Market revolution

(Vatoussa)

Some days ago Bruno Tersago, a Belgium blogger living in Piraeus, wrote about the Potato Movement (only in Dutch). It was about farmers who could not sell their potatoes because they were said to be polluted. The farmers took their potatoes to Athens and distributed them for free. Farmers from another part of Greece were having the same problem and also took their potatoes to the capital. They sold them for cost. Many people welcomed this opportunity for cheaper produce because normally most brokers triple the prices.

It seems a new revolution: farmers coming to the cities to sell their own products. Which is what usually is done at a markets. However, a market stall will cost you and not everybody has money lying ready in their kitchen drawer.

I remember visiting markets in Chania (Crete) and in Athens and I am sure there must be others in Greece. But on Lesvos, the third biggest island of Greece, there are none. Why? It might be because most of the people here have their own little gardens where they grow their own vegetables, whilst one of their neighbours will have sheep and goats and most families on the island have olive trees for their daily consummation of olive oil.

It is also said that the shopkeepers oppose a farmer’s market: they are afraid of loss of income. Like the shopkeepers of Kalloni are opposing a bypass because they fear than no-one will come into their city for shopping. Meanwhile, most travellers to the north frequently get stuck in traffic jams in Kalloni.

All those shopkeepers should be sent abroad to take a look at foreign markets. In the South of France, the local markets, where you’ll find the most delicious local products, attract lots of people who also go into the local shops because not everything is available on the market stalls.

Here on Lesvos you could say that we have a mobile market. A few vegetable growers sell their products from their pick-ups. There are also some men selling fish from their cars. And there are gypsies and Chinese people travelling around selling chairs, clothes, knifes, tools, poultry and so on. They are like the peddlers of the Middle Ages. When you see those poultry vans, you believe yourself to be in another time. The poultry is kept in tiny cages and should be forbidden, especially in the soaring summer heat, when it’s pure animal cruelty.

Those other driving ‘marketcars’ are okay, but where are they when you need them. Years ago I went hunting for the mobile fish seller, but after chasing him with blazing horn for ages and to no-result, it’s no longer fun.

And then there are the tourists who ask frequently where the island markets are. The Dutch love to visit markets abroad to see all the local products. You can send them to the cooperative shops, but they don’t carry all products, especially no fresh vegetables.

Here in Molyvos they tried to organise a market, without any result. Last week I discussed this phenomenon with friends who work in the tourist industry and they told me that one of the most popular excursions on Las Palmas (Gran Canarian) is the one to a faraway local market.

So that’s it: don’t plan a market too close — but faraway! Lafionas for example is a picturesque village above Petra, where you could organize a market. You could make it into an attractive excursion where tourists, once up in the village, can also take the Alexander walk, an easy walk around a mountaintop with splendid views over the region.

If the sub-municipality of Petra doesn’t approve of a market in Lafionas then you make a market in Vatoussa, one of the most beautiful villages of the island, and which has a large parking lot. Or in Andissa, where they say that they have the most beautiful square. They wouldn’t object to having the most cozy market of the island. Because a market brings lots of life and where there’s life, there’s business.

Yesterday in Skamnioudi I tasted a one-day-old feta, and I nearly ate a kilo, it was that delicious. I get honey in Karini, but I am sure you also can find the same good quality elsewhere on the island. Lisvori makes a very special bread, like the bread from the wood stove in Megalochori which also is famous. The region around Mandamados is famous for its cheese, Agios Dimitrios (close to Agiasos) is known for its in sugar preserved vegetables and fruit (gliko toe koetalio) and the womens’ cooperative of Anamotia makes delicious cakes. It will take you days to buy all your favourite products here on the island.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have all those different cheeses from the island gathered in one market, along with all the different products of the many womens’ cooperatives, or to see all the honeys on a row, or all the olive oils, all the wines, all the horta and so on . . .

During the Ottoman Empire Greeks were known as being smart and good business people. Where did that business spirit go? Huge national and international enterprises have made Greece poor. So change the laws and the bureaucratic systems so that small entrepreneurs can build up Greece again with honest commerce and old-fashioned mercantilism.

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

@ Smitaki 2012

Winter Vegetables Blues

Sometimes I think: I wish it would always be winter. It is the refreshing quietness on the island, the winter sun that’s warm but not hot, nature that is saturated with rain and is shining green, beautiful skies, that for change are not just bright blue but populated with stout clouds. And, yes, whenever there is a storm flying over the island - like last week, when there was a southern storm that blew everything away from our garden, ripped thick branches from the trees and who knows what damage elsewhere - for a change it is nice to sit cozy, dry and warm at the fireplace.

