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Greece Culinary Travel with Aglaia Kremezi


Lesbos and Chios

Just off the shores of Turkey are the northeastern Aegean islands, of which Lesbos and Chios are the largest. Unlike most of the smaller islands, these are self-contained, with year-round industries of their own that don't depend on tourism. One of the few things these two very different islands have in common is ouzo, which is served everywhere since there is no local wine. Lesbos has managed to make its ouzo known all over Greece and exports it abroad, but the ouzo of Chios, unknown outside the island, is also excellent.

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There are 11 million olive trees on Lesbos—an amazing number, especially when one considers the work needed to build the stone walls around most of the trees planted on the slopes of hills. Olive oil, naturally, is the island's most important source of income.

Lesbos has a wonderful abundance of fish and seafood dishes, including simply boiled skate's fin, which is served drizzled with the local olive oil, delicious rolled monkfish fillets, exotic mahogany clams, and freshly salted sardines from the Gulf of Kalloni. In the central market of Mytilini, the capital of Lesbos, the stalls of the fishmongers are piled with fresh fish, and the grocery stores carry the wrinkled local olives and the marvelous cheeses of Lesbos: fresh or baked myzithra (the generic term for a ricottalike cheese that, in its traditional form is made of sheep and goat's milk, but is often made of cow's milk when produced commercially) and the famous ladotyri, a semihard cheese made from a combination of sheep and goat's milk, which is aged wholly submerged in olive oil. On the side streets of the market, the traditional coffee shops have no signs and can be easily missed. A coffee shop in Lesbos serves not just coffee but also ouzo and small plates (mezes) such as fried vegetables, bean salads, stuffed grape leaves, and zucchini blossoms, followed by all kinds of seasonal seafood.

Unlike Lesbos, the Chian landscape is varied, with fertile plains where fruit, wheat, and vegetables are cultivated. Stone shacks on bare mountains house goats and sheep. There are also pine forests and hills covered with fragrant trees of the pistachio family—Pistacia lentiscus—that grow only in southern Chios. The sap of the trees gives the island its most famous product, mastic, which is used in Greece and throughout the Middle East as a licoricelike flavoring for breads, cookies, ice cream, and cakes, and is also chewed like gum.

Greek Citrus Preserves Chios

In the Kambos region, south of the capital of Chios, citrus orchards surround the houses, some growing an indigenous variety of tangerine. Chios is famous for its fruit preserves, or spoon sweets, as they are called: Whole tiny tangerines, rolled strips of lemon, bergamot or bitter orange peel, unripe pistachios or figs, even fragrant citrus blossoms and the petals of pink roses are cooked in syrup and served on tiny glass plates as a treat for guests.

The Cyclades

Approximately 20 inhabited islands extend from the southern tip of the peninsula around Athens and dot the central part of the Aegean. These include Milos, Kea, Naxos, Andros, Myconos, and Santorini, as well as many uninhabited land masses. The mainstays of the cuisine—savory barley and wheat biscuits, simple cheeses, and cured pork—have remained more or less unchanged throughout the centuries. The drystone terraces on the steep hillsides were originally built in antiquity to expand the scarce cultivable land of the islands so that the people could plant barley, beans, and vegetables. Barley, which has been cultivated in the Mediterranean since the beginnings of civilization, was for centuries the staple for the island people.

Greek Capers and Tomatoes

Paximadia, the barley biscuits, were convenient food for sailors, who took them on long voyages. Today, city people as well as tourists love these versatile crunchy biscuits, which are crumbled and made into delicious salads with the flavorful island tomatoes and capers, drizzled with fruity olive oil and seasoned with fragrant oregano. Paximadia are also topped with ksyno, a slightly tangy fresh local cheese.

The wonderful artisanal cheeses of the Cyclades—produced mainly from goat's milk, with some sheep's or cow's milk—are seasonal and most fall out of the DOC system, as they are produced in little shacks that do not even remotely meet European Union standards for exportation. The numerous myzithra (the term is generic for all kinds of cheeses), fresh and soft, aged and hard, can be excellent, though they are inconsistent and in short supply. On the islands of Tinos and Naxos, there are cheese-producing cooperatives that make the local DOC graviera from a mixture of sheep's and cow's milk. In Syros, the San Michali graviera, produced only from cow's milk, is probably the best of its kind in Greece.

Pork plays a significant role in the diet of these islanders. The winter family feasts and customs surrounding the slaughtering of the pig have not changed for centuries. Some parts of the animal, such as chops, are roasted in the oven or over the hearth fire, or stewed with celery and winter greens and lemon, often as part of a festive Christmas meal, while most is cured and stored for use throughout the year. Louza or loza—exquisite cured pork that can be compared to the best jamón serrano of Spain—is made from the tenderloin, which is marinated in wine, then spiced and smoked. Pieces of cured pork are also added to vegetable stews, bean soups, and island omelets, which are made with seasonal produce such as fresh fava beans, artichokes, or simple wild greens gathered from the hills. Cycladic sausages, seasoned with intensely aromatic dried savory or oregano and occasionally with wild fennel and orange peel, are often dipped in wine before being smoked. Seafood is not plentiful in the Aegean, which may explain why it has never been one of the basic foods of the islanders.

The Dodecanese

The Dodecanese, meaning "12 islands," lie in the southeastern Aegean, along the southern coast of Asia Minor (Turkey). They include popular tourist destinations like Rhodes and Kos, as well as smaller, less-frequented islands, such as Karpathos, whose villages are almost untouched by modern civilization. The foods of the Dodecanese are more elaborate than those of the Cyclades. Rice and homemade pastas play an important role in the cuisine, as do tomatoes, which are used in all sorts of dishes, including stews and (along with ground meat) in traditional keftedes, the fried meatballs of Rhodes.

The most distinguishing characteristic of the Dodecanesian cuisine is the use of a wide variety of spices. For example, in the remote village of Olympos on Karpathos, breads and sweet Easter cheese tarts are flavored with an aromatic blend of coarsely crushed coriander seeds (grown and dried in the village), ground allspice berries, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, black pepper, and mastic or aniseeds.

In Astypalaia, another small island of the Dodecanese, saffron threads gathered from the hills in late fall give color and aroma to the traditional Easter cookies and tarts, which are made with chlori, a wonderful local goat's-milk ricotta cheese.


Wines/grapes native to this region: Muscat (from Alexandrian Muscat grapes), Samos sweet and Muscat wines, dry white and sparkling wines (mainly from Athiri grapes), dry red wines (from Mandhilaria grapes), crisp white wine (from Asyrtiko grapes), Visanto sweet wine (from partly sun-dried grapes), sweet wines called Liasto, and reds with dark color (from Mandhilaria and Monemvasia grapes)

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