August 20 - Yammi, a bami!

The summer is moving towards its end and still plenty of tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, beans and watermelons are being served. There are even beetroots still being served (although I think of them as winter dish). I’m slowly starting to long for cabbages and spinach, but we have to wait for the winter for them to appear in the fields. My local market gardener actually succeeded in growing green salad (marouli) in the summer heat (this also is regarded as a winter dish), and it was a welcome change from endless tomato salads (choriatiki), and I used it to combine wonderfully with different wild herbs and dried tomatoes.

I must admit that by the end of August I have had enough of tomatoes (and for sure I have eaten too much watermelon). But now the real work is about to start: preserving tomatoes. Even though you might feel as if you’ve eaten five years’ worth of tomatoes; as soon as the first showers start encouraging the rotting process of the last tomatoes, you’ll get that feeling: gosh!, I really do like a big tasty red tomato. And you cannot do without tomatoes in the Greek kitchen. I once had a Greek cookbook (most likely thrown away because of its poor quality because now I cannot find it anywhere) containing recipes, which were predominantly tomato based

I have to admit that I now also use a lot of tomatoes in my dishes: they are a fine seasoner. When in winter you want to make a fish soup or simply a spaghetti sauce it is handy to always have some tomato sauce in the freezer or preserved in a pot. So you’d better preserve tomatoes in the summer.

In past years I have made lots of tomato sauces, in which I also put other vegetables and herbs like aubergines, paprika, courgettes, parsley and basil: whatever remained in the garden and had to be finished. But since I got a new oven in which I can bake pizza, I make a pure sauce, just tomatoes. Pizzas already have enough ingredients so a neutral sauce is better; although you couldn’t possibly call the rich taste of Greek tomatoes dull. So I just reduce them to a thick sauce, with just a little salt and pepper added and end up with a first class tomato sauce.

One of the many Greek summer dishes with a sauce of these red rascals is Okra in Tomato Sauce (bamiès me saltsa). It is not on the list of the most familiar Greeks dishes (they are rarely available in restaurants), although okra was introduced centuries ago to the Greek kitchen. Growing okra is not as easy as growing tomatoes, nor is the harvest an easy job. Gathering these fruits demands patience because they are at their best when they are small (3 to 5 cm long) and picking them is work requiring gloves as the plant is highly allergic. This plant (Abelmoschus esculentus) often grows as long as two meters, though it belongs to the family of the low growing Malva and it has soft yellow, hibiscus-like flowers. Okra resembles some pulses and the taste is a little like green beans.

This vegetable is especially popular in India, Africa and in certain southern states of the United Nations (for Gumbo). The English gave them the elegant name of Lady’s Fingers, in Spanish they have the funny sounding name of quimbombó and in Greek (and other Arabian countries) they are named bamies (which sounds a little like the Indonesian dish popular in Holland: bami).

There are people who want to eat nothing else but bamies, once they appear in the fields. I took a long time to appreciate them and I’m still not keen on certain dishes like Bamies in Tomato Sauce or when combined with chicken (kotopoelo me bamies). What I don’t like is their sometimes slimy consistency.

My local market gardener grows them every summer and each summer he offers me this delicacy. He puts lots of time into harvesting them and he just can’t understand that I don’t like them. So I searched the web in order to find a nice recipe and eureka! I have found a nice one! It is a recipe where for some reason or other this ‘okrian’ sliminess does not occur, so you can eat them as very tasty Lady’s fingers: filled and fried okra, a dish coming from India, served as finger food or as a starter. You make a herb mix, cut the stem and head from the bamies, make a deep cut lengthwise (be careful not to halve them!), fill the cavity with the herb mix and fry them for a few minutes in a layer of oil till they are crispy. In preparation, pray for some patience, but it’s worthwhile. Further down you will find the recipe for the herb mixture: kali orexi!