And what is also nice about the winter is the food. Except for some nutritious soups the Greek kitchen (or island kitchen) does not have real winterfood like the stews we know in the north. Just as in summer you order several dishes, only the vegetables are different: cabbages and beans, green salads (marouli), leek, beetroots, celery and spinach. There is a bigger choice of fresh fish (weather permitting) and you can be sure that the calamaria and shrimps are fresh, just like the shellfish. There are huge radishes, there are wild vegetables (horta) and lovely goat or lamb in the oven. And another benefit: no watermelon as a desert, but pieces of cake or halva, fresh oranges or apples.

The vegetables are served very simply: cauliflower, cabbage leaves, broccoli just cooked and seasoned with a little olive oil and some drops of lemon juice. And they taste super, because they are fresh from the fields.

You could say that in the winter you eat the real authentic Greek food. Because whilst tomatoes reign over the Greek kitchen in the summer, the tomato is in fact an intruder. It was only around the Sixteenth century that tomatoes were brought from South-America to Europe by the Spanish conquerors. First the plants were just for decorations, because it was believed that the tomatoes were poisonous, and only about one and a half century later, tomatoes were accepted as an edible vegetable. Aubergines that originate from Asia came also to Europe around the Sixteenth century. A century earlier it was Christopher Colombus who brought seeds of the courgette to Europe, but the courgette that we eat now was only cultivated in Italy in the last century. The cucumbers were a little earlier: Pliny the Elder, a Roman military, writer, naturalist and philosopher, who lived in the first century AD, wrote that the ancient Greeks already grew cucumbers. But the cucumber originally comes from India. It might have been Alexander the Great, who was not only a big conqueror but introduced lots of new products (like the chestnut) to Greece, who brought the cucumber to Europe.

But cabbage is said to come from the Mediterranean. Green cabbage, red cabbage, white cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower ¬— they all came from a wild cabbage plant that loved salted coasts and poor grounds. Did you know that broccoli and cauliflower are the flower buds of the plant? If you don’t harvest these vegetables you’ll see the stems growing and the flowers appearing from their buds.

Beetroots also come from the Mediterranean countries. They come from wild spinach (originally called Sea Beet), a horta you can still find nowadays. The Greeks not only eat the root, but also the leaves. And yes, you guessed it: the leaves have a spinach-like taste. The roots and leaves all served together with a garlic sauce (skordalia) are a delicious Greek dish and if you run out of spinach one day, the leaves of the beetroot is a good replacement.

Celery leaves have been found in the grave of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamon (he died around 1323 BC). The ancient Greeks believed that celery came from the blood of Kadmilos, who was the father of the non-Hellenistic gods the Cabeiri who were originally worshipped in the islands of the North Aegean (Lemnos, Imbros, and Samothrace [and possibly Lesvos]). This cult later spread further afield to the island of Delos and according to Pausiana as far as Thebes on the mainland. The Cabeiri were an odd kind of gods, sometimes father and son, or mother and son, but their lives remain a mystery. According to one of the many Greek myths they may also have been the grandchildren of Hephaestus, a son of Zeus who was worshipped on Lemnos and was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, fire and vulcanoes (his Roman name was indeed Vulcan).

So, if I may believe the ancient Greeks I do live in the home of the celery (Lemnos is the neighbouring island of Lesvos) and in the home area of beetroots and cabbages.

I like to experiment with food. I am even writing a cookbook with recipes that are Not Quite Greek, but are made from Greek ingredients (I also count the summer vegetables as Greek). Celery can be more than just a soup ingredient and can accompany more than just pork, cauliflowers and broccoli sometimes require some decoration, and beetroots sometimes can get fed up with just the garlic sauce.

Here is a foretaste for a dish from Just Not Greek:

Beet salad with marinated anchovy (gavros)
(side dish for 4 persons)

500 g beetroot
1 bay leaf
salt
1 tsp sugar
a dash of vinegar
100 g marinated anchovy (or salted herring)

For the seasoning:
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp Greek yoghurt
1 tsp mustard
½ tsp dill weed
½ tsp thyme

Wash the beetroots, remove the leaves (leaving 1 cm of the stem) but do not remove the root. Put them in a pan with the bay leaf, salt, sugar and vinegar and add water until everything is covered. Cook for about 1/2 hour. When they are soft, cut the small root and peel them. Dice them into small pieces (about 1 – 1.5 cm). Put 4 of the anchovies aside and add the rest to the beetroots. Mix all ingredients for the sauce and add to the beetroot. Serve on a green salad and garnish each portion with an anchovy.

