Egg and lemon soup (Σούπα αυγολέμονο)

Five minutes: that's about the amount of time I would say I spend washing my hands and face, brushing my hair and teeth, and applying a dab of perfume and maybe some lip balm on a cold morning, before going to work. That's after I've spent 10 minutes toasting bread, warming up milk and serving it all up for the kids' breakfast. So Xanthe Clay is way ahead of me when she makes the classic Greek soup, avgolemono, in just five precious minutes:

(Thanks for link, Peter)

Is chicken stock really truly that kind of brown colour? Is pre-cooked rice an ingredient or a fast food? Maybe this is the way soup is served in a fast food restaurant; it needs five minutes to cook, and if not eaten in the next five minutes, it will go off. To cook such a soup from scratch, admittedly, it would not take 5 minutes to make, but whoever heard of a whole meal being cooked in 5 minutes, except in fast food restaurants?

This kind of video is supposedly an attempt to get people cooking some kind of 'real food', which is all the rage these days, judging by discussions among 'top chefs' like Alice Waters and Anthony Bourdain:

(Thanks for the link, Elissa)

And I congratulate Xanthe's effort in this direction. But let's not forget, as Alice Waters says: where did each of Xanthe's ready-to-eat ingredients come from and how easy is it to actually cook the same food from scratch without wasting, beg your pardon, spending too much time in the kitchen? Xanthe's version of avgolemono soup serves 2 people and can be made in just 5 minutes. She probably needed a longer time buying her ingredients from the supermarket; in how much of a rush can 2 diners possibly be?

My mum used to make avgolemono soup very often on cold winter nights in New Zealand, especially after she came home with my father and her children from the fish and chip shop my parents owned and operated. It would be 7.30 at night, and she'd go into the kitchen as soon as we came home. She'd tell us to take our baths or finish our school homework, while during this time, she'd whip up the evening meal. Even though convenience foods were widely available in 1980s New Zealand, she hardly ever used them. Nearly everything she cooked was related to the food she remembered from Crete, and it was cooked from scratch.

I can still remember how she made avgolemono soup. As I write this, I remember our house in Wellington, the kitchen table, the cutlery and crockery; most of the time, I used to help her mix the hot stock with the egg and lemon sauce. "Pour it in drop by drop!" she'd tell me. "Wait till I've blended it in well!" she'd ask me. "Don't let the egg cook!" she'd warn me.

This soup took longer than five minutes to cook; by planning ahead, it is never a toilsome soup to make.

Here's my version of quick and easy avgolemono soup, using Xanthe's ingredients list as a base, which you can make for dinner after you've come home from work, to feed your family a nourishing winter warmer in the cold days that are ahead of us - and making use of all the fresh ingredients available around you. Making chicken stock does not require the luxury of time; you can make it in the 15-20 minutes it took Xanthe to buy her ready-to-gloop ingredients from the supermarket (and if time really is a hassle, then make your stock 1-3 days before: it keeps this long in the fridge).

For a family of 4, you need:

2 fresh chicken drumsticks (We usually buy whole chickens - I reserve the wings and neck to make really good stock, but you won't get much meat out of them if you intend to add bits of chicken to the soup)

the juice of 1-2 lemons, depending on how tangy you want it to be, placed in a medium sized bowl

2 eggs (we like our avgolemono less eggy and more lemony)

a fistful of raw rice (I am using Asian egg noodles today instead, for a more kid-friendly meal)

salt and pepper (you can add some chopped parsley as a garnish, like Xanthe did, but this is definitely not what the average working wife and mother who lacks time would feel the need to do when serving up a nutritious meal right after she's been at work...)

Place the chicken parts in a medium-sized pot and cover with cold water. Let the water boil away for about 15 minutes. Depending on the kind of chicken used (ie how the chicken is reared), it may require more or less cooking time (which is why I prefer to use chicken wings and necks for stock making). Strain the stock into another pot. If the use of too many pots in the kitchen perturbs you, then it's best to make your stock the night before so you can maintain control over the dirty dishes; my urbanised friends always freak out when they see the detritus of my kitchen - that's before they've tasted the food of course, after which they've forgotten about the kitchen chaos. Maybe they realised it was worth the effort. But they probably wouldn't invite me to cook in their kitchen.