(Besides bamiès, marouli and really tasty tomatoes the gardener on the road in Eftalou also sells white aubergines)

Mix for filled okra’s:

½ tsp ground peanuts

½ tsp ground coconut

½ tsp sugar

½ tsp coriander

½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground chili

1 tsp sesame paste

½ tsp salt

1 tsp olive oil

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2013

August 9 – Mary Thalassine

(The Mary Vrefokratousa Church in Agiasos)

You would think that when the sky is blue each day and when the sun shines constantly, the weather is always the same and that’s boring. But there is another factor influencing the weather and that’s the wind. This summer we have had more than enough wind: the meltemi blows around your head almost all day long, especially if you live somewhere with a northern outlook; north is the direction from which this wind mostly blows.

In Molyvos people complain about the heat, which is retained between the stone houses. But if you just go a kilometre out towards Eftalou, you could easily be blown out of your shoes by a warm wind, which most people welcome as a nice change. However, I don’t feel that way. 

What bothers me about this wind is that the sea is never calm anymore. That beautiful light blue tranquil water surface that invited you to at least ten swims a day seems to be just a sweet memory. Rarely do I see the sea settle down, and when I do, I know I have to hurry to the shore, because before you know it, the white caps appear in the distance. Of course it’s fun to swim in a sea with waves, but here on the coast the water whips up the seaweed: green wisps surround you and tickle you everywhere. This seaweed bath can be healthy, like thallaso therapy, but you cannot have a relaxing swim in a centrifuge full of seaweed.

The other disadvantage of the meltemi is that you cannot sit quietly outside. A full glass will be heavy enough to withstand the wind, but salad leaves or other light foods will be blown off your plate into the bushes. And you can certainly forget about playing cards. On the web I have read about tourists who can’t leave windows or doors open lest their room be thrown into turmoil, nor can they sit on their balcony. This wind also makes you pretty restless.

The meltemi, in ancient times called an Etesian wind, can blow from mid May until mid September, so in the worst case we could still have a month to go. I don’t exactly remember when the wind started this summer, but I can’t stand it anymore. For a few days the meltemi is a blessing, for a few weeks a meltemi is okay, but a meltemi blowing for a few months is too much.

A good sailor might be glad of this wind, though the meltemi is known as a treacherous wind. You never know how strong the wind will get: 6 or 7 Beaufort can easily be upgraded to 8 and then you’d best be in a sheltered harbour.

While temperatures in many places have easily risen to over 35 ºC, here I remain stuck with this meltemi. At least this wind, which thankfully ceases periodically, is far better than the endless heat wave we had last summer.

And it is like this unending wind also is blowing forwards time more quickly: this week the peak of the Greek summer will be there! August 15^th – celebrated in Greece as the Assumption of Mary. This Thursday masses of people will be visiting churches and chapels dedicated to Mary. Regardless of whether a meltemi or a heatwave strikes, most of them will make a traditional pilgrimage in order to ask this Holy Lady for a favour: from Mytilini on foot to the church of Mary Vrefokratousa in Agiasos, or climbing the 114 steps to honour Mary Glikofiloussa in Petra.

The Saint Mother Mary, in Greece called Panagia is known for so many miracles (see The miraculous World of Mary) that she also has many different names: in Agiasos it’s Panagia Vrefokratousa – Mary wearing the Holy Child, in Petra it is Panagia Glikofiloussa or Mary of the sweet kiss. But she can also be called Angeloktiste -Mary the Angel; Elevtherotria – the liberator; Galatousa – the nurse; Hodegetria – the leader; Hypermachos Strategos – the protecting general; Myrobletissa – the source of the myrrh.

There even is a Mary of Death: Panagia tou Garou. This Mary is named after an icon that can be found on the small island of Lipsi. She is pictured like an Italian Pieta, with Jesus, after crucifiction lying dead in her lap. In the Orthodox Church Mary is normally depicted with Jesus as a small child or baby, which can explain the exceptional name.

There also is a Mary of the Sea: Panagia Thalassine (read here her miraculous story). This icon, which I think now resides in a monastery on Crete, is celebrated on the sixth of December, the same day as Saint Nicolas, the saint-protector of all seafarers.

I would say that the Mary in Petra should also be a Thalassine. The story of the icon in the church on the rock in Petra is that the icon belonged to a fisherman who always took it with him. In a rough sea the icon was lost. Once ashore, the fisherman saw a tiny light glowing on a huge rock and there he found his lost icon. He took the icon back to sea and again the icon got lost. When he found the icon for the second time on the huge rock, he realised that he had to build a church and leave the icon there.

Participants of the Aegean Regatta 2013 could ask the Mary Thalassine in Petra for a safe and successful journey. Just two days after the Assumption of Mary this race over the Aegean starts from Molyvos harbour. I’m not sure what the sailors think about this consistent meltemi, but the first stretch of the race will be to the island of Lemnos in the north, which might engage the sailors in a battle with the winds. From there they sail south towards Skyros and then north again to Skopelos, where the race will finish this year.

Apparently Philip II of Macedonia (382 - 336 BC) always planned his military actions during the meltemi season so that his enemies to the south could not – or only very slowly – reach him. When the meltemi continues to blow it is a blessing for all pilgrims (although I doubt if its cooling winds will reach as far as Agiasos), but for the sailors this wind might be a curse.

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2013

July 30 – Help, somebody ran off with my phone!

(A fox on Lesvos)

I must admit that since the attack of the camel spider on my terrace, I have not been at peace sitting outside after darkness falls. The monster of the screen door can be death, but barely a week later another camel spider stormed over the terrace, straight towards me and I barely managed to jump aside before the monster disappeared into the dark bushes where the cats, in vain, tried to locate him.

When it’s dark, so many things crawl, run and walk around the bushes around the house. Apart from the cicadas, who are making a deafening sound due to the increasing heat, on the ground amidst the dry grasses and the plants there is a lot of swishing as the cats spend long hours engaging in their nightly hunt.

Not that they hunt everything. Some animals are difficult to catch: like the two hedgehogs which come every evening to look for the cat’s leftovers. Whilst there they also have a little nip from the water trough. They are so cute I just have to stroke them and the cats, who watch carefully what the hedgehogs are up to, keep a clear distance.

My dogs also think hedgehogs are interesting, but they are wary of having a fight with such a prickling ball. The natural enemies of hedgehogs are badgers, fitches, pine martens, lynx (which we do not have on the island), wild boars (which have been reintroduced for the hunt around Ayasos), foxes, hawks, golden eagles and eagle owls.

I have no idea if we have badgers or fitches on Lesvos. What I do know is that under the roof tiles of my house there lives a noisy family of a kind of rats, although I think they could be some other kind of animal. The list of mammals of Greece, offers up an endless number of mice – or ‘rat-alikes’ (under the chapter Rodentia), all with beautiful names. The family living above me have white bellies, as far as I can see; they barely show themselves, except for their tails, which you can see when they flee the house over a tree branch or an electricity line. Sometimes they have a party and yell and scurry, like children playing games, from one side of the roof to the other. If I don’t interfere they might well celebrate long into the night. But when I knock with a broom against the ceiling, they become perplexed and fall silent.

There aren’t many rabbits on Lesvos, although I sometimes spot a hare jumping over the road. Lemnos is the island full of rabbits, often a plague for the agriculture there. Squirrels and moles are plentiful on the island, and one can often see holes in the earth which I guess belong to other animals (which ones I have no idea). Greece also has a long list of bats. Around twilight small batmen fly around my head when I sit outside, but I can’t see the difference between two bats in the darkness.

The biggest mammal here on the island (I don’t count the wild boars, as they have not come in a natural way to the island) is the fox which lives here in great numbers. You not only see them darting in front of your car, but more and more often, you stumble upon them while having a walk.

Last week I went for dinner to some friends in Molyvos and I wondered about the assorted weapons they had next to the dinner table: a bucket of water and a plastic water-gun, a toy normally for children —  although they had none. The story was that their cat had a bad encounter with a fox, which wounded her and since then they began their hunting season for foxes. Not only had he lain the cat low for some days, but shoes also started to mysteriously disappear from the terrace and the house.

A fox is not known for its cheekiness, but rather as a smart animal. Although it is a fact that they more and more go into the village, looking for food, or – who knows – for a drink (my friends have a pool which both the foxes and the cat use as a watering hole). But apparently they also like shoes. Or is it just the little foxes that wander with their mother into town, looking for toys? A neighbour of those friends told me that the foxes ruined one of her handbags and that on another evening when she was working in the garden, with her telephone lying on a table, she saw a little fox running off with her mobile phone! From her landline she phoned her mobile and you can imagine that the little fox got a bit of a fright from the phone jingling in his mouth. He dropped it instantly and the woman, after a search of about an hour, found her mobile, undamaged, deep in the bushes

I like to see foxes, they look cute, but were I to have to buy a new pair of shoes or a mobile phone every day, I too would buy a water pistol. In the same vein, I now have a glue spray ready for when the camel spider dares to show his face again.

Even in ancient times Greeks didn’t know what to do with foxes. The ancient city of Thebe once was being punished by a God with a huge fox (Teumessian Fox) that attacked children and it was known that he could never be caught. The regent had a hard time figuring out what to do; he decided to enlist the help of the mythical dog Laelaps, who was renowned for always catching his prey. Just imagine the sight of those two: the dog endlessly chasing the fox through bushes, along beaches, through woods, over mountains and so on. After a while – or maybe even an eternity – Zeus took pity and changed both animals into a rock and later he put them between the stars, two constellations now known as the Little and the Big Dog.

On nice evenings you’d better look upwards to the stars, rather than down towards the creeps, and you’ll see a large array of animals such as a dog, a fox, a bear, a horse, a goat, a bull, a hare, a fish, a scorpion and a lobster: they are all placed in the sky for eternity.

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2013

July 22 – ‘Price Fighters’ expected

(Lesvos is waiting for tourists)

Last week a friend of mine travelled to Paris, the City of Light. He was horrified by the number of tourists: too many and you had to queue hours for all the attractions. It’s the same story for Venice, where too many large cruise ships bring not only money but also destruction to the city, a canal town already threatened by the water.

They say Amsterdam is in for a same future, although these floating-tourist-paradises are too large to enter the canals. Just imagine a fifteen-storey high flat passing your house! I can see those huge cruise ships crossing the Aegean Sea, although they stay far from our coast. Sometimes a very small exemplar stops outside the port of Molyvos, but normally Lesvos – even though it’s on the route from the South Aegean islands to Instanbul, is not on the average cruise-ship map.

Islands Tourism Development: A Viewpoint of Tourism Stakeholders of Lesvos Island is a report about the opinion of a few people working in tourism on Lesvos who answered some questions, posed by students of the University of the Aegean in 2010, about tourism in Lesvos. The writers, who think that mass tourism will soon be in decline, use two models for tourism. The 4S model: Sun, Sand, Sea, Sex (equal to mass tourism) and the 4E model: Environment and clean nature, Educational Tourism, culture and history, Events and mega events, Entertainment and fun. 20% of the respondents want the 4S model for Lesvos, 52% want it partly and 28% are against it.

Okay, here we go then: Sun, Sand, Sea and Sex. First of all, parts of the coast around Molyvos would be excavated in order to make longer and wider beaches, as the existing ones are not large enough to contain thousands of people and most of them are pebbled, so they’d need to be covered with sand. With extended beaches Eftalou would be an excellent place for a busy boulevard lined with big hotels. And even the Arion Hotel, on the outskirts of Molyvos and abandoned for tens of years, could finally get rebuilt. That site has the most brilliant view of the medieval town of Molyvos.

Doing the same in Petra is a little more difficult. This town already has a beautiful beach along its boulevard, only the small houses would need to be torn down in order to make place for some big resorts.

Anaxos, a place consisting of small pensions and gardens, already seems to be prepared. Its lovely beach is filled up with sun beds and umbrellas. But I bet that there are plenty of Greeks willing to sell their little second houses and gardens for a nice price, so even in Anaxos some big resorts could be built.

Restaurants needn’t worry if their businesses are too small or if they have too few chairs. Most modern hotels will be all-inclusive and will have their own dining rooms. Their guests will just stroll a little around the village, have a drink, buy a souvenir, but spend the bulk of their money in their hotel.

When evening falls, if there’s not enough entertainment in their hotel, the guests might venture out looking for a discotheque. So we should create more of those big dance-palaces, because the one and a half already existing in the north of Lesvos, will barely be enough. And what better than to hear the electronic boom boom boom reverberating through the night air as an alternative to those screaming creepy cicadas that we listen to now.

And of course the airport is too far away from the most popular places on the island. So, wouldn’t it be great if the old plan of making an airport at Kalloni resurges. I suggest that they then also reclaim part of the Gulf of Kalloni because I’m sure that a resort full of people will bring in more money than salt and birds.

Speaking about infrastructure: for years there has been talk about a paved road along the coast from Eftalou to Skala Sykaminia. They should definitely make that road and, better still, a highway so that busses can quickly transport tourists to this little fishing harbour, which would be an excellent place to organise huge Greek evenings. For romantic people, the boat connection should remain, although it would be preferable to use a faster speedboat, otherwise the evening will be over before the boat arrives.

Right now it is quiet on the island, too quiet for the high season. Greek tourists especially do not have money for a vacation; so it’s no wonder that lots of Lesvorians dream about busy streets and beaches overcrowded with people. In crisis times it is easy to sell your soul to the devil. But when I ask the island inhabitants if they want Eftalou to become the Faliraki of the North (Faliraki on Rhodes used to be a quiet family beach), they hesitate. So maybe no mass tourism on Lesvos? 63% of the respondents were inclined towards model 4E, a more friendly tourism that also involves nature and environment.

The conclusion of the makers of the report is that tourism on Lesvos needs a bit from each model. I agree because I would have 2 S’s – Sea and Sun – a 2 E’s – Environment and a clean nature and Eductional tourism. I am wondering how they would connect nature and mega events, but I know for sure that all tourists want entertainment and fun for their holidays. And by the way, the biggest beach of the island, Vatera, would be very suitable for big beach parties.

It is said that next year two ‘Price Fighters’ will organise regular flights to the island:

Flights from Ryan Air (from England) and Corendon Dutch Airlines (from Holland) will hopefully bring lower cost flights and bring more people to the island, something that Lesvos really needs. Of course I hope that the nightmare scenario I described above will never happen. Lesvos is so unique because of her wild and sensational nature and that fact that there is no mass tourism. However, when tourism is well organized there is plenty of space for a greater number of holidaymakers. So let the ‘Price Fighters’ discover Lesvos. And if they do not bring big developers, they will be all the more welcome!

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2013

July 8: Hop hop hoppa

(Photo: internet)

There’s a new trend in the travel world: social travelling! While cruises remain popular, it seems that people may be tiring of the all-inclusive holidays, which are a disaster for the holiday regions. Now it’s back to holiday roots: booking a room with locals and discovering your holiday destination with a local.

Maybe children have finally listened to their parents’ stories about how, in the Sixties and Seventies, they spent their holidays island hopping in Greece. Then you travelled to Athens by train or plane and from Piraeus you took the ferries out across the Aegean. There was no internet in those times. You just went to the Greek Tourist Office to get a map and started dreaming of all the islands, following the thin red striped line of the ferry routes across the light blue sea on the map. Most likely you would just chose a group of islands or a faraway island as a destination. Little symbols on the maps indicated if there were archaeological treasures to be seen and the number of roads gave an indication of how busy the island could be. You just picked an island and from there you would see what happened.

When the boat anchored in a harbour, half of the village would be waiting on the quay to welcome the visitors: “You want room, nice room at sea!” I bet that no one was ever left alone on the quay. By donkey cart or little old vans you would be transported to a pension, most of the time, just a room in the house of your host. And if you disliked the room, you’d just tell them that you had to travel further on and looked for a better one. When your hostess did not provide the food, there would be a local taverna just around the corner. If that was not social travelling . . .

Nowadays charter flights look more like cattle transports and that’s why taking a boat is so much nicer. It’s pure magic to sail toward mysterious islands that are trying, siren-like, to seduce you, to discover a bunch of dolphins jumping alongside the ship, to enjoy colourful sunsets, or just to listen to the keel of the boat splitting the waves, together with the monotonous humming of the ship’s motor.

Of course it can happen that a boat fails to sail. It happened recently to the neighbouring island Limnos; for weeks they remained without a ferry connection with Thessaloniki, Kavala and Lesvos. Not a nice situation because the island depends on ferries also for the carriage of goods. If you weren’t prepared to take a plane, the only solution was to do some mini-island hopping: from Psara to Chios and Lesvos.

Today in the early morning haze an enormous cruise boat came along. I wondered because it was weeks ago that I last saw a passengers ship passing by, but I was waiting to see the Ionian Sky which was supposed to pick up stranded voyagers from Limnos. Just half an hour later I heard the well known rumbling of an old ferry approaching and there it was, already a day late: the boat that from now on will connect Mytilini with Limnos, Thessaloniki and Kavala.

Another nice aspect of ships is that you can trace their history through the internet. The Ionian Sky started her career in 1974 as the Sapporo Manu in Japan, was rebaptized as the Sun Flower Sapporo, in 1998 was bought by a Greek shipping company and named again, this time as the Ionian Victory and sailed between Venice and Ancona to Corfou. When she again was sold, she moved to the other side of the country and was named Blue Sky and now her name is Ionian Sky.

The Greek island people all know the boats by heart and name them when talking about them. This is quite different from the world of airplanes: not all planes have names and only very few are known by them, for example when they became famous because of history, like the Enola Gay, a bomber who dropped the first atom bomb above Hiroshima in 1945.

But let’s keep to the story. Times have passed when, in summer, you’d see an equal number of tourists and travelling island people on a ferry. Greece as a holiday country has become a lot more expensive and tourists are not as adventurous anymore. You’d think social travelling will make island hopping popular again?

227 islands of Greece are habited, and most can be reached by boat. How many more destinations you want? The islands are divided in groups: Crete, Cyclads, Dodecanese, Sporades, Iionian islands, Saronic  islands and the Northern Aegean islands which consist, alongside Samos, Chios and Lesvos, of smaller islands like Psara, Ikaria (where lots of people reach the age of a hundred years), Oinousses (small island group of wealthy shipping tycoons), Ai Stratis and Lemnos (known for its excellent wine) with their sand dunes, and the green pearls Thassos and Samothrace (although these last two islands officially belong to East-Macedonia and Thrace).

You might think that charter travels to Lesvos (and many other small islands where there is no mass tourism) are a bit of social travelling because most hotels and restaurants belong to locals, just as the excursion guides are mostly local. I admit that island hopping is more social travelling, because then just like the locals you share the ups and downs of the ferries and you can visit the small islands which are not on charter maps.

So who wants to go island hopping? Just as in times past, ferries continue to sail, beaches still glitter under a hot sun, the sea is still sky blue and most Greeks are as hospitable as they used to be. The Northern Aegean Islands, still undisturbed by mass tourism, are an ideal area to start island hopping. And even if the ferry doesn’t sail because of a storm or another cause, who is afraid of being stranded on a beautiful Greek island?

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2013

June 28 – Put away that winter feeling: eat Greek food!

(A camelspider: to eat or not to eat)

Just to make the readers in the rest of Europe jealous: here on Lesvos (and in the rest of Greece) we are fully enjoying the sun, the warmth, the sea and the food. Sometimes I wonder whether life here on the island in the summer, when high temperatures make it difficult to concentrate on work, consists of anything other than swimming and eating.

But the warm months not only bring fun. You have to learn to live with spiders, mosquitos and many other flying and creeping insect-like objects: brrrrrr. I just read that this year on the neighbouring islands of Lemnos and Ai Stratis there are many more grasshoppers as usual. I have also seen here on Lesvos many of these jumping fellows not only outside, but also inside my house. Even if you expend lots of effort to get your house insect free, grasshoppers know how to get in and can give you a hard time.

I can live with some grasshoppers in the house, so the place was not hermetically sealed. This changed yesterday when a huge wind scorpion or camel spider tried to find his way in my house through the screen door. Now all cracks and screen doors and windows are glued so that no nook or crannie offers the possibility for the miscreants to sneak in.

Even just writing about this creature gives me the creeps and I constantly look at the screen door afraid his partner may show up to take revenge. A friend (I was too afraid even to get close) killed this pseudo spider with flea spray (for dogs) and, really, what a creep it was. My friend put the creep in a box, saying that this was a very rare animal. Well, I no longer believe one word of it, because during ten years here on Lesvos I have only once seen one and this was the third camel spider I have seen in two months! You think we have a camel spider plague? Read about my first encounter with this horror spider in: Creepy!

In more than one country it is common to eat grasshoppers. As there are so many around now maybe I should experiment with frying them. And why not, maybe this camel spider is also a delicacy. However, as I can barely look at this horror, I don’t think I will be able to throw him into the cooking pan. And I have to admit that I’m not reading-up on frying grasshoppers. I prefer to grill watermelon.

The culinary challenge I have taken up was to make flour from chickpeas. This pulse here is mainly grown around Lisvori (Lesvos). In Greece chickpeas are eaten cooked with or without a spicy tomato sauce. But there are many more possibilities for this legume, like falafel or hummus . . . and plenty of recipes with chickpea flour.

I promised a friend who is on a gluten free diet to cook for him and that is how I got the idea because chickpeas suit this diet. Although I nearly gave up trying to make the flour because when I poured chickpeas into my food processor and I pushed the button for grinding, such an incredible hard noise arose that I was afraid the food processor would explode. So this is a warning for anybody grinding chickpeas: put on earmuffs for the first minutes!

Grinding dried chick peas will produce a fine flour you can use to make spinach-egg-omelettes or pancakes. I was inspired by the Italian panella, Sicilian fried cookies spiced with parsley. I followed the recipe for the batter but used Greek spices: a recipe that would suit my cooking book Almost Greek.

Because of the wet winter the summer vegetables are only now being displayed in large numbers in the shops: courgettes, aubergines, cucumbers and tomatoes. They are not my favourites but I think it a challenge to find as many recipes for them as possible — like an eggplant curry or a salad of half-dried tomatoes. Will this be a first step to a second cookbook, a companion to Almost Greek? I am not sure. But the good news is that the illustrator Sylvia Weve won a highly regarded price in Holland (De Zilveren Penseel) for her drawings in a Dutch children’s book Aan de kant, ik ben je oma niet! (writer: Bette Westera).

For those of you who do not know the cookbook Almost Greek: it is full of stories about Greek food and recipes using Greek ingredients, which, I am sure, will bring sunshine to your table. There are easy recipes and some special ones like the tomato sorbet or the grilled watermelon. And of course it contains lots of entertaining drawings of prize-winning Sylvia Weve. You can order the book via internet (or in some local stores on Lesvos and in Holland; see Smitaki on Facebook): http://www.smitaki.nl/?lang=en

Recipe: Greek panella

200 gr chick pea flour

600 cl water

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp cumin

1 tbsp fresh mint leaves (crushed)

3 tbsp lemon juice

½ hot pepper (sliced in small pieces)

salt & pepper

olive oil to fry

Grind about 250 gr chick peas into a flour: just grind for a few minutes, sieve out the fine flour and repeat the process with the remaining pieces of chickpeas (the pieces will get smaller and smaller and the noise lesser). Continue until you obtain about 200 gr fine flour.

Put the flour in a pan on a low heat and slowly pour the water in, stir until you get a thick smooth mass. Add the spices, lemon juice and salt & pepper according to your taste.

Spread the batter onto baking paper (to a thickness of about 2 cm). Put away to cool and thicken (2 – 3 hours).

Cut the thickened batter in small cubes (5 by 2 cm or what ever form you fancy) and fry them in the oil until they are golden. Good as mezès or as a side dish for a Mediterranean dinner.

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2013

June 18 – A magic garden

(An apricot or peach)

After he killed his children in a moment of frenzy, Heracles’ punishment was to undertake twelve deeds. One if his last tasks, was to steal the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. This was a kind of paradise that surrounded the tree with the golden apples, (a wedding gift from Gaia to Zeus and Hera). When you ate a golden apple you became immortal; so they were much sought after and protected by seven nymphs, called the Hesperides. However Hera did not much trust these beauties and reinforced the team with Ladon, the dragon with a hundred heads. How Heracles managed to get the golden apples, you can read about in Apples from Lesvos.

