The Delicious Legacy

A Greek Gourmand, travels through time...Imagine yourself dining with Socrates, Plato, or Pythagoras! What tasty morsels of food accompanied the conversations of these most significant minds in Western philosophy?Now picture yourself as you sat for a symposium with Cicero, or Pliny the Elder or Julius Caesar. The opulent feasts of the decadent Romans!Maybe, you're following Alexander the Great during his military campaigns in Asia for ten years. Conquering the vast Persian empire, while discovering new foods. Or try and picture the richness of fruits and vegetables in the lush Hanging Gardens of Babylon.What foods did our ancestors ate?How did all begin? Who was the first to write a recipe down and why? Sauces, ingredients, ways of cooking. Timeless and continuous yet unique and so alien to us now days. Staple ingredients of the Mediterranean world -as we think now- like tomatoes, potatoes, rice, peppers, didn't exist. What did they eat? We will travel far and wide, reconstructing the diet, the feasts, the dishes of a Greek Philosopher in a symposium in Athens, or a Roman Emperor or as a rich merchant in the last night in Pompeii.....Lavish dinners, exotic spices, so-called "barbaric" traditions of beer and milk, all intertwined...Stay tuned and find out more here, in 'The Delicious Legacy' Podcast!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy.

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Ancient Greek Music with Pavlos Kapralos

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Flint Dibble: Zooarchaeology, Ancient Greece and Food

30 minutes ago 1h 19m

Hello!

Ugly stuff? Broken Bones? The earliest archaeologists a century ago ignored these. But not my guest today!

Flint Dibble is an ancient historian and archaeological scientist who studies people, animals, and the environment in the ancient Greek world. According to his words, his goal is to make real archaeological research accessible to everyone.

With the publication of "The agropastoral debate in context: the relationship between the consumption and management of animals at Azoria on Crete" I wanted to share this conversation I had with Flint about the food in Ancient Greece. What do we know? What does the archaeological evidence tells us that is the same, similar or diverges, from the literary sources that survived the passage of time?

What animals were eaten in ancient Greece? How did the ancient Greeks prepared them? And what was the difference between home cooking and sacrificial, professional butchering and cooking for public feasts? How were the poor and the elite different in their eating habits, and how was the food cooked at home and in mobile situations? What does the isotope analysis of teeth and bones tells us about the climate through a millennia of ancient greek history, and how that affected the agropastoralism and transhumanism? When were the first chickens eaten in the Greek context?

All the above and a lot more are discussed in our conversation with the fantastic Flint Dibble!

The write up about Flint's article can be found here:

A goat’s tooth may have solved a 100‑year debate about ancient Greek farming

https://theconversation.com/a-goats-tooth-may-have-solved-a-100-year-debate-about-ancient-greek-farming-285839

The article:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-026-02512-7

Flint's YouTube channel:

www.youtube.com/@flintdibble

Music by Pavlos Kapralos

Enjoy!

Thom & The Delicious Legacy Podcast

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Recipe of the Week: Chicken stewed with onions, olives and feta

Protein, Poo and Power - A Rich History of Manure & Food

Food and Traditions of Mani Peninsula -Tough landscape and tough people!

Jun 17 42m

Hello!

Brand new episode is out for all of you lovely subscribers!

This time we are going to the hard and unforgiving landscape of Mani Peninsula in Southern Greece. Peloponnesos!

Vendettas lasting decades... Towering villages in inhospitable mountains...Rocky and barren peninsulas with crystal clear azure waters. The landscape of Mani is unique, and so are it's people!

We are looking for the traditional foods, recipes and ways of cooking as well as ingredients, the simple, hearty things that these unconquerable people ate the past few centuries! What is the role of olives and olive oil in their life, economy and cuisine? What is 'Syglino'? what is 'Sfela'?

What was the role of quails in people's diets? How do you bake a whole quail in bread and how to preserve it in olive oi?

Why so many writers and artists fell in love with the landscape of Mani? From Patrick Leigh Fermor and Nikos Kazantzakis to many others!

On top of all this I will be going through some fantastic recipes from the region, some vegetarian, some vegan, some meat dishes and some local desserts! All of course feature copious amounts of the regions fantastic extra virgin olive oil!

Links, books and further reading about Mani:

https://archive.org/details/deepintomanijour0000gree/page/n5/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/journeytomorea00kaza/page/n7/mode/2up

More about Patrick Leigh Fermor

https://thelondonmagazine.org/article/remembering-patrick-leigh-fermor/

https://patrickleighfermor.org/video/

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/jun/10/patrick-leigh-fermor-obituary

All this and more on today's episode!

Enjoy!

Thom

Support the podcast on Ko-Fi and Patreon for ad-free episodes!

https://ko-fi.com/thedeliciouslegacypodcast

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Recipe of the Week: Three Pontic Greek Dishes

The Black Sea Greeks - Cuisine Food & Tradition (Reprise)

Jun 10 33m

Hello!

*This episode was first released on April 10th 2024*

Deep in a mountain in the Pontic Alps, North-East Turkey, there's a monastery reminiscent of Tolkien's Minas Tirith; the seven-walled fortress city built on the spur of a mountain. Nestled in a steep cliff at an altitude of about 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) and facing a beautiful wooded mountain valley is Panayia Soumela Greek Orthodox monastery, dedicated to Virgin Mary. This is the heartland of the Pontic Greeks. And my journey today begun from a church with the same name, near my home town of Veria, in Northern Greece, 1800 Km away from Trabzon, deep in a forested mountain on a similar altitude...

The Pontic Greeks lived in the region of northern Turkey roughly in the areas of Trabzon, Samsun and Gerishun, Sinop for about 2 millennia before their forced expulsion and genocide.

But their food and culture remains still alive luckily for us, and even their unique Greek language which traces its lineage to ancient Greek!

So what did they eat? How they cooked their foods? And how does their cuisine differ from other Greeks, and the similarities with other Black Sea nations around...

Some spectacular videos of Panagia Soumela Monastery and countryside in Trabzon region mountains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQb3UJVvbmM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLcqCxCh0s

For traditional Pontic produce in Greece today go to Thessaloniki and find this guy:

http://ragian.gr/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=4

Google map link for the Thessaloniki shop:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/QJGjFiEBW4YN7W369

The farm were they age cheeses in caves, smoke their own meats and produce their pasta:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/yVQHg9HVdGDcEyWdA

More information about history and culture of Pontic Greeks:

https://pontosworld.com/index.php

And the Guardian article that inspired me to do this episode today: