George's Greek Cooking
Real Recipes and Culture
Overview
This page talks about the overview and information about the project
The project that I will be focussing on is Greek cuisine and how simple ingredients make a meal mouth-watering and can wake your senses. Greek food has reputation for being heart healthy with its heavy use of oil, fresh fish, lean meats, vegetable, herbs and grains. Greeks are known for having small meals like Mezze. When we have family functions, we have small mezze on the table. What this means small meals but a bigger variety.
My aim for this project is to invite the classroom into my Yiayia’s kitchen via video and through the video show the classroom and teachers how simple it is to cook Greek cuisine using healthy ingredients and traditional herbs.
The meals I have chosen are:
1.Spanakopita
2. Gemista
3. Fasolakia
4.Souvlaki
5. Tzastiki
Bletas Cooking
About Greek Culture
Greece's culinary traditions go back thousands of years and have evolved into famous dishes we know today, over the years Greece and its traditional foods have not only evolved overtime but have been absorbed by diverse influences. Some very famous traditional Greek foods have been known to have Turkish, Persian and Arabic roots. While Greek cooking has influenced and been infleunced by other cultures, as have cuisines of most countries. All of those countries, Greece has been foremost in the ranks of having "Fusion" cusines which is easliy tracked back past 350 B.C.
About me
My name is George, I am 15 years old and was born in Melbourne, Victoria in 2005. I love to cook in my spare time when I'm not playing soccer. Some of my favourite things to cook is Greek souvlaki and tzatziki. A lot of my experience and influence to cook is mostly from my mum and my yiayia which are professionals at making any type of Greek food.
Greek Traditional Cuisines
These are the 5 Greek cuisines I have made, all the pictures provided I have made personally and I will list recipes and a background of them.
Hope you enjoy.
Souvlaki
Souvlaki, we have all had one. Souvlaki is a very traditional Greek dish and is known worldwide, it is also one of the most popular foods in the world. Gyros is what souvlaki is called as its the traditional way. Souvlakia was invented in the early 1960's and late 1950's, the first Greek souvlaki shop opened up in Livadi, 1951.
The recipe for making a souvlaki consists of, lamb, chicken or pork, tomatoes, tzatzki, lettuce, onion, chips, pita bread and in some cases feta.
-Pita bread
-Lamb, Chicken or Pork
-Lettuce
-Pepper
-Tzatzki
-Onion
-Tomato
Reviews (real reviews)
Alex: Honestly this has to be one of the best homemade souvlaki I have ever had, the gyro was cooked perfect and was lovely. Fantastic job!
Johnny: Bravo Levandi. This was a great souvlaki and dinner, very good work.
Vasili: To be honest this was a nice souvlaki but for me the gyro pita bread was too crispy.
Tzatzki
Tzatzki, one of the most used sauces in Greek culture, every Greek has this with their meals and is the heart of it all. Tzatzki is a Greek dip or sauce that has been considered Greek but has Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish roots. The sauce was made around 300 B.C. in the Sparta era, the Ottomans have also got some roots in the cuisine but is misunderstood as being Greek.
The recipe of making Tzatzki is very simple consisting of garlic, Greek yoghurt, shredded cucumber skin, olive oil, salt and in some cases olives on top.
-Greek yohgurt
-garlic
-Cucumber skins
-Olive oil
-Salt
Reviews
Alex: This tzatziki is very good to be honest, for home made it was very good, nice and smooth with not too much garlic I liked it, good work.
Johnny: I like this dip, very well mixed with the cucumber.
Vasili: It had to be one of the best homemade dips I’ve had and it had the perfect amount of everything
Gemista (Yemista)
Gemista or stuffed peppers is traditional Greek dish that has Spanish roots but, is mostly known and originated in the mediterranean area. Gemista was very popular after WW1 when the Greeks escaped from Turkey in the Greek-Turkish war.
The recipe for Gemista or the Greek way (Yemista) consists of gutted tomato or peppers, meat such as beef, rice and in some cases cheese.
-Bell peper, tomato, eggplant or potato (gutted)
-Rice
-Ground meat
-Onion
-Olive oil
-Black peper
-Garlic
-Tomato paste
-Courgette
-Parsley
Reviews
Alex: The gemista was beautiful very flavourful and the rice with the meat was a perfect combo.
