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Cooking by the Athens calendar
Six years of Friday recipes from a Pagrati kitchen. Honest restaurant reviews from across the city. Two cookbooks, printed in Halandri.
“I made Marina's spanakopita for my daughter's name day in March and three of my aunts asked for the recipe at the same time. The twelve-sheets-not-thirteen rule is the kind of detail you only get from someone who has actually rolled phyllo a hundred Sundays in a row.”
“Sunday Lunch is the only newsletter I read every week without fail. Marina's review of Diporto sent me there on my last Athens trip and I sat at the same table she described. The lentil soup was exactly what she said it would be.”
“I bought Twelve Months in My Athens Kitchen for my mother who is 73 and has been cooking longer than Marina has been alive. She read the chapter on March from cover to cover and called me to say 'this woman cooks like a person, not a chef.'”
“I followed Marina's neighbourhood guide to Petralona on a Saturday in October and ended up at Oikonomou where she said to sit at the small table by the window. I did. The bekri meze was as good as she promised. I went back twice that month.”
“I cooked Marina's stuffed tomatoes for my mum's 80th birthday in April. She lived in Athens as a young woman in the 1960s and the smell sent her straight back. Marina, you made my mum cry happy tears. Thank you.”