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: 24 dried figs 12 walnut halves 1 cup premium Greek honey (thyme-scented) 1 tbsp rosewater 6 sheets filo (optional) Method: Soak the figs for 24 hours in a bowl with 3 tablespoons honey, 1 tablespoon rose-water, and enough warm water to cover. The next day, remove the figs, drain, and stuff each one with […]

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 […]

Ingredients: 1 small chicken (1kg) 500g hulled barley or wheat (bulgur) 50g fresh butter (optional) 1/2 cup olive oil 1 onion, quartered 1 carrot, sliced 1 stalks celery, with leaves, chopped salt and pepper Method: Place the chicken and vegetables in a pot with enough water to cover. Add salt and pepper and cook over […]

Ingredients: 1 medium chicken, quartered 2 large red onions +1 clove garlic, roasted whole 1/2 cup vinegar 1/2 cup honey 500 g green onions, finely chopped 5 chicken livers, chopped and sauteed 2 tbsp black raisins 1 tsp cumin seeds, coarsely crushed 1/2 cup olive oil 1/2 cup firm pomegranate seeds 150 g haloumi (traditional […]

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 […]

It would be a serious omission to end this brief account of ancient Greek nutrition without making a passing mention of wine. Other than a daily beverage, wine in essence was regarded as food, and figured prominently at every meal, breakfast included.

Tradition holds that Greeks have always consumed more fish than meat. They preferred oily fish such as mackerel, skoumbri (common mackerel), sardines, bogue, whitebait, anchovies, and eel, all of which are of high nutritional value. This preference for oily fish is manifested in the well-known popular saying: “Everything at its time and the mackerel in […]

With the exception of banquets and Homeric heroes, meat-eating was fairly limited. In general, meat was festive fare, reserved for public or private special occasions. This was attributed not to a general, early tendency of the ancient people for vegetarianism, but to the same reason that forced Greeks in the early 20th century to virtually […]