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

@ Smitaki 2012

Food as cultural heritage

The Petrified Forest of Lesvos did not make UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites. Greece has some twenty sites on that list, including the Acropolis in Athens, the medieval town of Rhodes, the Meteora Monastery, the monastery of Saint John the Theologian, its cave and historical centre (chora) in Patmos and the old city of Corfu. Even though the Petrified Forest was nominated, it was not elected.

So as far as UNESCO is concerned if you come to Lesvos now you will not find any world heritage. But this could change quite suddenly. Next time you may well enjoy some real world heritage: the Mediterranean diet.

This healthy diet might sound a little odd placed amongst all those ancient buildings but I have found out that besides its list of material objects, UNESCO now has items from the immaterial fabric of culture, known as the Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

Here you will find all kinds of dance, music and carnivals — the Argentinian tango and the Brazilian samba; the carnival of Binche (in Belgium), the Kunqu opera and Dragon festival from China, a traditional musical from Azerbaijan, and so on.

Together, the countries of Greece, Italy, Spain and Morocco have proposed the Mediterranean diet be included on this list, and although they were knocked back at first, the rules have been changed so that the diet could pass the test and join the list of music, festivals (and lace making) later this year in November.

So my dear tourists, when you come here to Lesvos, I will not hear from you eating a pizza or souvlaki every day. Instead, why not profit from your stay here by enjoying a very healthy diet? I hear through the grapevine that many tourists still have no idea how to eat Greek. They may know tsatsiki and souvlaki, but prefer to stay safe and order pizza or pasta.

We are lucky on Lesvos because we have no foreign restaurants like Chinese, Indian or fish & chips. If we did maybe the tourists might never try Greek food at all and feed only fish & chips and pizza.

So, perhaps you should at least listen to what UNESCO decrees and believe that traditional Greek food as served in nearly all restaurants here on the island is the same Mediterranean diet and discover that it is incredibly healthy. It is not only the olive oil but the variety of vegetables, fruit, grains and fish (with a little meat) that together have a positive influence on cardio–vascular diseases, cancer and diabetes. And food is also eaten according to what is fresh and in season. What could be more healthy?

A Greek salad with a bit of meat or fish is not quite enough. At a restaurant here, first you look at the appetizers, which in truth the Greeks don’t eat as ‘starters’ at all. They are all put on the table together and everybody shares them, and they include a variety of vegetables. You can order dishes based on zucchini, eggplant dish, beans and salad and potatoes as well as fish and meat. And don’t forget a cheese dish. You start eating whatever arrives first on the table and you will see that gradually the table will be spread with everything you have ordered. To know more about these dishes read: Greek Dining for Beginners and when you think you know how to eat Greek you can move on to Greek Dining for Experts.

I realise that most tourists who come here do not speak Greek. That should not be a problem because you are always welcome to go into the kitchen to have a look at what they have because most restaurants have their dishes on display (behind glass). This is definitely not just for tourists because Greeks like to go into the kitchen to see what food is on offer. And do not be afraid to order something you do not recognise. You may not be familiar with a lovely dish made from zucchini flowers stuffed with rice or cheese and you should also know that there is often a variety of different kinds of salted fish. Besides the sardelles pastes they might have salted tuna (lakerda pasto). And don’t be put by the prospect of an enormous serving, because salted or smoked fish are always served on tiny plates, to stimulate your appetite.

Beans with chickpeas is a particular delicacy on this island. Just taste it and you will love it. It’s the variety that defines the Mediterranean diet, so order at least three different kinds of vegetables, or you can stick to ‘starters’ only. When you come home after such a good meal, you feel not only satisfied but much healthier.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2010

Kappari

(a caper plant)
We now know pretty much of how the Greeks used to eat in earlier times. Through books of old philosophers and writers, but as well thanks to pottery digged out of the earth and archeaology scientists can imagine how the kitchen of Antique Greeks once looked like.

They used to eat lots of bread, until the fifth century BC mainly barley bread. Other grain bread came later, with grain that first was imported and later was grown in Greece itself. Bread was mainly made home or baked in communal ovens. When the choice of different bread became bigger, there came as well the first bakers in the Greek cities where you could buy bread.

Breakfast and lunch for the old Greeks consisted mainly of wine mixed with water and bread that you dipped into the wine and sometimes aside some dried figs or olives. Only in the evening vegetables and when it could be afforded fish or meat was served. As vegetables it were mainly beans and cabbages.

