KUKLA’S KOUZINA
A Gourmet Journey~Greek Island Style©
what's new in Kukla's Kouzinacooking series & blogOur Greek-island~Karpathian food & lifestyle blog every Monday and
YouTube cooking series, Flippin' Greek! 
Gifting is on the menu this week with our Gift the Mediterranean post. It’s that time of year when joy is shared with special packages wrapped in shinny paper and pretty bows, and nothing is more appreciated than delicious gifts chosen with love. This year’s selections from the warm Mediterranean are some of our favorite new things. Following months of tasting and testing, we finally finished reviewing over 100 products from this year’s Summer Fancy Food Show and have narrowed down our choices to the best of the best to share with you. Our curated finds will be featured in three installments starting with Gift the Mediterranean.
We begin, of course, with our home country, Greece, then taste our way through Spain, Ibiza, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey, and Portugal, followed by three special Mediterranean-flavored brands. We wrap up this gift post with an exceptional sweet treat from our favorite confectioner, André’s Confiserie Suisse. Choose one, a prepared gift package, or create a themed basket customized to your recipient’s tastes. Get ready to be WOWED by some of the most exceptional foods we’ve sampled! Check out our cooking series, Flippin’ Greek! ™, for how-to videos of some of our favorite dishes! Recipes can be found on our blog with links to each video/episode.
ABOUT KUKLA'S KOUZINA FLIPPIN' GREEK! ™ Flippin' Greek! ™, our YouTube cooking series, features familiar non-Greek recipes we flip to Greek-island style using ingredients and cooking techniques found in Karpathos. Each episode runs 2 to 15 minutes, the perfect length for us to quickly show you how to recreate foods and beverages/cocktails right alongside us. The ingredients used in Greek-island cuisine is what sets this style of cooking apart from standard Greek fare, giving meals a fresh take that keeps them interesting. Karpathos, the home of Kukla’s Kouzina, has its own unique style, and we’ll show you how to take common dishes and reinvent them into Karpathian versions with our simple substitutions. Many think that everyday Greek cooking is made up of dishes like spanakopita (spinach pie), moussaka, and pastitsio. These are classics for sure, but too time-consuming to make on a regular basis. During our time in Karpathos, we learned that the locals’ quick meals made from the island’s staples like fresh vegetables, fruit, herbs, spices, and protein, prepared using certain methods, came out tasting Greek-island delicious. So we thought this would be a great way to bring our hometown flavor into YOUR kouzina, adding some spicy variety to your life while keeping it simple and fast. Recipe(s) for each week will be posted right here on our blog with link(s) to the episode(s). Get your apron on for this fun adventure and re-create some distinctive foods with us! For Karpathian/Greek recipes, check out our new cookbooks Kukla’s Kouzina: A Gourmet Journey~Greek Island Style, Meze (Appetizers & Petite Plates) and Spreads & Dips, available on Amazon. Go to our BOOKS page for details about the books and us! Sign up for our e-newsletter (if you haven’t already) and stay connected on social media for cooking tips and recipes, as well as for all Kukla's Kouzina updates and news. Kali orexi!
Good appetite! media! Left to right: Joanne Staikopoulos Marzella, Jacqueline Maria Marzella, and Kelly Salonica Staikopoulos of Kukla's Kouzina. (Photo by Anastassios Mentis / Mentis Studio)
The girls from Kukla’s Kouzina are the focus of articles and podcasts! Get to know us, our journey, and learn more about our exciting new cooking series. ARTICLES Kukla's Kouzina is featured in the definitive Greek newspaper, The National Herald: Food & Wine 2020: Recipes to Make and Enjoy From Kukla's Kouzina, Kukla’s Kouzina Sharing the Taste of Karpathos in Cookbook Series. Great articles by Eleni Sakellis! The Mediterranean Lifestyle | TML Food: Greek Dolmades PODCASTS SheVentures: Greeking Out on Recipes with Kukla's Kouzina's Kelly Salonica Staikopoulos and Joanne Staikopoulos-Marzella Learning from Smart People: Greek Food, Culture & Cooking with the Staikopoulos Family videosOur cooking-demonstration videos take the guesswork out
of cooking Greek! |
booksMeze
Spreads & Dips
Our cookbooks, Meze
and Spreads & Dips are available for purchase on AMAZON in print & eBook formats. Go to our BOOKS page for details about the books and us! Come taste what Kukla's Kouzina is all about! 
