies dopio (eel-yes doe-pyo).

Olive Oil
Greek olive oil is simply the best. In fact it is so good that the Italians bought it in great quantities and slapped their labels on it and exporeted it to America. Now this practice is coming to an end and Greek Olive oil, particularly extra-virgin, is in great demand and you can find it in many supermarkets and gourmet shops though usually at very high prices. This does not mean that there are not other countries making good olive oil. I have had Lebanese Olive oil that was delicious too. But overall the Greeks make the best olive oil. That may be because it has been in use since the days of the ancient Minoans and Myceneans and the Greeks consume more olive oil per person than any country in the world.

The olives are picked by hand in late November and taken to the village cooperative or to the local privately owned pressing plant where the oil is extracted. In some places they are pressed in the same way they have been for thousands of years using large wood and stone pieces of equipment that could be mistaken for medieval torture devices. Nowdays though the oil is extracted by high-speed centrifugal machines. The oil which comes from this method is called Extra-Virgin. It is the first pressing and you need roughly 5 kilos of olives to make one kilo of olive oil. This is the healthiest olive oil you can eat and it may be the healthiest thing you can eat on the planet. The best comes from the island of Lesvos but there are those people who will swear by olive oil from Crete or the Peloponessos. For my money Lesvos is tops.

Pure or refined olive oil is extracted at high temperatures. It is less healthy, and less tasty though it is often flavored with extra vergin. What it is good for is frying because it has a higher burning temperature. I have this argument at home often when my wife asks me why I buy that "Pure Olive Oil Crap". I explain patiently over and over again that the extra-virgin should be used in salads, over fish, in stews and soups after the cooking is over or even  for dipping bread into. To fry with it or even saute can ruin the oil and the taste of the food. Thats what refined is for. At the bottom of the olive oil totem pole is the Pomace which is the bottom of the barrel, extracted chemically. It makes better soap than cooking or eating.

Bread
The busiest shop in any Greek village is the local bakery. Bread was at one time the staple food of Greece and is still eaten at every meal, large hunks dipped in remaining sauce and olive oil, or coated with tsatziki (garlic-cucumber-yogurt dip), tarama salata (fish roe salad) or melitzana salata (eggplant salad). There is nothing better than going to a local bakery and buying a loaf of fresh village bread and eating it while it is still hot. Some village bakeries still use wood burning stoves and the same wholesome recipes their fathers and grandfathers had used. Others have bent to the desire of the Athenian middle-class, making bread with white flower. Lately there has been a surge in the popularity of the healthier dark bread sometimes called mavro psomi. Horiatiko psomi means village bread and that is usually a mixture of whole and refined flour. There are also breads for different occasions. On Clean Monday, the first day of the 40 days of fasting before easter there is an unleavened bread sold on the streets. During Easter there is the famous bread with the red easter egg in the middle of it. Bread is a very important part of Greek religious services and I have seen my sister-in-law make sure every person in the village received a piece of the holy bread from her aunt's memorial service. lets not forget pita bread which every souvlaki is wrapped in, and paxamadia, the hard bread which is eaten at breakfast, dipped in hot milk or coffee, or found under the tomatoes, onions, feta and olives of the Cretan dakos salad. Also in the bread catagory are kalouria which are like skinny bagels and are the food for people on the run, sold on the street by venders on foot or with small carts.

Feta
Everyone is familiar with feta cheese which is made from sheep, goat or cow and is the national cheese of Greece if there is such a thing. Recently the EU made it a law that only the Greeks could call their cheese Feta. Feta cheese is actually from the area of Roumeli and is soaked in brine to keep it from going bad. It is not an aged cheese and in fact if you leave it too long and gets too salty. I use it in my spanakopita, just like my grandmother, in fact I am the type who believes when making spanakopita (spinach pie), or any vegetable pita, the more feta you use, the better. Aglaia believes the opposite but she is a much better and more subtle cook than I who have often been accused of having a heavy hand, being the big macho dude that I am. To me there is no feeling like the first bite of a piece of feta that makes your whole mouth come alive with sensation. I also use it in my omelets and in a feta saganaki I learned from the famous Rolando of Kea.

Misithra (and Manouri)
This is one of those cheeses that depending on where you are will be completely different. The common one ios the skliri mizithra which is a hard cheese, like manouri which can be dried and grated on pastas and other dishes. But when I think of mizithra I think of the Sifnos variety which is a cross between feta and cottage cheese. Imagine a mild feta with the consistancy of ricotta. This is usually found on the horiatiki salads on the island but can also be ordered seperately.

Kasseri
This is a sheep or goats milk cheese, available in many gourmet grocery stores in the USA. It is good for slicing and eating plain but is commonly ised in saganaki, covered in oil, oregano and other spices and baked, or even deep-fried.

Kefalotyri
This is a sharp, hard and salty cheese usually made from sheeps milk and can also be used in saganaki or grated on to pasta dishes. Similar to kasseri.

Graviera
This is a translation of the French gruyere and is made from cow, sheep or goats milk. Like kefalotiri and kasseri  you may find yourself in areas of greece where it will be hard to tell the difference between the three. In fact all three can be used in the same way.

Other Cheeses
There are as many cheeses as there are people who make them. Every area will have a local cheese and some of the names may confuse you because they will have nothing to do with the name you associate with a particular cheese. You may go to one island and get their special island cheese and realize that this is the same as the special island cheese of another island. Even individual cheesemakers will have their own special variety.

Cheese can be bought in any market in Greece but in the Athens central market there are shops that sell only cheese, some that sell only feta. The best cheese comes from the areas that have the most goats, sheep or cows. Lesvos is famous for its hard and medium hard cheeses, especially the village of Vatousa where the smell of cheese waste is hard to miss as you drive by on a hot summer day.

Fruits and Vegetables
If you visit Greece in the summer and stay a couple weeks there are two things that will happen to you if you are able to break away from the tourist restaurants and find yourself in the places the locals eat. The first thing is that you will eat the best tomato you have ever tasted in you life. Shortly thereafter you will eat the best melon you have ever eaten in your life. It may be a karpoozi (watermelon) or it may be a peponi (honey-dew melon) but you will look at your wife or husband or child and say "I had no idea something could taste this good and not be bad for you."