Spices were then not added to dishes for a new flavour, but were mainly used as medicine. Salt was used to conserve for example fish and onions were thought to give a man new strength. That is why Alexander the Great fed his soldiers with lots of onions. This way he hoped his army would last forever. From garlic as well it was thought that it could bring you special strength. That is why participants of the early Olympic Games eat garlic before the matches, although garlic was mainly used as a cure for bites and infections.

Capers as well were seen as a cure. Theophrastus (371 - 287 BC), who came from Lesvos (Eresos) and is seen as the first botanist, wrote that capers were a good carminative: they stimulate the blood stream in the stomach. Later they thought capers were as well good against rheumatism.

So capers may have been served sometimes as an appetizer (they stimulate the appetite) and maybe an old Greek may have served it as an aphrodisiac during a symposium (in Antiquity this was an evening dinner were guests were invited, only for men!), but a sauce or salad with capers was probably not yet invented then.

Here on Lesvos as well they hardly know the caper, even that on some places they grow abundantly. In some taverns they are served in a salad, like the one in Liota, but you will never get capers on a pizza nor a capers sauce served over ray (nor in the rest of Greece, I guess). There are even people living their whole life here on the island who do not believe that capers grow on their island!

I love capers and I now understand quite well why they are so expensive to buy. Harvesting capers is a hell of a job and you need time to do it because they are so small that you easily need an hour to fill a little pot. While strawberries, cherries, plums, apricots and mulberries are screaming to be harvested, you as well have to go on a caper expedition to pick those delicate flower buds on those prickly plants that grow on rocky ground near the sea.

When you once have picked them it is not a time consuming job anymore to preserve them like it is with other fruit that you have to peel or extract a kern. You just have to put them some days on fresh water and then put them in a pot with a mix of salted water, vinegar and some spices.

And when the pots are getting ready in your larder, all scratches from the caper plants are healed and the heatstroke caught during picking capers has subdued you will be delighted to use them on a pizza or in a beetroot salad. When you must believe the scientists the old Greeks who were rich had enormous and interesting banquets that they drank away with wine while debating and philosophizing. But I would not have wanted to live in that time. After Antiquity so many new products, like the tomato, eggplant and potato invaded the Greek kitchen that it totally changed. They may have had so many smart philosophers who wrote books about plants and grounded the medicinal science like Hippocratus (ca. 460 - 370 BC) did, but food is much better nowadays.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2010

Winterfood

The talk is often negative: “The house smelled of long cooked cabbage”, a saying that mostly means that it is a house of the poor that have nothing else to eat than cabbage. Cabbage does not have a good name and if it should be on a menu in a restaurant in Holland, I would never order it.

Anyhow, I do not know where they got the idea that cabbage should be boiled endless. You just need to cook it for some minutes, then there will be no bad smell and cabbage is very healthy to eat. It contains large amounts of calcium and vitamin C.

Cabbage in Greek is ‘lachano’ and when you order here on Lesvos ‘lachano’ it seems that you order quite another thing than cabbage. Because the white cabbage that they serve you here is nearly a delicacy, although it is just cooked for some minutes and aroused with a little olive oil.

But they do more with cabbage than only a dish with cabbage. For example in the winter you do not eat the famous Greek salad choriatiki, because there are no tomatoes. Some people may think that here on the island fresh tomatoes are growing during the whole year (well, yes in green houses...). A few weeks ago an old Greek who always works in his garden growing vegetables and flowers met a group of tourists who were passing by. They asked him if he had some fresh tomatoes left and were very disappointed when he gave a negative answer. The Greek wondered from which planet these ladies were, asking him for tomatoes in the middle of the winter...

In the winter you eat green salad, in Greece known as marouli. I personally prefer the anamichti, a mixed salad of marouli teared in small strokes, grated carrot and grated cabbage with spices and some hot green preserved peppers.

The most tasteful cabbage dish is the lachanodolmades, stuffed cabbage leaves that in some restaurants are served as excellent dishes. Off course you can get as well still the normal dolmades. Each good Greek housewife in spring picks new wines leaves and keeps piles of them in the freezer, in order that she can make dolmades the whole year through.

Although I prefer stuffed cabbage leaves and last week I got the best I ever had (and I did taste already quite a lot of different ones). Normally the leaves are stuffed with rice and spices or rice, spices and minced meat, but in restaurant Meltemi (just outside the harbor of Skamnioudi, a little harbor place under Lisvori) the owner stuffed the cabbage leaves with a mixture of rice and octopus. A real sensation!

Greeks are good in cooking rice with fish. They do not make paella, this royal Spanish dish where different sorts of fish and or meat and vegetables are all cooked together, the Greeks make a side dish of rice cooked in the broth where mussels (midopilafo), shrimps (garidopilafo) or other shells (thalassinopilafo) are cooked in.

