Recipes for Greek Spinach

The Food of Greece
By Vilma Liacouras Chantiles
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The Gourd
By Aristophanes
(448-380 B.C.)

There you shall at mid-winter see
Cucumbers, gourds, grapes and apples,
And wreaths of fragrant violets
Covered with dust, as if in summer.
And the same man will sell you thrushes,
And pears and honey-comb and olives,
Beestings and tripe and summer olives,
And grasshoppers and bullocks’ paunches.
There you may see full baskets packed
With figs and myrtle, crown’d with snow.
There you may see fine pumpkins join’d
To that discovered bond, and mighty turnips,
So that a stranger may well fear
To name the season of the year.

The Marketplace is the Foundation of Greek Cooking

Spinach with Lemon-Oil Dressing

Not much changed at the street market in Athens between the time around 400 B.C., when Aristophanes wrote the poem reprinted to the left, and the early 1970s, when Vilma Liacouras Chantiles, a second generation Greek-American food writer, was a regular visitor.

Grasshoppers were no longer readily available in food markets. And "beestings," the first milking from a cow that has just calved, had dropped out of the everyday diet of Athenians. But otherwise, the color, the aromas, the hustle and bustle and above all the bewildering variety of fruits, vegetables and other food products available at the open-air marketplace was much the same during Chantiles’ culinary sojourns in the Greek Isles.

The marketplace, surviving against the encroachment of supermarkets, forms the backdrop for many of the recipes in the book that came out of Chantiles’ travels: The Food of Greece: Cooking, Folkways and Travel in the Mainland and Islands of Greece, first published in 1975 and reissued in 1997 by Simon & Schuster.

"Impeccably ripe produce and perfectly tender meats are a must, not a fad, in Greece," she wrote. "I remember watching a woman bending over a bin of okra, seriously involved in selecting her vegetables for the day. ‘What do you think of frozen vegetables?’ I asked her. Her spontaneous reply was a wince and a shudder."

Sadly, Chantiles found that supermarkets had spread their influence to a noticeable degree in just the two years between 1971 and 1973. The new edition of the book offers no update on what has become of marketplace since then. But the recipes captured in the book are timeless.

In Greece, the "most traditional year-long salad, changing only with the seasonal crops," consists of boiled or sauted greens dressed with a simple lemon-olive oil sauce, which can be as lemony as you like, she writes. The following recipe calls for spinach, but any of the best, tenderest young greens of the season will serve just as well.

Spinach with Lemon-Oil Dressing

2 pounds fresh spinach
Salt and freshly ground pepper
A few chives, chopped (optional)
1 sprig of fresh mint
Ľ cup olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
Lemon slices for garnish

1. Wash, drain, and trim the spinach. Put in an enameled pan without water, cover, and cook over medium heat until the leaves wilt (this method is called ‘panning’), removing the lid several times during the first 5 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, chives, and mint. Stir with a wooden spoon, then cover and simmer gently 15 to 18 minutes until just tender.

2. Remove from the heat and transfer to a warm serving bowl.

3. Meanwhile, prepare sauce by mixing the oil with the lemon juice, using a fork or wire whisk. Pour the sauce over the spinach and garnish with lemon slices.

NOTE: Here is another delicious style. After heating the spinach until the leaves wilt, saute in a small amount of olive oil or butter with chopped scallions and dill leaves. Serve with fish or cold meats.

Recipes Copyright 1997 Simon and Schuster,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Reprinted with permission