Greek Cooking for Everyone by Theoni Pappas & Elvira Monroe
Reviewed by Anala Rabari
This cookbook begins with a short chapter on what it means to have the "Greek Touch" in your kitchen by covering the staples of Greek cooking such as having a bowl of yogurt, a platter of cheeses, wedges of lemon, and Greek olives always included at the table. It also covers the staples of a Greek spice rack, pantry, wines, and coffees. The book then proceeds to layout 22 full meal menus. It breaks these down into meat, fish, poultry, and vegetable meals and each menu has about 5 dishes. Some are easy and probable more familiar to you such as roast chicken & potatoes with a spinach & feta salad; while others like fried squid or fish head soup might be more, shall we say challenging, for most chiefs. The cookbook concludes with chapters on breads, desserts and a chapter on delicacies commonly found at food stands in Greece, such as roasted chestnuts or spinach pies.
I feel this is an excellent cookbook with a great variety of recipes to both excite the palate and wet the appetite for Greek foods. The fact that they layout full meal menus is wonderful to me as I often find myself floundering when it comes to figuring out side dishes that will compliment the main dish for many of my meals. They also do a wonder job of including both the Greek and English names of dishes & giving the reader glimpses into Greek life. It includes beautiful photos of Greece; however they are all in back & white. I only have two small critics of this book. One is that it doesn't include photos of the food itself; the other is that its not a lay flat binding which I love in the kitchen when I'm cooking. Of course these small flaws can be overlooked and completely forgotten after you taste some of these delicious recipes.