Olive oil (Ελαιόλαδο)

That ubiquitous ingredient in Greek cooking, olive oil is the only cooking oil that can be extracted without the use of heat, thereby protecting it against the loss of nutritious substances. We cook using only olive oil in our house. We make cakes, fry sweets and savories, dress salads, stew meat and grease baking tins using just olive oil.

Olive oil is not cheap; it cost between E5-6 a kilo in the supermarket. If you buy it straight from the oil producer, it will cost you 25% less. If olive oil is too expensive for you or it sounds too fatty for your liking, try using it sparingly, without substituting it with other cheaper or less fatty oils. If it's too expensive to buy it in your own country, simply use less than the recipe states. Do the same thing if you think that the quantity of olive oil used in a particular recipe is more than you are used to when you cook or prepare the main meals in your household. Don't forget that Greek people are not known for their SL (SLeek, SLim, SLender) bodies - rotund and bulgy is more like it!

Don't substitute olive oil for any other kind of oil if you are cooking Greek (or other Mediterranean) food; only olive oil is used, so the meal won't taste the same.

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CRETAN PRODUCE:
Soft mizithra cheese
Xinohondro (hondro)
Stamnagathi
Avronies (wild asparagus)
Dakos rusk salad
Orange juice
Lagos stifado
Bougatsa
Sorrel
Silverbeet
Black mustard greens
Kalitsounia
Malotira
Olives tsakistes - pastes
Olive oil