Recipe collections

Athens mess, or Eton mess goes to Greece: fresh blueberries and strawberries, lightly whipped cream and filo pastry brittle. You’ll never want the Eton version again!

Fresh cucumbers with feta cheese and honey are a minimalist version of Greek salad and all the better for skipping tomatoes – mainly for your digestion.

Feta saganaki with caramelised figs. Saganaki is a Greek dish of anything cooked and served in a small skillet, cheese saganaki the most popular.

Greek lamb, spinach and feta filo pastry pie, using leftover roast lamb, is better than the original roast.

Halloumi burgers with roasted pepper, aubergine and onion. I love the cheese. Gorgeously rubbery, gooey but not dissolving, tasting of nothing much at all, it must be the mother of processed cheese. I bet the founders of Kraft Foods were Cypriots.

Koulourakia are Greek Easter cookies, flavoured with mahlep and coiled into twisty shapes. This traditional recipe uses ammonia as raising agent and exotic mahlep spice, which can be replaced with ground cardamom and fennel seed.

Greek style lamb koftas served with a simple harissa dip. Lamb koftas are perfect for a barbecue and just as tasty griddled, with this easy recipe for koftas and harissa sauce.

Baked yellow courgettes stuffed with minced lamb and tomatoes, topped with grated cheese. Large yellow courgettes are perfect for baking, and much easier to fill with stuffing than the green ones.

Classic Greek moussaka with potato slices and minced lamb and beef meat sauce. I love moussaka – my weakness for minced meat reveals itself in all kinds of dishes, moussaka (non-veggie) included.

Greek pork gyros served with tzatziki and pita bread. Another street dish impossible to replicate at home? Wrong: you can cook it in the oven.

Roasted Mediterranean vegetable mix with a topping of crumbled feta and toasted pine nuts. It’s vegetarian, it’s wholesome and it’s healthy.

Spanakopita, Greek spinach pie wrapped in filo pastry. Pies are a whole skills set; unless you call meat covered with puff pastry a pie (don’t). Pie needs a bottom as well as the hat and they both should be crusty, not soggy.

Watermelon and feta salad is the simplest summery perfection, the salty-sweet combo in the most refreshing form. Whole or half a watermelon is really easy to prepare and much better value than prepacked tubs.

Whipped feta and hazelnut dip is heavenly spooned on cherry tomato halves. Snacking does not get much healthier than this!