Turn your kitchen into a taverna with these local Greek cookbooks

Just over a decade ago, Sharon Brenner moved to Athens and became enamored with the flavors and fragrances of Greece, the allure of fried dough drizzled with honey, the communal joys of sharing meze in a taverna late into the evening. The immigration attorney and food writer, now based back in Los Angeles, has written three self-published cookbooks to help share and recreate some of her experiences there.

“I felt like this country gave me so much, I really fell in love with it,” she said. “A way to give back through food was to educate people about the country and their cuisine and the history, because it’s all so intertwined.”

Brenner, who is not Greek by descent, moved to Athens in 2014 with a then-boyfriend. Though their yearslong relationship ended almost as soon as they’d arrived — with Brenner’s belongings still on a boat being shipped over — she chose to stay, and her love affair with the city bloomed. She worked remotely for an American law firm by day, and dove into the burgeoning community of food blogs in her off-time. She spent evenings sharing raki with friends in tavernas.

The avid home cook began chronicling her own recipes online, and scouring the Greek markets for seasonal and new-to-her ingredients. She photographed her dishes with her cell phone. A year later, she bought a digital camera. Eventually she realized these recipes and photos could be compiled into a zine-like cookbook not to detail the breadth of Greek cuisine, but to provide a snapshot of her time there and inspire others to experience it.

“This was before Athens was as trendy as it is now and I felt like no one goes to Athens, or if they did, they stopped for a day on their way to the islands,” she said. “It’s this incredible city with all this artistic momentum and I thought it deserved its due. Any person you see in that book is my friend, any street you see is a street that I would walk normally. It was really [made] to holistically introduce people to the city, to encourage them to give it their attention.”

Cookbook author Sharon Brenner.

(Jessica Chou)

When she returned to the U.S. in 2017, she finished her first self-published cookbook. “Athena” debuted in 2020, and in 2022 she released a second run due to its popularity. She followed it with a digital cookbook, “A Pie Project,” wherein she shared recipes for spinach pie, phyllo dough and other specialties. Then came “Fry Day” — her latest — a cookbook devoted to all things golden and crunchy from a dunk in hot oil, and the kinds of dishes she missed eating there.

“How can I give cultural context and dispel stereotypes?” she asked of her work. “Another thing I feel really strongly about in Greece — and I’m sure people from all over the world feel this way — is that people maybe know one dish from a country, and then they go there and they want to eat that dish. In Greece in particular, I felt like people would go to Greece and want to eat tzatziki and gyros and all these things that my friends aren’t really eating on a daily basis.”

A dish like horta — boiled greens with olive oil and lemon — is ubiquitous in Greece but fairly unknown in the U.S. in comparison. Brenner’s cookbooks include recipes for recognizable dishes such as dolmadakia (stuffed grape leaves) and soutzoukakia (meatballs in tomato sauce), but also Cretan pasta with farmers cheese, a simple dish of pantzaria (roasted beets with garlic) and the comforting revithia (chickpea stew).

During her first foray into cookbook publishing, she launched an intimate Greek dinner series in promotion. Athena Dinners took off. Friends, friends of friends, and total strangers gathered in art galleries, her own home and various other L.A. spaces for ticketed meals cooked by Brenner. Some served collaborative dinners from Brenner and local chefs such as Chainsaw’s Karla Subero Pittol.

She paused the dinner series in late 2023, hoping to revive it. Now that she and her husband are displaced due to January’s Altadena Fire, Brenner is unsure of where or when it could return. Perhaps, she said, it might reappear in its more collaborative form, with local chefs and in a new space. She’s also considering reprising her in-person, hands-on pie classes, teaching others by demonstrating just the right thinness of fresh phyllo dough stretched between her fingers.

Making spinach pie, she said, is both therapeutic and a practice she hopes to constantly improve upon for the rest of her life.

“Since the fires, I obviously have been doing it a lot less,” Brenner said, “but now that we’re somewhat more stable, I’ve been making pie again, and I really missed it.”

Brenner can be found popping up with her signature chocolate chip cookies — and occasionally her spinach pie — most often at neighborhood wine and culinary shop Altadena Bev. Her next appearance is June 7, and all three of her cookbooks can be purchased online.

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Sesame-Crusted Feta

With a golden crust and drizzle of honey, these planks of sesame-coated Greek feta offer the perfect balance of sweet and savory. Mozzarella sticks will always have a place in my heart, but Brenner’s “Fry Day” recipe for fried cheese is otherworldly. The feta isn’t stringy and melty so much as soft and fluffy, its natural saltiness curbed by the earthiness of sesame. Drizzle with copious honey or, as Brenner points out in this recipe, lend it an even more savory edge with oregano, olive oil and chile flakes.
Get the recipe.
Cooking time: 45 minutes. Serves 2.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Taverna-Style Greek Gigantes

I often keep a ready-made tin of stewed gigantes on hand for a snack, a small meal unto itself, or a salad topping. The plump white beans in an allium-laced tomato sauce manage to hit the spot in a way other legumes can’t quite manage. But after making and tasting Brenner’s recipe, I think I’ll always keep her homemade variety stocked in my freezer instead. Her version — with instruction from the owner of her favorite taverna in Athens — involves plenty of whole carrots, onion, celery stalks and garlic, which pack the already nutrient-rich dish with even more vegetal goodness.
Get the recipe.
Cooking time: 2 hours and 30 minutes, plus overnight bean soak. Serves 8.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)