Mussels are not that popular on the island. Tons of them are fished out of the Bays of Gera and Kaloni, but most of them get exported. Mussels are mostly used to make a rice dish or cooked with tomatoes and feta (midosaganaki). When you order just plain mussels, do not be surprised when they serve you a little dish with raw mussels and half a lemon. That is the way the Greeks eat all shellfishes. But you can always ask the cook to cook them for you in a little water or white wine.

Last week when I got bags full of mussels and oysters from a friend who is a fisherman, I invited a Greek friend to come and eat mussels the way we in Holland (and in Belgium) usually eat mussels: a big pan full of cooked mussels, served with some dip sauces. Our Michaelis could not believe his eyes and together with the oysters we ate as kings.

The nice thing of going out for dinner in the winter to the small restaurants that depend on only local customers and no tourists, are that you eat what the ‘mother’ cooks, what means that you will often have surprising dishes, cooked according to recipes that are generations old like stuffed calamaris, smoked fish, rice with spinach, rabbit and so on. With the green cabbage and other vegetables of the season like cauliflower, broccoli and sellery as very tasty side dishes.

It may sound silly to some people but here in Lesvos you can feast upon a dish simple cooked cabbage, just like many Greeks know how to transform a dish of beans into a five-star dish. They do not use cream, alcohol or whatever special ingredient, maybe just their own olive oil, and their dishes can compete with the products of a star-cook. The Lesvorian food can be simple, but thanks to the fresh products they use, it remains top food.

Copyright © Smitaki 2009

Greek dinner for beginners

According to recent research 75% of Greeks are overweight. This places Greece at the top of the list of European countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy with overweighted people. I assume it cannot be because of the Mediterranean diet.

This week a French doctors organisation came to the the conclusion that the monks living on Mount Athos might be the healthiest group of people living in Europe. The monks in their centuries old monasteries live to be very old because they have almost no heart or lung disease. What is their secret? The Mediterranean diet. Most of them eat according to a tradition that is almost as old as their monasteries. They regularly fast, they don't eat too much meat and all vegetables, fruit, wine and olive oil mostly come from their own gardens.

Elsewhere in Greece modern life has struck and modern life also means fastfood.

I think that whenever you investigate in which parts of Greece they still eat healthy food, Lesvos will be somewhere at the top of the list. There is still only a small number of fastfood places on the island, just as there are still just a few big supermarkets. In almost all restaurants you can have traditional food and many restaurants use vegetables from their own garden. In Lesvorian homes it is mostly grandmother's dishes that appear on the table.

When you come for a holiday here and you want to get to know Greek life, you should also learn how to eat Greek. By that I mean the Mediterranean diet, which is rich with vegetables, pulses and olive oil. To have dinner in Greece means a social occasion: the more people join the dinner table the better.

Although there is always a list of starters on Greek menus, it doesn't mean they'll appear on the table first. Many tourists feel cheated when everything they ordered comes to the table in a random order. I always say: what's ready first in the kitchen, will appear first on the table. Nobody orders a dish for themselves, all dishes are to be shared. Having a good Greek dinner means you will have a table full of food.

A salad is a must in a Greek dinner. In the summer that will be the famous choriatiki (Greek salad), which is a salad based on tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, onions and feta. It's often sprinkled with local herbs like parsley, chopped rocket leaves, dried oregano, wild purslane and, not so often on Lesvos, but frequently on Chios, capers. The treat of a tomato salad however is on the bottom of the dish where olive oil and tomato juice mingle and where you dip in with a piece of bread (another compulsory element in a Greek dinner). Greeks are big dippers and many Greek dishes have wonderful juices (my favourite dip dish: chtapodi krassato!).

The Greek kitchen is known for its many vegetable dishes, so don't be afraid to order a lot: the portions are small and you have to share all of them: fried slices of aubergine (melitzanes tiganitès) or courgette (kolokithakia tiganitès), stuffed aubergine (imam), French beans (fasoles) or vegetable pies (pitas), that can have as main ingredients onions (kremidia), courgettes (kolokithia) or wild vegetables (chorta). Vegatables are also made into little balls (kolokithokeftèdes, melizanokeftèdes), also cheese balls (tirokeftèdes) and potato balls (patatokeftèdes). A Lesvorian speciality is stuffed courgette flower, cooked with a filling of rice (kolokitholoeloeda mè rizi), or fried with a stuffing of cheese (kolokitholoeloeda mè tiri). Then there are wonderful dips like yoghurt with cucumber (tzatziki), cod roe salad (taramosalata) and pureed aubergines (melitzanosalata).

