In Greek: ριγανάδα, pronounced ree-ghah-NAH-thah This is one version of Greek bruschetta and a favorite and easy recipe for a quick snack or accompaniment to drinks. Use homemade crusty country bread, or thick slices of sourdough, french, or italian bread. Cook Time: 10 minutes Total Time: 10 minutes Ingredients: 3/4-inch slices of country style bread chopped tomatoes […]

Ingredients: 250gr of shrimps 250gr of mussels Half a kilo of rice 3 medium tomatoes, finely diced 2 medium onions, sliced 2 teacups of olive oil 2 tablespoons of ouzo Salt and pepper to taste Method: Heat the olive oil in a pan and lightly sauté the onions. Add the shrimps, mussels and the tomatoes […]

Tyropsomo me Halloumi (Cheese-Bread with Halloumi) Halloumi Cup Cakes (Cheese Muffins) Paskies me Prozimi (Lamb and Cheese Pie with Sourdough) Cypriot Black Olive Pies Kolokotes (Squash Pastries) Glystarkes (Sweet Sesame Rusk’s) Flaounes (1) (Easter Cheese Pastries) Easter Flaounes (2) Eliopita (Black Olive Bread) Chicken pies Cyprus pitta recipe Kattimeri Cyprus recipe

SKORDALIA APO HTAPOTHOZOUMO Makes 4 to 6 meze servings This garlic dip is served just as aliatha, ayiatha, and others are—as an accompaniment to boiled greens, fried vegetables or fish, plain on bread, or as a side with Ithacan Fried Octopus . Four 1-inch-thick slices stale rustic bread Pan juices from cooking 2 small or 1 large octopus. Igredients: 4 to […]

TIGANITO HTAPOTHAKI APO TIN ITHAKI Makes 8 to 10 meze servings Octopus is the Lenten fare par excellence in Ithaca. There is plenty of it, it is rich and filling despite its associations with the fast, and it is cooked in several unusual ways. The following recipes were given to me by Mihalis Maghoulas, an Ithacan native who tinkers in […]

Stuffed Little Meatballs POLPETES APO TIN KERKYRA Makes about 24 meatballs What the rest of Greece knows as keftedes or by the diminutive, keftedakia, Seven Islanders call polpetes, delicate little meatballs. In the Ionian area these days they are apt to be the mint-doused rendition common throughout all of Greece. This particular recipe, borrowed from Ninetta Laskari’s excellent book on Corfu, […]

SKARTSOTSETTA Here’s a dish that some claim was the invention of Zakynthian and Corfiote taverna owners, but others, more wisely, point to Venice as the source of its provenance. (Skartsotsetta—at least etymologically— probably derives from the Italian scartocetti for “packets” because of the way the thinly sliced veal isstuffed, rolled, and braised.) Regardless of its origins, the dish has evolved to […]

ORTYKIA ME KOUKIA – ορτυκια με κουκια Quail appear in many varied dishes all over Greece, from the preserved quail so revered in the Mani to the quail-stuffed bread, also from the southern Peloponnesos. From the eastern Aegean, we find another unusual quail dish, in which the tiny birds are stuffed into eggplants (the recipe is included in my first book, The […]

BAKALIAROPITA TIS ITHAKIS Makes 8 to 10 servings Codfish pies are found throughout the Ionian Islands. The Ithacan version includes both rice and cubed potatoes, testimony to the fact that this originated as poor man’s food, a dish that needed to be as filling as possible. Cod pie is a classic Lenten dish not only in Ithaca but in Cephalonia […]

The World’s Most Basic Soup ZOUPA Makes 4 servings This dish is the apotheosis of the trinity of Mediterranean flavors—wheat, wine, and olive oil. “It’s just like the akraton — the breakfast of bread and undiluted wine—that the ancients used to eat.” At first I thought it was one of those dishes, like so many others, lost to time, […]