Soon your garden will be ripe with lots and lots of zucchini. My previous post featured Zucchini patties…a summer time favourite for many Greeks. There is also Kolokithakia Gemista with an Avgolemono Sauce, one of my personal faves and I had my mom make this for me last year for my arrival in Greece. There’s [...]

Years ago, my family would attend these huge picnics where hundreds of Greek families would gather at a park somewhere north of Toronto. Anyone remember Green River? 101 International Park? Each family would pack coolers with provisions for the day: soft drinks, water, beer and wine, salads, rice, Spanakopitas, Tyropitas, bread, cheeses and lots of [...]

Once again last week, a visit to the market offered up inspiration for this dish. The markets are full of  fresh bunches of scallions (green onions). Peppers are starting to appear but I have frozen roasted red peppers in the freezer (for just the occasion like today) and a walk to the fish and seafood [...]

Most of you are familiar with dolmades, where small packets of rice and aromatics are bundled using grape-vine leaves or “ampelofyla” in Greek. These small morsels may also contain meat or be wrapped with Swiss chard cabbage. The cabbage rolls are also often called “lahano-dolmades”. The use of grape-vine leaves is not limited to just [...]

WhenI first scanned over this recipe in a recent issue of Gastronomos, I was smitten with the concept of filling cabbage with seafood. In Greek cuisine, cabbage rolls are usually filled with mince and finished with a creamy Avgolemono (egg/lemon) sauce. This recipe is an obvious take or twist on the Greek classic: shrimp and [...]

Those who read my blog on a regular basis know that I prefer eating whole fish rather than fillets. This preference is not an inflexible rule and nor does it mean that one cannot enjoy a fish fillet. Today’s dish features a fillet sliced off of a whole sea bream (porgy). The main reason why [...]

This dish can be as quick or as difficult as you want it to be. For me, the toughest part about this dish was tying up the chicken breasts. I’ve always been a visual learner and this YouTube video clip shows one how to properly tie up a roast or in this case, a stuffed [...]

Recipe update from November 2007 This is one of my favourite soups, one of my favourite Greek dishes. It’s Giouvarlakia Soup. It’s a soup made of meatballs and rice, good stock and finished off with beaten eggs and lemon juice…Avgolemono. This dish is Greek comfort food. I’ve enjoyed it as a child and I will [...]

This week, Indian food was demystified for myself. The long list of exotic ingredients had intimidated me and I was all too content to simply go out for Indian food instead. Toronto is very multicultural and one can easily go out and dine any cuisine their heart (and belly) desires. Toronto also has a large [...]

One of the most popular and re-occurring ingredients in Greek cuisine has to be the grape leaf. They can be found grown all over Greece and many Greeks will go and pick their own and preserve them for future use throughout the year. I was just a year ago that I went and picked and [...]