Food, culture, celebration, and memory are inexorably tied together inside Tessa Kiros’s Food from Many Greek Kitchens. As the follow-up to her best-selling cookbooks Venezia: Food and Dreams and Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes, her new cookbook 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, Food from Many Greek Kitchens adds a greater depth of flavor to each dish through Kiros’s warm anecdotal introductions.
Tessa Kiros 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.
I picked up this cookbook and was immediately enthralled by the colorful photographs, which seemed to transport me directly to Greece, a place I would so love to actually visit someday. Then, as I started to flip through the recipes and look for ones to try, I became excited that although they all seemed exotic to me, they all also seemed highly accessible — which for me means that, generally, the ingredients are not hard to find and the cooking processes are not overly elaborate. Poached Fish with Lemon Oil, Beets with Yogurt and Pistachios — I can do that! Still, I started thinking that this book would be much better served with a review by someone knowledgeable of Greek cuisine. And that “someone” certainly isn’t me. Once that decision was made, the next decision was easy: the recipe testing and review needed to be done by my favorite Greek blogger, Peter from kalofagas.ca. If you want to know what kalofagas means, head over to his blog. If you haven’t visited it already, you’re missing out…
Luckily for me (and you), Peter agreed to review the book and test a recipe — and he agreed to do so before leaving on a trip to Greece, where he is now. I suspect he might even be eating keftedes …
Cooks&Books&Recipes Guest Cook: Peter, kalofagas.ca, Greek Food and Beyond
There are a lot of cookbooks out there, and I must add that there are many Greek cookbooks out there — a testament to this old cuisine’s popularity, surviving the many food trends that come and go year after year. My cookbook collection is extensive, and I’m very happy with the Greek cookbooks in my library. In fact, I thought I had just about every Greek cookbook, spanning both the Greek and the English languages.
I was recently sent a review copy of Tessa Kiros’s Food From Many Greek Kitchens from Cooks&Books&Recipes. Yes, there are a lot of Greek cookbooks out there, but even I would want to add this latest Tessa Kiros book to my collection. Kiros is better known for her Floating Cloudberries book, and I also have her cookbook that pays homage to Portuguese cuisine. Kiros has a reputation for compiling authentic recipes that read easily. Her books are accompanied by stories and a blend of stylish and sentimental photographs. The best testimonial one can give for a cookbook is that the recipes work out!
Kiros was born in London to a Greek-Cypriot father and Finnish mother, and after publishing seven cookbooks, she finally dedicates a book to Greek cuisine. Kiros spent her formative years in South Africa living among the large Greek community, was baptized Greek-Orthodox, and was immersed in Greek culture through schools, attending plays and Greek music events (clubs and concerts). In each aspect of her life, food always had a significant role.
The photos in the book are not staged, nor are they the product of a props department. All the photos were taken around Greece from cafes, tavernas, homes, kitchens, markets, and streets. The book is visually stimulating, and each recipe is accompanied by a story or brief intro. Once again, the recipes are easy to follow, and none are too complex.
Featured Recipe: Keftedes (Fried Meatballs)
Author Tessa Kiros:
These are very popular in Greece. They are lovely as a meze with a dish of feta and a few other bits and pieces. Of course they are also great with french fries. Many Greeks roll their keftedes in a little flour before frying.
Guest Cook Peter:
I chose to try out Kiros’s fried keftedes (meatballs) recipe, as I’ve held a bias toward grilled keftedes, and I wanted to really test out a recipe. These keftedes are also different from the ones I grew up eating, as the main binding ingredient of those was soaked stale bread whereas Kiros’s contain boiled potatoes. The seasonings of the fried keftedes are the usual Greek flavourings of oregano and mint, but the boiled potatoes in the mix were the wild card.
Photo credit: www.kalofagas.ca
The recipe was easy to make, the texture of the fried keftedes was light, and each meatball was more delicious than the next! Food From Many Greek Kitchens is loaded with many of the Greek classics and favourites, and I think this book would appeal to the seasoned Greek food afficionado and to those looking to learn and cook more Greek. Tessa Kiros’s book does double-duty as both a cookbook and a coffee-table fixture and is surely a fine gift for the budding gourmand in your family.
Photo credit: www.kalofagas.ca
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Keftedes (Fried Meatballs)
Makes about 35
- 10 1/2 ounces unpeeled potatoes (about 2)
1 pound 2 ounces ground beef
1 red onion, grated
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped Italian parsley
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried mint
Good pinch of ground cinnamon
1 egg, lightly beaten
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
All-purpose flour, for dusting
Olive oil, for frying
Lemon quarters, for serving
Boil the potatoes, covered, in plenty of water until they are soft when pierced with a fork.
Meanwhile, put the beef, onion, parsley, oregano, mint, cinnamon and egg into a bowl and mix. Drain the cooked potatoes and when they are cool enough to handle, peel and break up into the bowl. Season well with salt and pepper, then mash everything together with a potato masher. Knead again with your hands to make a compact mix. Form walnut-size balls of about 1 ounce each, but you can make them smaller or bigger if you like. Scatter some flour onto a flat plate and roll the balls lightly in the flour, keeping them in compact balls.
Heat olive oil to a depth of about 1/4 inch in a large nonstick skillet. Add as many balls as will fit to the skillet and fry until they are golden on all sides, flicking them gently to roll over. You will probably have to fry in two batches. Remove carefully with tongs and drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Add a little salt (as fried things are always good with a last sprinkling of salt). Serve hot, with a few drops of lemon juice.
© 2011 Tessa Kiros
—From Food from Many Greek Kitchens, by Tessa Kiros (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
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