Megali Sarakosti (Μεγάλη Σαρακοστή) is the 40-day period of Lent before Greek Easter, running from “Clean Monday” to Easter Sunday. The fasting rules prohibit consumption of any kind of meat or animal-derived products like dairy and eggs. Fish is not allowed either (with a few exceptions), but bloodless seafood like crustaceans, shellfish, fish roe, calamari and octopus are fair game. What always fascinated me is the fact that in Greek folk tradition, Sarakosti is personified as a woman, named Kyra Sarakosti (Mrs. Sarakosti), often made out of paper (still a common activity in schools – my son Apollo loves drawing her!), but also sometimes out of felt or even a basic dough.

We recently spoke to Betty Liu about her new cookbook, My Shanghai (Harper Design, March 2021), which spotlights the home-style Shanghainese food she grew up eating. Organized by season, this handsome volume takes readers through a year in the Shanghai culinary calendar, with flavorful, deeply personal recipes that are daily fare for Betty and her family. It also provides a thorough introduction to the ingredients at the heart of the region’s cuisine and illuminates the area’s diverse communities and their food rituals. Betty has been sharing recipes since 2015 on her award-winning blog bettysliu.com and worked as a food photographer – her talent is on display in My Shanghai, for which she did the styling and photography.

Like Greek Easter, the Monday after Carnival Sunday is a moveable holiday – this year it falls on March 15. Known as Kathara Deftera (Καθαρά Δευτέρα), which translates as “Clean Monday,” this day marks the official commencement of the forty days of fasting before Easter, called Sarakosti (Σαρακοστή) in Greece but more generally known as Lent. (Clean Monday is celebrated exactly 48 days before Easter Sunday.) This Christian celebration is traced back to the Byzantine period. The day was named Kathara Deftera because it was (and still is) a time for cleansing, both of body and soul. It also calls for literal cleaning: For example, on the morning of Clean Monday, people traditionally washed their pots and pans using hot ash water and dyed their pavements white, practices that are less common nowadays.

The commencement of Greek carnival (καρναβάλι), also called Apokries (απόκριες), begins a three-week period during which almost anything goes: feasting, dancing, singing and freedoms of all sorts. Apokries has the same meaning as its Latin counterpart, Carnival, which translates roughly as “farewell to meat” – these are the last days of eating meat before Lent, or Sarakosti, the 40 days of fasting before Easter Sunday, begins. It’s a celebration deeply rooted in ancient Greece, primarily the celebration of Anthesteria, an important festivity that took place during the same season and was particularly big in ancient Athens. Dedicated to the god Dionysus, it was both a joyous occasion of non-stop revelry and also a commemoration of the dead, whom they believed joined the world of the living on these days.

“A proper Rum house has to have everything,” a venerable chef once told me in Greek, the language that we have proudly spoken within our Istanbul community for more than 2,000 years. “Spoon sweets, lakerda, pickles, liqueurs…” He then puckered his grey mustache and switched into Turkish: “Olmazsa olmaz,” which is best translated by the Latin phrase sine qua non. Many of these essential culinary preparations appear in my novel, A Recipe for Daphne, which is both a love story and a meditation on the past and future of the community. But just who are the Istanbul Rums? The thoughts of my novel’s main character, Fanis, explain the term best.

This is the season when almond trees blossom in Greece. They usually begin blooming in January, unless the winter is colder than normal, in which case you start seeing the flowers later, in mid-February. The dreamy white-pink blossoms resemble those of the cherry tree and can be found in abundance in most parts of Greece, especially in the south, including Athens and its wider region of Attica, and on the islands. Believed to originate in Western and Central Asia, almonds were widely produced and used in ancient Greece dating back to at least the 3rd century BC, according to historians. The nut was highly valued for its medicinal properties (Hippocrates made use of it in remedies).

This is a day to do nothing. After a week of working from home, I’m facing another weekend of lockdown. Our restaurants are closed, and so are the bars – nowhere to get a drink. It’s raining outside, and I realize that I have chosen the wrong book to read: “The Winter of Our Discontent” by John Steinbeck makes the pandemic numbers even more difficult to bear. I open my computer and scan the news. Stopping to read an article about the selection of the year’s best Port wine, I remember that, yes, January 27 was declared International Port Day – a day for the world to celebrate this fortified vinho – a decade or so ago by the Center for Wine Origins, an organization in Washington D.C. At this point in time, I’ll take any reason to celebrate.

