♪ ♪ [Diane Kochilas] This episode is a paean to the power of food to unite us and the power of food to surpass boundaries and create a realm of its own.

With one rule for citizenship, everything has to taste great.

In the kitchen, I'm making a hyphenated feast inspired by Japanese noodles.

It's the perfect marriage of opposites.

Mexican fajitas.

This is a perfect marriage of cultures.

And good old American baked potatoes.

Spanakopita-filled baked potatoes, Greek passport all the way.

To each a Greek touch, to me, nóstimo, delicioso, Oishi, and just plain delicious.

Yamas.

♪ (upbeat music) ♪ [Announcer] My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by...

The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

Dodoni, tradition in taste.

Celestyal Cruises.

Meltemi Greek Yogurt.

The National Hellenic Society And by the following... ♪ ♪ [Diane Kochilas] Athens is an exciting food city with great satisfying meals for just about every palate.

No doubt, visitors to the Greek capital want a taste of tradition, but also a taste of the latest Greek food trends.

Modern Greek cooking in Athens is vibrant and bold with several generations now of Greek chefs who've reinvented the proverbial wheel, keeping the roots of the cuisine intact, and adding an exciting vibe to just about every Greek ingredient.

But that's not the end of the Athenian food scene.

Beyond Greek and beyond the newfound embrace of small ethnic restaurants, bakeries, sweet shops, and more, from delicious Jordanian flatbread baked in a tandoori oven, to Asian foods redolent of just about everything, from Indian curries to Korean barbecue, there's even more.

A new hybrid.

It's exciting, it's multiethnic, it's Greek with a hyphen and it proves that food can unite us regardless of who we are and where we're from.

Nowadays, Greek markets, from main street supermarkets to the central market and its environs, brim with all sorts of new to Greece ingredients.

Greek-Japanese has taken the city by storm, but so have Grek-Mex, Chilean Greek and more.

Let's cross the border into Greek hyphen territory, no passport necessary.

Great food around a shared table unites us all as citizens of the world.

I'm making a dish that totally mirrors what's happening in Athens now, where a city of many, many traditions, deep traditions, but also a city that embraces diversity.

And I'm making Japanese soba noodles with tahini, Greek honey, soy sauce, ouzo, shrimp and various seasonings.

So let's get started.

I'm using olive oil, which is really pretty common when you marry Greek and Asian ingredients together and I'm gonna sear the shrimp first.

We eat a lot of seafood in Greece.

That's actually something we have quite in common with Japanese cuisine.

[sizzling] This dish brings back a lot of memories, uh for my first years in Athens.

I got a job 30 years ago as a food writer and I got the job because I actually wrote to them and told them that the food column that they had been publishing was great, but you couldn't find any of the ingredients back then.

So I suggested, you know, maybe they should go with somebody who knows a little bit about Greek food and they hired me.

But the city has changed so much in those three decades and especially in the last few years.

And I'm gonna add my garlic next.

♪ ♪ The next thing that's going into the shrimp, it's a really classic flavoring for shrimp, is a little bit of ouzo, which goes surprisingly well with soy sauce and other Asian flavors.

It adds great flavor.

I love the anise flavor of ouzo.

I use it actually quite often as an ingredient.

I'm gonna turn this off and get to the sauce.

This whole recipe is actually inspired by an Asian classic, cold sesame noodles.

The first thing in is my tahini, which is sesame paste, one of the most traditional ingredients in Greece, but also throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, and it's something that we eat pretty frequently during periods of fasting in Greece.

A little lemon juice, which we almost always use with tahini.

And a little bit of water.

[water dribbling] I'm gonna get that whipped up before adding everything else.

[lid snapping] [whir of blades] A little ginger.

Some chili powder.

Some cumin.

And a little Greek honey.

Which is gorgeous and like golden silk threads.

The soy sauce.

I'm gonna work this all together.

[whir of blades] I just want to taste this and check it for heat, but also to see how loose it is.

See, that's exactly what we're looking for.

This is gonna be really nice over the soba noodles.

Mm.

That's good.

Woo, spicy.

The soba noodles go in next.

Soba are made from buckwheat.

And you know there's a Greek word for that, it's called fagopyro.

These just take about five minutes.

You want to be careful not to overcook them, and you never boil them in salted water.

The soba noodles are done and they're ready to be drained and rinsed under cold water.

♪ ♪ [hiss of water] I'm coming with the noodles and they're rinsed and cold and ready to be married with all these beautiful ingredients up here.

