Customer Reviews

Flavors of Greece

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I have visited Greece many times, and have wanted a cookbook that had recipes for the delicious food I have eaten there that would allow me to prepare this great cuisine at home. This is the first cookbook that has met my needs. The recipe for pork souvlaki is outstanding, and I have never had a dish turn out less than wonderful from this book. It needs to be reprinted!!

If you love Mediterranean food this is a great cookbook to add to your library.

The author does a nice job with her overview of Greek cooking ingredients. The glossary of Greek terms is also very useful. The author has included a nice recipe for a fresh cheese that is lovely. Just be warned it is made with half and half so your cardiologist will not approve. I would describe it as Greek Mascarpone.

The book is organized as follows:
The Greek Kitchen
Appetizers
Soups
Light Meals
Fish and Seafood
Chicken and Game
Meats
Vegetables and Salads
Pilafs and Pasta
Bread
Pies, Pastries, Cakes and Cookies
Fruit Desserts, Puddings and Creams, and Candy
Sauces

This book is full of wonderful recipes. I have not made one yet that wasn't a winner and I have made approximately 1/3 of the recipes in the book.

If you are looking for a good Greek cookbook that is fairly comprehensive this is a nice choice.

After recently spending 2 months in Greece and thoroughly enjoying the Greek cuisine, I was delighted to find this comprehensive yet readible guide. The author shares insight into the essentials for setting up a Greek kitchen and preparing the recipes in the traditional way along with modern preparation tips. I loved her way of sharing the fellowship and joy of the Greek dining experience. Flavors of Greece made me homesick!

Delicious, authentic, healthy food...just make sure you have a lot of lemons and honey on hand, AND be prepared that some of the simplest recipes allow for 30 minutes or more of "sweat" time for cucumbers, eggplant, etc...read and plan ahead. I have never made anything out of this book that my family & friends didn't LOVE...originally purchased the 1991 ed. at a library book sale for 50 cents... would buy it again at full price in a second! Also has a really wonderful glossary of greek staples in the beginning!

Rosemary Barron's Flavors Of Greece is as much a celebration of Greek culinary tradition as it is a compendium of mouth-watering recipes. Eschewing so-called "haute cuisine" Rosemary offers over 250 recipes meant to be created with simple ingredients, hearty industry, and a passion for aroma, texture, and putting so much flavor into one's creation that a tiny appetizer can seem like a meal. Sumptuous dishes offered range from Fried Cheese to Sausage and Potato Omelet, Grilled Octopus, Saffron Rice with Mussels, Sweet Chestnuts and Lemon Cheese, and much more. Explicit instructions and brief tidbits, tips, and trivia concerning various dishes makes Flavors Of Greece fun to read and easy to follow.

With all due respect to the glowing reviews this book has received, my experience has been vastly different than the other reviewers. For starters, I've tried several of the recipes and have not gotten anywhere near the results as described in the book, but since that can be chalked up to user error, (although I have been working in kitchens since I was 14, so "user error" seems unlikely to me, but what do I know?),allow me to address some of the more (most?) ridiculous statements made in this "cook book"

-Let us begin on page 248 and learn all we need to know about how NOT to make bread correctly. For starters(no pun intended), her statements about how yeast "refuses to work if too cold" are simply false. Any half serious baker knows that many bread recipes call for an overnight fermentation in a refrigerated environment, which encourages the formation of acetic acid, AKA vinegar, which elements of the yeast expel as a result of their metabolization of bread proteins. So yeast most definitely will not "die" if "kept too cold".

-"Oven temperatures must be exact": While I agree that oven temperatures should be as constant as possible, it's just a fallacy to think that greek villagers, or any other pre 20th century bakers anywhere, had anywhere an exact degree of temperature of control over their ovens. If any of you have dealt with pizza ovens, you would know that unless you have the privelege of having a large commercial wood fired oven, the temperatures go up and down all the time. Every time an (gas/electric) oven door is opened the temp drops at least a few degrees. Also, wood fired ovens require constant care and feeding, with the attendant sweeping and restoking the fire as needed. Bread is way more resilient than people think.

