This book is devoted to the golden, crispy, crunchy, make-you-feel-good fried foods of Greece. Whether you’re new to Greek food or frying food at home, fresh off a trip to Greece or in the throngs of planning one, or simply looking to expand your cooking repertoire, ‘FRY DAY στην Ελλάδα’ (in Greece) is the book for you!
To author Sharon Brenner, fried food is magic. It’s a cooking technique that completely transforms its subject. Imagine a potato being chosen at the market, meeting its fate as a deliciously roasted potato swimming and shimmering in a sexy shiny pool of olive oil, bedazzled with oregano like it was a music video star. Or a humble bag of flour being totally transformed from blah to banger when it emerges as a ribbon of diples (δίπλες) from the depths of a deep bath of oil, like The Little Mermaid leaving the sea with legs, in awe and wonder of its newfound identity.
It’s this enchantment that drew Sharon to frying food at home, fascinated by the very prospect that she too could conjure up fried delights on demand, craving all the battered, golden, crunchy bites she so deeply enjoys when in Greece. This book is not only for people wanting to learn more about Greek food, it’s also about the cooking technique of frying itself. To anyone who is apprehensive to dip their toes into the figurative hot oil, “I hear you! I was you”.
Making, serving and sharing fried food is exciting, like stumbling upon buried treasure. There’s something truly therapeutic and at the same time, thrilling, about frying food. It’s the calm tempered sound of kalitsounia (καλιτσούνια) bubbling in oil; it’s the exhilaration of watching loukoumades (λουκουμάδες) shape shift from a sticky batter into perfect golden globes ready to be drenched in honey-cinnamon syrup.
Join Sharon on this golden crispy journey through the not so hidden hinterlands of Greek fried food, and together we’ll enjoy the bounty of the country’s many and diverse ways of experiencing the immeasurable joy that frying can bring to your table.
Words, recipes and photography by Sharon Brenner
Design by Bryan Fountain
Printed in Athens, Greece
