Greece cooking classes are hands-on lessons in Greek home cooking, held in Athens and on Crete, Santorini, Mykonos and Naxos, where the class prepares and eats dishes such as pies, salads and slow-cooked stews. The page is part of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville.
This page covers what Greece cooking classes are, the classes place by place, the dishes taught, the olive oil, herbs, cheese, bread and pastry used in class, and how classes compare with food tours. Common questions come last. Each section links to the Greece Ville posts on single tours.
What are Greece cooking classes?
Greece cooking classes are hands-on lessons in which a local cook teaches visitors to prepare Greek dishes from raw ingredients, covering a national cuisine that runs from Cretan salads to Ionian recipes with Italian influence and filo pies from the north-west.
Greek cuisine is the cuisine of Greece and of the Greek diaspora, and it is regional. The Ionian style, called Heptanisiaki, carries a lot of Italian influence, while Cretan and Cypriot cooking each keep a style of their own. Greece cooking classes follow those regional lines.
North-western and central Greece have a strong tradition of filo-based dishes, including special regional pies. Kotopita is a chicken pie, and kimadopita, also called kreatopita, is a ground meat pie. Filo skills therefore carry across the national menu.
Ancient Greek cooking has a long record. Teganites were pancakes of wheat flour, olive oil, honey and curdled milk, served for breakfast. The earliest references to them appear in poems by Cratinus and Magnes from the fifth century BCE.
Byzantine trade brought grains, sugar, livestock, fruits, vegetables and spices into Greek kitchens from abroad. Greece cooking classes therefore join old habits to regional dishes, and the sections below take the main stops one by one.
- Hilos: This porridge is a breakfast dish.
- Galaktopoleia: These dairy shops once sold milk, butter, yogurt, sweets and honey.
- Kimadopita: This ground meat pie is also called kreatopita.
- Teganites: These pancakes mixed wheat flour, olive oil, honey and curdled milk.
The sections below follow the cities and islands where Greece cooking classes run, then the dishes, ingredients and breads that classes teach, and end with a comparison with food tours.
What do Greece cooking classes teach in Athens?
Greece cooking classes in Athens sit in a city with an old food trade, where women sold fruit and other goods in the ancient agora and Plato named the baker Thearion in his dialogue Gorgias as an Athenian novelty.
The Athens cooking class post covers egg-lemon sauce, pulses, clay cookware, kitchen tools, stuffed vegetables and the citrus of the city. This hub places that post among the wider Greece cooking classes.
The ancient agora lies north-west of the Acropolis. In the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, evidence shows women acting as innkeepers and merchants there. Their stock included fruits, so food retail in Athens has a long record.
In Gorgias, Plato calls Thearion the baker an Athenian novelty who sells goods that a household can make. Plato favoured home production over commercial production, so a bread lesson in Athens carries an old argument.
Solon, the Athenian lawmaker of the sixth century BCE, reserved leavened bread for feast days. By the end of the fifth century BCE, leavened bread was sold in the market.
- Breakfast: Ancient breakfast, akratismos, consisted of barley bread soaked in wine, with figs, dates or olives added at times.
- Utensils: Diners used knives for meat and spoons for soups and broths.
- Tables: By the fourth century BCE, tables were round, with animal-shaped legs such as lion’s paws.
- Syssitia: In Crete and Sparta, mandatory shared meals for men and youths were called syssitia.
Athens anchors the first group of Greece cooking classes in this hub. The Athens post gives the detail on method, cookware and ingredients, and the later sections move on to the islands.
How do Greece cooking classes handle Cretan food?
Greece cooking classes in Crete teach a cuisine built on plants, olive oil, herbs, pulses and dairy, one that stayed largely seasonal and lightly processed until the 1960s, when rising living standards shifted eating habits toward more meat.
The Crete cooking class post covers Minoan cooking, the arrival of tomatoes and potatoes, cheese making, barley rusk and wood-fired ovens. Among Greece cooking classes, it shows how much one island teaches.
Cretan cooks followed the seasons and used products from the wider local area with little or no processing. Fruit, pulses, endemic wild herbs and rough cereals made up the core of every meal.
Dairy products arrived on the table daily in low to moderate amounts. Poultry and fish reached the table weekly in moderate amounts. The common dessert was yogurt with fresh fruit, and honey pastries appeared a handful of times a week.