When a tourist thinks of Greek cuisine, despite its vast richness, there are usually certain stereotypical dishes that come to mind: Greek salad, souvlaki, creamy tzatziki and, perhaps above all, moussaka, a hearty baked dish with layers of eggplant and meat sauce, all topped with a creamy, cheesy béchamel sauce. To be honest, I often feel ashamed of the moussaka that most tourist restaurants around Greece serve to visitors. It’s heavy, oily and usually nothing like the real deal. I hardly ever order moussaka at a restaurant unless I have total trust in the place. Like many other Greeks I know, moussaka is a dish I mostly enjoy cooking and eating at home.

We recently spoke to Marianna Leivaditaki about her cookbook, “Aegean: Recipes from the Mountains to the Sea” (Kyle Books, September 2020), which delves into the cuisine of Crete, the largest island in Greece and one of its most distinct. Marianna grew up on Crete, where her father was a fisherman and her mother ran the family’s restaurant, before later settling in the UK – she’s now the head chef at Morito Hackney Road in London. A skilled storyteller, she weaves an enveloping portrait of life on the island, which is simple but simultaneously rich, and presents its cuisine through a personal lens. The end result is a transporting love letter to Crete, an island with so much to give.

Greek stifado is a special dish: It requires time to prepare but the result is succulent, rewarding and stomach-warming, like stews ought to be. Tender, juicy chunks of meat are patiently cooked at low heat amid a sea of small pearl onions in a rich red wine sauce flavored with warming spices and herbs, like allspice, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and rosemary, that I tend to associate more with the winter season. By the end, the onions go glossy and caramelized in this delicious sauce and the pieces of meat are fork tender. The word stifado derives from the ancient Greek word tyfos (τύφος), which means steam. This is the root for the Latin word estufare, from which the Italian stufato (or Venetian stufado), the Italian word for stew, was born.

Pies, both sweet and savory, are an essential component of the Greek cuisine. Each region in the country usually has several different takes on pita (πίτα, or pie, the plural being πίτες, or pites), which is enclosed either in pastry, most commonly phyllo, or using a different method that bypasses pastry altogether. Besides the fillings, the variation in pie recipes around Greece mostly comes down to the kinds of phyllo used: its ingredients and the technique of rolling it out. Then there’s also the question of how the phyllo is assembled or wrapped around the filling, before the pie is finally baked, fried or even grilled.

We recently spoke to Mely Martínez about her cookbook, “The Mexican Home Kitchen” (Rock Point, September 2020), which compiles the traditional home-style dishes that feed Mexican families day in and day out. These include comforting foods like caldo de pollo and carne con papas, celebratory recipes like mole poblano and pastel de cumpleaños, and classics like tamales and pozole, as well as basics like corn and flour tortillas, salsas, rice, and beans. Mely is best known for her popular blog, Mexico in My Kitchen, which she started in 2008 for her teenage son, hoping that someday he will use it to recreate the Mexican food his mom made for the family. Although born and raised in the city of Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mely has traveled to most states in Mexico and lived in several of them.

It used to be the only favors I asked of Helena Bedwell were for phone numbers of particular officials I could not otherwise get from my usual sources. Helena, a journalist for 25 years, knows everyone in Tbilisi. Then last week, I called her for some help of a more domestic kind: I wanted to learn how to cook a Georgian holiday dish. She offered to show me pelamushi, a voluptuous tooth-smacking porridge. A couple of years ago, the Georgian journalist published her first cookbook, “Georgian Flavors from Helena,” a homey, straightforward collection of her take on classic Georgian recipes designed for “busy and on-the-go” people like her who may be abroad and want to recreate Georgian dishes with a limited supply of time and ingredients.

In Greece, Epiphany is celebrated on January 6 (some eastern Orthodox churches celebrate it on January 19). To say it’s significant is an understatement: For eastern Christians like the Greeks, the day commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, seen as his manifestation as the son of God. For western Christians, the celebration came to commemorate the visit of the Magi; as a result, the day is also called Three Kings’ Day, often shortened to Kings’ Day. Called Theofania (theos=god + faino=reveal) or commonly Ton Foton (Των Φώτων, which literally translates “Of the Lights”), the celebration revolves around the blessing of waters. The process begins on the day prior, January 5, which is called protagiasi or fotisi.

The presence of bread on the Greek Christmas table is rich with significance: It symbolizes hope for prosperity, an abundant harvest year and good health. The tradition of baking bread for a festive occasion, as well as its many symbolic meanings, can be traced back to ancient times, when many great Mediterranean civilizations associated the cycle of human life with the full life cycle of wheat. It was a belief that embedded deeply in Greek folk culture and has survived over the centuries, ultimately coming to occupy an important place in Christianity. Christopsomo (Christ’s Bread) is a type of traditional Christmas bread prepared all across Greece. The bread itself and the ceremonial nature of preparing it symbolize the prosperity of the household.