This is a nice way to serve olives. The marinade is a delicious and colorful combination. It’s served as a “mezé,” which in Greek means something to nibble on: An appetizer to be served with an aperitif before dinner. Ingredients:  1 cup Kalamata olives 1/2 cup oil cured olives 1/2 cup green olives Zest of 2 lemons 1 tablespoon […]

Ingredients: 6 slices of tope (dogfish or smooth-hound shark steaks) 250 g mulberries or blackberries 25 g olive oil 25 g walnuts, chopped 6 slices white bread, dried and crumbled 1 spring spearmint, finely chopped 2 tbsp. raisins or currents 25 g fresh butter 1/2 cup sweet, white wine salt, pepper juice of one lemon […]

Chickpeas, according to Athenaeus, were introduced by Poseidon (II.55b). He does not offer further information, presumably because he considered it basic knowledge among his readers. Pomegranates, that follow in the list of ancient Greek dinner cooking recipes, apart from their distinctive color also have a sweet and sour taste, and are equally old. A pomegranate was […]

Ancient Greek dinners often led to symposiums. A people who enjoy companionship, eating with others, followed by singing, dancing or conversation and who hate a lonely meal, could do lettle else but invent the symposium. It is the logical next step in a coherent view, an existential pholosophy: I eat, discuss, sing, dance, therefore I […]

The relatively large-scale consumption of legumes and cereals is another nutritional characteristic that markedly sets apart ancient Greeks from other European peoples. Legumes and cereals were the fare of the poor and constituted the dietary basis for the majority of Greeks who could not often afford expensive meat, both in ancient and more recent times. […]

It appears that in classical times Greeks ate two meals a day, although in the pre-classical period daily meals amounted to three. Breakfast was usually called “αριστον” [ariston] and in the Byzantine period the participle “αριστευσας” [aristefsas] signified not only the student who had earned a mark above “very good” but also someone who had […]

Pastelli se fylla nerantzias Ingredients: 2 cups coarsely ground walnuts 1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs or finely crushed rusks 1 cup premium quality Greek honey 1/2 cup sugar orange flower or rose water sesame seeds, toasted Seville orange leaves Method: Combine the walnuts with the breadcrumbs. Prepare a slab of marble (or a rectangular pan 25×30 […]

Ingredients: 150 g day-old bread, soaked in wine and squeezed 1 tbsp. vinegar 1 small head of garlic, peeled and mashed 100 g walnuts, chopped 2/3 cup olive oil salt and pepper Method: Blend all the ingredients in a food processor, adding the olive oil, little by little, at the end to make a thick […]

Ingredients: 300g onions, thinly sliced 1/3 cup red wine 1 cup olive oil 150 g dry myzithra or goat cheese or haloumi, cut into 12 triangles 6 slices of sandwich bread, cut diagonally (12 triangles) flour for dusting 1 tbsp wine vinegar a pinch of dried thyme salt and pepper Method: Fry the bread in […]

Due to fasting, the Byzantines incorporated fresh vegetables and wild greens in their meals much more often than the ancient Greeks, although the varieties consumed in both historic periods did not vary considerably. Compared with the modern age, fresh vegetables and wild greens were given different names and varied in their cooking method; for these […]