Crete has a rich variety of native herbs, including common sage, rosemary, thyme and oregano. Greece cooking classes on the island therefore start with plants and herbs before meat or fish.
Cretan specialities include hirino me selino, which is pork with celery, and the appetiser list includes raw cardoons. Greece cooking classes also meet xerotigana, a Cretan dessert.
- Pasta: Avgochilos is a Cretan pasta.
- Cheese: Tiromalama is a Cretan cheese.
- Appetisers: Kolokythoanthoi, or courgette flowers, appear on the Cretan appetiser list.
- Sweets: Xerotigana sits on the list of Cretan desserts.
Cretan lessons show how one island turns plants, herbs, dairy and olive oil into a full menu, and the Crete cooking class post above follows the method step by step.
What do Greece cooking classes use on Santorini?
Greece cooking classes on Santorini work with produce shaped by volcanic soil and with the island tomato, a crop so important that Santorini was known as tomato island before a volcanic eruption in 1950, and the island still keeps a museum of that industry.
The Santorini cooking class post covers a cooking lesson on the island. This hub adds the industrial history of the tomato, which sits behind Santorini kitchens.
Dimitros Nomikos established his first tomato processing business in 1915 in Messaria. By 1922, he had built one of the first canneries in the Balkans, at Monolithos.
Nine factories operated on the islands until the late 1950s. During the busiest periods, 3500 baskets of tomatoes were processed each day.
The Santorini tomato had a thin skin, thick flesh and a strong taste. Those qualities suited tomato paste, which is why Greece cooking classes on the island treat the tomato as a local staple.
The Vlychada factory reopened as a museum with digital tools, including holographic fans, augmented reality and speech-to-text support for people who have impaired hearing. Boilers there once generated electricity for tomato paste production.
- Founder: Dimitros Nomikos set up his first business in Messaria in 1915.
- Cannery: The Monolithos plant of 1922 was one of the first canneries in the Balkans.
- Factories: Nine factories worked on the islands until the late 1950s.
- Output: Busy periods processed 3500 baskets of tomatoes each day.
Santorini cooking starts with the tomato and its factory past, and the Santorini post above covers the lesson itself within the wider group of Greece cooking classes.
Where do Greece cooking classes fit on Mykonos?
Greece cooking classes on Mykonos fit an island that moved from trade to tourism, from a harbour that hosted a battle between British and French ships in June 1794 to the French dig on Delos that began in 1873.
The Mykonos cooking class post covers class formats, the setting, the dishes, olive oil, dough, stuffed vegetables, salads, dips and the history behind them. It is the island entry among these Greece cooking classes, and it sits beside the Santorini and Naxos entries.
For almost three centuries Mykonos formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Its system of self-governance had a governor and an appointed council of syndics, which ran local affairs.
In June 1794 the Battle of Mykonos was fought between British and French ships in the main harbour. Trade then faded, and Mykonians left the island to find work on the mainland and abroad.
The French School of Archaeology began work on Delos in 1873, and its excavations helped tourism come to dominate the local economy. Greece cooking classes now belong to that tourist trade.
- Harbour: British and French ships fought the Battle of Mykonos there in June 1794.
- Governance: Ottoman rule gave Mykonos a governor and an appointed council of syndics.
- Delos: The French School of Archaeology began work on the nearby island in 1873.
- Emigration: Mykonians left to find work in mainland Greece and abroad, especially the United States.
Mykonos lessons draw on an island with a trading past, and the Mykonos post above gives the full detail on formats, dishes and the history of each lesson within the wider Greece cooking classes.
What do Greece cooking classes draw on at Naxos?
Greece cooking classes on Naxos draw on a Cycladic island that Herodotus described around 500 BC as the wealthiest Greek island of its day and that dominated commerce in the island group during the eighth and seventh centuries BC.
The Naxos cooking class post covers the villages, potatoes, graviera, slow-cooked dishes, kitron, herbs, honey and the best months. It is the Cyclades entry among these Greece cooking classes.
Naxos dominated commerce in the Cyclades during the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Herodotus later described it as the wealthiest Greek island, so Greece cooking classes on Naxos stand on an old trading base.