For some reason vegetables and fruits taste better in Greece than they do elsewhere. There are many theories of course. Some say it is the absence of pesticides.  I have a theory of my own. Greece is made up of mountains and valleys. The farms are in the valleys. The water rains on the mountains and washes minerals into the valleys. The more rich a fruit or vegetable is in minerals, the better it will taste. Of course I can't prove this and since many fruits and vegetables are now grown on large industrialized farms or even imported, without knowing what you are eating and where it comes from you have no way of knowing why it is good, or in some cases is not. Just because you may eat the best tomato or melon in your life during your stay in Greece does not mean that you will eat delicious vegetables rich in minerals at every meal at every restaurant. But I can say with confidence that those restaurants where the Greeks eat, great care is taken in choosing the fruits and  vegetables that are served that day.

The Greeks eat seasonally. Take the horiatiki salata or as we call in the USA and other English speaking places, the Greek Salad or Greek Village Salad. Anyone going to Greece in the summer will find delicious horiaktiki salatas that consist of fresh ripe red tomatoes, green peppers, onions, cucumbers, olives, a big hunk of feta cheese, extra virgin olive oil, oregano and if you are lucky maybe some capers! Not at every restaurant of course. You could go to some tourist joint that serves tomatoes that are closer to green than red, a smidgeon of crumbled feta and one olive, topped with whatever crappy oil they got a good deal on. But I am talking about a good honest Greek restaurant. If you eat a horiatiki salata in season you will eat them for the rest of your life. In fact you will start a garden so you can have tomatoes like the ones you had in Greece. Another salad you may not be familiar with is the Cretan or dakos, which is like a horiatiki on top of a paximadi, which is a dried hard bread, though once the olive oil and juices soak in it is not hard for long. It is delicious and healthy too.

But what if you are not there in the summer? What if it is late spring or fall or winter and you order a horiatiki salata? You don't. In the winter months (winter meaning any season that is not summer) you would eat a lachano-marouli salata (cabbage-lettuce salad). Or a lachano-carota salata (cabbage-carrot salad). Or a plain marouli (lettuce) salata.

The healthiest thing you can eat in Greece are the hortas, or wild greens which if you come in the winter and spring you will see women picking by the side of the road. In the summer they eat vleeta which is wild amaranth and has been eaten since ancient times. In the winter they eat horta, which can be any one of a number of wild greens. Horta is usually a little bitter but is still delicious. Wild greens are boiled and then served with olive oil and lemon and are high in anti-oxidants as well as vitamins and minerals. For those who find they love the taste of these wild greens they can be bought in packages at some of the garden shops on Evripidou street in Athens to take home with you.

As I mentioned above, the Greeks have somehow perfected the tomato. I suppose people who spend time in Italy would say the same about their tomatoes too. But the tomato, which has only been a part of Greek cuisine since 1815, which is about the time it was introduced to America, is one of the most important vegetables (or fruit if you want to get technical) and is eaten raw (you can order a tomato salata which is just sliced tomato and olive oil), or used in a number of dishes. The most well known is probably tomates gemista, which is stuffed, either with rice, onions and herbs or with rice and meat. For you vegetarians you need to ask the waiter if they are with meat or not. Tomatoes are used in a number of sauces for meat and vegetable dishes. On the island of Santorini where the tomatoes are small and compact in flavor, they are mixed with flour and egg, deep-fried and called tomato-keftedes. They are also delicious plain and there is an annual tomato convention on the island.

The most popular pepper is the green bell which like the tomato can be found in salads, stuffed with rice or meat, or grilled. In general the Greeks don't eat rally spicy peppers though there are varieties of ground red pepper that are used for seasoning and there are the small green peppers that are pickled and found on many a Greek salad in America. My favorite peppers are the red ones from Florina in northern Greece, stuffed with cheese and baked, served as an appetizer with ouzo. In psistarias (grill houses) they often serve fried or grilled peppers which are seasoned with olive oil and vinegar. This award-winning pepper dish in the photo comes from a little hole-in-the-wall ouzerie on the island of Milos, called Medusa. The most common pepper dish is peperies gemista which is stuffed with rice and/or meat and served with the stuffed tomatoes.

Potatoes are probably the most widely eaten vegetable in Greece and found in a number of stews. But for me there are two potato dishes that I dream about when I am far from Greece or my own kitchen. The first is potates sto fourno, the oven roasted potatoes that are served with lamb or chicken but can also be made by themselves. Made with onions, garlic, lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano this is what a potato was meant to taste like. The second is simply fried potatoes. No not the greasy French fries from McDonalds or your local diner. I mean fresh cut potatoes, deep fried in olive-oil and topped with a squeeze of lemon and salt. When I was a starving hippy in the seventies I could live off fried potatoes and be quite happy about it. Even now I marvel at the taste and wonder how we in America could set our standards so low that we would be satisfied with the low quality fried potatoes that we poison ourselves and our children with. Another dish is potato salata which is like our potato salad except instead of mayo it is seasoned with parsley, onions, oil and lemon.

The Greeks eat a number of different beans. Gigandes are the big white broad beans that are cooked in tomato sauce. These can be found in almost every restaurant that serves food from the oven. Fasolakia are green string beans which can be cooked in tomato sauce, or are boiled and served like a salad with oil and lemon or vinegar. Fasolada is the famous bean soup that is practically the national dish of Greece, if it isn't the National Dish of Greece. Fakies are lentils and are found in lentil soup, after each individual lentil has been cleaned by hand by a little old lady. Fava is a dip or soup made from yellow split peas, not to be confused with one of the most interesting beans; koukia, which are these large brown beans, similar to foul moudamas which are a type of fava. These are eaten in the villages and they say that children should not eat them because they are poisonous to anyone under 16. Mavromatika is black-eyed-pea salad that is amazingly similar to what we eat on New Year's Day in North Carolina.