No dinner is complete without cheese: a slice of fried cheese (ladotiri saganaki) or a spicy feta (tirokafteri).

There are several fish dishes that you can order as a starter: Shrimps in a tomato sauce with feta (garides saganaki), the famous fresh salted sardines (sardelles pastès), other salted fish like mackerel or tuna (lakerda pasto) and octopus cooked in wine (chtapodi krassato) or roasted on the fire (chtapodi psyto). I am wondering if the famous squid (kalamari) is a starter. Like the other cuttle-fish (soepia), that you will find regularly as a starter.

After ordering salad, other vegetables, cheeses and fish you have to think what main course you are going to have (but you can also just leave it at 'starters'). For the fish you rely on what they have that day. Even I don't always know all the names of the fishes they will tell you. In this case the best you can do is go into the kitchen and choose your fish. There is only one warning: the red mullet is a very expensive fish. The big fishes are grilled on a fire and served with a sauce of olive oil and lemon.

For the meat you can mostly choose between lamb chops (paidakia), lamb from the oven (arni sto fourno), an oven dish with veal and onions (stifado), sausages (loekanika) meat on a spit (souvlaki), meatballs (keftèdes), chicken (kotopoelo) or a beefburger (biftèki). A common misunderstanding is that you may think that a biftèki is a nice steak. I'm sorry to tell you that you rarely find steak on a traditional Greek menu. A biftèki is a kind of dry baked hamburger that has nothing to do with a real juicy steak.

There is mostly no mention on the menu of any dessert. You depend on the goodwill of the restaurant. After you've asked for the bill, or had the table cleared, the owner may put a dish with fruit, yoghurt with honey or other sweets on the table. In the high summer season this is mostly watermelon (karpouzi).

You have a Greek dinner with a glass of ouzo (well, one glass may not be enough), or wine (krassi) and lots of water (nerò). Rosé (rosè) is not so well known and beer (birra) is just good to get rid of your thirst.

This is just a selection from the regular summer dishes (in the winter you have different vegetables and fish). So don't hesitate ordering whatever you fancy (as long as you don't order red mullet or lobster the bill will be moderate). And don't feel shy about going into the kitchen when there is no display to show the food they have. Greeks also go into the kitchen to look at the food.

Having a Greek dinner is not only healthy because of all the different food, it should also be a happy gathering. So don't copy the modern Greeks that order pizza or hamburger but just order what takes your fancy. This is the best way to learn about Lesvorian food. When you don't know what to order, just look at the table of your neighbours and point out what you're interested in. You will see that the Greeks are happy to show you around the Lesvorian dishes.

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Green food

In Greece in the summer you eat tomatoes and green salad is hard to get, but in the winter you will find plenty of it: the green marouli salad. It is an endive-like salad and the leaves are cut in small strips. Somewhere I read that they are better torn into strips, that seems to be healthier. Torn or cut, you eat marouli with some lemon juice and olive oil or in the anámikti (mixed salad) in combination with fine cut white cabbage and carrot. According to the season it is often served with some other chorta (wild salad).

At a good vegetable shop, but also sometimes from the man who sells vegetables on his donkey, you get a bunch of marouli with a spring onion and some chorta or herbs. Most of the time that will be dill, but last week I got a bunch of flowers with it. When I came home I wondered what I would have to do with those flowers. After studying a little I realized that it must be rocket, which I thought is a salad, but in free nature it is a white- yellowish flower. Indeed their leaves are like rocket, only they are a lot smaller than those of the cultivated ones. Anyhow, their taste is spicy and nut-like and they go very well with a marouli salad. The leafless flowers I put in a pot and I hope no Greek will pass by because he will have a fit of laughter because I have salad-flowers standing in a pot.

Because of the chorta-fever which is raging over the island during lent this week I tried out some other kinds of chorta. Not that I'm abstaining from eating meat but all those chorta-pickers do make me curious. Our field is filling up with yellow flowers: white mustard. When the buds appear you take the upper part of the stem with buds, blanch them in boiling water and hoppa: mustard-chorta. The taste however has nothing to do with the spicy taste of mustard: somewhere between a cabbage and asparagus taste. Although it is very healthy and it is a good combination with marouli and rocket.

Another herb that I know already all my life but which I kept a good distance from is the nettle. It is common knowledge that nettles are very healthy. It cleans the blood, it stops bleeding, it is anti-allergic and it is full of vitamins A and C and minerals like iron, potassium and magnesium. And you do not want to know everything you can do with it in the kitchen. Best known is the nettle-soup, but also you can make a salad with it, spice cheese, make an omelet, put it through pasta or make balls with it. Just look it up on the internet and you will be amazed.

