The Delicious Legacy

Hello my curious archaeogastronomers!This week's subject is a little bit darker than normal.My reason for doing an episode is that this time of the year, specifically near 28th of October, is that is when traditionally in Greece the commemoration and celebration of liberation from Nazis occupation is celebrated. I wanted to examine the role of the famine in the modern Greek psyche a little.World War 2 was brutal for the Greek people; Greece as country suffered under the triple occupation of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Bulgaria.Roughly 10% of the pre war population perished. A civil war that lasted 4 years ensued after liberation in 1944. Greece lay in ruins. Whoever could, in the 50's immigrated in USA, Australia and Germany to find a better luck.The after effects of the devastation and the great famine of WW2 were felt till recently. The grandmas talk about it, it has passed in the language and in the way people saw food in the subsequent decades.Listen to BBC's Witness History short episode:https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct3c59Recommended reading:Famine and death in occupied Greece, 1941-1944: By Violetta Hionidou · 2006The German Occupation Recipes:https://metabook.gr/books/oi-sintaghes-tis-katokhis-natalia-samara-gkaitlikh-20132Much Love,Thom & The Delicious Legacy

Hello!New episode is out for your delectable delight!Thessaloniki is located in Northern Greece in the region of Macedonia, and has a long, long history, being established in 315 BCE by king Cassander to honour his wife, the half-sister of Alexander the Great, Thessalonike. Today is the second largest and most important city in Greece.As a major port, with access to the Mediterranean, and half way to Constantinople it thrived for centuries, being an important hub for trade and culture from all over the Balkan peninsula, and beyond.It was also home to a thriving Jewish community for roughly 500 years; the Sephardic Jews.In the beginning of the 20th century they accounted for more than half of the total population of the city.As a result, Thessalonica’s food culture is a heady mix of influences from all across Greece, Balkans, and Turkey with amazing food, and rightly is considered by many the food capital of Greece.On today's episode, I have the honour to have as my guest Meni Valle, Greek-Australian cook and author, all about the best gastronomic destination in Greece, the city of Thessaloniki!!!In Valle’s new book, Thessaloniki: And the Many Kitchens of Northern Greece, published by Hardie Grant, she turns her focus to the diverse and historically rich cuisine of Greece’s second-largest city.Well, enjoy our discussion!https://www.menivalle.com.au/Her new book Thessaloniki is released soon in UK.https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thessaloniki-Many-Kitchens-Northern-Greece/dp/1761450980My food cultural / historical recommendations for the week include:Dr Roderick Bailey: The British Experience of the Great Fire of Thessaloniki of 1917https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUMh1RoqKiwCulina vetusFreezing and Salting Pork:https://www.culina-vetus.de/2025/09/30/freezing-and-salting-pork/PopChop - Future Food Culturehttps://popchop.at/Building Blocks: Greek Whole Grain Tahini, and the Artisans Behind Ithttps://culinarybackstreets.com/stories/athens/building-blocks-37Music on this episode -as ever- by Pavlos KapralosEnjoy!Love,Thom & The Delicious Legacy

Hello, and welcome to part two of my discussion about Balkan Food with the incredible Irina Janakievska!On this second part of our discussion -we pick up from where we left- we talk about the top five must try dishes of the region, that anyone who loves food should try. Foods from the heart of the Balkans.Such as cevapi, ajvar, dolma/ sarma, bourek, and tres leches revani! Yes....Lets find out why....I'm interviewing the award winning (James Beard awards on the International Category) and writer and recipe developer Irina Janakievska, author of the book "The Balkan Kitchen, Recipes and Stories from the Heart of the Balkans". She has also won the British Library Food Season Narrative Cookery Book Award (2025) and a Special Award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards (2024).The book was shortlisted for the Jane Grigson Trust Award (2023) and the Fortnum & Mason Debut Cookery Book Award (2025). She has featured on BBC Woman's Hour, BBC Radio London and Times Radio discussing Balkan cuisine.  She lives in south London with her husband and young son, cooking, researching and writing about Balkan history, food culture and culinary traditions, and where I went to chat about all things Balkan. plus tasting some delicious traditional home made specialities!Photo Credit is The Balkan Kitchen (Quadrille, 2024), Copyright for photos Liz Seabrook.Enjoy!Thom & The Delicious Legacy

