Greek cuisine

 

Quick meals

Meals easily available with inexpensive ingredients and little preparation involved.

• Hilopites pasta with chicken: savory chicken is mixed with "Hilopites" or cut up tile-shaped pasta in a spiced tomato sauce.
• Macaronada: classic spaghetti.
• Manestra
• Omeletta
• Strapatsada: eggs scrambled in olive oil and fresh tomato puree, seasoned with salt, pepper and oregano. Often includes feta cheese.

Desserts and sweets

                             Melomakarona.

 

 

 

Diples made on an iron mould dipped in batter and cooked in cooking oil.

 

Melitinia cookies.

• Amygdalopita: pie with almonds
• Amygdalotá or pastéli exist in many varieties throughout Greece and Cyprus, and are especially popular in the islands. They consist of powdered blanched almonds, confectioner's sugar and rose water, molded in various shapes and sizes. They are snow-white and are considered wedding and baptismal desserts.
• Copenhagen (dessert)
• Baklava, phyllo pastry layers filled with nuts and drenched in honey.
• Diples, a Christmas and wedding delicacy, made of paper-thin, sheet-like dough which is cut in large squares and dipped in a swirling fashion in a pot of hot olive oil for a few seconds. As the dough fries, it stiffens into a helical tube; it is then removed immediately and sprinkled with honey and crushed walnuts.
• Finikia, cookie topped with chopped nuts.
• Galaktoboureko, custard baked between layers of phyllo, and then soaked with lemon-scented honey syrup. The name derives from the Greek "gala"(γάλα), meaning milk, and from the Turkish börek, meaning filled, thus meaning "filled with milk".
• Halva
• Karydopita, a cake of crushed walnuts, soaked or not in syrup.
• Koulourakia, butter or olive-oil cookies.
• Kourabiedes, Christmas cookies made by kneading flour, butter and crushed roasted almonds, then generously dusted with powdered sugar. (equivalent in Turkey: Kurabiye - possibly originated from Persia in 7th century "Qurabiya")
• Lazarakia
• Loukoumades, similar to small crusty donuts, loukoumades are essentially fried balls of dough drenched in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon, typically serves with sesame seed.
• Loukoumi is a confection made from starch and sugar, essentially it is from Turkey as the Turkish delight. A variation from Serres is called Akanés.Loukoúmia are flavored with various fruit flavors, with rose water considered the most prized.
• Mandola, from Corfu
• Mandolato
• Melitinia cookies, from Santorini
• Melopita, honey pie
• Melomakarona, "honey macaroons", Christmas cookies soaked with a syrup of diluted honey (méli in Greek) and then sprinkled with crushed walnuts.
• Milopita, apple pie with cinnamon and powdered sugar.
• Moustalevria, a flour and grape must flan.
• Moustokouloura, cookies of flour kneaded with fresh grape juice (must) instead of water.
• Pasteli
• Rizogalo ("rice-milk") is rice pudding.
• Spoon sweets (γλυκά του κουταλιού) of various fruits, ripe or unripe, or green unripe nuts. Spoon sweets are essentially marmalade except that the fruit are boiled whole or in large chunks covered in the fruit's made syrup.
• Trigona, from Thessaloniki
• Tsoureki, a traditional Christmas and Easter sweet bread also known as 'Lambropsomo' (Easter bread), flavored with "mahlepi", the intensely aromatic extract of the stone of the St. Lucie Cherry.
• Vasilopita, Saint Basil's cake or King's cake, traditional only for New Year's Day. Vasilopites are baked with a coin inside, and whoever gets the coin in their slice are considered blessed with good luck for the whole year.
• Yogurt with honey and walnuts.

 

Cheeses

 

 

                                                                        Feta cheese.

There is a wide variety of cheeses made in various regions across Greece. The vast majority of them remain unknown outside the Greek borders due to the lack of knowledge and the highly localized distinctive features. Many artisanal, hand made cheeses, both common varieties and local specialties, are produced by small family farms throughout Greece and offer distinct flavors atypical of the mass-produced varieties found commercially in Greece and abroad. A good list of some of the varieties of cheese produced and consumed in Greece can be found here. These are some of the more popular throughout Greece:

Feta Kasseri Halloumi	Kefalotyri Kefalograviera Graviera	Myzithra Anthotyros Formaela	Manouri Metsovone

Drinks

Alcoholic beverages

Wine

The origins of wine-making in Greece go back 6,500 years and evidence suggesting wine production confirm that Greece is home to the oldest known grape wine remnants discovered in the world and the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes. The spread of Greek civilization and their worship of Dionysus, the god of wine, spread Dionysian cults throughout the Mediterranean areas during the period of 1600 BC to the year 1. Greece's viticultural history goes back to prehistoric times, and wine production was thriving until the 11th century. After World War II, Greek winemakers imported and cultivated foreign grape varieties, especially French ones, in order to support local production. In 1960s, retsina, a dry white wine with lumps of resin, was probably the most well-known Greek wine abroad. In recent years, local varieties are rediscovered and often blended with foreign ones. In early 1980s, a system of appellations, modelled on the respective French one, was implemented to assure consumers the origins of their wine purchases. Today, there are 28 appellations (Appellations of Origin of Superior Quality and Controlled Appellation of Origin) throughout the country, from Macedonia to Crete.

 

 

 

Beer

Traditional Greek alcoholic beverages:Tentura (left) and Mastika (right).

Archaeological and archaeochemical finds suggest that the Minoans fermented barley and other substances, and consumed some form of beer. The beer tradition of the Minoans was discontinued by the Mycenaeans; beverages from fermented cereals may have remained only in Crete during their rule. In Archaic and Classical Greece, beer is mentioned as a foreign beverage, while, when Alexander the Great conquered in 332 BC Egypt, a civilization with a long brewing tradition, the Greeks continued to disdain beer seeing it as the drink of their rivals. In Modern Greece, a limited number of brands — owned by breweries from northern Europe in most cases (e.g. Heineken or Amstel) — dominated for many years the local market, while a stringent Bavarian-influenced beer purity law was in force. Gradually, the provisions of this law loosened, and, since the late 1990s, new local brands emerged (in 1997 Mythos made a breakthrough) or re-emerged (e.g. Fix Hellas), reviving competition. In recent years, in parallel with the large breweries, local microbreweries operate throughout Greece.

Other

Other traditional Greek alcoholic beverages include the anise-flavored ouzo, tsipouro (whose Cretan variation is called tsikoudia), and local liquors, such asmastika (not to be confused with the homonymous anise-flavored Bulgarian drink), kitron, a citrus flavoured liquor from Naxos and tentura, a cinnamon flavored liquor from Patras. Another famous Greek spirit is metaxa, a blend of brandy and Greek wines (savatiano and muscat from Samos or other islands). Local dessert and fortified wines include muscats (with the Muscat of Samos being the most well-known), mavrodafni, produced from a black grape indigenous to the Achaea region in Northern Peloponnese, and Vin Santo of Santorini, a variation of the Italian Vin Santo.

Coffee

The traditional coffeehouses in Greece are called kafenia, and they offer coffee, refreshments, alcoholic beverages and snacks or meze. However, in recent years coffee culture evolves and, especially in the large urban centres, kafenia are gradually repaced by modern "cafeterias". Preferred types of coffee by the consumers are, among others, the Greek coffee (a variation of theTurkish coffee), frappé (a Greek foam-covered iced coffee drink), and the freddo versions of capuccino and espresso, which vary from the Italian original. Iced coffee-based drinks, such asfreddoccino or freddito, are also popular, especially during the summer period.