-Kneading. She's mostly right, but again one doesn't need to "knuckle" the dough to knead it correctly. In fact there's a french technique that involves pulling and twisting that's easily as effective as treating dough like it owes you money. Bonus points for the savvy bakers that utilize the "autolyse" process. Lastly, while hand kneading is "gangster", just use a stand mixer. The only person that cares about whether or not bread is kneaded by hand are people that can afford to have never performed manual labor in their lives. Nothing wrong with hand kneading, I did it for decades, up until December when my girlfriend surprised us with a stand mixer.

-Rising. Here is where I think the author is a little insane in the membrane. She states that
"To rise properly, bread dough needs warmth and contact WITH THE YEAST MICROORGANISMS THAT EXIST IN THE AIR". BZZZT! the "yeast microorganisms that exist in the air" have NOTHING AT ALL to do with dough proofing. This is alchemy, people, and just plain wrong. The yeast IS IN THE DOUGH ALREADY.
Of course she goes on to contradict herself with the whole yeast-microorganism thing by then writing that one should "cover the dough or bowl with plastic wrap to MINIMIZE CONTACT WITH THE AIR and slow down rising" Hmm, isn't this a direct contradiction to the requirement of the bread dough needing contact with the YEAST MICROORGANISMS THAT EXIST IN THE AIR?? So which is it?? the yeast in the air or the minimization with air contact to assist in the rise?? Alchemy.

I THINK that the reason folks undertake the practice of covering rising dough is so a crust doesn't form.

This whole notion of "using bottled water for best results" is obviously written from the point of view of a rich person that doesn't "trust" their local municipal water supply. Yeah! Use Fiji Water for best results! Then throw the empty bottles into the recycle bin OR the trash bin; they'll both probably end up in the landfill anyway. USE TAP WATER, PEOPLE. IF IT TASTES FUNNY, YOU'VE GOT MORE PROBLEMS THAN HOW YOUR BREAD TURNS OUT.

-More insanity: "A simple way to create a good crust is TO SPRAY THE DOUGH WITH WATER ONCE OR TWICE DURING BAKING" Oh, yeah! This has NO affect on the oven temperature! pay attention folks, opening up your home oven and SPRAYING WATER INTO IT is DEFINITELY going to lower the temperature. Probably by 25 degrees or so.. Again we're confronted with how everything needs to be exact with baking, yet advice is proffered in which nothing is exact. If there's this much conflicting information about something as critical as baking, then how can we know that a tablespoon isn't something else?

Oh and one more thing about the "bread" recipes. I make bread just about every other day; I make bagels, bialies, baguettes, dinner rolls, scones, pita, ad naseum, and I have to tell you that the amount of yeast called for in most of these recipes verges on insane. I regularly make bread recipes that yield 3 reasonably large loaves of bread (i.e. 4 cups of flour) that use around 1&1/2 teaspoons of yeast. Perhaps she mentions dough collapsing is because she uses an unsustainable amount of yeast??

At the risk of offending some of you "taste tippers" out there, this book reeks of a rich bored person wanting to find meaning in their lives. If you really want to learn how to cook Greek food, go to Greece and sleep on floors and perform manual labor in exchange for kitchen time. Barring that, find a Greek in your town, befriend them with Ouzo and beer, and get to know them as a person, and maybe if you're lucky, they'll invite you over to their house for some home cooking.

Sorry, but the whole "Archeological dig" story "being cut off by rugged mountain passes from all but the most durable of supplies" reads like an undergraduate travelogue from a junior at Sarah Lawrence, Brown, Bowdoin, or maybe Bryn Mawr college; and is it just me or does the idea of a non native moving "back" to Crete to set up "a state of the art kitchen, at the time the only one on Crete" reek of privelege?

Finally, if you don't have the temperament/stomach to work as an actual baker, then pick up a copy of the excellent "Artisan Baking" by Maggie Glezer.(This is a very good book)

Sorry folks, but the book is a wreck. An absolute waste of my money, and worst of all, my time. If you're an actual cook, and (I hope not) a line cook, if you're looking for "authentic Greek Recipes" then avoid this book like a zombie plague, unless you have a girl/boyfriend from a yuppie east coast school that knows nothing of real Greek food. Then this is exactly the book for you.