Summer is around the corner, and with many vegetables and fruit coming into season, we will start to venture outdoors to enjoy the sun a bit more. While the Greeks might share our love of the outdoors, Australians are more barbecue prone given that most have backyards, while in Greece they eat out or at home on their veranda. But I’m not going to compare summers in this article as both countries have their share of hot weather and outdoor living. Instead I’m going to concentrate on lots of summer recipes.

We come to Australia from a country that encompasses one of the world’s best and healthiest dietary cultures. We have come to settle in a country that over the decades has embraced the cuisine of its Mediterranean migrants; Italian, Greek, Spanish and Middle Eastern. Australia was able to do this because of its climate, as people were also able to grow the products for these cuisines. I must not miss the contribution and the dynamism of the market gardens that the Chinese set up and they were the first to do so, but this article is about Greek food.

We are blessed to be able to have in Australia all that was left behind in Greece and more. We have the tropics that give us an abundance of produce that we could never get in Greece. Try mangos in Greece, imported from North Africa or Israel – tasteless and hard as a rock. Bananas are there but are few and very expensive because, again, they’re mostly imported except for a small crop from Crete, which is not worth talking about.

These days we can get all the best olive oils from Greece and other products to make our Greek dishes. We have a multitude of Greek shops stocking commercially-packed products from Greece to accompany the vegetables and fruit for making authentic Greek dishes.

There is one difference: Greece has volcanic soil and for this and only reason the food from the earth tastes better than the equivalent in Australia. I’m told that grown produce tastes better in New Zealand than here, and again, we have earth that has a different mineral consistency. But any good vegetable can be cooked in ways that make it delicious.

In Greece today there is resurgence of traditional Greek food. Culinary studies have been set up in universities and there is also a movement towards making the old into ‘new’, with young and innovative chefs creating amazing dishes from traditional recipes.

In Australia, some of our best chefs will be tweaking their menus to make use of the abundance of summer produce, and retiring the winter produce that is on the out.

Here are some summer products to look out for:
Berries (blueberries, blackberries, cherries, raspberries, strawberries)
Peaches
Oranges
Melons (rockmelon, watermelon, honeydew)
Plums
Nectarines
Capsicums
Tomatoes
Zucchini
Turnips
Chillies
Celery
Beans

If you want to contact Dora, email dora@neoskosmos.com.au with recipe suggestions – Kali orexi!