Revithia is the stew made from chick peas that is popular on the island of Sifnos, among other places and is flavored with rosemary. Chickpeas are also used to make revithia keftedes, fried chickpea balls which are similar to falafel though not eaten in a sandwich or pita but by themselves with lemon. Chickpeas are also eaten dried, as a snack, as are various nuts, sunflower seeds and pasetempo, which are roasted and salted pumpkin seeds.  My favorite are the red salted peanuts (photo) which can't be beat with a nice cold beer, and of course the pistachio nuts from the island of Aegina which are without a doubt the best in the world. Nuts are bought in shops that specialize in them and also by venders with carts that are found in areas where there is a lot of cafe life or on the main squares in the islands and towns. Greek almonds are also especially good whether you eat them raw or roasted and salted.

Capers are found growing wild almost everywhere and their leaves and berries are pickled and added to salads. There is also a capari-salata which is made with capers, olive oil, vinegar, garlic and onions and is eaten on bread, like melitzana-salata.

Without onions and garlic what would Greek food be? Onions are in almost every sauce and garlic is not used subtly in Greece. The best example being skordalia and sadziki (photo), two dips flavored so heavily with garlic that if you are with someone who is eating it, you might as well eat it too, even if you don't like the smell of garlic, because if you don't, it is all you will smell for the next day or so. If you can't beat em join em. Onions and garlic are important in briam, a dish of vegetables baked in the oven, as well as the fourno patates I mentioned previously. Garlic is one of the healthiest foods available so if you don't like it you should. It will keep you well and deter any evil spirits that may be thinking of bothering you.

For a food that many thought was poison not too many centuries ago (like tomatoes) the Greek chefs make great use of eggplant. Papoutsakia are eggplant stuffed with onions, garlic, ground meat and herbs, topped with a béchamel sauce, but its cousin, emam is minus the meat and béchamel. Mousaka is also in the same family and though you can find vegetarian versions in hip restaurants like Eden in the Plaka it is pretty much a meat dish though in Aglaia Kremezi's FOODS OF GREECE she has a recipe for vegetarian mousaka as does Cindy Econopouly in her DIET OF THE GODS Greek entrée cookbook. Melitzana salata (photo) is a dip made from roasted eggplant, onions, garlic, peppers and can be found in most restaurants. There are usually two versions, one with mayo and one with oil and vinegar. Often the mayo version comes in a package from the nearest supermarket and put on the plate by the chef at the local tourist restaurant. Fried eggplant is called melitzanes tiganites and is served with sadziki (yogurt garlic sauce) and many tavernas and psistarias. If you don't like eggplant then get kolokithea tiganites which is the same thing but made with zucchini.

An interesting dish found in Lesvos are stuffed zucchini flowers, louloudakia, which can be deep-fried with cheese or boiled and stuffed with rice and herbs like dolmades (stuffed grape leaves). Kolokithia keftedes join the family of fried meatless balls and are probably the most popular of all, made from grated zucchini, flour, onions and whatever secret recipe the chef knows. Stuffed zucchini or kolokithea gemista is another popular dish and like tomatoes and peppers you need to ask if it is with meat or without. Unlike the other gemista, kolokithea is usually served with avgolemono sauce, the egg lemon sauce which also flavors lamb fricasse and the egg-lemon soup that is to my family as chicken soup is to others when you have a cold or flu. Aginares (artichokes) are also served in a stew of avgolemono sauce, with potatoes, carrots and onions. There are not many places where you could include the leaves of the grape as a vegetable but for lack of a better category I am writing about it here. Stuffed grape leaves, or dolmadas, are found in a couple of  different styles, some with meat, some without, some with avgolemono sauce and some with olive oil, the latter often out of a can.

Other vegetables eaten in Greece are broccoli and cauliflower, usually boiled and seasoned with oil and vinegar or lemon, or avgolemono sauce. Badzaria (beets) are boiled and served with skordalia (garlic sauce). Street venders sell grilled corn-on-the-cob or roasted chestnuts. Vegetables are also put in various pies, called pitas, but this is a whole other section. Paros (leeks) are fairly common and are eaten like aginares in avgolemono and in prasopita which is a leek pie, similar to spanacopita (spinach pie). Manitaria (mushrooms) are picked wild in the winter by those knowledgable enough to know the safe ones from the poisonous or otherwise. They can also be found in the markets which is a safer way to get them. One of my favorite weird food are the volvi which are the bulbs of the tassled hyacinth and are served in the early spring. They supposedly have curative properties though my wife might argue that claim after sharing a plate and being stricken with a terrible case of diarrhea the next day on the flight back to America. They didn't bother me though.

After dinner many restaurants will treat customers to a plate of fruit, usually seasonal. Karpoozi (water-melon), peponi (honeydew), or apples, pears, cherries, or oranges. Figs ripen from mid-August through September and have to be tasted to be believed. While they seem to be getting more popular in the USA and you can now buy fresh figs at your local supermarket, there is still no comparison to the giant juicy figs you will find in Greece either at the market, or off some tree you walk by in the countryside where fig trees are almost like weeds. Oranges are a winter crop, grown in the Argolis, Crete and Rhodes. Bananas are imported but can be found on carts pushed by street venders or in the Athens Central market. Many fruits are made into preserves, incredibly sweet and only eaten in small doses, like when you are a guest in someone's house, served with a spoon and a cold glass of water. The Greeks have an amazing ability to turn some unlikely subjects into deserts for example candied baby eggplants. What do they taste like? Well, they taste so sweet you would not know it was an eggplant and prove that anything made with enough sugar becomes a desert.

Meat
In the last few years Doctors, nutritionists and dietitians have been singing the praises of the Mediterranean diet, claiming it is the answer to all sorts of ailments from obesity to high cholesterol and even cancer. But anyone visiting Greece would wonder exactly what is meant by the Mediterranean diet for while those of us outside the Med have been eating more whole grains, extra virgin olive oil and fresh vegetables, the Greeks have been eating more meat, turning a once or twice a week special occasion food to a daily affair, sometimes twice daily. As the Greeks become more affluent they eat more meat.