The old Greeks already ate plenty of them, Plinius gives it its prickly name (Urtica, which means a burning or itchy feeling) and the old Romans used nettles to increase their manhood.

Between the showers, and there were many yesterday, I finally decided to go for the nettles and I put thick gloves on. I dare to eat a lot, but nettles always scare me, maybe because these were painful moments when I met them in my childhood. So I carefully picked some young plants and of course got stuck by them because the gloves did not cover my wrists and I got nettle stings. As I read on the internet I put some rosemary on it (you can use for the same purpose dock, plantain, sage or mint), but it did not take the itching away.

So I threw the nettles in a pot with boiling water, while scratching my wrists and I cooked them for about ten minutes and then I had cooked nettles. I still was scared to death to taste them but I had to taste one before I mixed them with the eggs and some feta for an omelette. So I put a nettle in my mouth and eureka! It tastes like spinach! Very tasty and super healthy.

I already know how to find wild spinach, just like purslane which in the summer can taste so good in a tomato salad. Vegetables which do not grow all year long but whose time is coming soon are the wild asparagus (thin green shoots). Last week we found the first ones and the rain which has been pouring down so abundantly will only produce more of them. One was that big that it looked like a cultivated green one. It even seems to have it's own name, Thirnies, and is very good for the potency.

The weather was not so cooperative last week. One day of heavy cold and Turkey and the Lepetimnos were all covered with snow. So the snow forecast came true! Since the weekend the temperatures raised but then we got those endless heavy showers. But it is okay. We do not need to go to the grocery store anymore, all vitamins are growing in our garden.

Copyright © Smitaki 2006

Dinner is ready!

Last week I wrote that I would like to see something different on the Greek table, especially during the holidays. But there are also dishes to which I'm really looking forwards. With Easter there will be the stuffed lamb. And with some luck you will find shellfish in the restaurants around the Bay of Kaloni or in the shops in Mytilini.

A sea creature that I did not eat yet is the giant mussel from the Bay of Kaloni. I still haven't traced it's real name, but I saw a huge specimen of nearly half a metre in restaurant Ellis in Anaxos. When you take a walk along the beach in Skala Kaloni, along the high water-mark line you will find many pieces of this giant mussel. There is also a smaller one, the giant pen mussel, which has a nearly transparent but wrinkly shell. Those animals living inside are already big, the one living in the giant mussel must be enough for a main course.

There is no fish shop near Eftalou, so it is always difficult to make the project of a fish meal. Officially there is a mobile fish shop (a car with fish) that will be each morning at 8.30 at the school. But each time we went there still full of sleep, there was no trace of a fishmonger.

Our latest strategy is to go at night to the brasserie in Molyvos. From there you have a good view over the harbour as well as over the little fish auction which will only open when the bigger fishing boats come ashore. And then still you cannot be sure if it opens. During storms and celebration days they remain closed and Greece has many of those festivity days. On the second day of Christmas, which is not a holiday here in Greece, big boats came into the harbour but the auction did not open it's doors. On the 6th of January it was Epiphany Christos, the day that the papas bless the sea and throw a cross into the water and can be dived up by some boys. That day I did not even try the fish auction, it is a national holiday, especially for the fishermen.

When you plan to prepare meat for a meal it will be no problem, although lamb meat is also not always available. Like in the coming time all lambs will be saved for the Easter meal. The closer Easter will come, lesser chance you will have to get lamb meat. An alternative will be a good pork leg. In December when we couldn't get a nice leg of lamb, because the lambs were still too small, we bought a leg of pig.

It took me one sleepless hour where I was thinking of how I would prepare that leg because our oven is pretty small. Then I remembered the outside oven we have on our land. You regularly see them in gardens, a small stone building close to the house with an oven or grill in it. Never in my life did I cook such good meat in such an easy way.

In the afternoon for some hours you heat up the oven with a bunch of branches. Then you wipe all wood and ash out of the oven. In the mean time you prepare the leg. You put it in a large dish, you make some cuts at the upper part, you pinch in some garlic cloves and you range big pieces of potatoes besides. You spread the meat with a mix of lemon juice, mustard and olive oil, you add some branches of thyme, oregano and rosemary, you pour some water in the dish and cover all with tinfoil and hoopla, the leg is ready to enter the oven. The door is then securely closed and the waiting starts. A whole day long. The next day you check if everything is alright and then at dinner time you take the ready meat out of the oven and for sure it will be good...

