Cookbook Survivor: Maria Elia, Smashing Plates: Greek Flavors Redefined
Saturday's Child Works Hard for a Living
This is a book that maybe deserves its place on the shelf for a couple of really great ideas that I’ve already cooked. Top among them is using fig leaves in a number of recipes, which works surprisingly well. (It works, however, only if you own a fig tree, because you are never ever going to find them anywhere for sale.) There’s a few other stand-out recipes in the book, such as gnocchi with black olives.
On the whole, though, it sort of disappoints me every time I look through it. Some of the recipes really seem to me to amount to “cook lamb chops as you would if you know how to do that and then make a nice tzatziki sauce on the side”. Ok. It’s a fine idea but sort of pedestrian and obvious and not really a “redefinition” of Greek flavors. Or “octopus: buy it and grill it!” Ok! I like that, but…I know how to do that already. I was honestly kind of hoping for a really inventive twist on moussaka, pastichio, stifado and so on, and what there is like that is mostly pretty standard, or so it feels to me. (There’s a tomato stuffed with moussaka, and a stifado recipe, so some of the classics are there in some form.) Or something that infuses other Mediterranean dishes into Greek cuisine, or maybe something that really does a deep dive into regional Greek cuisines. I don’t know.
On the other hand, it’s a nice book to look at, the recipes are easy to find and think about, and there’s a fair amount that really does do something clever technically or that modestly tries to freshen up Greek cuisine. I suppose part of the problem I have with the book is the way it’s hyped in the blurbs and was described by some of the reviewers as dramatically shaking up or revising Greek cuisine—it just feels oversold in that respect.
One other thing that did occur to me is that Greek cuisine might be the rare thing in foodie culture where some of the specialized items have become harder to find over time. I used to see tarama fish roe even in relatively mainstream supermarkets, but I haven’t seen it anywhere in a decade. I used to see loukaniko sausage too and I haven’t seen that either outside of really specialized butcheries. It’s sometimes a bit of a chore to find phyllo dough, even. Maybe it’s different somewhere else in the Mid-Atlantic or the Northeast?
Anyway, I’m not going to do the few recipes in the book that I know I liked, that’s cheating. I’m going to try some recipes I might not ordinarily go for: a small batch of a cauliflower soup, some pickled chicken (that’s already made, since it takes 24 hours), and a braised pork belly.