Hello!New episode is out for all of you my darling archaeogastronomers!This time, I'm going back to my troubled neighbourhood of the Balkans! I'm interviewing the award winning (James Beard awards on the International Category) writer and recipe developer Irina Janakievska, author of the book "The Balkan Kitchen, Recipes and Stories from the Heart of the Balkans". The book was shortlisted for the Jane Grigson Trust Award (2023) and the Fortnum & Mason Debut Cookery Book Award (2025), a British Library Food Season Narrative Cookery Book Award (2025) and a Special Award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards (2024). She has featured on BBC Woman's Hour, BBC Radio London and Times Radio discussing Balkan cuisine.  She lives in south London with her husband and young son, cooking, researching and writing about Balkan history, food culture and culinary traditions, and where I went to chat about all things Balkan. plus tasting some delicious traditional home made specialties!We had so much fun and so many things to say, being neighbours and all, that I had to split this episode in to two parts for you! Next week will have Part two!How many people used "Balkanisation" as a negative concept though the ages?Well we are trying today to bring a bit of a balance and talk about about the delightful and delicious common and unique dishes we have throughout this historic, varied and rich part of europe! A crossroad of civilisations for millennia and place with mountains, sea, plateaus and fertile valleys!Irina is the author of the book The Balkan Kitchen (Quadrille, 2024) which you can purchase now here:https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/the-balkan-kitchen/irina-janakievska/9781784886851You can find more about her and her recipes and story here:http://balkankitchen.co.uk/Photo Credit is The Balkan Kitchen (Quadrille, 2024), Copyright for photos Liz Seabrook.Enjoy!Much love,Thom & The Delicious Legacy

What is it to lose a paradise? How do you square the feeling of deep loss for a place?Welcome to the newest episode of The Delicious Legacy!Strong Roots, is the memoir of Olia Hercules, food writer, cook, activist amongst many other things.The book is an ode to the land, to ideas of home and belonging, and to family stories and recipes passed down the generations.Here we talk about the land, the produce, the culinary treasures of Ukrainian people and their unique foods, a mixture of many people and religions living in the rich bountiful land of Ukraine. Of course war, dispossession, hunger and exiled are part and parcel of the story of Ukraine. For Ukrainians worry is a national pastime. And fermentation is in their DNA. Preservation, is part and parcel of their survival.Olia is the author of Mamushka, Summer Kitchens, Kaukasis: The Cookbook, Home Food and of course Strong Roots.You can get a copy of Strong Roots here:https://www.waterstones.com/book/strong-roots/olia-hercules/9781526662927Who is Taras Shevchenko:https://shevchenko.ca/taras-shevchenko/biography/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Taras_ShevchenkoRecommendation of the week:https://ruby-tandoh.medium.com/empire-of-seeds-ee4308a529c4Music by Pavlos KapralosEnjoy!Thom & The Delicious Legacy

* * * Reminder: The first ever FOOD HISTORY FESTIVAL is happening on the 18th of October and it's all online! Get your tickets here:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/serve-it-forth-food-history-festival-2025-tickets-1490885802569?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdssIt's going to be a fantastic day with many excellent food historian guests, and of course my fellow Serve It Forth members, food historians, Dr Neil Buttery, Dr Alessandra Pino and Sam Bilton!Join us for a day of historical dishes, cocktails and recipes! * * * Famously, Diodorus Siculus the Greek geographer said for Britain:"It is the home of men who are complete savages and lead a miserable existence because of the cold; and therefore, in my opinion, the northern limit of our inhabited world is to be placed there"But nevertheless the Romans went and conquered it and made it part of the Roman Empire for nearly four hundred years.The stereotypes even then two thousand years abound:"Those near the coast in Kent may be more civilised, but in the interior they do not cultivate the land but share their wives with family members, live on milk and meat, and wear the skins of animals."Horace wrote.Diodorus continues: "The numerous population of natives, he says, live in thatched cottages, store their grain in subterranean caches and bake bread from it. They are "of simple manners" (ēthesin haplous) and are content with plain fare..."But beyond this, there was a thriving Celtic and British Roman culture that existed. The local foods and customs and rich pasture for animals helped the invading Romans create a rich culinary legacy, based on many imported foods from across the empire and introduced numerous plants and animals to Britain that since became native to the land, from humble leek to plums to rabbits and pheasants.So on this episode together with fellow chef and podcaster Lewis Bassett (The Full English) we sat down to chat and explore the legacy of Rome in the British Isles, through food, culinary pathways and how this intertwines with class and politics to our modern age!Join us and let's find out what did the Roman-British table and pantry had to offer!Music by Pavlos Kapralos.Enjoy!Love,The Delicious Legacy

