Cooking lessons

These cooking lessons reveal the secrets of longevity, which are hidden in the island’s unique gastronomy. Participants will learn how to prepare and cook three or four recipes from the mainly plant-based Ikarian cuisine. They may actively involve themselves in the cooking process or keep notes, while at the end of the lesson, the food is served for everyone to enjoy together with wine from the family’s winery.

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Being mostly vegetarian (plant-based), Ikarian cuisine embraces fresh vegetables and organic ingredients (legumes, cereals, flours), fresh (and occasionally dried) aromatic plants and herbs, rich in goodness and with special flavour and aroma. Olive oil is used mainly towards the end of the cooking process. Most of the dishes are cooked in the wood oven. The use of meat in cooking is rare and even then, it comes solely from our own farm. Fish is part of the menu more often and is particularly fresh, as it comes straight from Ikaria’s own fishermen. The fruit, the vegetables and the aromatic herbs, the goat’s cheese and the eggs, the olive oil and the olives are all 100% produced on the farm. The bread is pre-leavened and made from 100% Greek flours of ancient origin. It is all these pure ingredients in conjunction with the light way of cooking, forever prevalent in Ikaria, that result in food which has kept all its nutritional value, such as antioxidants, enzymes, vitamins and minerals.

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Local gastronomy is inextricably linked to longevity according to the results of studies run by American and European research groups. These scientists have cooperated with the Karimalis family in the selection of information and data on the Ikarian way of life and the local gastronomy based on traditional recipes.

(See Press).

Duration: 4 h