-I love to wander and explore local markets.

Today, I'm here in Hermoupolis on the island of Syros, and we're going to find the freshest ingredients and cook lunch together under the most beautiful blue skies.

We'll make seafood orzo risotto and traditional rolled grape leaves.

And back in San Francisco, we'll make spicy red feta and a Greek-inspired mussel saganaki.

And, of course, what Greek meze table wouldn't be complete without tzatziki?

I love to travel the globe in search of new food and wine discoveries.

For me, it's about more than returning home with a handful of new recipes.

It's about taking the spirit of Austria, of Italy, of Greece, and of the Danube River and injecting some of their magic into our everyday lives.

Food has a unique ability to transport us.

Join me as we discover new plates and places on our culinary journey together.

-"Joanne Weir's Plates & Places" is brought to you by... -With AmaWaterways, guests can climb, pedal, and journey beyond the beaten path while cruising on storied rivers across Europe.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-Our winemaking is the result of teamwork and patience.

Working together, we dedicate our best efforts with every vine, grape, and bottle -- Washington Vintners.

-Since 1899, my family shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

-For baking, cooking, and snacks, California Figs from Valley Fig Growers.

-Today, our first stop is a tsipouro distillery in the small village of Vari to pick up a bottle of their deliciously herbaceous tsipouro.

This strong spirit is distilled twice.

That means it goes through the first 12-hour distillation to create the basic tsipouro.

And then aromatics are added for a second distillation to produce a very special liquor that packs a real punch.

They call this one [speaks Greek] This particular tsipouro is made from the Assyrtiko grape and flavored with nine herbs that are native to Syros.

I can't wait to show you how we'll use it later in the show.

But now we're on our way to shop on the island of Syros for our cooking class, making a few different small plates, or as the Greeks say, "meze."

♪ Hermoupolis, the capital of the Cyclades, is one of the most architecturally fascinating ports in the Mediterranean.

For the best view of this stunning city, we're starting at the top and winding our way slowly down to the waterfront and the market street.

With gorgeous neoclassical architecture, Hermoupolis is a magical city with beauty wherever you look.

♪ So many Greek islands are devoted exclusively to tourism, and Syros is no exception, but the city of Hermoupolis is both magical and, at the same time, a real city.

I love the narrow, winding streets that offer new discoveries at every turn.

But as tempting as it might be to sightsee all day, we're not here for that.

We're going shopping for our cooking class, where we'll make several meze that we'll have for lunch.

But the best part -- we have John Fragias as our guide and local expert.

Was this always the area for the market?

-Yes.

We call it manavika, which means greengrocer's.

-Oh, okay.

Manavika?

-Yes.

-Manavika.

-It's just a greengrocer's and food stuff here.

-Right.

Right, right.

-Everything from clothes to cafes to leather stuff here.

-Right.

-Or glasses, opticians.

-Right.

One of the best parts of food shopping on Syros is, of course, the seafood, which is always super-fresh and plentiful.

The quality and variety is pretty extraordinary.

I mean, look at this stall.

There are so many different options.

It's so hard to know what to choose.

This is a third-generation business, with family members fishing the seas daily to bring the best catch to market.

And this family of hardworking fishermen and fishmongers are so proud of what they do.

One of the things that I love about travel is making these kinds of connections and forming relationships with local purveyors.

And speaking of local, you can't get more Greek than a perfectly trimmed leg of lamb.

It's so important that they show it off in a glass case right out in front of this butcher shop.

Here, you can find almost any cut of meat.

Check out these sausages.

These would be so great on any meze table, but I have other ideas.

That looks so amazing.

Check out that huge pork chop.

Wow!

Yum.

I can't wait to see what we discover next.

-These are from Syros.

-Oh, they're from Syros?

-Mm-hmm.

-Wow.

Okay.

Hello.

I want that melon.

Where are these fruits?

I mean, they're not having apricots now here, so where are things coming from?

-If they are not from -- from Syros, you will see the place of origin... -Okay.

-...written on the -- on the tag.

-Where is that one from?

-So this is from Argos, which is in Peloponnese.

-Oh, okay.

And then, what about the melons?

-These are from Crete.

-From Crete?

Oh, yum.

There's something universal about the smell of a fresh, ripe melon.

It's a fun thing to share.

♪ Samphire is a sea vegetable that has a crisp texture, kind of salty, and tastes just like the sea.

And can you believe all of these fresh grape leaves?

We'll use them for our rolled grape leaves we'll make together.

So I want to show you this.

These are really the staples of the kitchen.

This is dill and mint.

And both of them are used a lot in the kitchen.

Speaking of the kitchen, now it's back to our villa to create our seaside menu.

And we'll start with the grape leaves we saw in the market.

Grape leaves are a staple of the Greek kitchen.

At almost every special occasion, you'll find dolmades with a variety of fillings.

Many households in Greece pick and preserve their own grape leaves, pickling them in brine.

