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Eternally sunny, peaceful and inviting Greece is an ideal place to relax on the sea coast and a paradise for the gastronomic tourist. Greek cuisine captivates with an extravaganza of aromas and perfect taste combinations. To enjoy them live, you do not have to go on a trip. We offer you to prepare popular dishes of national cuisine yourself and feel the unique Mediterranean flavor.
The eternal harmony of the three
The combination of feta cheese, fresh tomatoes and olives can be found not only in the Greek salad, but also in the dakos snack. This is the name of the bread made from coarse flour, which is popular in Crete. It is baked twice in the oven in a special way in the form of round buns, which makes them acquire a dense crispy texture. If you could not find it, you can take ordinary barley crackers.
Cut the dacos in half, pour both halves with olive oil. Pour boiling water over a large fleshy tomato, remove the skin and cut into cubes. We spread it on the halves of dacos and sprinkle with fresh or ground oregano. By the way, almost no recipe can do without this fragrant seasoning in Greece. Knead into a large crumb or cut into cubes 100 g of feta and sprinkle with tomatoes. Cheese, if desired, can also be seasoned with oregano. It remains to put the pitted olives and basil petals on top. It is customary to cut the dacos into several parts and eat with your hands.
A small cheese treat
Saganaki is an incredibly popular and easy-to-prepare snack. The name translates from Greek as “small frying pan”. And they fry only one ingredient in it-cheese.
Most often, this is a hard kefalotiri cheese made from sheep’s or goat’s milk. It tastes like Italian Parmesan. Sometimes they take a sweet-salty hard graviere cheese instead. This variety is found in different variations – from cow’s, goat’s or sheep’s milk. The Greeks put it in the filling for pies or in meat dishes.
We cut 200 g of kefalotiri cheese into rectangular plates with a thickness of at least 1.5 cm. Heat a thick-walled frying pan with vegetable oil well. Take the butter in such a way that it covers the cheese slices by a third. We roll the cheese in flour, shake off the excess and put it in hot oil. We hold them for just a few seconds on each side and transfer them to a paper towel. Saganaki is served with half a lemon to squeeze the juice directly on the hot cheese.
Street feast for the whole world
Greek souvlaki kebabs are usually served on wooden skewers. But in countless street eateries, a more satisfying option is often found. The pieces of meat are wrapped in a round tortilla along with vegetables. Then we get another popular Greek dish-gyros, a relative of our shawarma.
Cut 300 g of pork in the form of skewers, pour 3 tbsp. l. olive oil, juice of half a lemon, sprinkle with salt, black pepper and oregano. Marinate the meat for half an hour, string it on wet wooden skewers and fry it until golden brown in a grill pan. In a regular frying pan, we heat 100 ml of vegetable oil strongly and fry straws from 2-3 potatoes.
We spread pieces of fried meat on a round flatbread. French fries can be laid out together with potatoes or served separately. We cover the meat with rings of sweet onions and slices of tomatoes, pour zadziki sauce (or tzatziki). We will mix it from 200 g of natural yogurt, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, grated fresh cucumber, 2-3 crushed garlic cloves. You can add any fresh herbs and feta cheese here. Roll the cake with the filling into a bag and fasten the edges with a toothpick.
What a delight these peppers are!
Lovers of hearty hot snacks will like the national Greek dish gemista. These are sweet peppers stuffed with rice, vegetables and minced meat. Here we will need 8-10 large red bell peppers, from which we will cut off the caps and carefully remove the partitions with seeds.
In advance, we boil 100 g of rice until it is half cooked. We make a roast of onions and carrots with the addition of cumin, paprika and oregano. We put 1 kg of any minced meat in a frying pan to passerovka, fry until golden brown. Remove the skin from 3 tomatoes, grind them into mashed potatoes and add them to the minced meat. After cooking it for 5 minutes, add rice, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 1 tbsp sugar, 0.5 tsp ground chili and black pepper to taste. Sometimes raisins, pine nuts and cinnamon sticks are put in the filling. Zucchini and eggplant are also allowed here.
We stuff the hollow peppers, put them vertically in a baking dish and put large slices of potatoes between them. Cover them with lids, pour water into the mold so that it covers the potatoes, and bake at 200 °C. After 1.5 hours, you can get fragrant ruddy peppers from the oven.
With all the Greek generosity
Greek moussaka casserole is a worldwide gastronomic hit. According to the traditional recipe, it is prepared from minced meat and eggplant, sprinkled with bechamel sauce.
