Bringing the secrets of Yiayia’s Greek kitchen to yours

Bringing the secrets of Yiayia’s Greek kitchen to yours

Writing a book and launching a new business is easy.

SAID NO-ONE EVER.

Yet, for the last few months this is exactly what I have been doing. Longer, if you go back 3-years ago to when my sister-in-law, Eva, and I first had the idea to write a book of Yiayia’s traditional Greek recipes, which would feature alongside stories of Grenglish family life.

Yiayia (Greek for Grandmother) has been feeding her family for over 40-years on these recipes and we want our own children to grow up on them too.

However, there are so many recipes we decided to focus on meze, soups and dips in this book and if we write another, which I sincerely hope we do, then we’ll put all of Yiayia’s big Greek main courses in there.

We have spent much of the last year writing the recipes, testing them, rewriting them and testing them again. We then also had to write introductions to accompany each recipe and although this is undoubtedly the fun part, it was like having to come up with 30-blog posts in one sitting!

It took a lot of early mornings, a lot of late nights, and a lot more wine than we’d probably like to admit, but we finally had something that resembled a book.

Except for the photos!

The snaps we had taken on our phones were just not jumping off the page to us and saying ‘EAT ME’, so we enlisted the help of Louise at Gingham Hearts to give us some advice on styling the food shots and it made so much difference.

Fortuitously, the wife of one of the Greek God(zilla)’s friends is a graphic designer for a publishing company and offered to help format and layout the book for us. It was a huge taking on, which I don’t think any of us fully appreciated at the time, but she stuck with us until the end and patiently accepted change after change after change from 2 total publishing novices.

Final Cover image

With the book finally ready, you would think now would be a good time to exhale and slow down… but where would be the fun in that?!

As our confidence in these recipes has grown as have our ambitions, and we have decided to start selling our authentic Greek dips at local farmer’s markets and fairs.

Our new baby business, Yiayia’s Kouzina, is born!

yiayias kouzina RGB

Logo by Oliver @mrmcquitty.com

So, we have our book, Secrets from Yiayia’s Greek Kitchen: Meze, Soups & Dips, which you can buy on Amazon now.

Our dips will be available in the new year, so we’ll have more to update you on this soon.

We also have Yiayia’s Kouzina branded aprons, tote bags and mugs that you will be able to buy on our website yiayiaskouzina.co.uk from next week. We’ll be posting many more of Yiayia’s delicious recipes over there too, so you won’t have to wait for another 3-years until we finish the next book!

Meanwhile, please follow us on Twitter @yiayiaskouzina and find us on Facebook/yiayiaskouzinaltd

Kali Orexi!

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3 Comments

  1. November 27, 2015 / 12:40 PM

    I’m so excited for you with this project! I have the book and love Greek food so I can’t wait to start trying out recipes. And I also can’t wait for the big Greek main meals!

    • Grenglish
      Author
      November 27, 2015 / 12:43 PM

      Thanks Helen! Also for buying the book, I really hope you like it.
      We’ll start putting the main meals up on the website from next week so watch this space!
      xx

  2. December 3, 2015 / 12:24 AM

    SO proud of you all, cannot wait to read this book-you know I adore Greek food and I can’t wait to meet Yiayia. Bravo xx

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