Welcome and thank you for visiting my Greek Fusion Cuisine
Blog. My name is Mary Axiotis aka Mary
Rose-Sellers as I go by for the different websites that I write like Helium.com
and Yahoo!Voices. I am very Greek even
though I lived in the States for most of my life. The idea about creating this blog came to me,
when friends and family raved about my cooking and asked me for my
recipes. As with any Greek cook, I never
follow a cookbook or a recipe. Although
all the recipes you will find here have been prepared and tried on numerous
occasions and not just on holidays.
Fusion cuisine existed for many, many years in Greece, even
before it ever became popular in the United States. Taking Greece’s history one will find out
that Greek cooking influenced many worlds and in return, it adopted a few
culinary ingredients from other countries.
For centuries while Greece was under the Ottomans, Greek cuisine adopted
a plethora of Middle Eastern spices used in their food. When Greek refugees left Turkey, early in the
20th Century and arrived in Northern Greece, many of them brought with
them dishes like keftedes (meatballs), and phyllo based pies like Spanakopita
(spinach pie). There is a French influence
(thus the béchamel sauce that’s used to make moussaka (even though moussaka is Arabic),
and Italian (spaghetti, that’s a very popular dish in Greece).
When I first moved here from Greece, feta cheese was not
easily accessible. I had to improvise when
I wanted to make spinach and cheese pie (spanakotyropita). Therefore, I substituted feta cheese with
cottage cheese and added a bit of salt.
As the years went by and the world markets opened up, feta cheese became
more easily accessible, and now you can buy it in blocks at Costco.
In this Greek Fusion Cuisine blog you will find an array of
Greek dishes, with some Middle Eastern spices, like cumin and nutmeg, and some Italian
influences in a somewhat Americanized way. In all my dishes I use olive oil or extra virgin olive oil especially in salads. Rarely I'll use canola oil, and that only if I need to fry something, which I never really do. I never use soybeans, soybean oil or any soy products in my food. In some cases I also use gluten free ingredients. I hope you will enjoy visiting my blog!