20 European cities will compete for this trophy between January 20 and February 10: Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Istanbul, Innsbruck, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Reykjavik, Riga, Rome, Valetta, Vienna, Zagreb.

The winner will be the city with the most online votes!

One of the 20 destinations will be awarded the title of “European Best Destination 2015″. The next nine destinations with the highest number of votes will be announced through EBD’s communications, website and social networks as being one the best European destinations to visit in 2015.

The 2015 best European Destination will be authorized to use the title and affix the “European Best Destination” logo on all its communications, adverts, website and photos; it will also have the right to authorize its own public and private partners to use the logo.

The destinations in the Top 10 can also use the logo by indicating that they have been chosen as one of the ten best destinations to visit in Europe. Their news, photos and videos will be shared by the European Best Destination organization’s website and major social networks throughout the year.

 

“Maybe the otolith?” another scientist suggested.

“Ah,” Panopoulos said, “the otolith.”

He worked a knife into the fish’s head and removed the pearly ear bone. Then, using his glass as a primitive magnifying instrument, he counted the otolith’s layers, which accrue like rings in a tree. “I see four,” Panopoulos said, “and they are uneven. This fish is four years old and wild.”

That the fish before us was indeed wild is a rarity in modern Greece. Never common, wild European sea bass are today one of the more overfished creatures in the Mediterranean. So rare that when you want to say you “hit the jackpot” in Greek, you say you “epyase lavraki” — you caught a sea bass. But as is increasingly the case with prized sea creatures, the end of a fish in the sea does not mean its disappearance from the plate. In fact the diminishing of a wild population is often the trigger that starts research on a new species’ domestication.

Sea-bass farming has been a long time in the works. It was piloted in France and Israel in the 1960s, and it took years to decode the biochemistry behind reproduction and diet. A final element — the warm, protected inlets of coastal Greece, turned it into a commodity.

In Greece it began, as it should, with a man at sea. In 1982, Thanasis Frentzos set sail from Kefalonia, an island some archaeologists believe was Odysseus’ Ithaca. Frentzos bears a certain resemblance to Homer’s protagonist, and so it follows that when he traveled to Sicily to purchase 100,000 inch-long sea-bass juveniles, his return trip was interrupted by a fierce gale known as the donkey mistral, and 90,000 bass perished in the storm. He installed the surviving bass in a pen and grew them to maturity. From this first farm (now called Kefalonia Fisheries), Greece came to dominate world sea-bass production, and the Selonda company has emerged as an international leader, with exports to the United States growing to more than a million pounds in 2004 from 10,000 pounds in 2000.

American appreciation of foreign bass has risen in inverse proportion to the decline of our own domestic striped bass. Similar in shape to European sea bass, American striped bass were recently found through DNA analysis to be so closely related as to share a common genus (Morone). With their meaty white flesh, “stripers” were a favorite from the Carolinas to Maine all the way back to Colonial days. Fishing pressure on stripers mounted progressively until the mid-’70s, when the catch plunged. By the early ’80s, just as Thanasis Frentzos was sailing for Sicily, conservationists were suggesting stripers for the Endangered Species List.

But while Europeans generally turn to the farm when fish go missing, Americans tend to look to the wild. In a major conservation act, a consortium of states halted striped-bass fishing in the ’80s, and a program was introduced to rebuild the breeding stock in the Chesapeake Bay. One scientist the government engaged was Yonathan Zohar, an Israeli-born biologist at the University of Maryland at Baltimore who helped decode European sea-bass reproduction. Zohar, who refers to himself as an “OB-GYN for fish,” got wild striped bass to spawn in captivity in a predictable manner. Supplementation combined with fishing moratoriums yielded results. Today striper populations are listed as “fully rebuilt,” and the fish has once again appeared on seafood menus — alongside branzino.

To read more, please visit nytimes.com

By Paul Greenberg

Fish and meat are eaten less frequently, and in smaller portions, but are cooked with the same attention to herbs, oil, and simple cooking techniques. Olives, wines, spirits, and cheeses need no cooking at all. However, the foods that so closely identify Greece to non-Greeks are quite different.

Greek food expert and cookbook author, Aglaia Kremezi, writes in Some Thoughts on the Past, Present, and Future of Greek Food,
"Mousaka, pastichio, creamy avgolemono (thickened egg-and-lemon sauce), and Greek salad are the dishes that most non-Greeks consider to be the epitome of traditional Greek cooking. Yet, most of these dishes have very little to do with traditional foods. They were developed, or drastically revised, by professional cooks and restaurateurs."

The most influential of those professional cooks was Nicholas Tselementes, a Greek chef from the island of Sifnos who trained in Europe and worked in some of the world's finest hotel kitchens.

It's not clear whether Tselementes believed that French cooking originated in Greece (which it did not), or that French was somehow "better" than the simple Greek fare of the day, but the result was that he developed recipes and cooking styles based on sauces and French methods of preparation to "cleanse" Greek food of Turkish, Roman, and other influences that had been incorporated over centuries, influences Tselementes saw as barbaric. He preferred butter to olive oil, elaborate sauces to bare dishes. French was in, Greek was out. It was most probably Tselementes who created the moussaka and pastitsio we know today - with an inch of cream sauce, cheeses, and 700 calories per serving - from the original dishes which were simple combinations of ground meat and vegetables or pasta.

His theories and first cookbook, written in 1910, became the darlings of early 20th century "upwardly mobile" Greeks who saw a new sophistication in his recipes. Greek chefs and restaurateurs sought to imitate his techniques and style, hoping to attract an international and worldly clientèle with mild tastes and elaborate presentations.

To read more, please visit greekfood.about.com

Ingredients

2 medium, very firm, ripe zucchini
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil or Mastiha-scented olive oil
3 Tbsp. fresh strained lemon juice, or more to taste
2 drops Mastiha essential oil
1 Tbsp. fresh marjoram or oregano leaves, whole or chopped
Grated zest of 1 lime, optional
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
6-ounces (180 gr.) sharp Greek Cretan kefalograviera or graviera cheese, shaved

Instructions

1. Wash the zucchini well and trim off the ends. Scrub the outside of the zucchini under cold running water and trim off the ends. Using a mandolin or food processor, cut the zucchini lengthwise into paper-thin slices.
2. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, Mastiha essential oil (if using; see Note), marjoram or oregano, lime zest, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl.
3. Arrange the zucchini in overlapping slices on a large platter. Drizzle with the dressing. Let stand for 30 minutes to 1 hour to marinate.
4. Using a vegetable peeler, shave the kefalograviera or graviera into thin strips and place them decoratively over the zucchini. Serve immediately.

Greek Food - Greek Cooking - Greek Recipes by Diane Kochilas

http://www.dianekochilas.com/