In Greek myth, Poseidon was driving his chariot across the sea when he first saw his future wife, the nereid Amphitrite, as she danced on Naxos. The myth gives the island a place in the older stories of the sea.
Homer mentions Dia, the sacred island of the Goddess. The name Dia means heavenly or divine, and it was applied to small islands near larger ones such as Crete or Naxos and later to Naxos itself.
- Date: Herodotus describes Naxos around 500 BC as the wealthiest Greek island.
- Trade: Naxos dominated commerce in the Cyclades in the eighth and seventh centuries BC.
- Myth: In Greek myth, Poseidon first saw the nereid Amphitrite dancing on Naxos.
- Name: Dia means heavenly or divine and became a name for Naxos.
Naxos lessons rest on a wealthy farm and trade island with a long record in myth and commerce, and the Naxos post above covers the island kitchen in full within the wider Greece cooking classes.
Which dishes do Greece cooking classes teach?
Greece cooking classes teach dishes from every part of the Greek repertoire, from soutzoukakia Smyrneika, meatballs with cumin and cinnamon, to potato yachni, skordopsomo garlic bread and the cabbage salad pikantiki, which the Greek kitchen also calls politiki.
The Greek food to try post covers salads, dips, pies, cheeses, mains, sweets, breads and drinks, and it names the dishes a first-time visitor meets. This hub adds dishes that sit outside that list.
Soutzoukakia Smyrneika are oblong beef meatballs made with cumin and cinnamon, then simmered in a rich tomato sauce. Greece cooking classes use them to show how a sauce and a spice mix work together.
Potatoes yachni is a potato stew, made from potatoes simmered in a tomato sauce with onions, garlic, herbs and spices. It is a plain dish that teaches the method of a simple stew.
Pikantiki, also known as politiki, combines white and purple cabbage with pickled Florina peppers, carrot, celery, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, white vinegar, olive oil and salt.
Skordopsomo is garlic bread made from sliced bread, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano and basil. It shows how Greek cooks flavour plain bread.
- Salad: Kaparosalata is a caper salad.
- Fritters: Patatokeftedes are potato fritters.
- Cake: Karpouzopita is a watermelon cake from the island of Milos.
- Figs: Sykomaida is a fig cake from Corfu made with dried figs, ground almonds or walnuts, ouzo, cinnamon, cloves and fennel seeds.
The dishes above show the range that Greece cooking classes cover, from stews and salads to breads and cakes, and the Greek food to try post lists the better-known names.
How do Greece cooking classes use olive oil, herbs and cheese?
Greece cooking classes use olive oil, herbs and cheese as the base ingredients of the Greek kitchen, from oregano and its disputed Greek root to feta curd drained in a cloth bag and kefalotyri, a hard cheese grated over food.
In the medieval Levant, a sharp-tasting green oil called anpeqinon was sometimes extracted from unripe olives and used in cuisine. Greece cooking classes begin with the oil and its long record.
The English word oregano comes from Spanish, which took it from Latin and from Classical Greek. One view holds that the Greek root joins oros, meaning mountain, and ganos, meaning joy, though the origin is disputed.
Country codes printed on an olive oil bottle include GR for Greece and E for Spain. Greece cooking classes read the label as part of choosing the oil.
Oregano is a woody perennial that grows up to 90 centimetres tall. Its flowers are white, pink or light purple, and it is native to the Mediterranean region.
Feta curd is chopped and placed in a mould or a cloth bag that lets the whey drain. After the whey drains, the curd is firm enough to cut up and salt.
- Brine: Feta matures in a brine of 7% salt in water.
- Salt: Feta salinity reaches about 3% before the curds enter the brine.
- Name: Kefalotyri is named for the Greek words for head and cheese.
- Pies: Kefalotyri goes with feta in recipes for spanakopita.
Oil, herbs and cheese appear in every lesson, and Greece cooking classes treat each one as a subject before any dish is started.
What bread and pastry do Greece cooking classes cover?
Greece cooking classes cover bread and pastry that run from ancient wheat and barley loaves to paper-thin filo, a pastry whose Greek name means leaf and whose modern thin form developed in the Ottoman Empire by the fifteenth century.
Filo is a very thin unleavened pastry dough, and makers layer sheets of it brushed with oil or butter before baking. Greece cooking classes that make filo show how thin a sheet of dough can become.