You can also blanch and freeze fresh grape leaves.

But, of course, when you can't find them fresh, jarred are fine.

We rinsed our fresh grape leaves and trimmed the stems.

Then we start by sautéing the onions and making the rice to go in the filling that contains pine nuts, green onions, currants, and the three favorite herbs of the Greek kitchen -- dill, mint, and parsley -- that we found in the market today.

We add the herbs along with a good pinch of cinnamon, salt, and pepper.

This really smells amazing.

♪ When our filling has cooled, we begin to fill the grape leaves.

Many hands make the work go quickly.

There's something special about getting everyone involved.

It's fun to really get in there and get your hands dirty, using local ingredients and making something you might never attempt at home.

Once you find out how easy it is, then you'll have the confidence to try it on your own.

When the leaves are filled, we nestle them close together in a heavy saucepan, adding a little salt, olive oil, and lemon juice to each layer with a little bit of water and then steam them slowly for about 90 minutes.

I love to make grape leaves in a class.

Guess why.

I get everybody on the job.

I gather them all around, because if you want to make grape leaves, make a lot of them.

Put them in your refrigerator.

So I get everybody.

I get the whole table and everybody -- or worktable -- and everybody's there rolling grape leaves.

It's very fun.

And in the end, you've got lots of grape leaves.

♪ Now some more meze.

You're going to learn all about saganaki later in the show, but today, we made the same dish in Greece with shrimp.

♪ Now we'll make spicy red feta and tzatziki.

We crumble the feta, combining it with some Greek yogurt, cayenne, sweet paprika, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

This meze has a creamy texture with just the right amount of heat.

♪ For the tzatziki, we carefully check the recipe and then peeled, seeded, and grated cucumber, mixed in chopped garlic, mint, dill, olive oil, and lemon juice.

♪ Now it's time to put our seafood orzo risotto together.

Orzo isn't rice but pasta shaped like a large grain of rice.

We tasted the orzo to make sure it was cooked to al dente and then added salt to taste.

The nice thing about this dish is we made the orzo in the oven.

This makes the whole process so much easier than making it on the top of the stove.

Everybody thinks of risotto coming from Italy.

But what I did was I took orzo instead and made risotto with it.

And it was really good to put it with the seafood.

It was really fun.

And everybody really loved that dish.

When the orzo is ready, we cook the mussels.

Just look at these beauties fresh from the Aegean.

♪ We cook them in minutes on the stovetop with a little drizzle of olive oil and tsipouro and covered just until the mussels open.

While the mussels cook, we topped the orzo with our herbs and local capers and then use some of the mussel broth to add more depth of flavor.

♪ Finally, we place these big jumbo shrimp right on top.

Yum!

This is going to be so delicious!

♪ The word "meze," or, plural, "mezedes," means something to whet your appetite, and the Greeks have made it a part of their daily social life.

♪ What a meze feast.

It's so nice to cook and eat together in such a beautiful spot overlooking the Aegean.

♪ Logistically, the kitchen was difficult.

I'm telling you, I mean, yes, it was so beautiful because we're out on the balcony looking over the Aegean, but we were 30 steps away from the kitchen and running water.

They brought in a stove and also an oven, and they brought in refrigeration and the tables and chairs.

But it was really, really great.

But what's amazing about it is we turned out incredible dishes, like the orzo with seafood, the red feta, the rolled grape leaves, and the tzatziki.

And we sat down for lunch.

It was so beautiful.

You know, it's funny.

When you put your heart into it and everybody was really excited about it, it just -- we pulled it off.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ What's really fun about the feta, the spicy red feta, is that you can have it on pita, and it's delicious then, but the other thing that you can do is make a sandwich with some warm lamb.

It would be wonderful.

Or even chicken you've taken off the grill.

Slather that on, and with that warm chicken or lamb, it just kind of melts onto the sandwich.

It's so delicious.

♪ I'm making a dish called mussel saganaki.

And I know it's a really weird name, right?

You would never think that's Greek.

But it's just mussels that are stewed with tomatoes and feta.

And they also make it with shrimp.

And I love this dish so much.

It's easy, too.

So I'm sautéing some onions until they're nice and soft and translucent.

My flame's a little high, so I'm going to turn it down.

[ Sizzling ] While those are cooking, I wanted to show you -- I have some really fresh mussels.

One thing about making any dish with mussels, you want to make sure they're super-fresh.

What I always do is I look to see, first of all, how do they smell?

They smell like the sea.

That's what you're looking for.

They should just smell fresh, like the sea.

And then I also look -- I'm trying to find one that might be open.

Well, not really.

What happens is, if they're open and you press them and they start to close, then you know that those are really super-fresh.

They also should feel heavy in comparison to their size.

And that's also really important.

That means they've got a lot of liquid in the shell, along with the meat of the mussel.

You want to remove the beards.

If they have -- Sometimes they don't even have beards anymore, but that's what this kind of little hairy thing is sticking out of the side.

