Promoting Greek food.
When Maria Benardis sees Greek salad on a menu, she wants more information.
“Every region in Greece has its own salad,” said Benardis, whose latest cookbook shares stories and regional recipes from throughout Greece, including a dozen salad recipes from Crete and Kalamata to Santorini.
Benardis grew up on the Greek island of Psara cooking with her grandmother. They had no electricity but had plentiful produce and fish for every meal. She grew up, moved to Australia and built a career in accounting. She became dissatisfied with the business world, faced some health issues and began blogging about the thing she loved most: Greek cooking. She opened the first Greek cookery school in Australia in 2007. Looking for a change, in 2014 Benardis moved to New York City where she now does personal catering, teaches cooking classes and continues to blog at greekalicious.nyc .
Through family stories, recipes and Greek history, Benardis digs into regional recipes in the modern kitchen with “My Greek Family Table: Fresh, Regional Recipes” (Countryman Press), in stores May 16. A shorter predecessor to this book (without the stories or regional emphasis) was published in Australia in 2009.
Q. What’s your background? How did you get started teaching Greek cooking?
A. I’ve always been in love with food and the history and wisdom. I was raised on the Greek island of Psara. We had no electricity, no flushing toilets, so our connection to the land was really important. We had to grow everything. It started there and learning to cook with my grandmother.
My aha moment that this is what I was meant to be here for happened in 2004 on a Greek island. I was really unhappy in the corporate world, I was making rich people become even more rich with their tax returns. I wanted to help a majority of people. I was overcome with love in this little church, call it the universe, it said do what you always loved, which is cooking great food.
The next thing I know, I get back on the plane (home) to Australia. I rang some high-profile chefs, including Neil Perry, who has written over 20 books and does menus for Qantas airlines. I said I have no experience other than with my grandmother and aunts, but this is the career I want to embark on. Can you give me a chance? I’d like to come work in your kitchen.
Perry said yes. I did that, then wanted to go and teach, not be behind the scenes. I opened the first Greek cookery school in Australia in 2007.
Q. What are some ingredients that are regional and might be hard to get outside Greece?
A. With the internet, we can now get every single ingredient due to Amazon. To my great surprise, you can even get the specific Greek chewing gum, all you have to do is type “mastic.”
The things that I always bring back in my suitcase, I always bring back Mastic, the Greek healing gum, and wild oregano. When we go up to the mountains where the goats are the only ones, we gather it with my family. It has a story attached to it.
Q. Are there misconceptions about Greek cooking?
A. Oh yes. The first thing I did when I landed in New York was to try all the great restaurants. I aimed for the top 20. I noticed a mis-education at the restaurant level, and they were doing a lot of things very well, but a lot were done badly as well.
Things were mislabeled on the menus. I kept seeing this term “Greek salad,” but Crete has its own salad. Mykonos has its own salad. Kalamata has its own salad. I’m not understanding, which region is it from? Everyone was using “Greek salad,” but no one knew what they were making. There was an education gap. There is no creativity or regional dishes.
Q. What was the starting point for this cookbook?
A. It started in 2004. The most important thing was to document recipes and more. I discovered that everyone was writing just recipes and little snippets about them, but no one was covering recipes from ancient Greece or the ingredients like the healing chewing gum from Greece.
I felt like the Greek cuisine was not represented properly, and people were missing out. There are many more dishes than moussaka and tzatziki.
Q. What defines your cooking philosophy?
A. It can be summed up in agapi, which we say in Greek is unconditional love. It is the only word in the world that doesn’t mean love, it means unconditional love.
Q. When it comes to ingredients like feta cheese, what do you want people to know?
A. I’m not sure people are aware, there are a lot of ingredients that have a protection of origin. For example, Parmesan cheese can only be made by Italy. Brie can only be made by France. Feta can only be made by Greece. It is illegal in the European Union to label it as feta otherwise, they must call it white cheese.
We don’t have those same labels in America. If you’re going to buy feta, buy Greek because I know the standards and the milks used. For example, the real Greek feta is made with goat and sheep milk. There are no cows in Greece, so there is no cow’s milk.
Q. If you could teach only one Greek recipe, what would it be?
A. Pies. The reason I say that is pie making originates in Greece. … Pies are one of the simplest dishes to make. There are seafood pies, tomato pies, you can recycle anything in the fridge, any leftover, into a pie, and it has origins in ancient Greece.