Book Reviews

Thursday, November 01, 2001

Regional Greek Cooking

The Glorious Foods of Greece: Traditional Recipes from the Islands, Cities and Villages by Diane Kochilas. William Morrow, New York, 496 pages, 2001, $40.00.

By Andrew Dalby

For ten years, Diane Kochilas has been traveling up and down Greece, exploring local foods, discovering and recording traditional recipes. She has already written The Food and Wine of Greece and The Greek Vegetarian. In this, her third book, Diane once more shares the knowledge she has gained in her personal gastronomic odyssey, and we are all richer as a result. “I got this recipe,” she reports in one case, “from an old cruise ship chef in Neapoli, a town on the southern coast of the Peloponnese known for…the predominant profession of its local sons. A whole generation of sailor-cooks came from here.”

The Glorious Foods of Greece is, as a result, a great cookbook. More than 400 recipes are gathered in these well-planned pages; most of them have never appeared in English before. But this is also more than a cookbook: It is the nearest there has yet been to a true encyclopedia of regional Greek cooking.

Each regional chapter begins with a whistle-stop tour, followed by sections on the foods of each district or island, followed in turn by a survey of cheeses. These cheese sections deserve a special mention. Until now there has never been such full information in English on the local cheeses of Greece. Now we know more, from the “extremely creamy” feta of Cephalonia to the krassotyri, steeped in wine-lees, of Kos. After the regional chapters, there is a section on basic ingredients and techniques, with plenty of details on the inimitable trahana, described by Diane not unfairly as a “pebble-shaped pasta,” an ancient and traditional way to dry milk and wheatmeal for later use. Now, a foretaste of those regional chapters.

1. The Peloponnese, the southern mainland, the peninsula south of Corinth. Recipes include octopus yioulbasi, baked in paper. For this (so Diane advises the enthusiastic cook), one should really “hang a fresh octopus out to dry in the sun for a day so that its liquid drains and its flavor intensifies. One can do this easily enough if the weather is warm and sunny. If not, hang the octopus over the kitchen sink for a day or two.” For a change of flavor, read the enticing information on the sweets of Levithi and the rose-petal jam made by the monks at Taxiarkhon monastery near Aigeon. Recipes are suggested for both, although the monks would not give away every last secret of the manufacture even to Diane!

2. The Ionian islands, with their special history and unique traditions. There are introductory sections on Corfu, Cephalonia, Zakynthos, Ithaca, and Lefkada – and fascinating anecdotes on the kumquats and jujubes of Corfu and the paximadia (barley rusks) of Lefkada. Excellent recipes for mezedes include the special skordalia or garlic sauces of Cephalonia and Corfu, where they call it ayiatha. If you didn’t know how to make poulenta (yes, polenta) the way they do in Lefkada, here’s your recipe.

3. Roumeli, the central mainland west of Athens. Remember the olives of Amfissa? Remember the klotsotyri, the “cheese with a kick” of Roumeli? Here, too, are hints on how to deal with every bit of the Easter lamb.

4. Epirus, the rough northwestern mountains. Here, Diane describes the sini, the dome-shaped cooking cover, now made of copper, which is traditional among the shepherds of these mountains – and is a direct descendant of the earthenware klibanos of ancient Greece. From the recipes in this chapter, who’ll be the first to try the irresistible kouneli kapamas, rabbit with garlicky brown butter sauce and walnuts?

5. Thessaly, the inland plain below Mount Olympus. From here, I recommend the chicken and celeriac stew with egg-and-lemon sauce; and I’m going to try the apple spoon-sweet, flavored with cinnamon, cloves, and orange zest.

6. Macedonia and Thrace, the northern strip of the mainland. The long introduction to this chapter explores the traditions of these two regions and the novelties resulting from the influx of Greeks from Asia Minor and Constantinople after 1922. There’s room for an eye-watering history of the peppers of Aridea or Karatsova, second in fame only to Hungarian paprika. There’s also a fascinating page about the saffron of Kozani. Notice the recipe from Nymphaio for mushroom pie with onions, mint, and paprika, and a fine selection of recipes for sweets.

7. The big islands of the northeastern Aegean. Here are Ikaria, Samos, Chios, Lesvos, and Limnos, along with the full story of a real rarity, the sea-washed cheese of Limnos. The sardines of Lesvos, too, get their share of the limelight; so does the mastic of Chios. The recipe for pancake with yogurt and currants, based on an old dish from Chios, attracts me strongly.

8. The Cyclades, the islands of the middle Aegean. Here, Diane focuses on Santorini, Syros, Tinos, and Andros, and she lists page after page of island cheeses. Recipes come not only from these four islands but also from Sifnos, Naxos, Anafi, and Kimolos, source of a recipe for sesame brittle flavored with ouzo.

9. The Dodecanese. It’s fascinating that the myzithra cheese of Kos has a little sea-water added to the whey as it boils, while in the cheese of Leros, the milk is mixed with seawater before the cheese sets – fascinating because a little added seawater was the special feature of the wine of Kos in Roman times! In this section are several recipes for stuffed grape leaves, and a couple of fine ideas for purslane, which grows as a weed in so many gardens.

10. Crete. The introductory section deals with olives, olive oil, and the famous wild greens of Crete, as part of a quick survey and history of Cretan cuisine. The recipe section for Crete is one of the longest, fully 50 pages, with many fine flavors and an amusing note on the eptazymo, chickpea bread of Krousta.

And poor Athens gets only three pages! But it’s perfectly true, as Diane writes here, that “Greece’s capital and its environs don’t really have a regional cuisine.” In Athens, in fact, the whole country is represented, not only in the menus of ambitious modern restaurateurs and chefs, but also in the astonishing, crowded Central Market, which Diane does her best to describe in one scintillating page: “a raucous symphony of unabashed huckstering. The carnal, almost salacious odors of the meat market and its 45-odd stalls (replete with pigs’ heads and cows’ tongues dangling on hooks, tripe, and just about everything else displayed without much heed to the heat or to more puritanical issues such as hygiene) segue to the unmistakable scents of salt and iodine next door, where almost twice as many fishmongers hawk the catch from ice-filled stands. Here and there the sharp, briny smells of pickles and olives pierce the air….”

If The Glorious Foods of Greece tilts the balance slightly in favor of Crete and the mainland rather than the Aegean islands – at least I think it might, although I haven’t counted pages – that’s no bad thing. The mainland, outside a limited tourist circuit, is less well-known to most travelers. And the islands have been the focus of several recent cookbooks, including Aglaia Kremezi’s The Foods of the Greek Islands (which I have already reviewed on greekworks.com)

. Aglaia’s well-illustrated book will stand beside Diane’s on many shelves: thanks to both these authors, and their publishers, the gastronomic pleasures of Greece will reach a wide audience.