New ideas

Appears in
The Food & Cooking of Greece
The Food & Cooking of Greece

By Rena Salaman

Published 2023

  • About
In the past decade or so, there has been a marked change in eating habits in Greece, and new dishes have been emerging. Greeks who have worked abroad and then returned home are importing culinary experiences, which they graft on to the traditional dishes. Some of these are obviously influenced by foreign dishes and have had a Greek interpretation, while, conversely, others have evolved from classic Greek dishes and incorporate exotic elements.

One of those is kritharoto. The first time I encountered it was about ten years ago in the magical garden of the Hotel Europa in Olympia on the Peloponnese peninsula. There was a ‘seafood kritharoto’ or a vegetarian version made with sun-dried and fresh little vine tomatoes. I was a bit puzzled at first, but then the rhyming of the word with ‘risotto’ sparked in my mind. And indeed this is a Greek interpretation of Italian risotto, cooked in the same way but, instead of rice, little tear-shaped pasta called kritharaki in Greek (or orzo in Italian) is used. Since then, I’ve encountered various versions of kritharoto, including the one with fresh prawns that my friend Anna cooked for us in her house in Volos some years ago.