A MEAL AT MY GREEK TABLE—WHETHER IN ATHENS, ON MY ANCESTRAL ISLAND, IKARIA, or stateside—is noisy, chaotic, and usually filled with enough variety to satisfy a wide range of appetites, from vegans to carnivores. Meals chez moi, even on weekdays, are rambling, filled-plate, free-ranging affairs during which we linger over wine, mostly Greek with the hard-to-pronounce names of our indigenous grapes, and people talk for hours. Perhaps in less-expressive cultures, one would label these exchanges “shouting matches” or “arguments.” For us Greeks, passionate table talk and unbridled grazing from a landscape that includes every food group and lots of plant-based dishes are part of our Mediterranean ways. The table in Greece is the perfect place to witness the spectrum of foods that make up one of the world’s healthiest cuisines and the emotional well-being inherent in a way of eating that is inclusive, varied, and good for life.
My Greek Table is a celebration of these rituals. It is a feast of great Greek home cooking—my home cooking—served forth with generosity and abundance.
The book is a very personal paean to the healthful foods I make at home. Some dishes have crossed the Atlantic a few times, morphing anew in my restaurant work, but always starting and usually ending at home. My recipes are inspired by seasonal, regional, raw ingredients and the traditions from which they derive, and from the farmers, cheese makers, vintners, and other devoted artisans who produce them.
My goal with My Greek Table is to share great Greek recipes for home cooks, some regional classics, and my own interpretations and innovations, which happen to belong to a broad tradition of eating well and deliciously.
The beauty of Greek cuisine is that it combines innate nutrition with vibrant flavors. It is a cuisine of indulgence, not abstention. My Greek Table is the expression of the natural Greek way to eat that embraces health without anxiety.
I hope to open the window on a Greece that few people know by using traditional ingredients in time-honored but also innovative ways, attesting to the flexibility and timelessness of Greece’s cuisine.
My Greek Table is different from the eight other Greek cookbooks I have written in that it is less a research project and more a subjective tale. I am not setting out to document the vast wealth of Greek regional dishes; I’ve already done that. My Greek Table is personal, and the recipes are inspired by my travels and deep-rooted knowledge of Greece and Greek products.
There is a famous novel in Greek called Loxandra, the story of a cook in Constantinople. She would wake up in the morning and think first thing about what she was going to make that day. That’s me, and it’s a role I relish even more than a svelte silhouette, more than dining out in the starriest of restaurants, more than pretty much anything else. Cooks are givers, the sentimental orchestrators of that most civilized human activity: a meal shared with other people around a table.
In Greece, this activity is still sacred. We are fortunate to be blessed with an abundance of delicious, healthful recipes rooted in regional, religious, and social traditions that are also thoroughly modern and accessible. Everything, every individual and business decision, every milestone, every day in Greek culture is celebrated and calibrated around the table. There is something elemental and intrinsically good for us in eating and sharing food around a Greek table. I hope My Greek Table is a celebration of heartfelt Greek hospitality.
