Simplified Greek recipes for spanakopita and pastitsio

Much like its neighboring Italian pastas, many dishes in the Greek canon of cooking require multiple steps and are labor intensive. Georgina Hayden wanted to make the recipes of her childhood more achievable for the rest of us. What resulted is her latest cookbook, Greekish: Everyday Recipes with Greek Roots.

Evan Kleiman: Tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and and a little bit about the travel that your family did.

Georgina Hayden: I was born and raised in London, England, but all my family are from Cyprus, an island in the very end of the Mediterranean Sea that's surrounded by all continents. You've got Africa, the Middle East, Europe. My family are sort of from the Greek side. My grandparents and my dad, they all grew up there and came over to England between the '50s and '70s. Between the four of the grandparents, they set up camp in England, as lots of Greek-Cypriot people did in that time when there was trouble on the island. 

My family, they've all got a food background. My mum's side of the family had a delicatessen where they used to import loads of amazing Greek and Cypriot ingredients. My dad's parents had a restaurant. I was really lucky because the restaurant was around until I was in my teens. Our Greek taverna was basically the heart of our life for most of my childhood, which was a really wonderful way to learn to cook and be part of my heritage. That's where it all started. Actually, my grandparents, who had the restaurant, my grandad only recently passed away, and my granny is still alive, so I still cook with her all the time, which is amazing.

"Greekish: Everyday Recipes with Greek Roots" simplifies classic dishes, cutting down on steps and the number of pans. Photo courtesy of Bloomsbury.

It is amazing. You're so lucky.

I feel very, very blessed. You know, she's wonderful. She's 83 and she lives down the road. She'll call me up and she'll say, "You know," in Greek, because her English is still terrible, even though she's been here for 50 years. She'll say to me, "It's vine leaf season. You must come over. I've got some vine leaves." Or she'll tell me whatever seasonal thing she's doing. I have to be able to carry on the traditions and the recipes. I feel like it's a real honor.

Let's talk about how labor-intensive quite a few Greek dishes are. Can you share with us what some of your favorite revisions are to simplify the process?

I was adamant I wanted to do pastitsio, they call it in Greece. In Cyprus we call it makaronia tou fournou, which very literally translated means "pasta in the oven." Pastitsio is quite a popular dish. It's long pasta, sort of noodle tubes, mixed with a ragu, and then it has a thick white, sort of bechamel white sauce on top. If you know Greek food, you're probably familiar with it. But if you've ever tried to make it yourself, you'll know it's quite labor intensive. You've got a pan for the pasta, a pan for the ragu, a pan for the white sauce. Then you need another dish to bake it in. So I thought, "Come on, I can do this in a pan. One pan!" 

I got myself a really big, deep saucepan, or large, wide frying pan, and I made the ragu, and I made it quite wet so that I could then just cook the pasta directly in the sauce. The lid's on, the pasta is cooked, everything's delicious. Then, instead of a traditional bechamel, which is very delicious but keeping things easy, just mixing up a crème fraîche, like a sour cream with some egg yolks and lots of grated Greek cheese or Parmesan — whatever you've got — then spooning that over the top. 

To finish it, you just pop the whole pan under the grill, and you've suddenly got something that takes hours and loads of washing up in one pan, and it becomes achievable after work.

Raised in London with frequent visits to Greece and Cyprus, Georgina Hayden had food-focused relatives on both sides of the family. Photo by Laura Edwards.

That sounds so delicious. Can you share with us the spicing of the ragu, which gives the pastitsio so much of its character?

Yeah, of course. One of the things I would say differentiates Greek food and Italian food, because at the end of the day they are neighbors and there are lots of similarities and differences, as well. But for example, I would always use ground cinnamon. I think a bit of cinnamon just works wonderful. It adds a lovely warmth and flavor to the meat. Then also, oregano. I always add dried oregano. That is an absolute stand. I'm sure everyone knows, in terms of Greek food, we put oregano in everything. Then, tomato puree, because where you guys are, you probably have amazing produce all year round. But in London, we don't often get very good tomatoes, unless it's like the height of summer and the ones we get otherwise are quite substandard. So a lovely tomato puree, you get all the sweetness when it's all canned, when they're ripe. I'd say those three things are really classic. 

I think I started making Greek food at home when I was about 10. I found this amazing cookbook in my local Greek deli and I fell in love with making spanakopita. I would do the whole thing with the filo and then do the whole folding it like a little flag situation.

I love that.

I became kind of obsessed with it and thought I was like a little caterer. Every time my mother would have people over, I would make it for guests. Spanakopita is such a fantastic filling, the spinach and the feta and other cheese. But sometimes we don't want to make those little triangles. What spins do you like to put on spanakopita?

I've tried everything. The ones that made the cut that I think are particularly great are spanakopita jacket potatoes. A jacket potato, baked potato is such a staple thing for us in the house. I can shove them in the oven and when I get back from work or kids or whatever, they're ready. Taking out that potato, filling and mixing it with the spinach and the dills, spring onions, loads of cheese, and then just re-baking them a bit. It's glorious.

Spanakopita jacket potatoes give spuds the spinach and cheese treatment and can be prepared a day ahead. Photo by Laura Edwards.