Cuisine guide
Greek
recipes.
Greek cuisine sits at a hinge point — Mediterranean, Balkan, and Middle Eastern at the same time, shaped by 400 years of Ottoman rule, two thousand years of olive cultivation, and a long coastal tradition of fish and shellfish. The food is famously simple: a few good ingredients, treated well, dressed with lemon and oil. The Mediterranean diet that nutritionists rave about is essentially Greek and Cretan home cooking: lots of vegetables, beans and lentils, whole grains, fish, moderate dairy (sheep and goat), small amounts of meat, and olive oil at every turn.
Recipes from Greek
8 dishes to cook from
The shape of the cuisine
Three pillars to anchor what you cook.
Olive oil as a cooking fat AND a finisher
Greek dishes often involve olive oil at multiple stages — fried vegetables, simmered into stews, drizzled raw over the finished plate. Crete in particular has the highest per-capita olive oil consumption in the world; high-quality oil is treated more like a vegetable than a condiment.
Mezze and the small-plate culture
Greek meals often start with a spread of small plates — tzatziki, taramosalata, melitzanosalata (eggplant), gigantes (giant beans), spanakopita, dolmades, grilled octopus. With ouzo or tsipouro, a meze can become the whole meal.
The taverna staples
Souvlaki and gyros (the Greek shawarma); moussaka (eggplant + lamb + béchamel); pastitsio (the Greek lasagna); the whole-fish tradition of grilled bream, sardines, and sea bass; lamb roasted with potatoes and lemon. The classics that define what most non-Greeks know as Greek food.
Staple ingredients
The pantry you'll want.
Extra-virgin olive oil (preferably Greek or Cretan), feta, kefalotyri or graviera cheese, Greek yoghurt, lemons, oregano, dill, mint, parsley, dried beans and lentils, kalamata olives, capers, phyllo dough, lamb, octopus, anchovies, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants.
You don't need everything at once. Build the pantry over a few months as recipes call for it; most of these are shelf-stable and useful across cuisines.
Core techniques
A few moves to learn well.
- Avgolemono — beaten eggs whisked with lemon juice and tempered into hot broth to thicken soups and sauces
- Roasting lamb low and slow with garlic, oregano, lemon, and potatoes that absorb the juices
- Grilling fish whole, cleaned but not filleted, brushed with oil
- Layering phyllo with melted butter or olive oil for spanakopita and tiropita