Ivy Liacopoulou

Ivy Liacopoulou grew up in Limassol, Cyprus, a beautiful island in the eastern Mediterranean, where her passion for cooking began as a child, helping her mother in the kitchen. Ivy belongs to a new generation of home cooks who loves to experiment and create new recipes of her own. She is the author of two cookbooks and she owns and manages Cooking Classes, in Nafplio, Peloponnese.

Pastitsio nistisimo (pr. Pah-STEE-tsio Knee-STEE-see-moh) is a vegan pasta casserole dish made with tubular pasta, vegetable filling and topped with a vegan faux béchamel sauce. The same dish can be made vegetarian using the same filling but adding a real bechamel sauce on top.

Nistisimi Béchamel is a vegan substitute which can be used on top of Greek dishes such as pastitsio, moussakas, papoutsakia etc to make them vegan.

Indian style chicken curry includes a variety of aromatic spices simmered in a coconut milk-based sauce and served with rice.

Traditional Greek Macedonian Halvas, is one of the main Lenten sweets. It’s main ingredient is sesame, which is turned into tahini and used to be sweetened originally with threpsini, which is a natural sweetener produced from raisins. During the War, when the Germans had confiscated all the production of raisins in Greece, other sweeteners were …

Pasta dishes combine a lot of qualities: cheap, quick, easy but most of all delicious! Just a few days before Lent started, I realized that I had a lot of ingredients in my refrigerator that I had to use and looking at what I had, a Carbonara was a perfect choice. I had leftover pancetta …

Daktyla, also called daktyla kyrion (meaning ladies fingers) is the most popular Cypriot dessert made with phyllo which is very crisp and very juicy, filled with almonds, cinnamon and sugar. They are fried and then drenched in syrup, scented with anthonero (orange blossom water), which make them irresistible.

Greek Orthodox Easter is just around the corner. For those who want to fast during the last weeks, I have compiled a list with over 100 Lenten Recipes (most of which are also vegan).

When I read Cynthia’s post about The Essence of Choka, I knew I would love this recipe but never had the opportunity to make it as I cannot find cilantro in Greece. When I went to Cyprus a few weeks ago, I went to the Supermarket and bought two large bunches of cilantro and tried …

Think Spice… is a monthly blog event dedicated to spices founded by Sunita, ofSunita’s World, and I had the pleasure to host it for the month of February, exceptionally featuring two spices this month: Mastic Gum and Fennel Seeds. The reason for this exception is that mastic gum is not a well known spice and …

There are certain recipes I have heard of but since I have never tried them before, I never bothered making them myself. I was debating whether to make Beef Stroganoff or a Borscht beef soup for Joan’s Culinary Tour Around the World, as this week’s destination is Russia. I wanted to make the Borscht soup …