Here’s another super easy and cheap recipe from the traditional, everyday cuisine of the beautiful island of Cyprus. It's incredibly quick, too, if you happen to have leftover cooked brown rice on hand.
Dishes like this are what make the Mediterranean diet such a healthy one, unlike the recipes with a heavy red meat emphasis that so many people mistakenly believe are the typical daily fare for Greek households.
Mama Aphrodite, my Greek-Cypriot mother-in-law, would often cook this meal at our request. We would usually ask for it after a weekend of visits to various Cypriot relatives’ homes where they showed their love for us with incredible feasts that invariably resulted in us stuffing ourselves to the point of discomfort.
There's a reason that the first word I learned in Greek (other than a few choice expletives and please and thank you), was the command to eat. In fact, “Fáe, Fáe, Fáe!” (Eat, eat eat!) is probably the most common refrain a guest will hear from any ethnic Greek host or hostess.
Dishes like this are what make the Mediterranean diet such a healthy one, unlike the recipes with a heavy red meat emphasis that so many people mistakenly believe are the typical daily fare for Greek households.
Mama Aphrodite, my Greek-Cypriot mother-in-law, would often cook this meal at our request. We would usually ask for it after a weekend of visits to various Cypriot relatives’ homes where they showed their love for us with incredible feasts that invariably resulted in us stuffing ourselves to the point of discomfort.
There's a reason that the first word I learned in Greek (other than a few choice expletives and please and thank you), was the command to eat. In fact, “Fáe, Fáe, Fáe!” (Eat, eat eat!) is probably the most common refrain a guest will hear from any ethnic Greek host or hostess.
And they really mean it.
When entertaining guests, they pull out all the stops, so that as a visitor to a typical Greek home you’ll often encounter a table almost groaning from the sheer weight of the platters of different grilled and stewed meat dishes, pasta and meat casseroles, meat and vegetable casseroles, stuffed grape leaves and zucchinis, small plate “meze” offerings (similar to appetizers or tapas), fruits, and desserts, etc.
The hospitality for which the region is renowned obligates the host or hostess to ply their guests with course after course of food until you are stuffed to the point where you simply cannot eat one bite more.
When entertaining guests, they pull out all the stops, so that as a visitor to a typical Greek home you’ll often encounter a table almost groaning from the sheer weight of the platters of different grilled and stewed meat dishes, pasta and meat casseroles, meat and vegetable casseroles, stuffed grape leaves and zucchinis, small plate “meze” offerings (similar to appetizers or tapas), fruits, and desserts, etc.
The hospitality for which the region is renowned obligates the host or hostess to ply their guests with course after course of food until you are stuffed to the point where you simply cannot eat one bite more.
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