Greek

By Food & Wine
Updated May 05, 2017
These fantastic recipes include staples like pork souvlaki with tzatziki and stuffed grape leaves.
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Avgolemono Custards with Crispy Chicken Skin

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Chef Erik Anderson puts his own twist on classic Greek avgolemono, the egg-and-lemon soup, turning it into a lemony custard and topping it with shards of crispy chicken skin.

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Greek Salad with Feta Mousse

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Gavin Kaysen's Greek salad has most of the usual ingredients, like tomatoes and olives—but, in an inspired twist, he turns the traditional feta cheese into a creamy, light feta mousse. Kaysen invented the dish to impress his coach when he was training for the prestigious international Bocuse d'Or cooking competition, and he says, "It blew him away."

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Greek Salad Sandwiches

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This is Greek salad perfection: Michael Psilakis tops warm bread with garlicky red-pepper tzatziki (cucumber-yogurt spread) and a piquant combo of cucumbers, olives, peperoncini, tomatoes, radishes, greens and feta. It's stellar with homemade ladopsomo bread and yogurt, but equally good with store-bought.

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Homemade Greek Yogurt

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Homemade yogurt requires surprisingly little prep and keeps in the fridge for a month.

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Greek-Style Leg of Lamb

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This dish pairs well with a dark, cherry-flavored, peppery Chinon.

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Pork Souvlaki with Tzatziki

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Greeks make souvlaki by marinating chunks of meat (usually pork or lamb) in oil, lemon juice and oregano, then skewering and grilling them. Grace Parisi opts for pork shoulder because it's so tender and succulent.

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Grilled Watermelon with Yogurt

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This is Michael Psilakis's modern take on the traditional Greek combination of watermelon and feta cheese. It features the creamy yogurt he grew up eating in New York's Long Island: "My mom made it at home all the time, and we'd snack on it with honey after school."

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Grilled Lamb Chops with Ladolemono

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Michael Psilakis dresses these luscious lamb chops with ladolemono, a supersimple Greek sauce of lemon juice and olive oil. The sauce is often spooned over fish, but it's delicious on meat and vegetables, too. "This is real Greek cooking," he says.

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Grilled Manouri Cheese with Caramelized Plums

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Michael Psilakis likes to riff on saganaki—fried cheese with lemon. He uses manouri, a fresh, milky white cheese made from the whey that's drained off during feta production. Like nearly all Greek cheeses, it's produced from either sheep's or goat's milk.

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Stuffed Grape Leaves with Pork and Fregola

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David Page and Barbara Shinn of Shinn Estate Vineyards on the North Fork of Long Island trim tender young grape leaves and brine them at home. Page often stuffs the brined leaves with sausage made from locally raised duck, calling the hors d'oeuvres "a NoFo classic." Here, he creates a version with ground pork and fregola, a small, round Sardinian couscous.

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Chopped Greek Salad with Shallot Vinaigrette

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For this clever riff on Greek salad, traditional ingredients like feta cheese and black olives get chopped into small pieces, then tossed with a shallot dressing. "None of the strong flavors take over," says Dave Alhadeff, who often orders the dish at Dressler. "Because it's all nicely chopped, you get a hint of feta, a taste of tomatoes. It's so much more complex than most Greek salads."

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Shrimp Saganaki

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For shrimp saganaki, Greeks sauté shrimp in a pan with tomatoes, olives and feta cheese, then serve it right out of the skillet with bread to soak up all the delicious juices. Grace Parisi stirs fresh dill into her quick version to brighten the flavor.

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Salt Cod Fritters with Garlicky Skordalia

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Skordalia is traditionally a thick, tangy puree of boiled or baked potatoes (or water-soaked bread) mixed with lots of garlic and olive oil. This skordalia is thinned with yogurt and water to make a dipping sauce for tender, anise-accented nuggets of salt cod.

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Swordfish with Orzo, Pistachios and Olives

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A staff-favorite, this delicious recipe can be whipped up in a quick 25 minutes.

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Spaghetti with Cauliflower

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For Michael Psilakis, macaronia ("pasta") has always meant chicken stewed with spaghetti, tomatoes, cinnamon, raisins and pine nuts. Those are the dominant ingredients here, except he's substituted chicken with cauliflower.

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