Books and People that Inspired my Food Journeys.

In the early 1980s, as a magazine editor, I wanted to introduce my audience to authentic French cuisine, badly represented in upscale Athenian restaurants...

The brilliant, incredibly talented, late Martin Brigdale, shooting on location with a bulky view camera for my Foods of Greece

Having studied graphic design and then photography at the Polytechnic of Central London, I always spent time in bookstores during my trips to Europe and the US for various press events. I admired the plethora of beautifully illustrated Italian cookbooks and as no such book existed for our cooking, I decided to produce one, so, eventually, my Foods of Greece was published in the early 1990ies.

Since my childhood, I have been cooking with my mother, grandmother and aunt, and I was quite comfortable preparing most seasonal everyday traditional dishes —like the ones we cook with our Kéa Artisanal guests.

Although I made mayonnaise from scratch, following my mother’s trick of adding a tablespoon of mashed potato as a stabilizer, I didn’t have any idea how to poach fish or seafood —we traditionally boiled them to death— or how to prepare the fresh asparagus that started to be available in some specialty shops.

For the weekly magazine I was editing, I was writing and photographing for my stories, interviewing people, following events and doing fashion. Eventually, I suggested we publish weekly French Cooking Lessons, loosely based on a series we acquired from the UK Observer, written by Ann Willan. Translating and adapting these lessons was my initiation into food writing, which I soon expanded with my own research and experience.

I wish I could introduce our no-frills Greek foods much like Patience Gray, with beautiful descriptions of places and people, or like Elisabeth David, who offered inspiring accounts of Mediterranean dishes without detailed instructions, as she wanted to inspire people who, she assumed, already knew how to cook.

After I signed my contract for a big, heavily illustrated book, it became obvious that very detailed and multiply-tested recipes were required. My publishers also thought that as a photo-journalist I was not qualified to do the photos required for such a book. To shoot the breath-taking images, the late Martin Brigdale, an immensely talented and tireless artist was contracted. He shot 4X5 inch color transparencies, dragging the huge view camera in various, sometimes almost inaccessible parts of Greece…

Martin Brigdale shooting in my newly restored 16th cen. house on Astypalaia, in the mid 1980ies.

I never imagined that this first book would have such an impact, and I hardly aspired to be a food writer when I wrote it; I enjoyed editing magazines, photographing and writing for newspapers, thinking that recipe writing was for me a one-time thing.

Reading and Learning

Eventually the first book led to another, and then another, all beautifully illustrated by specialized photographers and artists. My own photos appeared on my third book, the Foods of the Greek Islands, published in 2000. It was the very first I wrote her, on Kea, and I consider it my best work. The book became my bestseller, always kept in print by Haughton Mifflin.

Becoming a somewhat reluctant food writer, while I continued to work as a journalist, I felt I had to learn more about food and the traditions of other countries.

Ireland and its foods might seem faraway from our Mediterranean traditions, but Darina Allen’s unsurpassed book told me otherwise. It helped me enormously understand and appreciate our frugal dishes.

Being bombarded by so many sumptuous Italian-American books, I felt that I needed to do original research in the various regions of that rich and marvelous country. But I had neither the time nor the funds to do it. So I searched for a no-frills book of regional Italian food, and fortunately I found it. With a dictionary —as google-translate wasn’t yet available— I slowly discovered a wealth of wonderful dishes, especially from Italy’s south, where the use of seasonal ingredients was very similar to what we, Greeks do.

Of course I wanted to learn more about the science/physics/chemistry behind cooking. Fortunately Harold McGee’s unsurpassed 1984 book taught me all I needed, and more. Later I complemented my knowledge with Hervé This’ ‘Secrets of the cooking pot.’

Long before Vegetarian food became so popular, Deborah Madison’s wonderful 2007 book broadened everybody’s horizon, leading the way to the many who recently followed. Flatbreads and Flavors, a true Baker’s Atlas, was the first in a series of extensively researched books Naomi Duguid compiled. She traveled, and spent time photographing documenting dishes in countries that didn’t welcome Europeans or Americans. She managed to struck meaningful conversations with locals in various colorful markets, even under the scarry supervision of local police and ‘officials,’ as she once told me.

Beard on Bread (1973) was the very first baking book I bought, when I wanted to start baking. I had never made bread, and neither did my mother, so I learned the basics from this marvelous little book. Nicholas Stavroulakis was a rare scholar, the man who helped create the Jewish Museum in Athens. His Cookbook of the Jews of Greece has wonderful recipes, and his charming illustrations.

The larger than life, yet so accessible and friendly Claudia Roden helped me understand and appreciate the foods of our broader neighborhood, the Eastern Mediterranean. Recipes that were similar and related, although they might look different at first glance.

Last, but not least, my soulmate Paula Wolfert helped me enormously,especially when I was lost under the huge pile of recipes I had accumulated researching my very first book. ‘Which shall I choose to include?’ I asked her. ‘The ones you would like to cook and eat more than once,’ she told me.