WORLD WIDE MEAL 

The following menu suggestion is suitable for a festive dinner with a bunch of friends or some family celebration. This menu is not an easy one to prepare, since it contains quite an amount of different dishes and demands some good cooking skills, On the other hand some of the dishes can or should be prepared in advance, so there is no need to work under time pressure. And believe me, the result will be rewarding, since it will bring the best the Greek cuisine has to offer.

The menu is divided into 3 parts. First there is a set of meze dishes. Similar to the Spanish tapas, meze is a variety of hot or cold dishes usually served in small plates to be shared among the participants. Meze can be served separately to accompany alcoholic drinks, or as a part of a big dinner before the main course. Some of the meze dishes in this menu are served cold and can be prepared in advance.

The second part of the dinner is the main course dishes. The suggested dishes exhibit a variety of cooking styles and different ingredients to work with like beef, pork and seafood.

And finally the dessert, a nice piece of delicious semolina cake to accompany a cup of coffee or tea at the end of the dinner. This recipe should be prepared partly a day before. So enjoy your meal and the company!

Tips:

All meze dishes except the fish salad can be prepared a day-two in advance. Octopus, shrimps in olive oil and gyros should be prepared in advance since they need time in marinade.

Moussaka can be partly prepared in advance. The same goes for the semolina cake.

In any case plan your preparations: start the meze dishes preparation with the ones needing more time (like the octopus and the vine leaves), leave the fried dishes (gyros, cake) to the end since they should be served hot.

It may be a good idea to practice once or twice the preparation of more difficult dishes before calling the guests.