You can do that by just using your finger.

Or sometimes, if it's more stubborn, you can use a knife.

So sometimes I'll take a knife, and I just cut that right off.

The beard is how they attach to the pole that they grow on.

I visited years ago when I was studying cooking in Maine -- I studied with Madeleine Kamman, and she took us to Mr. Myers' mussel farm.

I'll never forget it.

And seeing the mussels grow, they grow on this big stick, and there's thousands of mussels on it.

All right, done.

These are just tomatoes that have been peeled, seeded, and chopped.

You all know how to do that.

You put your whole tomato, skin and all, in a pan of water, 30 seconds in boiling water, and then remove it.

[ Sizzling ] Also, if you wanted to for this dish, you could use canned tomatoes.

That's fine, too, especially if you want to make that dish in the winter or the summer.

And then I'm adding a little bit of crushed red pepper -- just a little bit of hot -- and then some oregano.

What I like to do is to just take it in my hand and rub it like this.

You get so much more flavor.

And I'm adding some white wine.

A dry white wine, like a Sauvignon Blanc, is good.

But if you're in Greece and you're making this, you're probably going to add something like Assyrtiko, which is a really nice, dry white wine you can use.

And then I'm just adding about a teaspoon of red wine vinegar.

I'm going to let that simmer for about 20 minutes.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Now that this sauce has cooked for about 20 minutes, I'm going to add all of the mussels.

So those go right into the pan.

And I want them to open in that great sauce.

Just put the cover on.

And I stand right here, and I've got some tongs.

As they open, I take the mussels out, and that way, they don't get overcooked.

All right.

See all that liquid?

Make sure you leave the liquid in the pan.

Once they start opening, they all seem to open.

If any of the mussels don't open, you can throw them away.

These are so fresh.

All of them opened.

All right, I'm turning that off for now.

I'm going to let the mussels cool just for a few minutes.

When you're cooking with mussels -- they're really, really wonderful -- but you want to make sure they're super-fresh.

I always talk to the fishmonger, and I say to him, "When did they come in?"

Not, "Did they come in today?"

Because you know what he's going to say?

Well, he's probably going to say, he's going to say, "Yeah, they came in today."

If you say "when," he's got to think about it.

And I just think it's important to smell them, to know they smell like the sea.

And if you have a good fishmonger, he's going to let you smell those mussels.

You want them to be super-fresh to make this dish.

Now that these are cool, I'm just taking the mussel out of the shell, discarding the shells.

Place those in one bowl and just the meat from the mussel in the other.

Also, at the same time, I'm just reducing a little bit of the liquid in the pan to concentrate the flavor.

That will just take a few minutes.

It's the perfect thing to happen while I'm shucking these mussels.

That didn't take very long.

And see that liquid that's at the bottom of the bowl?

Don't throw it away.

You're going to add that.

I'm going to turn this down and wash my hands.

I have some feta.

So I love -- This is a combination of sheep, goat, and cow feta.

It's really, really delicious, and it comes from Greece.

I'm adding the mussels back into the pan.

I'm going to stir it first, and then I'm going to add the feta.

And I'll add the feta.

It's a pretty easy dish.

You can also make this with shrimp if you'd like, like we did in Greece.

Now, of course, I'm going to make sure it tastes good here, especially before I serve it.

Mmm.

It's really good.

You remember this, right?

Tsipouro.

This is such a good spirit.

I love it so much.

I thought it would be really nice with this.

Going to just pour a little bit to have with it.

You know what?

Maybe even a drop in here would be good.

Not too much.

Just try it.

I think would be nice.

A little sprinkle of parsley on the top.

And that's all there is to it.

This is a meze that I just love.

Mmm.

Mmm.

The feta, together with the mussels and -- Mmm, there's a little bit of hot.

So delicious.

Mmm!

I love that, and, really, it's simple to make.

Probably the hardest part would be the mussels.

But if you do shrimp, it's easy, too.

So delicious.

Now, let's see on the tsipouro.

Ooh.

Ohh.

Wow.

Okay, that is really delicious.

I'm telling you, it's so good.

Spending time at the table is almost a sport in Greece, and what could be better than a few tasty plates of meze placed on the table to be shared and lingered over?

A taste of this and a taste of that, a little sip of tsipouro, and everyone is happy, especially me.

Yum.

-You can visit my website to find and print selected recipes, get information about each episode, learn more about the show, see behind-the-scenes photos, provide e-mail feedback, and more.

It's all at joanneweir.com/plates-places.

-"Joanne Weir's Plates & Places" is brought to you by... -With AmaWaterways, guests can climb, pedal, and journey beyond the beaten path while cruising on storied rivers across Europe.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-Our winemaking is the result of teamwork and patience.

Working together, we dedicate our best efforts with every vine, grape, and bottle -- Washington Vintners.

-Since 1899, my family shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

-For baking, cooking, and snacks, California Figs from Valley Fig Growers.

♪ ♪ ♪