Rice

Although rice is mentioned by Theophrastus (ca. 370-285 B.C.) and other Greek writers as a grain from India, it was not eaten regularly in Greece until the Byzantine Empire, and in the small, poor, and more remote villages it remained uncommon. Rice became a more highly prized delicacy when the Ottoman Turks conquered Greece, for the Turks loved their pilafs. Greeks still tell the story of the Ottomans’ believing that paradise is a place where the mountains are piles of pilaf.

The memoirs of French and English adventurers who traveled through the country during the eighteenth century include descriptions of ceremonial meals they were offered. In many of these accounts, one pilaf came after the other, cooked in chicken or lamb stock, with or without meat. Greeks did not habitually prepare three-course meals; they just offered a series of similar dishes to honored guests, and rice always accompanied meat and poultry on these festive occasions.