In Greece sometimes you have the problem of pieces of meat, or fishes, which are too big to enter one of your pans. I sometimes get chickens the size of a big fat turkey. Or somebody brings you a fish of half a metre. Then it is time to use the outside oven, which is very handy because you just need to do some preparations. Because of the increasing temperature inside the oven the meat will be perfectly cooked.

I wrote that the Greeks are no culinary adventurers, but for the curious eater there will be plenty of culinary adventures in Greece. Last Saturday night we went to a desolate Anaxos. The whole winter through I did not see that many people. Even though it was freezing cold the restaurant was full thanks to an evening of the local football club who brought whole families. A Greek band was playing and the atmosphere was really Greek: chaotic. Under the bright white lights and amidst running children, parents hasting to the toilet, dancing people, friends who walked around, a secretary playing the host and getting around for some money, running people who served out, smoking cooks, we got some magnificent lamb chops and excellent baked liver.

It is the first winter that Ellis has been open. Only for the weekends, but always with live music. If they can continue to serve their superb grilled meat from such a little grill place I'm sure that on Saturday nights in wintertime they will be the most crowded village of the whole island. And at least we found a new place to go.

Copyright © Smitaki 2006

Fish and snails with balls

Last week I wrote about the most popular fish you can find here in the restaurants. There is another fish that gets photographed a lot, but you will not find it in a regular restaurant; the rofos which is actually a grouper. This monster from the sea can grow far more than 1 metre and I really do hope you never catch it with a fishing-rod, otherwise you will have nothing left to fish with.

Swimmers who do not like fish do not have to be afraid of a confrontation with this fish because it likes to dwell over a muddy and deep sea floor. It is one of the favorites for game fishers, who dive from a boat into the water in the middle of the sea, armed with a harpoon. When you do some surfing on the internet in order to find out something about this big fellow, you will find triumphant photographs of fishermen posing proudly next to a rofos. Sometimes the fish is as big as the fisherman himself (a small fisherman can be as big as a large rofos).

Last weekend our neighbour Zina from Mytilini came with just such a whopper to Eftalou. It was a pretty one being more than half a metre. Her son Antonis, who is a game fisher, caught it and gave it to Zina to bring it to the lunch what is given each Sunday by Yannis and Marianthis. Normally all neighbours and their guests who are in Eftalou are invited.

Yannis and Marianthis have an old brick kiln here on the land. You light a fire in it, let it burn in order to heat the kiln, then you empty the kiln, put food in it and close it so that the food can cook. A stuffed lamb needs an entire night to cook there, the big grouper was more modest and needed only two hours to get ready. It was prepared with some herbs, tomatoes, a courgette and a smaller fish and I do not lie when I say that it was the best fish I ever tasted.

The Greeks, especially on the islands, eat what is around. Sometimes I miss my supermarket in Amsterdam, but mostly not. The food you get served here is fair and very fresh, and there are things you will never find in my Dutch supermarket. Because of this way of eating, some meals can be pretty surprising. So when there are snails around, a grouper and some sheep balls, they are all served together in one meal.

I know now that a lot of people start to shiver at the thought, but I started my lunch on Sunday with sheep balls, a delicacy for those who like organ meat. Just like a rofos you will not find those vital parts on any menu. When slaughtering a sheep the farmer mostly keeps the balls for himself. Just like the sweetbread. Sheep balls have a soft taste in between sweetbread and chicken meat. In Greece they are a beloved mezès, they have become one of my favorites as well.

Last Thursday night it rained a little and on Friday we got a heavy tropical rainfall what came pretty quick over the sea from Turkey. There were buckets of water emptied, many people were taken by surprise and got totally wet and also many a house did not keep dry. After 10 minutes the sky was as blue as it was before. We had to mop the water and find our way through the mud, otherwise you would have thought that nothing happened.

Rain in September means snails. They come out of hiding (not out of their houses!) where they have tried to survive the dry season. They feast upon the rain, like we in our turn feast upon the snails. The Greek kitchen has a different way from the French of preparing snails: for a few days they are put into flour where they clean themselves and then they are prepared with onions, quinces and some tomatoes. It is a very fine recipe and the French with their garlic snails really should try this way of preparation.

So that was my second dish of that Sunday lunch. Where after came the divine rofos. All these plates are wonderful with a glass of ouzo. I do not know how many I drunk, but I do know that I ate quite a lot. And that after this meal fit for a king I needed at least 2 hours of sleeping in my hammock to recover.

Copyright © Smitaki 2005