There is still some evidence that the good stuff they eat more than makes up for the drawbacks of a meat-heavy diet in the same way that people wonder how the French can eat such rich food and not be obese. However, if one lives on a Greek island, there is no better evidence of what the change in the Greek diet has meant then to watch Athenians get off the ferry on a holiday weekend. In the villages the Greeks are active and are eating well. The Athenians on the other hand, are looking more like overweight Americans, not surprising since they are eating like Americans: processed food, refined sugar and lots of meat.

I am not complaining. After all there are those who claim that a protein rich, low carb diet is the road to health. It may be one of many paths of which the most important is not to overindulge. But if you are visiting Greece for a couple weeks, why not indulge? Anyone who goes to Greece to lose weight is putting themselves in the same situation as the person who goes to Octoberfest to quit drinking beer.

Greek Meat Dishes
The most common meats in Greece are pork, lamb, beef, goat, chicken, veal and rabbit not necessarily in that order. Because it was expensive in the past, before the Greeks became affluent enough to eat it every day, meat was eaten perhaps twice a week and usually with vegetables, pasta or grains. One of the most well known meat dishes is mousaka, which is eggplant, ground beef (or lamb or pork), potatos and tomato sauce with béchamel which illustrates the way the Greek chefs use meat as a component to a dish.  Many meat dishes are cooked in tomatoes and red wine and others in lemon such as lamb fricasse, which is lamb cooked with endives or romaine lettuce and an egg-lemon sauce. Garlic is used heavily as are onions and potatoes in the many stews and oven baked dishes. There is a pork dish similar to fricasse which is made with celery and served in the winter called hirino me celino. Dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), kolokithia gemista, (stuffed zuchinni), tomates ke peperies gemista (stuffed tomatoes and peppers) and laxano gemista (stuffed cabbage) are other examples of stretching the meat by using it with rice and vegetables. Pastitsio (photo) is like lasagna though not as saucy and is made with pasta, ground beef, tomatoes, onions and garlic and béchamel sauce. Giovetsi is lamb baked with orzo pasta and tomato sauce.

For Easter the most popular food for most of Greece is whole lamb roasted on a spit. This is especially popular because it follows 40 days of fasting for lent and people are definitely ready for some meat, though not everyone fasts the entire forty days. If one has been to an Easter dinner in Greece you undoubtedly have memories of the men standing around watching the lamb turning over the hot coals, usually kept company by a kokoretsi, the intestines of the lamb stuffed with organ meat and also spit-roasted. Usually this takes place outdoors on Easter Sunday but in some places they head straight from the midnight mass at the church to the local taverna for their arni and kokoretsi.

You don't have to wait for Easter to have roast lamb. Whole lamb and kokoretsi is sold in the psistarias (grill houses) all over Athens and especially on the roads outside of town. Areas like Vari and Kalivia are known for the large grill houses that are full of carnivores on weekend nights and Sunday afternoons. Also popular at these places are ourounopoulo, which is roast suckling pig, which I prefer to lamb, especially the crispy outer skin thateven if it takes a year or so off your life is worth it. In some villages certain restaurants are known for the cook's ability to make the perfect pig and Saturday nights you have to get there early for a table. Kontosouvli is pork, big hunks of it skewered and put on a rotisserie with onions, tomatoes, peppers, and seasoned with salt and pepper, garlic and oregano. Kotopoulo (chicken) can also be roasted on a rotisserie, grilled or oven-roasted with potatoes, garlic, onions and lemon. I bought a Showtime Rotisserie for my house so that I can make chicken and kontosouvli and Greek friends who have come to dinner have exclaimed that my house smells like a psisatria.

Lamb is also made in the oven with roast potatoes. Even today in many villages, the Sunday dinner is brought to the bakery and for a small fee they cook the meal. This was because many homes did not have an oven, but even now that everyone has one they still bring their roast lamb and potatoes to the fourno (bakery) so that they don't have to make the whole apartment unbearably hot, especially in the summer. The recipe is pretty simple and consists of lamb, garlic, potatoes, salt, pepper, oregano and lemon. This dish is found in just about every restaurant that specializes in oven-cooked foods. You can get the same dish but made with chicken too. They are called Arni (lamb) psito me potates sto fourno or kotopoulo (chicken) psito me patates sto fourno. Katsiki (goat) is similar to lamb, though not as fatty, so therefore not as tasty though many people prefer it. It can be rotisserie roasted but is found more often in lemon sauce called katsiki lemonato with potatoes or with pasta, or Sifnos style, cooked in a clay pot, called mastello (or in other places it is called stamna.) The meat and vegetables are put in a clay pot and sealed. They are then cooked in the oven for several hours. Beef and lamb and chicken can also be found cooked in lemon sauce, called lemonato. There is a dish called arni kleftiko which is similar to the roast lamb with potatoes only it is cooked in oiled parchment paper which makes it much more tender, almost as if it has been steamed first. It is called kleftiko because it was eaten by the Klefts, the guerrilla fighters who fought against the Turks in the war for Independence. The reason they cooked it this way is so the paper would hide the aroma of the meat so their hideout would not be given away.

One of my favorite dishes is paidakia which are grilled lamb-chops and are to Greeks as baby-back ribs are to a southerner. A party of four can easily eat a kilo of these and many restaurants are known for their paidakia. Often the rallying cry for a night out is "Let's go for paidakia" and the evening begins at 10 pm and ends hours later after kilos of wine and lamb-chops as the waiters are sweeping up and the other parties around us are finishing their paidakia and leaving to go to the bouzoukia to listen to Greek music until the sun rises. Paidakia are meant to be eaten with your fingers and like baby-back ribs, require lots of napkins. Most people who try them in Greece long for them when they leave. You can't find good paidakia outside of Greece or if you can, I haven't.