So the first thing that I'm adding to this is the sauce.

Let me just get this... mixed up.

It smells really good.

Some scallion.

Classic in cold sesame noodles.

Some of the shrimp, save a little bit for garnish.

Just mixing that all together and this is going right into the serving bowl.

Some of these beautiful shrimp pieces in here.

A little bit of chopped parsley.

And some toasted sesame seeds.

Time to taste the soba noodles with some Greek flavors.

Take a piece of shrimp first.

Let's see what that tastes like.

Oops.

Mm.

That's good.

[chuckles] This is very complex, even though it was very simple to make.

It's the perfect marriage of opposites.

I'm getting sweetness from the ouzo and heat from the cayenne pepper.

The lusciousness of those noodles and the shrimp of course, add that seafood note.

Kind of the common touch, the thing that we have most in common with Japanese cuisine, which is fish and seafood.

I want to pair this with an interesting Greek wine, which is also a blend, it's not one varietal, but two traditional Greek varietals, Roditis... and Moscofilero.

And this is a wine produced in the Peloponnese.

Pairs really nicely with this because it's got almost a buttery palate, but also slight acidity.

If you like wines like Chardonnay, you'll like this very much.

I love experimenting with all sorts of flavors.

I feel really fortunate to be living in Athens at this period in its history because it's very ancient city, but it's also a very vibrant, happening, hip city, and all these beautiful flavors are a great example of that.

So I would like to say Efcharistó or domo arigato.

♪ ♪ In the multiculti world of modern Athens, Greek gets tossed with all sorts of other flavors.

Today I'm making a Grek-Mex dish, Greek style chicken fajitas with Greek olives, feta cheese and Greek yogurt.

To make my life a little easier, I'm using pre-carved Mediterranean chicken.

Let's get started.

The first thing I'm gonna do is get the peppers ready.

[chopping] And we want to cut the peppers into thin strips.

This is a very simple dish.

It's fun.

Kids love this dish.

It's also really quick, very convenient.

I'm gonna warm up a little bit of olive oil.

We don't need too much.

I've worked in a lot of Greek restaurant kitchens in my life and one of the things that I always loved were the staff meals because there are a lot of Mexican cooks in Greek kitchens, and the hybrid cuisine that evolves out of that sort of marriage of cultures is pretty delicious.

The onions.

As soon as this softens up, I'll add a little bit of garlic and our spice palette here, which I've got a mix of peppers.

I've got paprika, cayenne and chili powder, black pepper, Greek oregano and cumin.

Let me get a little salt over this.

Let's get the garlic in here next.

[sizzling] This is a great, easy, fast dinner.

And it's fun.

Some of the pepper mix.

You could add as much or as little as you like, depending on how spicy you like it.

Some black pepper.

Greek mountain oregano.

And some cumin.

These are ready to come off.

I'm just gonna warm up the chicken.

A little bit of olive oil on here.

Don't worry too much about those little burnt bits.

They're actually the tastiest part.

Let me add a little bit of this spicy pepper mix.

Some cumin powder.

Greek oregano.

A little bit of what we added to the peppers, in other words.

Since this is already cooked, I really just want to warm it up a little bit... ...and I'm about to get it off the grill.

I think you can see why kids come running to this when you make it for dinner.

Ready to warm up the tortillas.

Filled flatbreads or flatbread sandwiches are something that exist in so many different parts of the world.

In Greece, of course, we have the gyro, or gyro, sometimes souvlaki as well goes into a flatbread.

So, I think this is a really, really great example of the foods that unite us, the things that make us realize how similar we are, even with all this diversity.

Let's assemble a fajita together with this nice Grek-Mex filling.

Some of this nice Mediterranean chicken.

And this is where the Greek part comes in.

Some sliced Kalamata olives.

A little bit of feta cheese.

And a dollop of Greek yogurt, should we so desire.

Roll this up.

Time to taste the Grek-Mex fajita.

[singing] Mmm.

This is a perfect marriage of cultures.

It's not too spicy.

Peppers and onions are a combination that we see in all sorts of different cuisines: Greek, Mexican, Italian, Spanish, so it's kind of a universally loved combination together with the chicken.

But in this dish, it's the spunk of these Kalamata olives and the tartness of the feta and the creaminess of the Greek yogurt that really brings this together and gives it a complex personality.

♪ ♪ If there's one dish that unites Greece with the rest of the world, it's definitely spanakopita.

