The Bottom Line
Pros
- Fascinating and authentic bi-lingual cookbook (Greek and English)
- Filled with unusual recipes and methods of preparation, all described in detail.
- Enhanced with poetry
- A great restaurant of the same name
Cons
- Some ingredients will be hard to find outside Greece or Crete - baby snails?
Description
- The book is divided into chapters each detailing an area of Greek cookery.
- It's richly illustrated with photos.
- Some Greek online booksellers offer it, but your best bet is to order it directly.
- Katerina also offers special guided "foodie" trips throughout the year - contact her for details.
Guide Review - Logari
I have to confess, I come to this book review already prejudiced. I bought this book at 4am after having experienced what the author could do in the kitchen, throwing together, with apparent ease, a sudden feast for a dozen Cretan musicians at her culinary school in the center of Crete.It was midnight when we arrived for dinner, with a silvery full moon bouncing off clouds that looked like Zeus Asterios and Europa reclining in the sky. Katerina Hamilaki greeted us from the second-story balcony, where a hammock was slung between two posts and candle lanterns provided the illumination. A few guests had already arrived, and the local kokkino krasi -red wine- was flowing.
Inside, in the dining room near the traditional rounded fireplace in the corner, a table was set with gleaming glassware and plates. The fare was simple - masses of cooked snails, piles of stuffed vine leaves (call them grape leaves and be stared at blankly), a huge sparkling-fresh salad dressed with local olive oil, then boiled lamb and rice, one of the classic dishes of Crete. All were dishes I'd had many times before, but never prepared with such simple, potent flavors. The chef was not some wizened black-clad widow but a slim sophisticated woman who had lived in the village of all of her life, and who now devotes herself to preserving the rites of Cretan cooking.
Logari
Katalagari, Municipality of Nikos Kazantzakis
70100 Heraklion
Crete, Greece
Telephone: 30 281 0752 808; mobile +30 694 4662 840
