Secrets from Yiayia’s Greek Kitchen is a wonderful collection of traditional and modern Greek meze, soups and dip recipes created by Vasso Pylas, the aforementioned Yiayia, Greek for grandmother.
The book was was written with Vasso’s youngest daughter, Eva, and her daughter-in-law, Sarah, a local writer and blogger who started sharing stories about Greek/English family life on her award-nominated blog, Grenglish, in 2011. Since then she has written for SE22 magazine, Red Online, BritMums, TOTS 100, The Huffington Post and, of course, Around Dulwich!
This is the first time that Vasso, originally from Selia, a village in the wild mountains of Southern Crete, has ever revealed the secrets of these recipes, handed down and adapted through the generations.
In this book, she shares her time-honoured recipes for classic Greek dips such as houmous, tzatziki and taramosalata, hearty soups and popular family favourites such as delicious spanakopita, blissfully simple salads and tasty calamari krassato. The stories alongside each recipe take you on a fun journey into her kitchen and family life where you will discover the alluring flavours of authentic Greek cuisine for yourself.
“I’m very happy these recipes are now out there and I hope people will find them easy to follow. After feeding my family for many years, I am looking forward to putting my feet up and letting them now cook for me!” said Vasso.
“We are very lucky to be part of a big family that enjoys nothing more than getting together around the dining table for lots of good wholesome home cooking. Some of our happiest memories are of sharing a meal at Yiayia’s, talking and laughing into the night. We wanted to create this book of recipes so that our own children may also enjoy the food their parents grew up on and we very much hope that our boys will go on to pass them down to their own children too.” said Sarah.
“It was an enormous task to take on,” said Eva. “All the recipes are safely filed in mum’s head and since she measures out her ingredients by sight, it took a long time to get the recipes right. But we had a lot of fun in the process and I really hope people enjoy cooking the recipes as much as we have enjoyed getting them out there.”
The book is available to buy now on Amazon for £7.99.
For more info and recipes please visit www.yiayiaskouzina.co.uk
@yiayiaskouzina
Facebook.com/yiayiaskouzinaltd