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.
This is the first time that Vasso, from Selia, a village in the wild mountains of Southern Crete but who had lived in Wimbledon for over 40 years, has ever revealed the secrets of these recipes, handed down and adapted through the generations.
In this book, written with her youngest daughter, Eva, and her daughter-in-law, Sarah, Vasso 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 delightfully 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.