All of Greece on a platter – an endlessly comforting cuisine

author: Gianna Balafouti, food journalist

All of Greece on a platter is a project that appears to be in a decades-long dialogue with what we now call international culinary trends.

All of Greece on a platter is the result of how Greeks traditionally cooked, to feed all who lived and passed through the country. Recipes are created based on available ingredients and what is in season throughout the year. This is why it seems simple, but never slap-dash or hastily made.

After all, seasonality is not a choice but a fact. Every season has its own recipes, based on what is available, as has been the case traditionally. Seasonal cooking, as it’s known nowadays, has always been part of Greek everyday life, influencing our dietary choices and ultimately how we live our day to day lives.

Sharing is also a deeply embedded part of Greece’s dietary culture. It includes treats, gifted morsels, or meze in the middle of tables just in case someone feels peckish. It features recipes that do not just address necessity, but serve as a welcome for unexpected guests. What people worldwide call sharing food, Greeks intuitively consider an act of hospitality.

Dishes often function as maps, because Greek cuisine might be uniform, but Greece itself is stunningly diverse. Its mountains, seas, islands, and plains all have their own products, and as a result, each place has its own recipes and techniques. What people today call regional cuisine, Greeks simply experience as the result of the country’s diverse landscape (localization).

Nevertheless, Greece’s cuisine is far from monolithic or isolated. On the contrary, it was shaped through population movements, exchanges, additions and adjustments. That’s why Greek cuisine is actually a plethora of cuisines that learned to coexist: legumes with spices, olive oil and butter, meats and greens, seafood and pasta, pies with greens or anything else found by foraging. In Greece, what people worldwide call multicultural cuisine developed due to historical events and necessity.

As a result, Greek food is effortlessly comforting. It is accessible, familiar, unassuming. Comfort food elsewhere, a way of life here in Greece.

All of Greece on a platter is, ultimately, a practical means of organising life around food so as to cover needs, share resources, and get through the day. It developed for functionality, which is probably why it has the unique ability to turn “me” into “us”.