My chicken stock always comes out golden, never brown, in colour. I only ever watched my mother make chicken stock in New Zealand, and her Kiwi chicken also gave her golden, never brown, liquid. The stock in the above photos looks fatty, but you can skim the fat off before you use it, like I did for this soup. This pot produced 4 servings of hearty chicken soup.

Make sure your chicken stock is very hot, then add the washed rice (or noodles). Let it boil away, without stirring (which will make the rice go mushy), for as long as it takes to cook the rice/noodles. At this point, start making the egg and lemon sauce. Break the eggs into the bowl containing the lemon juice, add some salt, and use a fork, whisk or hand-mixer to blend everything together. Remove the meat in small bits from the chicken and set aside. Switch off the stock pot.

Making a hearty chicken egg and lemon soup; even the dog gets her share today (bottom right-hand corner: the tub contains the chicken bones and skin).

Now comes the tricky bit. Stir a shotglass-full of the hot stock (clear liquid is preferable - strain away the rice) into your egg and lemon sauce and whisk it in really well. Keep doing this until at least a third of the stock liquid has been added to the egg and lemon sauce, which should be cool rather than hot at all times. Now turn up the heat for the soup pot to very low, tip the egg and stock mixture back into the soup pot and stir it gently but constantly, so that the egg does not 'cook'. Add the chicken meat and stir till the soup has warmed up, and has a thick soupy texture, but don't let it boil because the egg may start to cook, and that's highly undesirable.

Avgolemono soup with all the trimmings: a selection of cheeses, two different kinds of olives, extra lemon for tanginess, and paximadi (Cretan dry rusks) for dunking.

Serve hot, ladled into soup bowls, and sprinkle (read: garnish) with pepper. I had also added a carrot to the chicken as it was boiling, so I could make this soup more nourishing; the carrot was sliced into thin rounds, and added at the same time as the chicken pieces (along with some tinned corn - remember, we're making this soup kid-friendly).

Real food, for real people.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Lemons (Λεμόνια)

Lemon in Greek cooking is commonly taken for granted that it is amazing to think it only existed in Europe since Ancient Rome. Lemon is the main dressing ingredient in Greek cuisine. How we managed to survive without lemons in the past is a mystery, because Greeks use a lot of lemon juice in their food. Boiled vegetables and greens are always dressed with lemon juice, along with olive oil and salt; lemon juice is absolutely essential on horta, fish and BBQ meat, while most Greek soups and white sauces are lemon-based. In Crete, green olives are preserved in lemon juice and salt.

In countries where lemons are in short supply, sour-tasting sumac is used as a substitute. A Middle-Eastern student of mine tells me that the common weed clover is also used for the same purpose, cut finely like a herb, to release its acidic flavour. Although lemons are grown all over Greece, the winter period poses a problem in finding locally grown lemons, even in Crete.

It's always a sad time in our house when we realise we've run out of lemons.

In the village, we have a lemon tree that is laden with fruit every year. In theory, we can have all the lemons we want, but the problem is that they aren't in season all year round. Fresh lemon juice can be frozen in ice cube trays and used in winter greens. One ice-cube placed over one serving of steaming hot horta is enough to get that tangy flavour always present in Greek-style boiled greens. This is an excellent way to preserve lemon juice, and it doesn't take up a lot of space in the freezer, especially for use in the winter when access to fresh lemons is limited. Lemons are often imported in Hania at this time, mainly from South America. They taste less tangy than locally grown ones.

In the summer, I love home-made lemonade. It is so refreshing and so simple to make. Elise gives a very simple recipe, which you can make up freshly each time you want to make lemonade. Her lemon syrup recipe keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge, if you prefer to make it in bulk; just don't mix it with extra water until you're ready to serve it.

