"Good food begins in the field." So begins Diane Kochilas's The Country Cooking of Greece, a collection of recipes and anecdotes that explores the dishes of the Greek countryside by both dish and ingredient. Starting with salads and meze (the Greek equivalent of tapas, small plates shared among a table), Kochilas moves on to country soups, artichokes, pastas and rice--even country preparations for chicken and game birds. The recipes vary from classics such as pastitsio and saganaki to lesser-known plates such as bougatsa (phyllo pastry with cream) and mantza (summer stew with fried cheese).
With photographs from Vassilis Stenos, The Country Cooking of Greece is a celebration of the local, farm-based culinary history of Greek country food, a collection of regional, traditional--yet flexible--recipes that invites readers to travel to the simple, rich world of the country. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm