This well-known Greek and Cypriot dish of meat ragù layered with potatoes and aubergines, topped with a thick cheese sauce, is often made with lamb. But actually each family has their own version and you could also use minced pork or beef, or a mixture of the two. The meat ragù is lightly spiced with cinnamon and oregano, and cooked in red wine with a touch of tomato purée. Leave it to sit for at least 15 minutes when it comes out of the oven.
A picture-perfect summer salad, watermelon and feta are such a great combination. The salty cheese cuts through the sweetness of the fruit, plus olives, cucumber and fresh mint add a savoury note. It's served with crunchy sourdough croutons. Grill the feta before adding it to the salad – it doesn't melt, but just softens slightly, and serving it warm really brings out the taste of the cheese.
In this fresh, zingy salad which is packed with flavour and texture, the fresh beetroot is roasted in foil with thyme, olive oil and garlic. You can use golden or purple beetroot. The fresh orange slices counteract the earthy flavours of the beets, and fennel and chopped baby gem lettuce add extra crunch. The dressing is sublime – fresh orange juice reduced down with honey, lemon, olive oil and cardamom.
Stifado is a beef stew with tomato, baby onions and red wine. You do need to marinate the meat in the wine, along with cinnamon, garlic, bay and orange, the day before cooking. Baby (or pickling) onions are a pain to peel, but if you cover them with boiling water for a few minutes, the skin comes off more easily. This dish is great served with orzo – short-cut pasta which looks like a large grain of rice.
Get the recipe for beef stifado here
Love this? Follow our Pinterest page for more recipe inspiration
This vegetarian pie usually consists of spinach, feta and ricotta encased with crisp layers of buttery filo pastry. Here, swiss chard leaves replace the spinach. It's nice and garlicky, with dried mint too, which is more intense and stronger than fresh. The trick to working with filo pastry is to keep it under a damp tea towel as you work, to prevent it drying out. This is a meal in itself – just serve with a green salad.
Tender griddled chunks of spiced, marinated chicken, served in toasted pitta breads with tzatziki, tomato salsa and crunchy lettuce will be a winner every time. The pieces of skinless thigh meat just need 15 minutes to marinate in the fridge – in yogurt, garlic, oregano, chilli and lemon zest. Keep the zested lemons and squeeze the juice over the finished gyros.
The Greeks are very fond of lamb, and this dish of slow-cooked lamb shanks in red wine and port, with vegetables, spices, tomato and herbs is so easy to make. It needs two hours in the oven, but the preparation is very simple. You could serve it with rice, potatoes or small pasta shapes.
Get the recipe for slow-cooked lamb shanks with braised vegetables here
Versions of stuffed aubergines are eaten all over the Mediterranean and the Levant. In Greece, papoutsakia, as they're called, contain similar ingredients to moussaka. Minced lamb, spices, tomatoes and roasted, scooped-out aubergine flesh are mixed, put back in aubergine skins and covered in a béchamel sauce. Follow the recipe below but swap the manchego for a cheese sauce.
Vegetable casseroles are popular all over Greece. This summer dish is known as a ladero, which means olive oil-based, so be sure to use your best extra-virgin olive oil. This braised runner bean and tomato casserole is cooked with garlic and herbs, and topped with a crisp feta and pistachio crumb. With olive oil mashed potato and a carrot purée on the side, it's a perfect meal to serve with barbecued meat.
On the island of Crete, these deep-fried small, spicy lamb meatballs are called keftedes. They are similar to Turkish kofte, as the two cuisines share many similarities. Packed with herbs, chilli and spices, they are bulked out with bulgur wheat. The parsley salad is finely chopped, a little like a salsa, and full of flavour. You can serve the kofte hot or cold.
This is more of a traditional spanakopita – a spinach filo pie. You can serve it hot or cold, so it's perfect for a picnic. It contains both feta and ricotta, and is laced with garlic, nutmeg and mint. Our recipe calls for mint jelly, but you could replace it with a teaspoon of dried mint. Remember you need to get as much water as you can out of the spinach before filling the pie.
Souvlaki is simple to make but absolutely delicious: cubes of marinated meat are skewered and cooked over coals. The chicken in this recipe is marinated in olive oil, lemon zest and lots of fresh oregano. Try to leave it in the marinade for at least 30 minutes, but a couple of hours would intensify the flavour. It's served with a simple herb, feta and roast pepper couscous salad and tzatziki.
If you have a food processor, it will make quick work of this dish. Whizz up chickpeas, spinach, feta, lemon and paprika, and stuff into filo parcels. Quickly fry to seal the base, then pop into a hot oven to cook. Meanwhile, finely slice cucumber and onion for the salad, and add to olives, almonds, lettuce, fresh herbs and perfectly ripe tomatoes. It makes for a nutritious and tasty meal.
A yachni refers to a dish of stewed vegetables, often containing potatoes and green beans, which was traditionally eaten during Lent when meat and fish were forbidden. This version, of slow-cooked baby onions, tomato, garlic, cinnamon and capers, makes a modern-day accompaniment to grilled fish or meat. It contains tomato perasti, which is a passata containing herbs and garlic. This chunky sauce would be great served on a bruschetta too.
Fried cheese... what's not to love! Saganaki refers to various Greek dishes prepared in a small frying pan but cheese is one of the best. This is a traditional way of serving kefalotyri cheese, which is a hard sheep's milk cheese widely eaten across Greece and Cyprus. If you can't track it down, you could use pecorino romano or pecorino sardo. Our recipe pairs it with gnocchi which, sure, is more Italian than Greek, but cooked with sage, lemon and plenty of olive oil, it's a wicked combination.
You can't beat a really great Greek salad. It's all about using the best ingredients you can find. Kalamata black olives are a must – they are fruitier and milder than most black olives, so don't overpower the rest of the salad. If you can find barrel-aged feta, even better. It's richer and less salty than the average feta. Complete the dish with beautiful ripe tomatoes, your best extra-virgin olive oil and crunchy cucumber and onions.
These meatballs are made with a mixture of beef and lamb (or pork, whichever you prefer), and spiced with cinnamon, cumin, paprika and garlic. Serve them with a rich tomato sauce which is made with the same spices. They're great with flatbreads, mash and green salad, or orzo which is frequently used in Greek cooking.
Here's a Greek Cypriot version of an upside-down cake. It's gluten-free (as long as you use gluten-free baking powder), with ground almonds and semolina replacing the flour. A buttery orange syrup goes in the base of the tin, with slices of fresh fig on top. Then pour over the batter and bake. It's a very easy cake to make – so moist and light, and just perfect with a dollop of thick Greek yogurt.
A tart with a difference, the base is made from a honey-soaked cookie dough called melamakarona, wonderfully fragrant with orange and cinnamon. It's then filled with a chocolate ganache and topped with ground walnuts. The recipe includes a method for hazelnut ice cream too, or just serve with your favourite shop-bought ice cream.
This is more of a cake than a pie, and it's quite unusual. Instead of flour, you add oven-dried strips of filo pastry to the cake batter, which is yogurt and oil-based, with orange zest. While the cake is baking, prepare an orange syrup, spiced with cardamom and cinnamon, which is poured over the sponge once it's out of the oven. The result is a light, airy cake, with both crunchy and soft textures – an absolute winner.
It's said that baklava was first made by the ancient Greeks, though other parts of the Middle East may claim it as their own. In any case, you find it all over Greece and it's surprisingly easy to make. Buttery layers of filo pastry are filled with chopped nuts, mixed with sugar and spices. Then it's baked until golden. The final stage is to pour a honey and lemon syrup over the pastry. It's sweet, nutty and just perfect with an espresso.