Loukaniko are sausages and there are as many types as there are people to make them. Among the most popular are those from Naxos. Spetsofai is a dish from Volos that is made with sausage, peppers, tomatoes and onions and is eaten in the winter and usually with tsipuro or ouzo. Sousoukia are in the sausage family and are heavily spiced and often salty. Pastrama has an appearance of pastrami but is cured beef with a paste of spices around it. We used to call it camel meat and perhaps historically that is what it was. This is sliced and eaten cold as an appetiser or baked with cheese and tomato sauce to make saganaki pastrama. It can also be found in pastramatopita, which is a pie, made with pastrama and cheese. In the Athens Central market there are shops that specialize in loukaniko and smoked meats. On the island of Kea one of the specialities is smoked pork loin.

Brizoles are steaks, usually pork and beef and mostly served well-done with fried potatoes. There are some restaurants in Athens, like Telis (photo) near Platia Komoundourou that specialize in hirino brizoles (grilled pork-chops). In fact all they serve is hirino brizoles, fried potatoes, salad, and sadziki. There are restaurants that actually serve lambs head. They split it open for you so you don't have to bring a hammer and chisel with you, but it is not the best thing on the menu and may not be that healthy for you either. The lamb's brain is considered a delicacy but it has the consistancy of oatmeal and tastes what you would expect a brain to taste like. You can get brizoles in just about any taverna or psistaria as well as any of the tourist restaurants in the Plaka.

Kima, which means meat and usually means beef, is found in the most basic pasta dish of all called macaronia me kima a meal that has provided sustenance for many a tourist child who was not adventurous enough to try other Greek dishes. It is a plate of macaroni with a pile of ground beef that has been cooked in a pot with onions, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper. It's good and proves that pasta with meat sauce can survive the absence of tomatoes. A better use of ground beef is soutzoukakia (photo)which are oblong patties made of ground beef (or pork or veal if you like), lots of cumin, onion, oregano and grilled. These can be served plain or further cooked in a tomato sauce, which is more common in Greek restaurants. And of course beefteakia, the bun-less hamburger, with fried potatoes is another kid pleaser for difficult young eaters. Beefteakia are like hamburgers, though seasoned so expertly you won't even miss the ketchup. Keftedes are meatballs, usually a smaller version of beefteakia though they are more often deep-fried than they are grilled. Many people put lemon on their beefteakia, keftedes and brizoles. I do anyway.

Yida is a stew made of beef and vegetables that tastes great in the winter and is probably pretty healthy, at least as healthy as chicken soup. Patsa, which I have gone into some detail about on another page, is tripe, the innards of a lamb, boiled in a soup and supposedly good for you too. Some people love it and some think it tastes like shit, which it sometimes does, not surprisingly since the intestines are a primary ingredient. In the same family is mayeritsa, the traditional soup used for breaking the 40 day fast, with similar ingredients to patsa, though this is definitely lamb, the same lamb you will be eating the next day on Easter Sunday. It is green in color with chunks of livers and other organs floating around. It tastes better than it looks which is not too difficult. Podi (photo)which means foot is a soup made from, you guessed it: A foot. In this case it is the foot of a cow. The active ingredient, I am guessing, is the marrow which gives it a gluey kind of texture. But I can speak from experience and tell you that as disgusting as it looks (it is after all a bowl of broth with a foot in it), it really is a sort of cure-all for hangovers and even flu-like symptoms. The best place for podi, patsa and mayeritsa is the working class Iepirus Restaurant in Athen central market but many islands have one working-class restaurant that specializes in patsa and podi.

Souvlakia are the most popular meat dish in Greece and deserve a page all their own. Rabbit is less common but is an ingredient in a popular dish called Stifado. This is a stew of rabbit, small onions and a heavy sweet tomato sauce with a strong flavor of cloves. You can also make stifado with chicken or beef. Psaronefi is pork tenderloin, roasted or cooked on a spit.

Greece is a meat eater's paradise but those who love fish and vegetables should not be put off by this page because for you there are just as many choices.

Fish and Seafood
If you take a look at a map of Greece you will see why fish is such an important part of the Greek diet. For such a small country there is a lot of coastline which is why they have such a strong history of seafaring. Eating seafood goes along with that. Unfortunately the sea which was once so abundant is now barren in places through over-fishing and the Aegean sea simply can't keep up with the demand of a seafood-loving population whose numbers swell during the tourist season. Fish can be very expensive, though there are inexpensive fish available year-round, and these are just as tasty as the expensive ones.

Lets start at the bottom and make our way up the fish chain. The cheapest fish are sardeles (sardines), gavros (anchovies), kolios (mackerel), gopa (bogue) and marides (smelt). Also in this inexpensive category are kalamari (squid), though the frozen variety which is usually, if not always, imported from California, China and other far away places. When kalamari is in season they will tell you on the menu that it is fresh. When cut and fried it is usually frozen but fresh kalamari is grilled or fried whole. In the kalamari family is also thrapsala which to you and I looks like a squid and tastes like a squid but is not a squid. Well maybe it is a squid but they call it thrapsala and like fresh kalamari they serve it grilled or fried whole. In the same family are soupia (cuttlefish) which have shorter tentacles and are never fried but cooked in a stew with tomato sauce. Octopus, which is eaten in small amounts as a meze (snack) can be local or can come from China or the Atlantic. Octopus can be served in a number of ways which I will go into later. In between there are a number of fish whose price depends on supply and include xifia (sword fish), a couple varieties of Mediterranean tuna, and a whole family of bream, trout and even mollusks. Included among them is fagri (red porgy), sargos (sea-bream), lavraki (sea bass),  lithrini (pandora), and synagrida (dentex) most of which are either baked or grilled and sold by the kilo.

