During the long island feasts, in the wee hours of the morning, as the diners continue to drink, sing, and dance, a tigania is whipped up. It is a tradition that I have found extremely odd when I first encountered it, at a Kean wedding…

In Kea and the other Cycladic islands, during the heart of the winter, when seaside taverns are closed and the cold northern wind vigorously beats the deserted beaches, islanders slaughter their pigs. Pig-slaughtering is still an occasion to gather in this or the other home, eat and drink homemade wine and raki (grappa), while helping divide the meat, make sausages, and prepare the much- valued loza – wine-macerated pork loin which is spiced, inserted into the pork’s large intestine, and smoked for two days. Little trimmings of pork meat are cooked on the spot, or saved for other occasions. They are briefly sautéed in the skillet with wine and sweet spices, to be enjoyed with bread and plenty of wine. The dish is called tigania (tigani is the skillet) and it is served usually as a late night treat, on all sorts of occasions, after the meal and even after the sweets. (more…)

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In the winter when we have plenty of greens, both cultivated and foraged, I often bake green bread or crunchy paximadia that are quite striking, delicious and healthy!

In my kitchen I have always large cookie jars filled with different colored savory biscotti: yellow, green, or darkbarley Paximadia. The word paximadi (plural paximadia) includes all kinds of twice-baked breads—what Italians call ‘biscotti.’ But while Italian biscotti are usually sweet, paximadia are the savory slices, rings or pencil-shaped crunchy delicacies. They are an almost guilt-free snack while Costas likes them with his coffee in the morning or after lunch; I usually serve them with spreads and salads as part of the meze, as they complement ideally the spread I make with Smoked Herring or Tarama. (more…)

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“We’re talking here about plating, gastronomic jargon for how a chef arranges the food before it is served. Naturally, every cook has to think about that, whether at Le Cirque or the Cheesecake Factory. But some think about it more than others,” writes Jeff Gordinier in his amusing, well-researched and illustrated piece at the Food section of the NYT.

Coming back from a trip to Japan, this piece forced me to make the connection between what I experienced there and the widespread trend, which in some cases–and not just in the United States and Europe–has gone to extremes; beautiful, often stunning plates or trays that offer very little or no taste when we get down to eating these magnificently executed edible ‘works of art.’ (more…)

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You never quite outgrow this simple comfort food, which we make often and our friends love it as much as Stamatia’s young grandsons, who ask her to bake it for them every time they visit her in Kea.

My friend Stamatia Stylou, from Livena, a Greek village in southern Albania, taught me this baked rice that comes in many versions, with or without meat. The term briani, from Biryani, brings to mind the popular Indian rice dishes. The word originates from the old Persian ‘beryā(n)’ which means ‘fried or roasted.’ As I found researching common words used for various dishes in the Mediterranean for a paper I did with Anissa Helou for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, in Pre-Ottoman Turkey the word retained the old Persian meaning. In his piece about the “Foods and Breads of the Selçuk Period” M. Zeki Oral writes: “Biryan means kebab. As biryans were mentioned in the plural in the Selçukname, we may conclude that there were several types at the feast”. (more…)

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We Greeks are not, of course, the only ones to eat leafy greens, especially this time to the year. Asians love greens, and some of the plants they cultivate are similar to the ones we eat here, on the other side of the world.

In my recent trip to Japan I fell in love with komatsuna, that looks like a cross between spinach and bok choy, but it is a different, wonderfully tender and succulent green! Suka-San, the hard-working organic producer in the region of Kamikawa, where I spent some days, was kind enough to give me seeds that I planted in my garden and I can’t wait to harvest and cook them. (more…)

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