Recipes

I love popcorn. I love olive oil. I often want a quick snack. Here’s the solution: stovetop popcorn made with extra virgin olive oil—two healthy ingredients that combine beautifully to make an ideal snack. An excellent olive oil transfers its flavor to the popcorn; with some salt, no additional flavoring is necessary to make an addictive all-natural treat.

If you have some phyllo dough on hand—for example, left over from making spanakopita–you can make miniature pies with all sorts of fillings, like my Cretan neighbor does for everyday snacks, parties, and holidays. For example, soft Greek cheeses and spanakopita fillings make wonderful little pies. This is how Arhontoula makes them, with her homemade dough.

If you know anything about Greek food, you’ve probably heard of spanakopita, the classic spinach pie with feta cheese and phyllo (or filo) pastry. My Cretan neighbor’s recipe is especially rich in leeks, onion, herbs, and olive oil, which blend beautifully with the spinach and feta. You can buy your phyllo or make your own, like Arhontoula always does.

This recipe from the Greek magazine Gastronomos uses trahana in one of the most wonderfully flavorful breads I have tasted. Trahana is a wheat product mixed with a milk product and then dried. There are many types of it; this recipe calls for the sour version made from wheat. If you can’t find it in your area, you can order it from various online sources.

What should I do with this olive oil? Four years ago, two Greek olive oil professionals decided to focus on answering that question. Kostas Tsoronis and Panagiotis Papanikolopoulos created Oliverse and started leading seminars in Greece and online to explore olive oil – food pairings: the way specific extra virgin olive oils combine with particular foods.

Chef Vasilis Leonidou strives “to blend the right olive oil into my recipes to impart character and balance between the ingredients and the olive oil.” He also enjoys experimenting with “rare and unique varieties of EVOO that chefs do not use very often in restaurants because of their complexity.” His results have drawn the attention of influential critics.

In this elegant gourmet recipe by chef Vassilis Alexiou, a spicy, full-bodied Manaki extra virgin olive oil from the Peloponnese in Greece gives a boost to the mild flavors of lentils, cuttlefish, and caviar. The recipe exemplifies this Greek chef’s interest in “waking up” or enlivening a recipe that starts out mild, by adding a bold extra virgin olive oil.

From Athens to Paris, from Kalamata to Santorini and Samos, Greek Chef de Cuisine Vassilis Alexiou has sought out the best products and producers. Connecting with farmers, he identified his favorite Greek products, including a variety of olive oils. Then he astonished Parisian chefs by incorporating eleven different extra virgin olive oils into his recipes.

Melomakarona, traditional Greek Christmas cookies, tend to be rich in olive oil and honey (with the beginning of their name coming from meli, the Greek word for honey). Dr. Eleni Melliou, president of the World Olive Center for Health in Athens, shared a version of her grandmother’s cookie recipe that uses super healthy high phenolic extra virgin olive oil.

Looking for recipes rich in olive oil these days? Here are some from homemakers on the Greek island of Crete: a black eyed pea salad; a spinach, walnut, and garlic dip; octopus cooked in wine; and spicy meatballs (soutzoukakia) with olives and tomato sauce. They are worth trying, because they are part of the Traditional Cretan Diet: The Secret of Longevity.

On any night I use this recipe to make a quick dinner for my family. I tend to keep green peppers on hand and lamb in my freezer. It’s one of those dishes you can pull together in no time. I shop for ground lamb, or you can use ground beef, at the butcher department of the grocery store. He can always grind you a pound or two. Choose the rice you prefer.

Appointed Ambassador of Greek Gastronomy by the Chef’s Club of Greece, celebrity chef Maria Loi celebrates the flavor and healthiness of the olive oil rich Greek diet. Loi recently took time out from cooking at her Loi Estiatorio restaurant in midtown Manhattan, New York to share her thoughts about olive oil and the Greek diet with Greek Liquid Gold.

Many ask what Christmas time is like in Greece. Is Christmas a major holiday? Yes. Is it on the same day as in the USA? Yes. Are there Christmas trees and gifts? Yes, plus charity bazaars, shopping, choirs, special church services, and Nativity scenes. However, Greek customs and flavors differ from those central to my American holidays in many ways.

This is a very tasty, simple cake that requires just one pan, where the batter is mixed, and no bowl, which makes cleanup very quick. Made with extra virgin olive oil, no butter or eggs, and just a reasonable amount of sugar, it is an excellent cake for an everyday treat. This is my young son’s favorite recipe to make and share, so the recipe is in demand.

How should I use olive oil? Greeks don’t need to ask, since they consume more of this liquid gold per capita than anyone else in the world. To help those outside the major olive growing regions, Greek Liquid Gold asked Greek olive oil producers and company representatives, plus two prominent European chefs, about their favorite ways to eat olive oil.

You can make this vegan recipe using more or less of various ingredients, including spinach, depending on your preference. You can even use the spinach stems left over after you’ve made something else with the spinach leaves. I prefer to make the dish healthier using wholegrain brown rice, but that must be cooked separately given its longer cooking time.

This is a wonderful stuffing recipe in which I do not miss the butter one bit; good bakery bread and an excellent extra virgin olive oil make it perfect. The herbs do have a strong flavor, so you can use less than called for if you prefer. See the link at the end for my inspiration and enough suggestions for almost endless variations on this theme.

This recipe’s first name was my teenage daughter’s idea, and a UFO seems appropriate (like its orange color) for Halloween. The second name is closer to accurate, but not exactly. This is a Cretan mother’s variation on some wonderful carrot parsley bread sticks, and an invention so tasty everyone in my family likes it (hallelujah—a rarity for healthy food!).

This is my mother’s wonderful recipe. A fruity olive oil works very well with cinnamon in this popular, tasty cake. It makes a 9 X 13 inch rectangle or a (more impressive) three-layer cake. I double the recipe, freeze the rectangle, and eat the layer cake first. There’s always an occasion when we “need” the other cake before too long, and it freezes well.

My mother’s original version was so good that I hesitated to tamper with it, but once I gained the courage, I found that it’s even better with yogurt and olive oil than with butter and sour cream! I always make a double recipe and freeze the sheet cake. This cake is so popular, moist and chocolaty, that it comes in handy for any special occasion.

I’ve always enjoyed dessert, especially my mother’s holiday creations. But when I learned I was following my mother into pre-diabetes, I decided it was time for a change. If you’ve resolved to eat more healthy food and less added sugar in the New Year, consider my method: stop the sugar, increase the tasty healthy foods, allow yourself bits of sweet treats.