filled with mouthwatering recipes and remarkable stories, this book will introduce many Americans to food as life, as only the Ikarians know it. Michele finds that “the recipes are realistic and well-written and can serve either as a roadmap to a specific dish or as inspiration for any cook comfortable with the style of the Mediterranean. The Food and Wine of Greece is a celebration of a cuisine and a people whose love of good food extends from their passion for garden and farm freshness, to their pride in the cook’s art of preparation, both simple and complex, to their love of entertaining and sharing of bread, wine, food and friendship. But immediately after that she discovered an Australian chef who “really blows up my skirt — George Calombaris and especially his book, Greek. While all the recipes are wonderful, they tend to favor experienced cooks or those who don’t mind making dishes like smoked octopus.

But this is a good solid Greek recipe book for making the same food they eat in Greece rather than Astoria or Chicago. Authored by culinary experts and chefs, these books serve as your guide to traditional and modern Greek recipes, offering more than just instructions but a true cultural experience. With this part cookbook and part travelogue, you’ll get a sense of the true spirit of the island and the healthy way of life. This cookbook includes recipes from the entire Mediterranean region including Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The recipes are hearty dishes that are native to the island and have been passed down through generations.

The following cookbooks are some of the most authentic options for tried-and-true Greek and Mediterranean recipes.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. We particularly love the incredible tender lamb fricassee with lettuce and herbs — we make it much more than we probably should, but the flavour combination is just so good! If you are planning a trip to Greece, or, alternatively, want to savor the memory if a voyage there, this book will help you.

The Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest in the world, and Greek cuisine is based on a wealth of traditional recipes from the mainland and the islands, and the next-generation cooks reimagine the execution of dishes, showcasing the original flavours and ingredients. And yet again, the inclusion of fresh ingredients makes for a great meal, but seasonal offerings are the key to truly impressing your guests or, better yet, yourself. They will include anything from taramasalata to eggplant salad to cheese pies and boiled beets with garlic sauce. Her book’s drawings also helped me with unfamiliar techniques, like, say, pie making, for I didn’t know much about working with filo pastry at the time.

Introductions to each recipe often provide additional information on ingredients and serving suggestions and many suggest variations to the dish itself. Of course there are dozens of Greek cookbooks available these days, so this tiny list of five titles is likely to be missing one of your favorites. Christine finds most of the recipes in Kokkari to be fairly simple, but her favorite is the moussaka, a hearty casserole made with roasted potato slices layered with a rich lamb ragu and topped with a white sauce that turns custard-like and beautifully browns in the oven. This book has some photos of the dishes however for my own personal preference I do like to have photos to show what all the finished dishes should look like rather than guessing and failing however I understand that this would only increase the amount of pages and the final weight of the book. As with all Mediterranean food, the dishes are stupendously light, simple and bring seasonal fresh produce right to the centre of the dinner table.