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★ It's easy and it's FREE! extra!Check out our Kouzina EXTRA! blog
where we'll be reporting on our food news & adventures—sometimes Greek, sometimes not—but always delicious! |
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about Kukla's Kouzina
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THE COOKBOOK SERIES
Welcome to our KUKLA’S KOUZINA: A Gourmet Journey~Greek Island Style cookbook series—A collection of recipes inspired by the southern Greek island of Karpathos and perfected by a woman with culinary vision, our mom Mary, a.k.a. "Kukla" (doll)! Let the warm Mediterranean breeze fill your sails and prepare to be taken on a delectable voyage from the roots of our mom’s and grandmother’s recipes to the family kouzina (kitchen) where history was reinvented. One of the few unspoiled isles in the Aegean and a utopia of culinary delights, Karpathos—the second largest island of the Dodecanese chain, nestled between its more renowned neighbors Crete and Rhodes—is the ideal backdrop for KUKLA’S KOUZINA: A Gourmet Journey~Greek Island Style, a cookbook enriched by our Kukla's ingenuity, transporting conventional recipes to a level of unparalleled excellence. Awe-inspiring as the Titans, the elder gods who made Karpathos their home, this anthology will give you a rare glimpse into the flavors that ascend as high as their mythological ancestors. It’s a slice of heaven of which the myths only hint! To become truly familiar with a culture one must live with its natives, breathe the same air, and of course, sample its foods. Foods reveal a story of the people who create them—cultures of the sea have diets abundant in fish, those inland take from the earth, and their use of spices reflects the passion they happily share. On Karpathos, all of these elements combine to tell the tale of a civilization with a generous lifestyle that makes holidays and every day a celebration. Extracted from the unspoiled mountain village of Olympos that remains frozen in time to the inland farming town of Volada to the age-old fishing port of Finiki, these recipes remain true to their heritage with an originality that sets them apart from standard Greek cuisine--this is an edible trip worth tasting! Kukla's Kouzina Meze Kukla's Kouzina Spreads & Dips |
THE WEBSITE
The heart of our website, and cookbook series, is the passing on of our customs and culinary history to the next generation in a fun and engaging way, securing the legacy started by our mom and grandmother while encouraging our children to be as inventive as they were. Our blog, The Naked Truth About...Greek Cooking!, is all about traditional Greek food from the island of Karpathos and serves as a companion to soon-to-be-published KUKLA’S KOUZINA: A Gourmet Journey ~Greek Island Style. In our posts you'll find Greek cooking techniques and tips that will demystify what is sometimes considered a complicated cuisine and will help you recreate the dishes of the gods in your very own kitchen! We'll also talk about specialty ingredients used in Greek cooking and tell you where you can buy them, as well as offer any acceptable substitutions. In addition to food, we'll explore Karpathian culture and music to turn your journey into a well-rounded experience. Come meet us in our about page and find out what we're passionate about and what brings us to this uniquely delicious table. In our videos you'll find cooking demonstrations that will pair with our recipes. In our gallery you can view a slide show of our foods, then take a trip down memory lane starting with Kukla's early years growing up, to her life at work and play, and finally a take a peak at the next generation. Our events page will keep you updated on our future cooking demonstrations, classes and speaking engagements. KUKLA’S KOUZINA: A Gourmet Journey~Greek Island Style cookbooks can be found on our BOOKS page. We welcome you to contact us and look forward to your comments, questions and requests. This is where you can sign up for our e-newsletter as well. We'd love to help you take your own journey~Greek island style! Our mom’s ultimate lesson to us, and now to you, never settle for ordinary when you can create something extraordinary! |
This exquisite olive oil produced by Mentis Estate is hand picked and carefully pressed by local artisans, creating a pure unblended oil that is aromatic and fruity with an acidity of less than 0.5%.
Mentis Estate is truly the finest olive oil we at Kukla's Kouzina have ever tasted and it's our first choice for serving with crusty bread, drizzling on salads, and finishing a dish. Check out our blog Olive Oil~Branch to Bottle to see what makes Mentis Estate so special. Delicious (υπέροχος)! |
Kali orexi! Good appetite!
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Mentis Estate Extra-Virgin Olive OilThe exquisite olive oil produced by Mentis Estate is hand picked and carefully pressed by local artisans. To preserve the integrity of this extra-virgin olive oil, only limited quantities are available.
A pure unblended olive oil, with an acidity of less than 0.5%, Mentis Estate produces an aromatic and fruity nectar. Well-balanced characteristics described as pine, floral, nutty, buttery, and pungent, with a hint of artichoke, make up this extra-virgin oil. This is truly the finest olive oil we at Kukla's Kouzina have ever tasted and it's our first choice for serving. Check out our blog Olive Oil~Branch to Bottle to see what makes Mentis Estate so special. |
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Kontos FoodsWhether we’re preparing lunch or dinner for family, cooking for a celebration, or baking one of our Karpathian desserts, we found Kontos has the finest products for our culinary needs. For more than 60 years Kontos has produced premium fillo and food items using the finest ingredients and time-honored methods. The Kontos brand will always be our guarantee of freshness, quality, and flavor.
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Inspired by a long-standing tradition that resurrects Cyprus' precious legacy, this Decanter WWA multi award-winning wine is a luxurious evolution of the world's oldest historically recorded wine, Kyprion Nama (today's Commandaria). "Anama, today's concept!
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As in the tagline, “Gastronomical Excellence,” Recipiada’s goal is to find, gather, and offer Mediterranean products which have an “excellent” quality.
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Web design by Kelly Salonica Staikopoulos
Web design by Kelly Salonica Staikopoulos
