The image of whole fish on the grill might be seared into the minds of most people when they think about Greece’s maritime cookery, but the Greek kitchen is filled with countless other ways to cook fish and seafood, most culled from the country’s rich regional traditions.

A classic way to fry sardines and fresh anchovies, for example, is to press two together at a time, right at the tail tips, and to pan fry them in olive oil, the result is a V-shaped double sardine. Typically that’s served with skordalia.

Sometimes larger fried fish, such as mullets, are served the next day in a preparation called savoro, which sounds Italian but hearkens back to the sweet and sour flavors that the ancients also liked to dress their fish with. It calls for a sauce of rosemary, raisins, tomatoes, vinegar and sometimes even petimezi, or grape must syrup.

But fish are also baked, pan-fried, grilled, sautéed, even poached in the Greek kitchen. The proliferation of excellent quality farmed fish in the last few years in Greece, especially bream and grouper, have made fish recipes more accessible, mainly because farmed fish is so much more economical than wild catch. Greece is also home to a great wealth of ready-to-eat fish and seafood mezedes, prepared and produced by the country’s formidable fish industry. Many of these products have been inspired by regional and other classic specialties.

The proliferation of excellent quality farmed fish in Greece has made regional fish recipes more accessible

Fish and Vegetables Regional fish cookery invariably means the marriage of fish and other healthy Greek ingredients such as vegetables. Variations of the vegetable-fish theme are echoed in such dishes as the Cretan recipe for bass, grouper or snapper baked with leeks (in winter) and okra (in summer), or for various species of fish baked with red and/ or green peppers, a specialty of Thessaly.

Fish stews are not as common in Greece as they are elsewhere in the Mediterranean, arguably because of the wealth of really fresh fish available here and the Greek penchant for liking great ingredients prepared as spartanly and simply as possible.

There are fish stews, though, among them a luscious, dense stew of cod and chick peas and another fascinating dish with bream and purslane in a light tomato-based stew. Both of these are from Crete.In the Ionian, where several fish dishes take their cue from the 400- year Venetian presence in many of the islands, fish stews are common. Bianco and bourtheto, the former in a peppery white wine sauce and the latter cooked with paprika, leeks and more, are two of the Ionian’s best known fish recipes.

Every country in the Mediterranean has its version of a fisherman’s soup. Many, like the bouillabaisse, are named for the pot in which they simmer. Greece’s kakavia, after the pot called kakavi, is one such soup.

Made with numerous fish of varying sizes (large on the bottom of the pot, smaller ones on top), this soup is known for its secret ingredient: a touch of sea water mixed into the pot for flavor, salt and mystery. Other fish soups abound, too. Fish and vegetables, especially tomatoes, potatoes and zucchini are often together in soups; fish soup avgolemono, with tender rice and that characteristic tang from the lemon and eggs in the avgolemono addition, is a home and restaurant classic.

In Salonika and its northern environs, where most seafood comes from the ample coves and inlets around the Halkidiki peninsula shellfish is abundant. The mussel is especially esteemed, thanks in large part to the large number of Asia Minor Greeks who brought a fondness for it with them when they emigrated as political refugees to the region in 1922. But mussel farming is also big business in Greece’s north, with places like Pieria and Halkidiki especially fecund. The local mussel is a small, slim one; most farmed mussels are the Mediterranean blue variety. Two of the best northern Greek dishes are mussels stuffed with rice and pine nuts, and mussels simmered in a small shallow frying pan called the “saganaki” and cooked with wine or ouzo, tomato, and feta.

Another legacy of northern Greek fish and seafood cookery is the penchant for the sardine, a favorite among the Pontian Greeks, who arrived from the Black Sea and also settled in large numbers in Macedonia. A few local dishes include baking it with leeks or wrapping it in grape leaves and baking or grilling. (Sardines are also a near staple food on the Greek island of Lesvos, where they flourish in the island’s many coves and bays and make for the foundation of a lucrative canning business.)

Freshwater fish such as a number of catfish varieties, carp, and trout, this latter one a popular farmed fish, too, have long been part of the fish traditions of northern Greece’s inland lakes and rivers. Recipes for these fish are distinct. Perhaps because such fish is blander than saltwater fish, strong seasoning is common.

One popular local preparation, from towns deep in the north such as Kastoria and Serres, is lake fish stuffed or baked with currants, black and red pepper, tomatoes, onions, and sometimes walnuts.

Nuts and robust seasoning are a trademark of certain Salonika fish dishes, too. Carp, fillet of sole, and fish croquettes might be served with a pungent walnut and vinegar sauce in Greece’s second city. There are some fascinating old Thessalonika Jewish recipes for heady fish, such as carp or bass baked with greengage plums and for fish fillets baked with white wine and prunes.

Once outside of northern Greece, though, Greek regional fish dishes tend to be simpler and more pared down, at least in terms of flavor.

In the Aegean islands, people have traditionally subsisted on fresh fish and their own garden vegetables.

Combinations of fish or seafood, especially snapper, bass, and bream, with vegetables such as okra, zucchini, and spinach are common among the islands. On the island of Lesvos, or Mytillene, known since antiquity for the abundance of seafood in its coastal waters, an interesting and unique Sunday meal is cabbage leaves stuffed with fish and rice.

In Crete, wild fennel and green olives are added to the pot, when it comes to simmering octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. Cretans also like the combination of oranges and tomato in a luscious octopus stew, which is a local specialty.

On Paros, in the Cyclades, a cousin to the sardine, the gavros, or anchovy, is sun-dried, then grilled—a meze made for ouzo. In Syros, it’s not the fish that’s dried under the hot Greek sun, but the capers that are cooked with it, in an oven-baked stew made with mackerel, tomatoes, and onions.

There is such a wealth of regional Greek fish dishes beyond the simple, almost formulaic whole grilled fish that defines Greek fish cooking abroad all too often. And yet, despite the variety, Greek fish cookery is almost always simple and straightforward.

There are no complicated sauces married with fish. Many recipes are made and enjoyed all over the country, and are easy to find in tavernas—octopus marinated in olive oil and vinegar, or simmered with tomato and pearl onions; cuttlefish and spinach stew; fried small fish such as whitebait and picarel, and the ubiquitous whole fish grilled to perfection. Then there are those dishes that are the mirror of specific regions, one whose flavors sparkle with the history, flora, seasonality, and marine life from place to place in this country of countless coastlines.