And when you're squeezing so many lemons, you'll notice your hands looking clean and shiny - lemon juice is a great cleansing agent.

Another way to use up excess lemons Greek-style is to turn them into spoon sweets preserved in syrup or add them to orange marmalade. Many cultures around the world also have their own unique lemon recipes: lemon meringue pie, lemon curd, lemon herb butter and lemon granita ice-cream have become universal favorites. But my absolute favourite internationally inspired use for lemon would have to be that delicious refreshing Italian limoncello, enjoyed outdoors on a warm summer’s evening.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Youvarlakia (Γιουβαρλάκια)

Dear Ms Verivaki,

I must congratulate you on your magnificent prose and excellent cooking skills. I am a regular follower of your Hania blogs (I read them both every day), and there has never been a moment that I have been disappointed by the food you present and the stories you write. I have fond memories of spending summers in my youth in Crete, and I feel as though I am right there with you when you describe village life, the beach, the weather, and daily life in that splendid Mediterranean town where you live.

Over the past year that I have been following your blog, I notice you have been cooking everything the way my dearly departed grandmother cooked (she was from Kambi); the same meals, the same ingredients, the same method. Your family must revere you for the feasts you conjure up in your kitchen. The photos seem to jump out of the screen, screaming "That's my grandmama!" to me.

There is one recipe that I haven't yet seen on your blog, and that's youvarlakia. It's my favorite Greek dish, the one that my mother makes for me and sends it from California via courier to my apartment in Connecticut where I'm studying IT, in a tupperware container which she has frozen. When I receive it, I simply warm it up in the microwave and eat it on the same night that I received the packet, saving one serving for the next day. It tastes so good, and it always makes me feel homesick.

Here is my mom's yourvalakia recipe. It took me a few times making it before I turned out a batch that I was even satisfied with. In my mind, my mom's yourvalakia are always smaller and lighter than mine, and the avgolemono is always fluffier and more nicely balanced in flavor, but I continue to practice, and some day I hope that it'll be good enough that I can serve it to my mom and she'll be proud of it.

I thought that it would eventually turn up in your recipe list, but it's been over a year, and I understand that you cook according to a strict cyclical repertoire of recipes. Maybe your family doesn't like youvarlakia? Well, all people are different, aren't they?

I have never felt closer to my second home than through your stories. I'm looking forward to being comforted by more of them this winter.

Your loyal reader...

*** *** ***

.

Kambi, 1919

Nikolas had heard the word 'Ameriki' mentioned many times in the village. Ameriki was the land of a poor man's wildest dream, something akin to utopia, where everyone is happy, employed and rich, like his brother, who sent one single postcard to his family since he left Kambi.

When Nikolas' older brother Grigori returned to the village from Ameriki, he had enough money on him to buy 90 acres of land in the village, and live happily ever after. After working in the restaurant trade for five years in New York, being the patriot that he was, Grigori decided to return to the mother country to buy the land his family could not afford to give him and to complete his Greek military service, at a time when Greece was under attack from an enemy.

"In Ameriki, people are prepared to fight for their freedom. How can I stand and watch when my country is in danger?" he replied to his family when they pleaded with him not to leave so soon after his arrival. His betrothal to a blooming village girl arranged (as befitted his financial position), he had no sooner invested his money in buying land than he left again, this time to Thesaloniki where his knowledge of English earned him the rank of officer. He managed to survive the Battle of Skra, only to die from malaria two months before the end of the campaign, having never set foot on the land that he had worked five years on foreign soil to buy. It was shared unevenly among his siblings: his four sisters received a large share each as a dowry, making them attractively eligible for marriage, while Grigori's brother ended up with the remainder, a mere pittance of the original amount.

Nikolas received 10 acres of the land that had been bought with his brother's money from Ameriki, along with the beautiful bride his brother never married. He married her out of pity; even though her engagement did not constitute a marriage (there was no marriage to consummate in the first place), she would have a hard time finding another husband after being betrothed once already. Word would have spread that she was engaged to be married; her fate had already been decided. Who knows when the next offer would come? Nikolas also felt that she had partly inherited his brother's fortune, so that she deserved to be in on his good fortune.

