COOKING IN: There's much more to Greek food than salad and the odd lamb stew, writes Hugo Arnold.
I adore Greece. It has a quiet, laid-back charm all its own. But finding the real thing is not easy, and this is certainly true of the food, or so I thought. My eyes were opened when Theodore Kyriakou launched his Real Greek restaurant in London five years ago. There before us on plate after plate was the food of the Greek home, the kind of cooking you could smell as you walked up cobbled streets at lunchtime, but could never access. Greek salad and chips was all there ever seemed to be for us tourists.
Theodore spent considerable time before he opened The Real Greek researching old recipes, to put together what is now an impressive repertoire. He followed his Real Greek Food with the recently-published The Real Greek at Home: Dishes from the Heart of the Greek Kitchen, with Charles Campion. The chapters span festival food - a sort of calendar of Greek life - Lent, dishes from the mountains, food from the big city and food for fishermen. If you thought there wasn't much more to Greek food than grilled sardines, salad and the odd lamb stew, this book will give you a different perspective.
Dishes such as pork and pickled cabbage, or pork belly with black-eye beans might be decidedly rustic and wintery, but there are also lighter summer dishes such as leek pilaff or warm salad of chickpeas with purslane, and desserts such as metaxa and sultanta ice-cream or rizoglo, a smooth rice pudding.
I had always eaten Greek food in the past in a format I understood to be universal - lots of little plates and then a main course. The opening of the Real Greek restaurant changed all that. First courses were made up of three of these smaller items, but served on one plate and grouped together to form contrasts and partnerships. The whole idea of sharing was thrown out the window. In Greek homes, while a meal will start with mezedes, there are not that many of them.
Picking at small plates of food can be fun, but I prefer a more structured approach, not least because it prevents me hoovering up too much hummus, a food I never seem to tire of. This book gives you the low-down on the real thing, from taramasalata to tzatziki and skordalia to htipiti. I could tell you what these last two are, but if you buy the book the explanation and method are far better, and you'll get to taste the real thing.