About

It’s a challenging task to get a real recipe from my mother. Not that she doesn’t have any, she has many great Greek recipes, like the best moussaka, and pastitsio, and koulourakia. But all those recipes are stored in her head. There’s a tiny gold notebook that appears every once in a while when it’s time to cook or bake something she hasn’t made in a while, but it’s filled with vague notes and cryptic measurements. So I have been on a quest for some time now to get them written down. She seems to enjoy this process, but laughs when I try to get her to nail down a measurement, “you know I don’t measure, after all these years, you just know how much is needed.”

My affection for all things food began in South Jersey, where I was born and raised. My parents settled there with my brother and sister after leaving their homeland of Chios, Greece. Fortunately for us, they wanted to maintain as many of their Greek cooking traditions as possible. We enjoyed amazing “Jersey Fresh” tomatoes as well as other fruits and vegetables from my father’s garden every summer, and delicious figs from trees in the back yard at the end of summer. My father made fresh bread every week. Almost every single meal was made by our parents, or an aunt and uncle, with love and care. And time. Greek recipes take time, many take hours, and some are prepared over the course of a day or two. The resulting meals are often shared with extended family.

Restaurants seem to run in our family. In high school, I worked at my cousin Maria’s Italian restaurant, and that’s where my love for the restaurant industry began. I worked the breakfast buffet, takeout window, hostess, random kitchen help, it didn’t really matter. I found myself going after school to help or hang out, even on days I wasn’t scheduled to work. The eggplant parm and my Uncle Nick’s cream of chicken with rice soup were just two of many favorites. After several detours, I have found myself back in school for Culinary Arts and Food Science. Which leads me back to getting these recipes written down.

Collecting them will take time, because there are stories, and discussions, and detailed instructions on exactly what kind of oil, or butter, or whatever is needed, or how warm the house has to be for the tsourekia to rise. “They need warmth, or else it will take two days” my mom says as she carefully covers the bowls of proofing dough with blankets. There are stories about who or where the recipes came from, stories about who had the best fields in the village for wheat. Discussions about who makes it best (always my mother) and re-explanations of the traditions behind a recipe and the reason why some things are only made on certain days of the year. But there are still no good measurements. Instead, there are hints, like add enough flour until it’s the right consistency. You know what the dough is supposed to look and feel like, right Katina? Yes mom, I do. Spoiler alert, a little bit of flour equals half a bag. Not a pinch, not a cup, just enough.