“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.

You would think Sérgio Oliveira, the owner of Conga in Porto and the secret-keeper of its legendary recipe for bifanas, would be tired of the restaurant’s signature dish. But you’d be wrong. “As much as I try not to eat it, I cannot. It is impossible,” he says. "One always eats it; there is no chance not to.” It’s a simple but addictive dish. Pork, cooked all day in a mysterious spicy sauce and stuffed into a piece of bread that looks a bit like a roll– at first glance, it does not seem to impress. But Porto continues to hide the best and tastiest of its secrets in the simplest things in life.

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.