Cut 1 kg of eggplant into longitudinal plates 0.5-1 cm thick, sprinkle with salt and leave for 20 minutes. Then we wash it in water, dry it, lubricate it with olive oil and fry it on both sides. In another frying pan, fry 500 g of ground beef or lamb with onions and mashed 3 tomatoes. Pour 150 ml of dry red wine here, put salt and any dry herbs to taste. Simmer the minced meat until all the liquid has evaporated.
In a saucepan, melt 70 g of butter and dissolve 1.5 tbsp of flour. Stirring vigorously with a whisk, we introduce 200 ml of warmed milk in a thin stream. Beat the sauce until it becomes creamy. At the end, put a pinch of nutmeg.
We grease a deep baking dish with oil and spread half of the eggplants. Sprinkle them with grated cheese and cover with a layer of minced meat. Next comes the second layer of eggplant, which we will smear with bechamel sauce and sprinkle with grated cheese. Cover the mold with foil and put it in the oven at 180 °C for 15 minutes. Then remove the foil and cook the casserole for another 20 minutes. Connoisseurs of Greek cuisine assure that moussaka is incomparable even in cold form.
Roast with heroic endurance
The kleftiko dish, originally from Cyprus, is a roast, most often made of lamb or beef. The meat is marinated for a long time, after which it is languished for several hours. As a result, it easily separates into fibers and melts in the mouth.
Chop 1.5 kg of lamb into medium pieces, pour 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon, season with oregano and paprika. In this form, we send the meat to the refrigerator for at least 8 hours. Peel and chop 9-10 potatoes into large slices. We cover a deep baking dish with several layers of foil. Put half of the potatoes on the bottom, sprinkle with olive oil, sprinkle with paprika, dried coriander, cumin, basil, pepper and salt. Next, we spread onion rings, carrots and whole cloves of garlic — as much as you want. Now it’s the turn of the marinated lamb, which we will also generously season with spices. We hide the meat under the remaining potatoes and sprinkle with olive oil.
Cover the mold with several layers of foil, put it in the oven at 250 °C for an hour. Then remove the foil, reduce the temperature to 180 °C and continue to simmer for about 4 more hours. Serve the kleftiko with fresh vegetables, sprinkled with chopped herbs.
Tenderness with citrus flavor
We turn to the traditional Greek soup avgolemono. It is usually cooked in chicken broth with the addition of beaten egg, lemon juice and rice. In some recipes, rice is replaced with small orzo pasta, resembling oblong grains.
Cut 2-3 onions into small cubes and fry in a saucepan until transparent. Pour in 1.5 liters of chicken broth, bring to a boil, lay the pieces of a small chicken fillet. Then pour out 100 g of washed rice and cook over medium heat for 15-20 minutes. We measure out a small cup of broth. Separately, beat 3 eggs into a homogeneous mass, pour the juice of half a lemon and enter the resulting mass into a cup with broth in a thin stream. Gradually mix the egg dressing into the pot with the soup. Constantly stirring with a wooden spatula, cook it on low heat until it begins to thicken. In any case, do not let the soup boil. Before serving, add the pre-boiled chicken and decorate the plates with avgolemono with lemon circles and herbs.
Not donuts, but gold
There are many desserts among the recipes of Greek dishes. But lukumades doughnuts should be tried first of all. In Greece, they are sold at every turn. Pieces of tender fried dough are poured with syrup, then sprinkled with cinnamon or nuts.
First of all, we cook a syrup of 200 g of sugar, 2 tablespoons of honey and 250 ml of water with the addition of a lemon slice. Separately, we heat 300 ml of milk, dilute 1 tsp of dry yeast, 2 tbsp of sugar, 50 g of corn starch and a pinch of salt. Then gradually pour 200 g of flour and knead the dough. Cover the bowl with the dough with a towel and put it in the heat for 30-40 minutes — it should increase in volume and be covered with bubbles.
In a saucepan with a thick bottom, pour 300-350 ml of vegetable oil and heat it properly. Using a spoon, we form balls from the dough, dip them in hot oil and quickly fry until golden brown. We catch the donuts with a slotted spoon, put them on a paper towel. Before serving, pour the lukumades with syrup and sprinkle with sesame seeds. You can dust them with powdered sugar or pour melted chocolate over them.
Of course, this is just a grain of the richest culinary heritage of Greece. You can always continue further closer acquaintance with the traditional recipes of the national cuisine of this country on the pages of the portal “We Eat at Home”. And if you are one of the fans of Greek cuisine, share your favorite dishes in the comments with other readers.