Then at the top of the fish food chain is astakos (lobster), which can cost a small fortune and is familiar to anyone who has taken a charter sailboat around the islands because many skippers take their clients to the tavernas that serve fresh lobster or the newly popular astako makaronada (macaroni with lobster). Not surprising since skippers often get a commission from the restaurants for any business they bring and a table full of lobster can cost a few hundred euros or more. But here's a tip. Save your lobster-money for home. Mediterranean lobsters are over-rated, under-tasty and few chefs have mastered the cooking of these creatures. They also lack claws which besides the tails are the only edible part unless you want to spend the night sucking bits of meat from legs and antennae. Yes. The Greek lobsters have meat in the antennae. But not enough to justify eating them. In Milos I did see lobsters with claws at the restaurant of the famous Roberto at Da Peppe. "Where did you find lobsters with claws?" I asked him in wonder. "On the airplane" he said in his broken English. They were flown in, maybe from Maine, definitely from somewhere on the Atlantic.

So while you are allowing the lobsters of Greece to re-establish themselves and maybe grow some claws, what can someone who wants to spend a lot of money on fish buy that is worth the expense. I have one word. Barbounia. The red-mullet is the best tasting fish you will ever eat, whether fried or grilled. Is it worth 55 euros a kilo? Well, luckily you can't eat a kilo. Half a kilo is enough for two and though you may want more after the last morsel of fish, skin or even bone is eaten, chances are there will be other fish on the table too. For those who think 55 euros is a little steep there are koutsomoures, the paler cousins of the barbouni, which some people like better and are cheaper.

Going out for a fish dinner is always a fun time if you are with someone who knows what they are doing. Usually the fish restaurants are on the sea, outside of Athens. One of my favorite areas is Anavissos, on the way to Sounion, a small seaside town famous for its fish tavernas. There are waiters standing in the road beckoning for you to park your car by their dining area so they can impress you with their fresh fish, keeping in mind that if the sea has been rough for several days there may not be any fresh fish. But once you sit down and look over the menu the procedure is for the leader of your group (the guy who knows what he is doing) to follow the waiter to the kitchen where he is shown what fish is available. If you are with George, my friend from Fantasy Travel, you will bring my daughter Amarandi in and allow her to pick the fish, which she will. The biggest one she sees, usually a fagria, sargos, or tsipoura, all in the bream family and delicious grilled and costing more than I normally like to spend on several dinners.

While the big fish is cooking we will have ordered some mezedes to go along with it. Among them is tarama salata (fish-row salad-photo) usually made from the eggs of carp but if you are lucky, from kefalo (gray mullet) which is what it was originally made from before the people who were eating it began to outnumber the fish who were laying the eggs. You have to ask if the restaurant makes it or if it comes from a container. Not that it matters. You can season the tarama from the supermarket so that it tastes pretty good. A plate of fried gavros (anchovies) is as essential as a plate of fried potatoes and are eaten the same way, with lemon or vinegar squeezed on them. Lemon makes them soggy. Vinegar keeps them crispy. Both taste great. These fish are about the size of your small finger and cooked almost whole. Their heads are cut off because they give it a bitter taste. Marides (smelt) are the same size hut the heads are left on. You eat the whole thing. Don't bother trying to pick out the bones or you will be there all night. Papalina are very small sardines, another great starter. Even smaller are the atherinia which are to fish as onion rings are to potatoes. Maybe that's a bad analogy. (Or a ridiculous one.) So let me try to explain. In Kea, at the famous Rolando's restaurant in Hora, he mixes atherinia with flour and sliced onions and then deep-fries the whole mass and serves it with vinegar and you sort of pull it apart and eat it. Like onion rings sort of.

Fried kalamarakia (squid) are also listed in the mezedes-appetisers section of the menu in most restaurants since they are trying to discourage you from making a whole meal out of it since it is so cheap. Don't let that stop you. When there is fresh kalamari available the menu will tell you. In fact by law the menus have to let you know whether a fish is fresh or frozen. If you see (kat) in parenthesis next to the fish you are ordering that means it is frozen. Kalamari and thrapsala are both delicious grilled or fried and can also be stuffed. But for me there is nothing like a whole fresh kalamari fried to perfection at Paradosiako Cafeneon in Athens. Thalia, the owner-chef of a small ouzerie in the port of Vourkari, Kea, makes these tiny baby kalamarakia that are just amazing.

Sardeles (sardines) are eaten in several ways, either as mezedes (appetisers) or main courses. Most people like them grilled. Fried is great too. They can also be served baked in tomato sauce with lemon and oregano but this is less common. The smaller the sardines the better they are. In Lesvos during the month of July when the sardines are a certain size, they are eaten as sardeles pastes (photo). The fishermen go out, catch a net full of sardines in one of the two big bays, and cover them in salt. That night they are ready to eat, raw, like sushi. They go very well with ouzo, in fact they are the best thing to eat with ouzo in my opinion. You can find them later in the summer too but as the sardines grow they need to be in salt longer. I have made them myself. Eating then requires a little technique but it can be mastered quite easily. You hold the tail of the sardine with two fingers on one half and two fingers (of the other hand) holding the other half. Then you gently pull and the fillet (but tiny) separates from the backbone. Then you take your fork and run the remaining fillet and tail through the tines (that's a real word; its the things that make a fork a fork) and separate the other filet from the backbone. Then you eat it or if you don't like it give it to the cats that have been watching you with interest. Some restaurants serve sardeles pastes plain and others with oil, lemon or even vinegar. I like mine with oil and lemon.

Another meze (appetiser) is lakerda, which is in the tuna family. The fish is made into steaks about half an inch thick and marinated in lemon and olive oil for a few days before being served. This also goes well with ouzo and is a popular dish on Lesvos where perhaps the best lakerda is found at a little hole in the wall restaurant in Campo Antissa, known as Kostas. Gavros marinatos (marinated anchovies) are a less intense, less salty, fresher version then the anchovies you get on your pizza, usually served with oil and vinegar. This is also served widely in Lesvos but can also be found in many ouzeries in Athens and around the other Greek islands. The best I have tasted were probably made by Melinda at the Captain's Table in Molyvos which were topped with oil, lemon, garlic and parsley. Lately I have been seeing gavros-marinatos sold in gourmet food shops in the USA.