Aggeliki, for all her outward qualities, was not the most useful woman around the house. She had been raised in the 'mimou aptou' way, as if her beauty did not permit her to cook, wash and clean the way a less attractive woman might conduct herself with respect to these duties, lest by applying herself to such tasks, her beauty may deteriorate, fade away, disappear, as if age could never play a part in this demeaning process, and it was all to do with how often one's hands touched the soil on the ground or how much sunlight shone on a woman's face.

Nikolas' land was fruitful, especially once he had cleared most of it from the thyme and dictamo bushes, after which he set about planting it with olive trees. He hunted hares and wild birds, plentiful in his own fields, but the cook was wonting in culinary skills; the rumour spread all over the village, with its population of 500, that Aggeliki was a hopeless cook. Nikolas didn't know who to feel sorry for more: himself for earning such fate, or the oven-charred or water-sodden carcasses that came out of the kitchen, sometimes sporting their fur or plumage. When he sat at the kafeneio with other men from the village, and listened to their chatter about how their own wives conducted themselves at home, his gut tightened.

"Give her time, Nikola, you're not even into a year of married life," the others would comfort him. But he neglected to tell them that Aggeliki entered the marriage in this way right from the start, and that his clothing was now almost ragged and Aggeliki showed no sign of replacing them for him before they had become tatters. He felt that the land - and possibly Angela's inviting appearance - had cursed him into the misfortune of a loveless marriage.

*** *** ***

When Aggeliki became engaged to Grigori, she had hopes of leaving the village for good. She knew that Grigori had made a lot of money, but she didn't realise that he had invested it in the mountainous territory that made up the village of Kambi. She expected that, once he had finished his military duty, he would move to lower ground - as most villagers who prospered did - and build a suitable dwelling for them to live in. After all, this is what he must have been accustomed to living in in Ameriki; everyone there apparently lived in fully furnished houses and had their clothes made for them by tailors and seamstresses. They did not need to shear sheep, spin yarn, or weave cloth on the argalio, which would eventually be turned into bedsheets and men's shirts; like cooking, sewing was not Aggeliki's forte. So it was to her greatest disappointment that Grigori did not return from Thesaloniki. She knew what fate had in store for her.

(Crete in the 1960s, four decades after Aggeliki and Nikolas emigrated; the photos come from CRETE 1960, by John Donat, Crete University Press)

Aggeliki had not wanted to marry her fiance's brother, but there was no question of that now that Grigori was dead. Had she been married to Grigori before he had left for Thesaloniki, she would have inherited his land, a mixed blessing if ever there was one. She would have become a rich woman, highly ineligible for marriage; what man in the village would have been able to match her wealth? As it was, she suffered the cruel fate of being labelled a widow after Grigori's death anyway, even though she had never married; such was the nature of life in the impenetrable snow-capped mountains of Kambi, at the foothills of the Lefka Ori.

She looked around the house Grigori had built in roughshod style a short while before they were married: two simple stone-built rooms with openings for windows, blocked by wooden shutters to stop the winter cold from entering. There was an outhouse a little way from the house and an earth oven built next to one of them rooms. This was not the Ameriki she had dreamed of, nor was it the town of Hania that she had hoped to move to after her marriage. It was true that she had never known better than the village life she was born into, but no one could stop her from dreaming, which is what she did most of the day when Nikolas was away, clearing scrubland, planting olive trees, hunting hares and grazing sheep.

*** *** ***

Kambi, 1921

Nikolas was sitting at the kafeneio. He usually sat on his own these days, as he had little to share with the locals. It was almost three years since he married Aggeliki and still no children. He had by now grown accustomed to the way the kafeneio chatter died down when he entered the shop, and the compassionate smiles of the other men sitting in groups around the tables. He picked up one of the newspapers that had been left on the fireplace, to be used for kindling a flame. Although he had not finished primary school, his reading was at a reasonable level. He did not write anything apart from his name; there was no one to write to, in any case, and no one interested in reading anything that he wrote.

