Athens

Pastitsio ends our Greek sojourn with comfort fare

Pastitsio ends our Greek sojourn with comfort fare

Posted on by Pat and David
Our nearly four-month exploration of Greek cuisine has netted us some dishes that we expect to stay in the rotation for years to come. Most rely on the goodness of fresh local produce, so we thought the arrival of autumn was an auspicious time to conclude our research. Frost is on the way, and outdoor grilling gets harder and harder as the temperature drops and darkness falls earlier and earlier. We decided that the best cool-weather Greek dish for us to perfect would not be any of the many variations of Greek lamb stews, but instead the dish sometimes called ‶Greek lasagna.″ A baked casserole, pastitsio contains layers of tubular noodles, a meat sauce, and a cheese-laden béchamel. While the tomatoes in the meat sauce...Read More
Branzino on the Weber—that’s Greek for fish

Branzino on the Weber—that’s Greek for fish

Posted on by Pat and David
Greeks consume about 43 pounds of fish per capita every year, roughly comparable to American consumption. The main difference is that Americans eat a lot of fried fish (calamari, clams, popcorn shrimp, fish filet sandwiches) and Greeks who can afford it favor fin fish. Part of making fish affordable is sustainable aquaculture. Greek aquaculture produces almost all of the world's supply of branzino. The European sea bass, which the French call loup de mer is also a restaurant staple from New York to San Francisco. It's the fish you'll probably get in Athens when you order whole fish—unless you get gilthead bream, another farmed fish. Above, the photo shows grilled seabream from a little street cafe just down Veikou from our rental apartment. It's simply...Read More
Chicken meat enriches classic Greek egg-lemon soup

Chicken meat enriches classic Greek egg-lemon soup

Posted on by Pat and David
The moment we saw eggs stacked up in the Athens Central Market—all sold individually by weight!—we had an immediate hankering for egg-lemon soup. It had been one of our lunchtime standards at home even before we ever got to visit Greece. David has fond memories of the soup because he once edited a small weekly paper housed upstairs from a diner run by Greek immigrants. As he and the production crew would fuss over page layouts (this was in the day of paste-ups of paper type laid down with hot wax), they would send downstairs for cartons of egg-lemon soup. Each came with its own rolled and lightly steamed round of pita bread. The key was not spilling any eggy soup on the layouts. By...Read More
Greeks know elemental simplicity of kebabs

Greeks know elemental simplicity of kebabs

Posted on by Pat and David
We can just imagine the invention of the kebab sometime in the Paleolithic era. Stone-age Barbecue Bob was grilling a whole haunch of ground sloth impaled on a tree branch over an open fire. As the haunch began to cook, it would eventually fall off the stick into the fire. And Bob would throw a cursing fit. A woman at the cave no doubt looked up from grinding wild grass seeds into flour. She observed that if Bob cut the haunch into smaller pieces, he could thread them on a stick and they would cook faster and remain ash-free. Ta-da! Bob's Kebabs was born. He got all the credit around the cave complex for this wondrous new invention. She got a break from his whining,...Read More
Going Greek: the pleasures of homemade pita bread

Going Greek: the pleasures of homemade pita bread

Posted on by Pat and David
Greece was the last place we were able to visit before the worldwide pandemic struck. The Parthenon, Delphi, and all the rest fulfilled that bucket-list desire to see the origins of western civilization. And we really enjoyed the food—everything from simple salads with slabs of feta to roasted whole fish. We had never really tried cooking Greek dishes at home, but as long as we're in a travel holding pattern, there's no time like the present to remedy that. We're focusing on some of the staples we enjoyed on our sojourn in Athens last winter. That begins with the simplest of breads. Pita isn't a quick bread, but it takes very little time to make Except for the fresh strawberries with super-thick yogurt we ate...Read More
Tastes of Greece at Pantopoleion gourmet shop

Tastes of Greece at Pantopoleion gourmet shop

Posted on by Pat and David
We love shopping in grocery stores to look for the foods that local people use in their kitchens. That's usually what we bring home to our own kitchen. But Athens supermarkets proved too much for us because we are illiterate in Greek. The alphabet confounded us. We can usually figure out food names in most European languages that use a Roman alphabet. Ironically, many of those food names come down from Greek. But knowing that doesn't help when you can't sound out the spelling. So we resorted to Pantopoleion (34 Dimitrakopolou, Athens; +30 210 325 4890; pantopwlion.gr/), a local specialty store in our neighborhood, and put ourselves in the capable hands of John Kontoyiannis, one of the owners. (That's John behind the deli counter at...Read More
In the beginning … was Greece

In the beginning … was Greece

Posted on by Pat and David
As we all keep living in the eternal present, we are grateful for the recent past. Last winter we caught the Paris sales and moved on to Athens, a city we had wanted to visit for years. Even while we were there in our rented apartment, we kept seeing ominous news of an infection that was sweeping Wuhan in China. Not long after we got back to Boston in February, it had jumped to Lombardy. The rest is already history, with more in the making. But we wouldn't give up that trip for anything. Even Greek friends told us we'd get bored after three days in Athens, but for us, a week was still not enough. Beyond the amazing sites from antiquity and the stunning...Read More