It's crossed all ethnic boundaries, we find it on menus all over the planet and it's used in all sorts of different dishes, from pies to omelets to baked potatoes, and that's what I'm making today, a spanakopita baked potato.

Let's get started.

The first thing we're gonna do is start on the onions.

A little bit of extra virgin Greek olive oil, the start of most good things in the Greek kitchen.

Some chopped red onions.

We just want to soften the onion a little bit, it takes a few minutes.

You want that nice translucent sheen and I'm gonna get the spinach in here in batches.

I'm using fresh spinach, coarsely chopped.

This will cook down.

Little bit of salt.

The basic spanakopita filling can take anything in the onion family, basically.

Red onion, white onion.

You could put leeks in here if you want, or scallions.

It's an extremely versatile filling.

A little more spinach.

This dish makes a great starter.

Everyone loves a good baked potato recipe, so this kind of falls into that general category.

Let's get the rest of the spinach in here.

This is just gonna take a few minutes.

We want the spinach to be nice and wilted.

It's gonna continue to cook inside the baked potato once this all comes together and goes into the oven.

The spinach is wilted exactly where we want it to be and there's not any liquid left in the pan, it's all cooked off.

I'm gonna let the spinach cool down a little bit and get to the potatoes.

I've already boiled the potatoes for about 20 minutes.

You want them to be soft enough so you can scoop out the pulp.

Cut them in half.

What I like to do, I like to just do it with a teaspoon.

Be careful not to tear- the skin and we just want to get... ...the potato flesh and you just want to make a cavity, and that's what we're gonna fill.

It's almost time to fill these beautiful potatoes.

I'm just getting some olive oil in the baking pan and let me just get these in.

They fit nice and snugly.

The spinach is cool.

Whatever flesh came out of those cooked potatoes is going into the filling.

Just mash it with a fork.

Just a touch of olive oil to soften this up.

Time to add the cheeses.

So I have a little bit of Greek feta, that is a classic ingredient in most spanakopita fillings.

I have anthotyros, which is a soft whey cheese very much like ricotta, so you could actually use ricotta if you want.

Some Greek yogurt for extra creamy texture in the filling and it adds a nice tart touch to this as well.

And finally, a little fresh dill adds that nice, almost spring-like flavor to this.

I'm just gonna whisk the eggs.

We want our filling to be nice and fluffy, but the eggs also will hold all of this together.

[tapping] Just a light whisk on that.

This is going in here next.

And we're gonna mix all of this together.

I think you're getting the picture here, this is a pretty rich rendition of a spanakopita filling and it's got an extra layer of flavor with the tartness of the yogurt.

The potato and the egg make it fairly substantial.

Just a little touch of salt in the filling.

And we're ready to fill the potato cavities... with this super creamy spanakopita filling.

You want to just mound it.

This is supposed to be over the top.

This is not a lighthearted dish.

This is a fun, rich rendition of spanakopita and baked potato together.

These are almost ready to go into the oven.

One last touch, a little bit of kasseri cheese, which is a very mild sheep's milk cheese, one of the nicest Greek table cheeses.

It's sweet, it's nutty and it melts really beautifully.

These are ready to go into the oven at 350 for about a half hour.

These are definitely ready.

The color is perfect.

Ah look at that.

Beautiful sight.

I can't wait to taste this version of spanakopita.

Little bit hot.

That's a pretty good thing.

Get a little of that cheese.

Wow.

This is a baked potato with a Greek passport.

It tastes just like spanakopita, but instead of the flakiness of filo, I have the comfort of a beautiful baked potato, that earthiness that holds all of this beautiful filling together and the feta and the spinach and the dill and the yogurt adds that beautiful tartness and creaminess.

This is a great appetizer or starter.

It's even a great snack, and this calls for a traditional Greek grape varietal that also travels the world very easily, Savatiano.

It's from the region of Attica right outside of Athens, it's got a nice light citrusy acidity and reminds me a little bit of a Pinot Grigio so if you like that sort of wine, you'll like it very much, and it goes beautiful with spanakopita-filled baked potatoes.

Greek passport all the way.

Yamas.

[Diane] For recipe links and information about My Greek Table , visit my website, DianeKochilas.com.

[Announcer] Diane's cookbook's "My Greek Table" and "Ikaria" are available to purchase online at DianeKochilas.com Or call the phone number on the screen.

My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by...

The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

Dodoni, tradition in taste.

Celestyal Cruises.

Meltemi Greek Yogurt.

The National Hellenic Society.

And by the following... ♪ ♪