A HEARTY FEAST FOR MODERN GREEK TABLE
Meals a blend of different ingredients, stories and legends, chef says
What constitutes a dish’s Greekness? Chef and food writer Theo A. Michaels, raised on Greek Cypriot food in London, has given this question due consideration.
The answer, he says, isn’t as simple as a collection of core components: A perfunctory hunk of feta, healthy squeeze of lemon juice or generous glug of olive oil.
“It’s almost one of those unanswerable questions, really,” says the author, who rose to culinary fame as a Masterchef 2014 semifinalist. “I thought, what makes something Greek or Cypriot? Is it ingredients? And you could argue that. Why is a Greek salad a Greek salad and not an Italian salad? There’s feta on it, but is that really all? Ultimately, it comes from the heart and the soul; that’s what makes something Greek.”
His third cookbook, Orexi! (Ryland Peters & Small, 2019), is an amalgam of the classic and modern. Dishes from his family table sit alongside those inspired by his travels around the world.
He describes his food philosophy as springing from his mother’s experience of Cypriot village life. Homegrown produce was paramount. While some of the recipes in the book will be recognizable, others — inspired by “simple village food” — are lesser known outside of the Greek Cypriot community.
“I wanted to champion Greek food,” says Michaels. “There’s so much more that’s sitting on the Greek family’s kitchen table that people don’t experience when they go to the local Greek restaurant.
“There are so many different ingredients, flavours, combinations, dishes, stories and legends wrapped around those dishes that I didn’t feel were really mainstream at all.”
Famously healthful — with its focus on vegetables, fruit, seafood, legumes, grains and olive oil — there’s a characteristic abundance and generosity that’s inseparable from the dishes themselves.
“If you sat down to a Greek meal and it was very sparse, you’d go, ‘This doesn’t feel Greek to me.’ The dishes are there but where’s the opulence?” Michaels says with a laugh. “Where’s the hospitality? Double everything and then it will feel like it’s a Greek meal.”
Recipes excerpted from Orexi! by Theo A. Michaels, published by Ryland Peters & Small