IT'S ALL
GREEK
TO ME
Healthy, flavorful and visually appealing,
Greek cuisine is founded on four traditional
pillars: start with fresh, local products, add in
herbs and spices and liberally use the world’s
best olive oil.
Finding fresh produce and cheese is
quite easy in Greece. Farm-to-table is not a
movement here; it’s their way of life. Fresh
vegetables are often grown a few miles from
where they’re eaten. And since no point in
Greece is more than 90 miles from the sea,
delicious fish and crustaceans caught in the
Adriatic that morning are served fresh on your
plate at lunch.
Fresh ingredients may be the building
blocks of any Greek meal, but herbs and
spices bring the flavors together. Oregano,
rosemary and mint grow wildly across the
land, used with a pinch-of-that precision
to bring out the perfect aromas and flavors
from a juicy lamb skewer or succulent sea
bass. Spices can also take over a food’s flavor
profile with delicious results, as you’ll notice
when biting into dolmades, classic grape-leafwrapped
rice parcels seasoned by a heady
combination of thyme, fennel and oregano.
The most important ingredient of dolmades,
like most Greek foods, is olive oil. The essential
oil is often the first ingredient used to coat the
pan and then the last to be drizzled over the
finished product. When mixed with lemon
dressing and oregano, it makes a latholemono
sauce that makes seafood burst with flavor.
Greek herbs and olives in olive oil
44 | SELECT · 2020