Greek Recipes

Christmas is everyone’s favorite time of the year. I enjoy it mostly for the food! Many savory dishes and desserts are made only during the Christmas and New Year festivities. This makes things interesting but it is a pity we can’t enjoy them throughout the entire year. In Greece we have two favorite cookies which are found in every single house as well as every pastry shop in the country. We just love melomacarona and kourabiedes !! There is no such thing as Christmas without these cookies. Melomacarona are egg free cookies scented with cinnamon, clove and orange. After baking they are immediately dipped into thick honey syrup that makes them irresistible. Kourabiedes are very simple to make, since they are made only with flour, butter and sugar and are scented with vanilla and brandy or rum. Very good quality butter gives these cookies their characteristic taste and aroma. In Greece we use goat or sheep’s milk butter both of which have a very intense aroma, but any good quality m...

Quinces have been used in Greek cuisine for thousands of years. Ancient Greeks used to call them ‘’apples’’ and they used to combine them with meat in savory dishes or in simple desserts like baked quinces stuffed with honey and almonds’’. In mythology quince was the fruit dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite (Venus)  and the ‘apple’ given to her by Paris in the famous beauty contest.. Plutarch tells us that Solon (a lawgiver and poet) suggested that brides bite into a slice of quince before they met with their husbands to ensure  a memorable and pleasant first kiss! Nowadays we still use quinces in cooking, in festive dishes with pork or beef or in desserts the same way you would use apples. The following recipe is a ‘’spoon sweet’’ which is quince cooked in syrup. It is the simplest way to preserve fruits and then use them in pastry. Quinces make a very tasty preserve with a vibrant red color that matches perfectly with yogurt, cheesecake, or as it is. Ingredients 500gr quinc...

In Greek cuisine pumpkin is mostly used in savory or sweet pies ( kolokythopita ), but there is also a preserve - a ‘’spoon sweet ‘’ - as we call it, made with pumpkin and honey that in Rhodes island is called ‘’r etseli ’’. In the countryside almost every house has pumpkins even if only as a decorative plant on fences. Neighbors are competing to show who has the biggest pumpkin every year or who has the greatest production. Sweet pumpkin pie is made with the addition of raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, and, of course, sugar, and it is dusted with icing sugar after baking. This pie resembles apple pie and is served as a dessert. In the Peloponnesus we make a savory pie with feta cheese and this is one of our favorite winter dishes. You will notice that we use dried pasta in this pie, giving the pie extra taste This way the pumpkin juices are absorbed instead of merely being discarded. We use chylopites  which are small squares of pasta. You can use any kind of dried pasta but flat shape...