The interesting thing about Greek fish is that the cheapest ones are the best for you. Gavros, sardeles, and kolios (mackerel) are the highest in omega fatty acids and of the three kolios is the tastiest and most filling. It is usually served grilled though it can also be fried. The best kollios is made in Lesvos and is called gouna. The fish is opened and dried in the sun with herbs. Then it is grilled. You won't taste anything better, especially if you go to the small town of Pirgi Thermi and eat at one of the small fish tavernas right on the water. I have also seen it in Naossa, Paros and in Skala Eressos, Lesvos.

Garides (shrimp) are very common on the island of Lesvos where they are fried whole and eaten whole, even the heads. Garides saganaki is a meze of baked cheese, tomato sauce and shrimp which is found in just about every ouzerie and mezedopoulion which are restaurants that specialize in ouzo and snacks, like tapas. Karaviedes are giant salt-water crayfish, very expensive and very un-satisfying. In Volos there are a number of dishes with crabs and other shellfish, that are eaten as mezedes. There is even a crab that is a very close cousin of the dungeness crab from California. In Lesvos there is something called agrio-garides which are a cross between a shrimp and a lobster tail and are deep fried and eaten whole. My daughter loves these but some people complain that they are inedible, being a little too hard-in-shell to eat whole and a little bit lacking-in-meat to be worth peeling.

A very popular dish is psarosoupa (fish soup), which is served at many working-class tavernas as well as the restaurants in the Plaka of Athens. The most commonly used fish is the rofos (grouper) a giant rock-dwelling fish that has to be caught one at a time and usually with a struggle. A rofos can be half the size of a man and its meat can be grilled in steaks too, but more commonly it is used in psarosoupa, along with some of the other rock fish and scorpios (scorpion fish). When you order psarosoupa they ask you if you want it with the fish. If you get it with the fish it comes in a bowl with the broth and some potatoes, carrots, onions, and a plate with the fish. It is usually in an avgolemono (egg-lemon) broth. This is one of the healthiest and best tasting dishes in Greece. The soup at Byzantino in Plaka is excellent. In some island fish restaurants you can special order a whole pot by calling the day before or in the morning. We were treated to a pot at the Akrotiri Fish Taverna in Agia Focas, near Vatera Beach after the owner found out that I was the guy who had written the review that all the tourists had with them when they found this far-away restaurant. It was amazing.

Octopus is the most misunderstood creature in the sea. Very intelligent, the Greeks have been struggling to outsmart them for centuries and now the few that remain seem to be the smartest and hardest to catch. No problem. There are plenty in China and chances are the octopus you eat in Greece will not be Greek. Still you have to feel a little bit sad for the slaughter of an animal that has the intelligence of a house-cat and none of the bad habits. When I was a happy yet ruthless spear-fisherman, the octopus was my most coveted prize. But after watching one in its death agony after going through the terrible procedure one must go through to make it edible (shoot it in the head, turn its head inside out and then beat it to death on a rock) I declared I would no longer hunt them and instead became their friend and savior, often finding them on the sea floor and whisking them to a safe hiding place before the Greek hunters, who will shoot anything no matter how small, could find them.

But this does not stop me from eating them and a well cooked, expertly seasoned octopus can taste like filet mignon. The best way to eat it is grilled. Marinated is good too. My last choice is with macaroni or in stifado with baby onions in tomato sauce. But you have to know how to cook an octopus because if you don't it will take you half an hour to eat one bite. It can be very tough if not made correctly and part of the procedure is the endless beating of it on a rock. In some palaces they say the fishermen put them in a washing machine (without soap) until they are tender. A method I have used is in my cuisine-art with the bread-kneading blade until you get a white froth, almost as if you had put detergent in with it. Octopus goes best by the sea with a glass of ouzo, or even a bottle.

Media (mussels) have always been eaten in certain areas of Greece but now they are almost mainstream and can be found in many tavernas in Lesvos and other islands as well in Athens, either steamed or in saganaki. There are other clams too that have found their way on to the menus, many of them from farms. There are a number of popular fish that are now farmed including pestrofo (fresh-water trout), salmon, eel and carp. There is talk of farming turbot, bluefin tuna, yellowtail, and octopus too. The most popular farmed fish are Tsipoura (Gilthead Sea-Bream) and Lavraki (Mediterranean Sea Bass) but I have seen Tilapia sold in the central market in Athens. If you drive along the coast you will see some of these fish farms, even as close as Sounion near Athens.

Bakaliaro (cod) is probably the most widely eaten fish, especially in the winter. If you go to the Athens Central Market or just about any island supermarket you will see salted dried cod. This can be served in a plaki, which is a sort of a roasted fish with vegetables in a tomato sauce and is usually made with fresh cod when it is available. But the most popular way to eat cod is in the basement taverns of the Plaka, which are only open in the winter and specialize in bakaliaro me skordalia ( batter-dipped deep fried cod with garlic sauce). As unhealthy as it may be, for me this is the only way to eat cod. The salted cod has to be soaked for a couple days, changing the water every so often. Similar is a dish called galeos, which is actually a small shark like what we call dog-fish, instead of 'red snapper' which is the translation many restaurants use to keep any tourists from thinking that there may be sharks in the happy seas of Greece. Galeos is also deep-fried and served with skordalia. If you don't like bones then these two dishes are for you.

Anyone who has eaten in a sushi restaurant has encountered the delight called uni which is sea urchin. In my opinion it is the worst tasting sushi dish you can find especially when compared to fresh sea-urchin. There is only one way to eat fresh sea urchin, called archinoos, and that is to dive down and catch one, cut it open and eat it right there. You can find it in some fish tavernas, notably on the island of Aegina, but as fresh as they claim it to be, there is nothing like eating it right out of the sea. The females are easily recognizable because they cover themselves with bits of sea weed, paper, or whatever they can find nearby. You have to pick them up carefully and bring them to the surface, take your knife and slice them open and eat the orange eggs. You won't believe how sweet they are. Don't eat too many.