Johnny: Honestly, I enjoyed every bit of that meal, all the ingredients were mixed well in the vegies with the meat was sensational.
Vasili: I do like gemista but this one for me wasn't cooked all the way through and the meat wasn't fully hot but it was ok.
Fasolakia
Fasolakia or green beans is a traditional Greek food usually made in the winter when its cold because its a nice hot meal to enjoy. Fasolakia was invented in the 1900's and has been a very common Greek dinner in alot of Greek households, it is not only easy to make but very tasty with string beans and potatos.
The recipe for fasolakia is straight forward and here are listed the main ingredients.
-Green beans (mostly used)
-White potato
-Zucchini
-Tomato sauce
-Olive oil
Reviews:
Alex: This cuisine was so yummy and the beans were perfect, love it!
Johnny: This fasolatha was great levandi the sauce was good and it wasn't salty perfect.
Vasili: To be honest it was really good, the potato was cooked so when I cut it open it was nice and soft but also tasted nice, good job.
Spanakopita
Spanakopita, one of the most popular and known cuisines in the world. Spanakopita is a cheese pie or a cheese and spinach pie which is almost perfect for any weather. This delicious food was invented around 400 years ago and is similar to the Turkish dish known as ispanakli. To be one of the most popular Greek food, it is very simple to make at home
The reipe for this amazing dish is very simple and only requires the ingrdients listed below.
-Spinach
-Feta
-Ricotta
-Filo
-Egg
-Dill
-Onion
-Butter
-Garlic
Reviews:
Alex: This was one of the best spanakopitas I have had, so much better then the ones I used to get at my local Psarakos Market.
Johnny: Very nice cheese used in this, I enjoyed it so much, the smooth filo on top was perfectly cooked!
Vasili: This was an ok dish for me, I'm not a fan of it but it was decent.
Interview With Panayiota
In this interview with Panayiota, we get into 9 questions with Panayiota and it was very interesting.
Down below is the interview, hope you enjoy.
Journal
The build up
I enjoy flavoursome foods and really enjoy eating. I began to research the Greek cuisine in the hope I can give it justice as I believe it is one of the best cuisines throughout the world. When I began the research, I started to get a little nervous and anxious as I was out of my comfort zone because my first love is soccer. Researching soccer would not have been a chore.
I avoided the work for about 2 weeks, looking at it but really getting any traction on it because I was trying to wish it to be soccer. My mum put the cracker under me, and I started to work on it and whilst researching I discovered a whole heap of things.
Before COVID we use to have dinner at my Yiayia’s house at least once a week. Her food is amazing, and I do miss it. I started to plan how I was going to achieve all these meals and what part of the project my Yiayia can play in making it spectacular. As Greek food is something, I grew up with this gave me a great advantage.
I first though maybe test tasting or sampling at school. I thought I could bring some sample foods in for my friends and classmates to ty and I could get their reviews and add these to my website. As of course weeks went by and going into the holidays with lockdown still put on us, it was very hard to involve my Yiayia to help me make the videos as she was paranoid (due to corona) and unable to come over and help with my tutorials, but in the end I decided to write down the recipes over the phone and attempt to make some traditional food on camera.
Then with the restrictions reintroduced I had to change direction and I asked my mother if she could help me cook some of the meals and be part of the interview. Asking my mother to cook and show me how to cook these meals was fun at times and at other times I was bored. There was too much to remember and I think some of the foods that I took for granted took longer to prepare than I thought. I took step by step photos as my mother didn’t want to be in a video. My mum is no nonsense and at times I could see my mum becoming frustrated with me and how I took so long to do things.
Cooking the traditional meals, I could see why the Greek cuisine has been voted the best. For all our recipes we used olive oil. The olive oil we have imported from my parent olive grove in Kalamata. The oregano from our garden that my mum had planted during the year. The olives were from our olive trees in our backyard that my Yiayia prepared. I felt a sense of pride, I am proud to be Greek and I am proud that my parent’s generation are still following their parents’ footsteps when it comes to cooking. I think my love for food has increased and I would like to get more involved in the cooking at home, however this is something I don’t think I will be telling my mum.
After the research I started to transfer the information on the WIX website to pull it together I started to get very frustrated and a little anxious as I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. I spent hours and hours on it and I finished it in the end. I’m proud of my achievement and I am also proud that I got out of my comfort space and did something very different.
