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Greece and its sun-kissed isles offer a tantalizing cuisine
that is
fresh and fragrant, served with warmth and vitality. The
Greeks'
zest for the good life and love of simple, well-seasoned foods
is
reflected at the table. Theirs is an unpretentious cuisine
that makes
the most of their surroundings.
It is a cuisine
entrenched in history and punctuated by the cultures
of its neighbors for centuries: Turkey, the Middle East, and the
Balkans.
This land of blue
skies and sparkling seas offers a variety of fresh
ingredients close at hand. Olive trees flourish, providing a
flavor-packed oil to bathe other foods. Vineyards thread the rolling
hills, and the grape crush and ferment produces excellent wines,
some resin-flavored. Fragrant lemon trees produce the golden fruit
whose tang pervades Greek gastronomy.
The seas are
blessed with a variety of fish and shellfish and
harbor-side tavernas serve them grilled, baked, and fried and often
whole, with the head still on.
Lamb is the
principal meat served and a holiday festivity calls for
ceremoniously spit-roasting a whole carcass out of doors. For
everyday meals, lamb is braised and stewed in casseroles with
assorted vegetables and skewered and broiled. Pork, beef, and
game are marinated, grilled, and baked. Chicken is broiled or
braised. Good meat and vegetable combinations are endless, often
embellished with the golden lemon sauce, avgolemono, or a
cinnamon-spiced tomato sauce.
Moussaka,
layered with eggplant or zucchini and a garlic-scented
meat sauce, and bearing a custard topping, is the ubiquitous
casserole dish. Pilaffs are laced with spices and nuts. Fila pitas,
composed of the wafer-thin pastry, and layered with chicken and
mushrooms, spinach and feta, or lamb and leeks, are a delight. An
abundance of fresh vegetables inspires imaginative cooked and
marinated vegetable dishes and salads, often strewn with
mountain-grown herbs: garlic, oregano, mint, basil, and dill. Fresh
feta, Romano, and Kasseri, in particular, are used lavishly to
accompany homemade whole-grain bread or salad or to grate and
top vegetables or pasta.
Undoubtedly baklava is the most famous pastry, a
multi-layered
affair ribboned with nuts and oozing with honey syrup. A visit to a
Greek pastry shop reveals the versatility of fila dough in dozens of
different fila pastries, many of Turkish derivation.The honeyed fila
pastries and buttery nut cookies compose a separate late afternoon
meal accompanied by thick Greek coffee. Fresh fruit -- generally
figs, orange, apples, and melon -- usually conclude the late evening
dinner.
Feasts and festivals are integral to Hellenic life. Name days,
saints'
days, weddings, and holidays are the occasion for merriment, a
bounteous table and spirited folk dancing.
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