Vasilopita

Just after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve or on the first day of the New Year, many Greek Orthodox families gather around the table to cut and split the vasilopita, a cake named after St. Basil (Aghios Vasilios), the Greek Santa Claus. The head of the family “crucifies” the cake three times with a knife and then cuts it into triangular pieces. Usually, the first piece is offered to Christ, the second to the Virgin Mary, the third to St. Basil and the fourth to the “house” before family members and friends each receive one. Some may offer a slice to St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, to the poor, as St. Basil cared for them, or to the family shop or company.

Athiri

On a busy thoroughfare in Keramikos near the bustling neighborhood of Gazi, it’s easy to miss Athiri – but we urge you to keep an eye out for this culinary gem. When we last visited the restaurant, the polite waiters welcomed us with gracious smiles. We chose a table in the verdant courtyard, a small oasis in the heart of Athens. The interior of the restaurant is simple and elegant as well, with modern details to complement the lovely atmosphere. Chef Alexander Kardasis has a personal and modern vision of Greek cuisine and is always striving to create clean flavors with traditional underpinnings. To that end, he’s assembled a collection of the finest raw materials, many of which arrive fresh daily.

Melomakarona

The debate rages on: which are Greece’s best traditional Christmas cookies, kourambiedes or melomakarona? Amongst our friends and family, moist, honey-soaked melomakarona win out over the crumbly, butter-rich almond kourambiedes. The word “melomakarona” is a combination of meli, which means “honey,” and makaronia, which comes from the ancient Greek word makaria (μακαρία), meaning “blessed” (and having nothing to do with the Italian pasta with the Greek name “macaroni”). Long ago, the makaria was a piece of oval-shaped bread made for a funerary dinner to bless the dead. Later on, the makaria was soaked in honey and became known as melomakarono (the singular form of the word; these cookies are also called finikia by some).

The Giving Tree

In Greece, where the land is mostly rocky and steep and the climate hot and arid, the olive tree thrives, and for millennia, olive oil has been as essential to Greek cooking as the gnarled, silver-leaved trees have been to its landscape. Greece is the third largest producer of olive oil in the world after Spain and Italy and the greatest in consumption per capita. Used liberally as a cooking fat for all manner of ingredients and preparations, as well as in its raw state to dress or flavor dishes, olive oil also plays an influential role in Greek baking, such as in koulourakia, twisted or coiled cookies, and paximadia, the twice-baked rusks that come savory or sweet.

Spring Greening

In terms of greenness, Athens doesn’t even come close to other European capitals with their verdant parks and blossoming gardens. The truth is, modern urban development has not been particularly gentle with this city. Numerous concrete buildings along with poor road design hem in inhabitants and visitors with featureless views. Thankfully, there are some oases in the cement desert that offer the hungry local or tourist a lush respite in which to enjoy a meal or a drink. Just behind the parliament lies the Ethnikos Kipos, or National Gardens, the indisputable green heart of the city.

Greek Food Idioms

With its rich, profound history – its roots lie in epics and at the foundation of modern civilization, after all – the Greek language is ripe for and with metaphor, particularly of the food-related variety. Folk sayings and proverbs have a prominent place in colloquial language and everyday life, and they are at turns humorous, instructive and ironic. And sometimes they are all three at once.

Culture Clubs

In a recent New Yorker profile of Turkish entrepreneur Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of Chobani, a wildly successful company that makes Greek-style yogurt in the U.S., we read with great interest about the trip writer Rebecca Mead made to Argos, in the Peloponnese, where renowned cookbook author Diane Kochilas had told Mead she’d had “the best yogurt she had ever tasted.”