A good moussaka is “one of the most fabulous things you can eat,” according to Aglaia Kremezi, author of Mediterranean Hot and Spicy. Her recipe for the Greek eggplant casserole, inherited from her mother, is a labor of love requiring sautéing, frying, boiling, and baking—but it’s well worth the trouble. The components (meat sauce, béchamel, and fried eggplant and potatoes) can be prepared the day before assembling.  

Around the World in 26 Eggplant Recipes

The post Moussaka (Greek Eggplant Casserole) appeared first on Saveur.

The region of Epirus in northwest Greece is famous for its alevropita, savory tarts so easy to make they’re nicknamed “lazy woman’s pies.” Twenty-five years ago, I had an unforgettable version at Kiki’s, a restaurant in the village of Monodendri. Served straight out of the wood-fired oven, it had a flaky, cracker-thin crust; the topping was a simple mix of egg and crumbled feta. Kiki took her recipe to the grave, but I developed a version that’s as good as what I remember: airy baked egg and cheese, fragrant with oregano and thyme, spiked with just a bit of heat from chile flakes, and layered with buttery phyllo. It’s almost too ample a reward for the little effort involved in making it.

See the recipe for Alevropita »

Aglaia Kremezi is author of_Vegetarian Mediterranean Feasts (Abrams, forthcoming, 2014)._

The post Lazy Woman’s Pie appeared first on Saveur.

I must have been 18 when, on a trip to the northern city of Thessaloniki, I first tasted the dish that is now my favorite meze, or small plate: plump, batter-fried mussels with a crunchy exterior and a soft, juicy core, pierced with toothpicks and arranged around a dollop of thick garlic sauce. The dish was a local specialty, and each mollusk was complex and powerful: a little meal unto itself. Years later, when I started entertaining at home, this was the meze that my friends hankered for, the one that always got finished first.

Mezedes, as the dishes are collectively known (there are variations on the word throughout the Mediterranean), are essential to the Greek way of eating. Served as snacks or appetizers in homes and tavernas, they make a convivial beginning to a meal. They’re also designed to accompany drinks, as it’s frowned upon here to bend an elbow on an empty stomach. (As long as you’re eating, it’s safe to order another round.)

Greeks have been eating this way since ancient times; the third-century author Athenaeus, for instance, writes of meals that centered on “a large tray on which are five small plates.” But tavernas that feature extensive and elaborate meze spreads are a relatively new phenomenon; these places were likely inspired by the popularity of traditional coffee bars in cities like Thessaloniki and Volos in northern Greece and by the legendary ouzo bars of Lesbos (ouzo being Greece’s aniseed-
flavored liquor), where cooks prepare impressive spreads with local vegetables and with the day’s catch. Traditionally, such places would also serve one-pot meals of stewed beans, greens, and meats, since there is no difference between a meze and a main course other than the size of the plate. “Only soup can’t be made into meze,” my grandmother used to say.

Mezedes can range from humble to fancy. The simplest—oil-cured olives, feta sprinkled with oregano, pickled peppers—are known as pikilia, which means “assortment,” and they usually arrive free of charge with any order of spirits, wine, or beer. Some mezedes are regional (like the mussels from Thessaloniki), while others are seasonal (like the fava beans and chickpeas you’ll see diners shelling at their tables in spring). Then there are the classics you’ll find always and everywhere: grilled octopus; garlicky dips served with bread; the rice-and-herb-filled grape leaves called dolmades; cheese-and-tomato-laden baked dishes called saganaki; and the ubiquitous tiny meatballs known as keftedes. By convention, one starts with the cold vegetables, spreads, and pickles, continues on to cold seafood, and finishes with the fried and warm foods. Whoever has “the quickest fork,” as the saying goes, succeeds in tasting them all.

The post Small (Plate) Wonders appeared first on Saveur.

Pastitsio (see Greek Lasagne) is the Greek comfort food par excellence: a layered casserole of macaroni and ground beef, veal, or lamb with cinnamon-scented tomato sauce, topped with a creamy bechamel enriched with cheese. But it isn’t as Greek as you might think. Unlike the seasonal dishes that are the foundation of Greek cuisine, pastitsio as we know it today is actually a French-influenced dish that first appeared in the early 20th century. It is the invention of Nikolaos Tselementes, the French-trained Greek chef who authored Greece’s most popular cookbook of all time, Greek Cookery, first published in 1910. Tselementes’s adaptations of traditional dishes—often radical, as he was introducing classical French technique to age-old recipes—fundamentally changed the taste of modern Greek food. He detested garlic and most spices, which he considered a hateful reminder of the Ottoman occupation, and he thought olive oil too heavy. Longing for the creamy sauces of France, he turned again and again to a bechamel of flour, butter, and milk, adding it to dishes like pastitsio and moussaka, the eggplant casserole. Many Greek home cooks in the early 1900s felt Tselementes’s book was all a household needed to leave the provincial Eastern Mediterranean past behind and step into the glorious European 20th century.

That is not to say that older versions of pastitsio didn’t exist before the book was published. There are actually a number of regional antecedents to the modern dish, all of which were made with a pastry crust. (The name pastitsio derives from an old word for pie.) My mother recalls a heated argument between my grandmother and my aunt over which pastitsio was better: my grandmother’s traditional macaroni pie enclosed in phyllo, or my aunt’s Tselementes-style one, which dispensed with the phyllo in favor of a sumptuous bechamel. My mother went with the more modern version, even going so far as to do away with the careful layering of the ingredients and, instead, simply mixing everything together. It didn’t look as elegant as Tselementes probably would have liked, but we all loved it. Today, I make my own version using a combination of lean ground veal and a smoky sausage produced near my home on the Aegean island of Kea. And cooks continue to update and refine the dish all the time. The version pictured at right has well-defined layers of meat sauce, bechamel, and pasta—in this case, long, hollow noodles designed specifically for pastitsio. There’s also an egg yolk added to the bechamel to give it a custardy texture. It all adds up to a beautiful, satisfying dish.

The post Modern Classic: Pastitsio appeared first on Saveur.