Chef Periklis Koskinas explains what lies at the core of his purely homegrown cuisine.
“Wherever I’m near the sea, I feel a sense of belonging, of being at home,” says Chef Periklis Koskinas. Growing up on Corfu, the Ionian Sea was his playground. “I spent all my time near or on the water and I’ve always loved fishing. The sea is in my cells, it’s part of me.” So the setting for the summer outpost of Cookoovaya, Koskinas’ acclaimed Athenian restaurant, could not be more perfect: a simple limewashed terrace shaded by tamarisk trees on the shoreline of Apantima bay on Antiparos, a small Cycladic island with a huge following among Greek island cognoscenti.
From Cookoovaya’s plain white tables, you can watch kids dive bombing off the concrete jetty, while a local fisherman untangles nets on his pot-bellied wooden boat. Almost completely open-air, the restaurant’s sun-dappled deck feels like an old friend’s summer house, where you can watch your lunch being prepared with a glass of saline, flinty Assyrtiko wine. “We didn’t want to do anything to impose on the landscape,” Koskinas explains. This approach chimes with his culinary philosophy of apheresis, or subtraction – paring Greek dishes back to their purest essence. “If you have proper ingredients, in season, you don’t need to do very much to them. It’s not your cooking that will make an impression, it’s the quality of each ingredient and the beauty of the setting.”
In the arid, rocky Cyclades islands, locals traditionally cook with whatever the land and sea provide – often just a handful of ingredients, treated with the utmost respect and restraint. Koskinas applies the same principles to his outdoor kitchen. Aubergines, tomatoes and onions, sourced from a farmer on Antiparos, are slow-roast in a wood-fired oven. Foraged wild fennel fills a wafer-thin pie that is served with mint-flecked yoghurt and almond pesto. Local shepherds provide goat for yiouvetsi and lamb for a mighty sandwich stuffed with chickpea cream, grilled vegetables, yoghurt and harissa.
But it’s the understated fish dishes that distil the spirit of the Cyclades. “Greece is a nation of fishermen. We have so many islands and such a varied coastline, so fish is a huge part of our culinary heritage,” says Koskinas, who honed his seafood skills at Milos, the first Greek restaurant to attract global attention with its elevated simplicity, choose-your-own ‘fish market’, and raw fish dishes seasoned with Mediterranean herbs and seasonings. At Cookoovaya, the catch of the day is treated in multiple ways – raw, grilled, steamed, poached, or roasted — for the whole table to share. “Our customers appreciate that if it’s windy, we might not have fresh fish. There’s a sincerity to that which people respect, because they know that if fish is on the menu it has just come off the fishing boat.”
After lunch, you could pad across the sand for a cocktail at The Beach House, a laidback beach bar that winds down at sunset, like Cookoovaya. “For me, the definition of Greek summer is long swims and drawn-out lunches with friends at a simple taverna lapped by the waves,” says Koskinas. It’s the perfect definition of his own unpretentious restaurant.
Simple fish crudo recipe
“The parrotfish – skaros in Greek – is perhaps the most characteristic fish of the Cycladic Islands, and certainly of Antiparos.” Here Chef Periklis Koskina shares how to prepare it
Ingredients
- Raw parrotfish, wild thyme blossom, lemon, extra virgin olive oil
- Ingredients
- 2 medium-sized parrotfish, about 300 grammes each
- 3–4 wild thyme flowers
- Handpicked sea salt
- 20ml extra virgin olive oil
- Juice of half a lemon
Method, by Chef Periklis Koskina
“Start by cleaning and scaling the fish carefully. Wash and set the scales aside. Fillet the fish, remove the bones and cut into thin, diagonal slices. Meanwhile, pat dry the scales and gently fry them in olive oil over low heat until they are crispy. Season them lightly with salt and set aside.
“Arrange the fish slices on a very cold plate and season with sea salt, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. (We harvest our salt from the rocks at Faneromeni beach on Antiparos and use oil from the Lianolia olive tree, native to Corfu.) Crush a few wild thyme flowers on top and add a small spoonful of the scales, giving a delicate crisp.”
