Vasilopita is the traditional Greek cake or bread served at midnight on New Year’s Eve to celebrate the life of Saint Basil. After baking the Vasilopita cake, a coin is inserted through the base. When cut, the person who finds the coin is said to be granted luck for the rest of the year!

Vasilopita can be made of a variety of doughs, depending on the region, with almost every family having their own unique recipe. There are two main variations of Vasilopita – the cake version, which is this recipe here and the tsoureki vasilopita version, which is the same as an easter Tsoureki and my Tsoureki in a bread machine but rather shaped in a tin!

Every year, my grandmother Polly, made this Vasilopita cake for New year’s. It took several years before I realized that it was her basic classic cake recipe that she always did except that she doubled it and made it in a round tin pan. Despite all this, this buttery version for Vasilopita is a safe choice to make and can be kept for days after being cut. It was interesting that we sat down together and opened her old notebooks to find the recipe written in drams and faded by time. We wrote it down and I took it upon myself to make the New Year’s pie this year.

I was supposed to make an apricot bundt cake but had a lot of work. A good solution in case you have bought soggy or too firm, or sour apricots is to bake them. This redeems them, the hot oven restores their creaminess and fruitiness. And they make the perfect dessert, both hot and cold, with greek yogurt or ice cream or even in a salad.

This recipe comes together easily and quickly. Works both for desserts well as breakfast. If you want to make this recipe vegan, just maple syrup and a vegan yoghurt. Stored in a jar in the refrigerator, the baked apricots and their syrup are easy to add to yogurt or oatmeal in the morning, and transform any cake to a super extra dessert. This is also a solution for many fruit especially during summer when we all tend to buy more fruit than we can consume, so instead of letting them go bad, bake them and store them in the fridge.

This rustic soup is perfect for winter as she says. Healthy, easy and very comforting. Yiayia Poly says that the secret to make the soup thicker and more rich is to press and melt some of the beans with your cooking spoon inside the pot when the soup is ready. This will give some body to the soup and help it thicken. It is also important to check that the beans you have bought are fresh which means they have not cracked and they are not very dry and hard. At the end she always adds a bit of lemon juice to give the soup a bit of acidity.

She got married at a young age, she must have been 18 or 19, and she did not know how to cook a lot of stuff. One recipe she knew how to make was ´fasolada´, this stew or soup with white beans. She remembers she learnt how to make it from this woman from Naxos Island that worked at their house when she was 15. Women that came from islands always knew how to cook well; they had a tradition and deep knowledge of cooking. Whenever her grandfather visited from Germany where he was a professor, he always asked for her ´fasolada´. However, she believes, as we say in Greece, that each person’s hand (their personal touch) makes the difference in a dish.

Celeriac is this brown root that you often see at your grocery store and you ignore since you do not know what to make with it. It might seem big and dirty but it makes the most elegant and creamy, almost white low-carb soup. This vegetable can stand on its own to give your soup a body with a fine flavor. Celeriac is part of the celery family, so it has the fresh and grassy flavor of celery but with a more earthy and nutty undertone.  You can do with celeriac almost everything you can do with potatoes. Chips, puree, roast it, boil it, you can even eat it raw.  For this soup you can always skip the potato if you want to keep the soup super low-carb, I add a potato or two to make it creamier since it has starch.  If you sauté your vegetables well and let them brown you can also use just water for the soup rather than vegetable stock. This keeps the purity of the celeriac and its flavor. Both work well, so it is your choice which one you use.

I first made this soup a few months ago as a starter dish at a brunch we organized @Ethrio. My friend Agapi, with whom we cooked together, proposed to make this soup. We accompanied it with these parmesan chips which are super easy to make and gives the soup a bit of crunch and saltiness. You can also add crushed tasted hazelnuts and a thyme infused olive oil. Thyme is one of the herbs that goes well with celeriac and can be added at the chips as well. Since then I have made this soup several times, in big batches, and kept it in the freezer in individual portions.

I was talking with my friend Elena the other day, giving me marketing advice and discussing about the consistency this platform needs. So in the process of trying to acquire some new habits and experiment with some lifestyle routine changes I thought of aiming on posting mainly soups for the next couple of weeks- since the weather here in Greece is cold and snowy and February will most likely be the same. This will be part of a discipline exercise I am working on testing myself under different circumstances.

I was thinking of doing Veg-anyary but January is almost done and also I kind of have a resistance to most trends- especially when it has to do with food and food blogging. So I might do a vegan month… in May. Also, I am very against the ‘cleansing’ which lasts a month only and then going back to our old habits. The body works in different ways.

So as i mentioned the weather in Greece and specifically in Athens is freaking insane. Huge snow storm, blackouts, everything closed for 3 days, people abandoning their cars. Exactly what you would expect of a movie scenery. We Greeks are known for our extremities after all. But yes, this should be – yet another- wake up call about global warming and how WE have impacted our lives to change.  Having said that, since we were unable to leave our houses Ι made this vegan soup with what I had in my house. Used canned mushrooms – not recommended- and frozen spinach but I recommend you use fresh.

