Review: Food From Many Greek Kitchens

• Author:  Tessa 
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (June 14, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449406521
• ISBN-13: 978-1449406523

Product Description

 

Food, culture, celebration, and memory are inexorably tied together inside Tessa Kiros's Kouzina. As the follow-up to her best-selling Venezia and Falling Cloudberries, Kouzina explores Kiros's Greek-Cypriot heritage and takes readers on a colorful journey into the Greek kitchens of her friends and family as she catalogs the traditional foods for fasting, festivals, and feast days.

 

Recipes like Vassilopitta New Year Wish Cake, Lamb in a Flowerpot with Dill and Red Wine, Yamopilafo Wedding Rice, and Easter Soup are accompanied by short introductions that explain each dish's cultural significance. In addition, lavish full-color photographs take readers on a tour from the local Mediterranean fishmongers and markets into Greek family homes and kitchens to experience the best in authentic Greek cooking.

With a glossary and more than 200 classically prepared Greek recipes, Kouzina adds a greater depth of flavor to each dish through Kiros's warm anecdotal introductions like the following passage for Vassilopitta:
"In Greece, everyone has a vassilopitta (cake) at New Year. The wonderful thing about this cake is that a flouri (coin) is added before baking. If you're lucky to get the piece with the coin, you'll be blessed for the year. Don't you love that sense of celebration the Greeks have?" --Kouzina: Food from Many Greek Kitchens
 

About the Author

 

Tessa Kiros was born in London to a Finnish mother and a Greek-Cypriot father. The family moved to South Africa when she was 4, and at the age of 18, Tessa set off to travel and learn all she could about the world's cultures and traditions and new ways of living and eating. She has cooked at London's The Groucho Club and in Australia, Greece, and Mexico. On a trip to Italy to study language and food, she met her husband Giovanni, and now lives in Tuscany.

My Review

Food From Many Greek Kitchens is filled with beautiful photographs but I found that the recipes were very authentic but not really to my taste.  I think that they were just a little too exotic for my tastes.  I do believe though that this book would be a nice souvenir of a trip to Greece.  The photos and recipes would bring back memories of a beautiful place.