Greek Revival: Cooking for Life
Down-home Greek, even Mediterranean cooking is best experienced as a meat-light peasant diet, embracing olive oil, grains, beans, vegetables, and fruits as its main ingredients. No wonder that public-health professional (and first-time author) Moore-Pastides, Greek by marriage, not only provides 87 authentic recipes but also promotes this healthy way of eating through frequent references to current scientific research. Many of these diet’s benefits are widely recognized, especially protection against heart disease; other features, like the avoidance of highly processed foods and the use of omega-3 fatty acids, are well documented within her text and in the appended references. Each recipe, though simple to follow, doesn’t emulate modern cookbooks in its format; instead, all are written in a narrative, surrounded by the author’s stories of living in Greece and Cyprus. Color photographs and occasional sidebars also help cooks complete dishes successfully, whether a traditional gyros or saganaki or a special-occasion moussaka or tava (slow-cooked lamb stew). A foreword by Dimitrios Trichopoulos, from Harvard School of Public Health, emphasizes the goodness of Greek eats. --Barbara Jacobs