Greece and its sun-kissed isles offer a tantalizing cuisine that is fresh and fragrant, served with warmth and vitality. The Greeks' zest for the good life and love of simple, well-seasoned foods is reflected at the table. Theirs is an unpretentious cuisine that makes the most of their surroundings. Turkey, the Middle East, and the Balkans. This land of blue skies and sparkling seas offers a variety of fresh ingredients close at hand.
Olive trees flourish, providing a flavor-packed oil to bathe other foods.
Vineyards thread the rolling hills, and the grape crush and ferment produces excellent wines, some resin-flavored. Fragrant lemon trees produce the golden fruit whose tang pervades Greek gastronomy. The seas are blessed with a variety of fish and shellfish and harbor-side tavernas serve them grilled, baked, and fried and often whole, with the head still on. Lamb is the principal meat served and a holiday festivity calls for ceremoniously spit-roasting a whole carcass out of doors. For everyday meals, lamb is braised and stewed in casseroles with assorted vegetables and skewered and broiled.