Nonetheless, the result was a rich, creamy soup. It does remind you of a veloute soup but also not since you have the floating gnocchi and pieces of vegetable which make this soup a proper meal rather than just a light appetizer. You can make it spicy adding some peperoncino, or add some curry for an Indian take or the zest of a lemon for a more fragrant mediterranean soup.  it is super fast, just need a pot and a few ingredients.

Apple crumble could be added to the list of comfort foods. It is the buttery crumbs, the soft and warm apple, the scent of cinnamon. Together with a traditional apple pie, which worldwide is a dessert that reminds us of home and our parents or grandparents, apple crumble has this same impression. A very easy recipe, perfect for Thanksgiving or Christmas gatherings, or as an afternoon treat with coffee or tea. It is easier and quicker than making a pie and it also quite forgiving with the quantities used. But even for a beginner this recipe is easy and you can do it using just one bowl.

This initial recipe is close to my heart because my friend Christina gave it to me when we were still in school. Her family always invited us for a so-stuffed Thanksgiving feast and Christina always made this apple crumble. When I took over and started cooking for Thanksgiving, she had emailed me the recipe which for years it got lost and I discovered it recently. It has been adapted a bit and altered throughout the years but it always reminds me of these gatherings full of food.

If you want to make it more Christmas-y you can add more spices like cardamon, all-spice, nutmeg and cloves. It is served perfectly with salted caramel sauce which balances the sweetness which recipe I will share soon, still needs to be photographed properly!

I first found this recipe from Eva aka www.funkycook.gr and I loved the idea of using olive oil instead of butter. It kind of seemed healthier or lighter, or that’s what I wanted to believe. Throughout the years I have slightly altered the recipe and very few recommendations. The version with toasted pecans is really a treat and is worth trying but also just the olive oil and dark chocolate matches perfectly and elevates the richness of the chocolate. You can cut it in pieces and keep it in an airtight taper wear and it can be kept for days, if you can resist eating it.

The good thing with this recipe is that it has few ingredients and you do not necessarily need an electric mixer. Last time I made it I used a 30×12 tin tray and it worked out well, although the pieces came out a bit thicker. You want to make sure that the mixture isn’t too thin or too thick either. In case you do not have a tray that is good for the amount of batter, you can make a division using aluminum foil and arrange the baking paper in a smaller part of the tray.

This recipe, like most of the recipes, I tested and shot almost 3 years ago. When TheFoodArchitect was just an idea and I was just starting using a DSLR camera. And I still have almost 100 recipes from these past 3 years but editing and writing down the recipes takes so much time. But then again it is nice sharing ideas and recipes with others and a lot of you asked for through Instagram. Butternut Squash. It’s the season protagonist. This dish can work as a starter or as a main dish for lunch or dinner with a green salad with pomegranate. I made it the other day with a few alterations from when I shot it. The toasted pine nuts did the job and added this nutty flavor and a bit of a crunch. And I used leek instead of fresh onion but both combined would be a charm. Also, I realized that you enjoy it more using a spoon. Make sure to get all the squash off the skin, and every bite be full of the sweetness of the squash and leek and tangy & rich Roquefort. I hope you try it out, and let me know how it worked out. Love and stay safe

Boiling potatoes is nothing difficult or complicated but there are small secrets that make the result really special. This potato salad is a perfect side dish or a filling and tasty lunch for 2 people accompanied with some fresh bread and white wine. Yes, you can have wine for lunch too! It reminds me a lot of spring or summer, when the weather is warm and the salad chilled, straight from the fridge. And now that lent has started in Greece and the sun has started shining more and more I thought it was appropriate to post.

However this salad can be enjoyed all year long. An important plus is that this potato salad can be made completely vegan. Skip the egg and make a simple vegan mayo and you are ready to go. Will post soon 2 mayonnaise version, I know this should come first but you can find really good store-bought mayonnaise both normal and vegan.

Choose all purpose potatoes and try to find similar sized potatoes so they will boil evenly and will need the same boiling time. This potato salad can be stored in the fridge for 2-3 days and you can even keep the ready boiled potatoes sealed so you can use later, either with their skin or peeled. The whole process of boiling potatoes and the different ways will need a separate post which I plan to do soon-ish! So, lets stick to this method for now.

Does oven baked chicken remind you of all the Greek-family lunch gatherings on a Sunday? It is easy and has so many different variations. But in all its variations it is a dish that is so homey and filling. To be honest I do not know if it is a Greek thing or families in other countries also have it as a go-to option when family is coming over. You marinate the chicken simply with lemon and oil, or orange, add all kind of herbs, add wine, mustard, even bake it in milk. I started making this delicious chicken and potato dish marinating everything with honey, mustard, oil and lemon juice. The combination of the acid and sweetness of the thyme honey and hotness of the mustard create a perfect match. This is also a very nice salad dressing combination.

The secret in this dish is the baking. Not overbaking the chicken – you might need to cover it up at some point so it does not lose its juices. And baking the potatoes perfectly, making them crisp but tender in the inside. There are many ways of doing this, like boiling the potatoes first, but lets try the simplest one without a lot of fuss.