In the Athens Central market and in smaller markets on the islands you can find rega, (smoked herring) which is served covered in olive oil and considered a winter food because it is so salty. You can find all sorts of canned sardines, some in olive oil which you can just open and eat, and some that is caked in salt which takes some work to make edible. You can also find in cans or packaged in plastic containers kolios (mackerel), gavros (anchovies),  lakerda (tuna) and even marinated octopus. Scoumbri which is in the mackerel family is sold whole and pickled and if you are a pickled fish fanatic you will love it, but if not you may want to let it go. It will stink up your hotel room and may even alert the airport dogs to contraband.

Also in the probably not-a-good-idea-to-eat category are the kefalo (gray mullet) which live in the harbors and eat the bread that the tourists toss to them. These fish tend to like polluted water though that does not mean that because you see them in the sea that the water is polluted because they are everywhere. They are sold in some restaurants and in the central market. When they are fresh and clean their gills will be exposed and a bright red like in the photo. Another interesting fish that you may come across is the smyrna (moray eel) which are fairly common in the Greek sea though you probably won't see them unless you are diving after sunset. They are big and nasty looking with the sharpest little teeth you have ever seen. They are quite edible, delicious fried, but such a pain to clean that few chefs will mess with them. You don't have to be afraid of them unless you are snorkeling and decide to tease one by sticking your hand in his hole.

One of my favorite fish which is also uncommon is the skaros, described by the ancient Greeks as the parrot fish, which is grilled whole, guts and all. In fact there is a little song the fishermen sing about the skaros:

The rofos you eat the head
melanouri the body
but for skaros eat the shit
and tell me which do you like better?

For a real treat visit the fish section of the Athens Central market on any weekday or Saturday morning. You will see just about every fish in Greece and many from outside Greece and even outside the Mediterranean. Make sure you are not wearing flip-flops or open sandals because the floor can be wet and nasty.

Remember too that when you go to a fish restaurant some of the fish will be sold by the merida (portion) and some by the kilo. Look at the price per kilo before you order so you don't get surprised when you get the bill. The waiter will always recommend the most expensive fish. What are my favorite fish? In this order they are: fried barbounia, sardeles pastes, grilled kollios, grilled octopus, fried gavros, grilled sardines and bacaliaro me skordalia. The best places for fish? Just about anywhere on the island of Lesvos. In Athens the fish-taverns at Anavissos are worth the trip especially if you want to visit Sounion. If you are in the city the small Paradosiako Cafeneon on Voulis street makes great fried and grilled fish, usually of the inexpensive variety. Violetta in Foikinos Negri is a nice little fish-taverna too. On the road to Kessariani there are a number of fish tavernas in Anagenisios Square. If you can get to Kea, Rolando, in Hora is recognized as a master in fried fish.

Herbs and Spices
This is one of the easiest section to write because Greek cooking is very simple and does not rely on a large variety of herbs and spices but the combination of a few. Very few. People who are nervous about going to Greece because they have a fear of spicy foods can take solace. Greeks don't eat spicy foods and they don't season heavily. The focus of Greek cooking is on the vegetables, breads and meats and the philosophy seems to be bringing out the natural flavor of these things rather than hide it or disguise it with spices.

So lets begin with the basics, and the most basic is elati (salt). Greek cooking relies heavily on salt to bring outn the flavor of meat, fish and vegetables and most of the salt used is from the sea. There are many places in Greece where salt is harvested on flat plains by the sea and Greek sea-salt is of a high quality. Next is peperi (pepper) which like salt is found on every table and is usually the normal black pepper that you eat at home. Some chefs, notably Aglaia Kremezi, use Aleppo Pepper which adds an interesting flavor to the food but if this was common in any period of Greek history it is not now unless you are lucky enough to be invited to her house for lunch.

Herbs
Rigani (oregano) is used a lot in Greek cooking appearing in most meat dishes, baked vegetables, sauces and of course on Greek salads. This is the most widely used herb. Among the other herbs which grow on the hillsides of the Greek mainland and the islands dendrolivano (rosemary) is used sparingly, in fact I can think of only two recipes. One is a vinegar sauce for fish that my mother used to make and the other is with lamb and roast potatoes though this may be more common among the Greeks I know than those of the general population. Thymari (thyme) is used in some meat dishes and for flavoring some olives as well as some of the best Greek honey.  Faskomilo (sage) can be smelled all over the mountains and is used in a tea. Diosmos (mint) is used to flavor keftedes (meatballs)  and in some pies and salads. Vassilikos (basil) which is one of my favorite herbs is actually not eaten in Greece though you will see it grown ornamentally or for good luck in gardens, apartments, rooftops, restaurants and even on boats. Anitho (dill) is used in pitas (pies), salads and dolmadas. Maidanos (parsley) is used as a garnish as well as in some meat and vegetable dishes. Dafnofila (bay leaves) are used in some soups and stews. Selino is actually wild celery and is used in some stews, particularly the hirino me selino which is served in the winter.

Spices
Garifalo (cloves) are an important ingredient in stifado and is also used in breads and sweets. Kumino (cumin) is used in soutzoukakia, the spicey meatballs served in tomato sauce. Sousami (sesame seeds) are used on breads and in halva and with honey to make a sweet called pasteli. Kanela (cinnamon) is used in many sauces and deserts and is sprinkled on apples for a desert after a big meal.

In the Athens central market there are venders selling herbs and spices on the street and there are several shops that specialize in them, the best known being Elixer on Evripidou Street right near the corner of Athinas Street.

Mezedes
Mezedes or meze are the small plates of food served with ouzo since in Greece it is customary to eat while you drink. Ouzo is never served without mezedes, even if it is only a handful of nuts at the tourist rip-off bar. Ouzo's cousins, raki, tsipouro and tsikoudia which are similar in spirit but without the anise-licorice taste are also served with meze which soften the effects of these powerful drinks and enable you to drink and talk for hours rather than getting drunk and incoherent. You will rarely see the Greeks rip-roaring drunk. This is because they drink slowly, eat meze and in between every bite are talking, listening, watching or reflecting.

What kind of meze depends on where you are. If you are by the sea you can count on it being seafood. If you are in the mountains you may find yourself eating cheese or even the sweetbreads of a lamb. In different areas of G