Hello!Part two of a catalogue of ingredients that ancient Greeks around the Med ate, how they ate it and what can we learn from it today?Recommendations for this week include:Ruby Tandoh, in the New Yorker: Inside the World of “The Great British Bake Off”https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/01/inside-the-world-of-the-great-british-bake-off?utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_FoodScene_090625&bxid=64ff2d52fff4462db5008e05&cndid=&hasha=a497a3041ea22b49ac020aa705c07fe1&hashb=9070ee59934b5363ceb4666efcad5b0eff3581b1&hashc=fb91fd7a11300ca6d1ccf6b3ca417c8cbe677ee45325b6d1e26ab60759584734&esrc=subscribe-page&mbid=mbid%3DCRMNYR012019The Food That Made Us HumanA three part story on how biodiversity gave early humans in South Africa the tools to survive extinction.https://newworlder.substack.com/p/the-food-that-made-us-human?r=tjeew&triedRedirect=trueAn immovable feast? How Dalston fishmongers took on the City of London:https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/an-immovable-feast-how-dalston-fishmongers-took-on-the-city-of-london/Enjoy!xThom

Hello,Here’s a quick special bonus episode for you – the lowdown on the Serve it Forth Food History Festival 2025 sponsored by the excellent Netherton Foundry.My fellow festival coordinators Sam Bilton, Thomas Ntinas and Alessandra Pino and I are here to tell you more about it: how the day will work, what the sessions will be like, the topics and the guests – including guest Tom Parker Bowles.We have a brief discussion about our own interests and how we all got into food history. We also talk about our biggest/most embarrassing disasters.Join us for Serve it Forth Food History Festival 2025 for a fantastic day of discussion, chat and learning about food history and traditions.Date and time:Saturday, October 18 · 10:30am - 4:30pm GMT+1Get your tickets with a 25% discount here:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/serve-it-forth-food-history-festival-2025-tickets-1490885802569?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurlLove,Thom & The Delicious Legacy

Hellooooo!!!!Today's episode is an elegy for fava beans!Soup, pottage, gruel, mash...Under many guises, pulses, and especially the ones from the genus Lathyrus, such as Pisum sativum have been eaten in the ancient Greek World since time immemorial...From Neolithic remains to modern Greek table, fava beans and peas, all these delicious pods of the genus Lathyrus have been cultivated and eaten in the Hellenic lands for thousands upon thousands of years!What did the ancient Greeks thought of the peas / yellow split peas? Where was the bastions of their cultivation? And how to cook it?Let's find out on today's episode about this amazing legume, that kept the Greeks alive for centuries!And why the Santorini Fava tastes just so so delicious?Also, this week's recommendations are the following:Odeuropa with William Tullett, by Around The Table podcast:https://recipes.hypotheses.org/23317https://odeuropa.eu/The blog cooking in the archives, rarecooking.comBon Appetit, Your Majesty: a talented chef travels to Joseon era korea and meets a tyrant king. Her modern dishes captivate his palate but challenges await her.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37600136/You can listen to the podcast on YouTube too:https://youtu.be/xlMe4Zm_1nUMusic by Pavlos KapralosEnjoy!Thom & The Delicious Legacy