People now wonder what these golden apples were exactly, because many kinds of fruit in ancient times were called apples. More than once, tracing the history of a fruit, I have been amused to read that the fruit was supposed to have hung in the tree in the garden of the Hesperides. Oranges, apricots, quinces, pomegranates and peaches, they are all candidates for the golden apple. Maybe this famous tree was a magical one and bore all different kind of fruit.

Although I wonder if it was apricots or peaches that hung in that tree, because historians agree that these fruits originated in China, a country far from the garden of the Hesperides and the Greek Gods. From Persia (from where the name peach comes) Alexander the Great brought the fruit to Greece and later on the Romans distributed it further into Europe. Of course, Alexander did not personally bring the fruit to Greece. He died in 323 BC in Babylon, the mystical city in today’s Iraq, after eleven years of conquering half of the world without ever again seeing his homeland of Macedonia. His conquest of so many countries enabled the mingling of many a Greek tradition with foreign ones and I am sure that neither he nor his soldiers sat down to a Greek dinner, but were served the dishes of the conquered countries. The returning soldiers of Alexander’s army brought home the most strange things, like the seeds for apricot and peach trees.

Peaches are a little bigger than apricots, their flesh is white to light yellow; the flesh of apricots is darker yellow or plain orange. Both have a peachy skin, opposed to nectarines, which are peach-like with a smooth skin. These small differences confuse me. In my garden there is an apricot tree producing large apricots, which while ripening change in colour from light green to yellow, then to orange with a fancy bright red blush. My neighbour also has an apricot tree, but hers produces much smaller fruit. She also has another tree with fruit as large as mine, but the flesh is light yellow, like that of a peach. And there’s another tree with fruit that has orange flesh, which would appear to be apricot, although it tastes more like a peach than like my apricots. Are you still following me? Well, it looks like the apricot-peach-trees here in the neighbourhood each have different fruit. My neighbour also has a tree with fruit, which seems to be a mix of an apple and a pear. It is a very special fruit, also tasting a little odd. I have a pear tree surrounded by only wild apple trees, will my neighbours’ tree be a mix? You could easily believe that the Hesperides have again taken up gardening and are creating crazy fruit, so that future historians will be confused whether we have grown apricot or peach or apple or pear trees.

With the prune trees it’s the same story. I have a tree with fruit, which ripens into a dark blue colour and tastes soft and very juicy. My neighbour’s tree produces dark red prunes, which is less juicy and soft. Cherries here also come in two different tastes: the morellos (acid ones) and the sweet cherries, the last nearly impossible to harvest because the birds are always faster than me. But we only have one kind of mulberry: the white ones.

So I don’t know what to call the marmalade I have made from the seven kilos of fruit gathered from the various trees: is it an apricot or peach marmalade or should I just call it a marmalade from golden apples?

Anyway we are in the midst of the time of the golden fruit: prunes, cherries, apricots, peaches and mulberries all are ripe at the same time. Because of the wet weather in April, I neglected the strawberries a little resulting in a very meagre harvest. When in May I recognized my failing I did my best to pamper them and now they have rewarded me with a second harvest, meaning that whilst picking the fruit from the trees, I also have to roam through the strawberry fields to find the thick red and belated Summer Kings (a Dutch nickname for strawberries).

It is hard to get all the ripe fruit, just like it’s hard to catch all the thieving butterflies, wasps and birds who are all feasting upon my fruit and only satisfied after their bellies are well filled. No wonder we have those incredibly huge wasps: they do not produce royal jelly, but apricot and prune jelly (or is it only the bees who make royal jelly?)!

Each year it’s a great joy to taste the first ripe fruit from the trees. Even after a second and third day you are still being regaled with them. But when bowls have to be replaced with buckets to collect them, you start to panic about where you will find the time to collect and preserve. Now the harvest is nearly done, and only a few boxes are waiting to be preserved, but I am sure that by next week when I look up at the green but empty branches, I will again be longing for that juicy fruit. Tell me, Hesperides, why can you not make all the fruit ripen at different times?

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2013