Diane Kochilas

The best Greek cookbook ever published in English. The regional approach guides you through the ingredients and relationship between place and food consumed. Lots of local recipes provided by actual Greeks. I use this quite a bit. But you won't find many of your lowest common denominator 'Greek' foods as found in immigrant restaurants. There's lots of local greens and beans and vegetable dishes; these are important dishes in the Greek cuisine because they are what everyone ate before show more industrial foods and mass meat consumption overwhelmed us - lamb was mostly an easter breaking of fast dish in the poor rural communities that made up the country until the second half of the 20thC. And other meat dishes were a rare speciality for guests.

It's important to remember that the Greek Orthodox calendar has 180 days of fasting. Many of these are fish, wine or cheese allowed fasts but most are non-animal product fasts. This means that vegans and vegetarians wanting interesting, healthy and flavoursome recipes can look to book like this for many examples. Greeks love greens of all sorts from leaks to cabbage, asparagus and wild leafy greens. It's not just Greek salad or zucchinis. Leaks stewed with prunes and tomato, lima beans with celery, cauliflower fritters with grated cheese and tomato, savoury pastries based on egg, milk, cheese, or wild spring field greens flavoured with dill and poppy leaf. Meat and fish, too, of course. But that's not the place to really find interesting food in this book.

I discovered a few wonderful connections to my parents in this too. Dishes that I had only known about vaguely that my father occasionally attempted so as to remember his old ways. He was from Messinia, down south and the beans and greens dishes, the wild asparagus, the gigantes with celery, stuffed chicken, pork and cabbage, lagoto, etc were all dishes I had already forgotten. Now I can make them.

This is the sort of cookbook you can use to maintain a healthy diet. But you have to ignore cooking and food-nutritional fads and just eat, enjoy and de-stress about the nonsense spoken and written about food. show less

More than a Greek cookbook, it is a history of Greek cooking and a travelogue through the various parts of Greece. The recipes tend to be simple yet delicious. The author obviously has a great love of Greece and its cuisine.

I am not a vegetarian, but this cookbook is excellent. We have only had it for a couple of months, but have already made four main courses from it, and they were all great. It is the best vegetarian cookbook that I have come across.

If your current vegetarian fare is boring you and you need a little oomf added back into your diet, this is a good book to pick up. The recipes are delicious and range in levels of difficulty, preparation time, and most would be good either in a casual or a formal setting.