54 real food summer 2019Interestingly, there’s a bonus beyond taste
for blending the two. “The lemon actually helps
make the nutrients in foods more available to
your body, especially when you’re cooking any-
thing with greens,” she says. “There’s this folk
knowledge about it in Greece. Many people
don’t know the reasoning behind it; they just
do it naturally.” She calls out spanakorizo, a
popular dish of rice cooked with spinach, as an
example. “The spinach and rice make a com-
plete protein; you squeeze lemon over it, and
that makes it much easier for your body to
absorb the iron. There are a lot of little secrets
like that, that people know innately.”
To add extra flavor to a dish, Greeks tend to
look to herbs rather than spice. “That’s not to
say [Greeks] don’t use spices—certainly cin-
namon and nutmeg, allspice and cumin are
fairly common—but the use of herbs is more
pronounced,” she says. “And the use of herbs
as medicine is still a living tradition; people
will make all sorts of herbal teas for all sorts
of ailments.”
And Kochilas admits to a few “secret weap-
ons” in the kitchen, like dried-mushroom
powder, even though there’s nothing particu-
larly Greek about it. “I just grind dried mush-
rooms and add the powder to meat and dark-
flavored dishes,” she explains. And she’s not
shy about salt, which intensifies flavors. “The
fear of salt in the U.S. is because people eat so
much processed foods that they are getting
much more salt than they need,” she says. If
you lay off the processed foods, there’s no rea-
son to leave off the salt, or to avoid the capers,
feta, taramasalata and other saline ingredients
that spike so many Greek dishes.
All that said, there are a few differences that
take attention to bridge. One is the vegetables
themselves. “I just had a conversation with a
friend a few nights ago about a pumpkin
moussaka recipe she loves, but she was com-
plaining that the pumpkin tends to be watery,”
Kochilas relates. “That’s because, in the U.S.,
everything tends to be overwatered and less
flavorful. Greece is quite a dry country, and
people don’t water their plants as much, so the
fruit here, from olives to strawberries, tends
to be intensely flavored.” The difference can
require some adjusting. For example, in
Kochilas’s take on the recipe in “My Greek
Table,” she has replaced pumpkin with a com-
bination of the tighter-fleshed butternut
squash as well as sweet potatoes.The other difference is how people eat.
While the average Athenian’s daily schedule
now looks all too much just like a New
Yorker’s, complete with work-desk lunches
and rushed dinners, the epitome of a good
meal still means a varied selection of mezes—
little plates—to be enjoyed over a drink with
family and friends. “There’s no fast rule,”
Kochilas says when I ask her how many plates
there should be, and what sorts. “The real rule
is to have variety—in terms of textures, you’ll
want spreads that are soft, as well as things that
are crunchy; you’ll want dishes of varied heat
levels, some spicy and others milder.” The only
constraint as to how many dishes to make is
your energy level, she says, but even then, the
work can be spread over the course of days.
“Dips you can do a day or two ahead of time;
phyllo pies, whether individual or whole, you
can make ahead and freeze raw, then bake
them to order. And a lot of mezes are served
at room temperature, so you don’t have to
worry about serving them just out of the oven.
That goes for all sorts of things, even braised
bean dishes and pies,” she says.
As for what to make, well, perhaps the most
important lesson to take away from “My
Greek Table” is that to cook like a Greek, you
don’t have to stick to any recipe. “You sort of
know what your guests like,” Kochilas says,
adding, “and recipes evolve. The chicken
keftedes: That came out of my own head. In
Greece we’d more likely use pork or lamb, but
that was one that was on the menu at
Committee, and we were keeping in mind
what people in the U.S. like to eat.” And
whereas Greeks would likely serve them with
a garlickly yogurt sauce, Kochilas might opt
for fresh peas in the summer, whirring
them with olive oil and herbs until silky and
bright green.
Then Kochilas hesitates. “There is one rule,”
she admits. “But it concerns what to serve for
a drink. Generally, anything that swims goes
well with ouzo or grappa—what we call tsi-
pouro—and everything that walks goes well
with wine.” But then again, this is Greece. “Of
course that’s not to say that with grilled
shrimp, you might not want to have a nice
white wine,” she says, and I can practically
hear her wink. Anything goes—as long as it’s
fresh, seasonal and seasoned with plenty of
lemon and olive oil. RECIPE AND PHOTO FROM “FROM MY
GREEK TABLE” BY DIANE KOCHILAS. ©2018
BY THE AUTHOR AND REPRINTED BY
PERMISSION OF ST. MARTIN'S GRIFFIN.
FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY BY VASILIS STENOS
FOOD STYLING BY CAROLINA DORITI“Greeks are the third
largest producer and first
in consumption of olive
oil and we love lemon ...
the most fundamental
flavor profile in the
Greek kitchen.”
—Diane KochilasTELEVISION STILLGEORGE VITSARAS