The recipes in my Big Fat Greek Cookbook were documented directly from his ailing mother as a way to preserve her memory.

The recipe from Cato dates to about 200 BC, but olives provided relish and flavouring all through ancient times. The olive tree had been under cultivation in Greece for a thousand years, if not longer, when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed (around the 8th century BC). At classical Greek banquets olives were served in brine, and sometimes, no doubt, they were served as relishes like this. Marinated kid or lamb: 1 pint milk, 4 oz honey, 1 oz pepper, a little salt, a little asafoetida. For the sauce: 2 fl oz oil, 2 fl oz fish sauce, 2 fl oz honey, 8 crushed dates, half pint good wine, a little starch.' This book is so gorgeous I could cry. Food, and scenery are illustrated through a few excellent photo plates.The recipes are bang on; this is the Anna Del Cona or Julia Child of Greek cooking - featuring simple, flavourful cuisine. Baked goods & sweets are mildly challenging but simple enough for a competent home cook to pull off & recipes are engaging enough to ‘teach you’ the basics of excellent Greek cooking (recipes for marzipan, veal stew, & sweet cheese tarts come to mind.) Other meals like vegetable stews and salads are simple enough for beginning cooks. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Add 1 teaspoon salt and the potatoes to the pot and boil for about 12 minutes until they are soft. Drain and place in a serving bowl. The hazlenut cake was plain and dry and in no way represents greece or greek food. I couldn’t even finish my slice and if you know me, you’d be surprised! Add the beans to the tomato sauce with the hot water and another ½ teaspoon salt. Cover and cook over low heat for 30 minutes. This dish is the sort of simple dinner that Romans would likely have had in bars and restaurants where you could easily while away an evening. We have substituted the gourds that the Romans grew for marrow or squash.

This cookbook by Debbie Matenopoulos, weaves together gorgeous story-telling, with familial stories. It is filled with easy-to-understand recipes with authentic ingredients. Who Is It For? This is perfect for home cooks seeking to improve their diets for an overall healthy life. Process oriented, the recipes are appropriate for beginner to intermediate cooks. Far more important, in my opinion, is a generous hand with the herbs, which sets this dish apart from the hundreds of other permutations on the spinach-and-cheese theme from around the world. Dill is the most common choice, closely followed by mint and parsley, though Mazi also adds chervil and fennel leaves and Petretzikis Mediterranean hartwort and oregano. Hartwort proves hard to come by in a British summer, so, on advice, I use lovage instead, which gives the filling a very savoury quality, while chervil and fennel lend an aniseedy, almost ouzo-like whiff that’s more popular with the panel. Dill is easier to get hold of, however, and along with mint for freshness and a little oregano for Greekness, should provide enough in the way of herbaceous excitement.

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This fiery moretum (garlic cheese) is not for the faint hearted! If we take the recipe at face value, it may include fifty cloves of garlic, a pretty potent mixture! But surprisingly good with a fresh warm loaf of bread and a few olives. This is a simple rustic meal, which ordinary farmers would likely have eaten. At first I thought Vefa Alexiandou used a ghost writer for this encyclopedic tome, given her warm & down to earth persona on Greek TV programs, then in reading through it I found she has a chemistry degree , which explains the concise & accurate recipes & analytical overview of the history of Greek cuisine. Much like Child’s analytical approach to French cooking; this is an overview of the food & history of a nation. Cato's recipe uses cumin, but it can overpower the herbs, so it is listed as optional below. Fennel leaf will not be easy to find unless you grow it yourself, so the chopped root will serve as a substitute. To make life easier buy good quality pitted olives.

If you are unfamiliar with Greek celebrity chefs and TV personalities, Vefa Alexiadou is a good person to start with. Dubbed "Greece's answer to Delia Smith" by The Independent, the 84 year-old cook has collated over 800 recipes in her new book, Greece: the Cookbook.For more than 25 years, she’s been at the head of trying to bring Americans healthy and delicious Greek and Mediterranean recipes.