Filo is traditionally rolled with a long, thin rolling pin that Turkish cooks call an oklava. Rolling is the skill that Greece cooking classes use to teach pastry.
The Ottomans prepared paper-thin dough throughout their empire, including the Balkans, where it was known as phyllo. The earliest known use of the word filo in English comes from an American newspaper, the Atlanta Constitution, in 1946.
Baklava appears to be the first dish made of filo. It is a layered pastry dessert of filo with chopped nuts, sweetened with syrup or honey.
In ancient Greece, bread wheat was hard to grow and linked to the upper classes. The poor ate coarse brown breads made from emmer wheat and barley.
- Machine: A practical filo machine appeared in 1971.
- Home oven: Dough loaves were baked at home in a clay oven set on legs.
- Coal method: A simpler method covered a heap of lit coals with a dome-shaped lid.
- Barley: Barley flour was roasted before milling because barley bread was heavy.
Bread and pastry join the earlier sections, and Greece cooking classes use them to show how plain ingredients become the base of a whole menu.
How do Greece cooking classes differ from food tours?
Greece cooking classes differ from food tours because a class teaches a visitor to make dishes at the stove, while a tour moves between shops, bakeries and tavernas to taste dishes that cooks elsewhere have already prepared for the table.
The Greece food tours post covers tastings in Athens, Thessaloniki, Crete, Santorini and Mykonos, along with olive oil, cheese, wine, honey and sweets. It is the tasting counterpart to these Greece cooking classes.
In Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria, meze are small dishes, hot or cold, spicy or savory. They go with spirits such as oghi, ouzo, arak, rakia, raki or grappa.
The word meze is borrowed from Turkish, which took it from the Persian word maze, meaning taste or relish. Melitzanosalata, an eggplant salad, and taramosalata are among the dishes that appear in a meze spread.
In Byzantine Constantinople and Thessaloniki, middle and lower class citizens consumed the offerings of the taverna. The common form of cooking was boiling, which Greece cooking classes still teach as a base method.
- Meze: These small dishes are served hot or cold in Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria.
- Spirits: Meze go with oghi, ouzo, arak, rakia, raki or grappa.
- Cooking: Boiling was the common method of cooking in the Byzantine taverna.
- Sauce: Murri was a fermented barley sauce used as a Byzantine condiment.
A cooking class and a food tour answer different needs in a Greek trip, and travellers who want the method of a dish choose Greece cooking classes while those who want tastings of finished dishes choose the tours.
What do travellers ask about Greece cooking classes?
Greece cooking classes raise questions about soups, seafood, sweets and vegetable dishes, and the answers below draw on the published record of Greek cooking, from youvarlakia and kotosoupa to the cakes and cookies that fill the dessert table in homes.
Which soups do Greece cooking classes cover?
Greece cooking classes cover youvarlakia, a soup of balls of ground meat and rice finished with avgolemono, the creamy egg and lemon sauce. Kotosoupa is chicken soup with root vegetables and rice, while kremidosoupa is onion soup and revithosoupa is chickpea soup. Hortosoupa is a vegetable soup that comes in different versions.
Do Greece cooking classes teach seafood dishes?
Greece cooking classes can teach kalamarakia tiganita, which are fried squid slices served with a lemon wedge. Garides saganaki is sauteed shrimp deglazed with ouzo, then doused in tomato sauce and topped with crumbled feta, Xiphias is a species of swordfish, and another seafood dish is octopus marinated in vinegar.
Which sweets do Greece cooking classes bake?
Greece cooking classes bake giaourtopita, a yogurt cake with syrup, and petimezopita, a grape syrup cake. Moustokouloura are grape must cookies, and korne is a cream-filled puff pastry cone. Stafidopsomo is raisin bread, a plainer item beside the cakes, and sousamopita is a sesame cake with syrup.
Do Greece cooking classes include salads and vegetable dishes?
Greece cooking classes include spanakorizo, a dish of spinach and rice, and agkinares, which is cardoon. Patzarosalata is a beet salad with boiled beet, kounoupidi is a salad with boiled cauliflower, and ampelofasoula is a cowpea salad. Lahanosalata is thinly chopped cabbage with salt, olive oil and lemon or vinegar juice.