He had not grown tired of working the village land. What tired him most of all - and he seemed to have aged a decade since his wedding day - was that he was working with no future in mind. So what if he had thousands of olive trees; so what if his coffers were filled with olive oil. There was no one to eat it, and no one to sell it to; people were too poor in the village to buy more as their own stocks ran out, so they simply used it more sparingly. The economy of the country was still engaged in a new war effort; there was no interest in trading olive oil. So much effort for very little reward; produce-rich but lacking currency.

Every morning started off the same, as every evening finished. Routine after routine, with very little variation. Nikolas saddled the donkey, which lived in a makeshift shelter next to the main house, along with a group of six goats and sheep which Aggeliki milked each morning, and left for the hills. The land he had inherited had never before been touched by human hands. He worked most of the day with some paid labourers clearing the land of the scrub wood and rocks, digging it up, tilling it, and planting it with olive trees. Aggeliki had filled a woven bag with bread, some olives, a chunk of graviera and a carafe of wine for Nikolas to curb his hunger, before he came back home at midday. It was usually too hot to work after that; the sun did not rest even in winter. The midday meal was a very silent affair, one that always heightened the void between the couple. They could not fill the space between them with their presence. They had little to say to each other; their world had become static.

Without offspring, there was no one to work for but himself, and his wife, of course, who, at times, seemed to live in her own reticent world. Apart from his requests for better food and clean clothes to wear, he had very little to say to her. Yesterday, she had cooked youvarlakia in a tomato sauce, using the anidres tomatoes he had hung on the rafters of the house to dry for the winter, while the lemon tree was bulging from its own weight, laden with fruit. Hadn't she ever had youvarlakia? Didn't she know how to make an avgolemono sauce?

"What were you thinking, using the tomatoes I was saving for the winter? Where are we going to find them when we need them, woman!" He could hear the rumble in his own voice as he shouted at her. Usually the house was so quiet. He wasn't used to hearing himself speak like this. He left the house feeling more angry with himself than his wife.

(Kambi village, 1974)

Things were not looking good in Smyrna: according to the front page, war was imminent. His mind immediately conjured up the image of his brother leaving the village to fight against the Bulgarians. What was it that his brother had said? "In Ameriki, people are prepared to fight for their freedom. How can I stand and watch when my country is in danger?" Did he understand what he was fighting for? Had he thought about whether the cause was worth fighting for? Did he know how close the war was to the end when he lay sick and dying? Nikolas did not share his brother's patriotism. He did not want to fight a war that he hadn't started. He did not wish to be one of the victims of war like his brother. Now seemed a good time to leave the village, maybe even the island, and why not the country if it got to that stage. The shame of childlessness could be avoided if he simply lived elsewhere, far away from anyone who knew him. Nikolas put it in his mind to seek a passage to Ameriki.

(The kind of Crete Nikolas and Aggeliki left when they decided to emigrate to Ameriki; these photos are more recent than the first set above. The photographs are works by George Meis, taken from a souvenir calendar of Crete)

(END OF PART ONE)

*** *** ***

Aggeliki may not have been too far wrong when she made youvarlakia with a tomato-based sauce. (In any case, her cooking improved once she went to Ameriki.) Youvarlakia is a meatball dish, in which the meatballs are made with rice, and cooked in an egg-and-lemon sauce, which turns them into a light main meal. My aunt in New Zealand used to make them, but not my mum; they simply didn't become a favorite in our house, along with, funnily enough, pastitsio, an all-time favorite Greek pasta dish.

The next time I had youvarlakia was in a hospital in Iraklio where my new-born son was under observation for an extremely rare blood disorder: at the age of two months, we discovered that he wasn't producing enough blood to supply his body with, which did thankfully clear up on its own when he was ten months old. He had six blood tranfusions in between this period. The hospital youvarlakia were cooked in the tradtional egg-and-lemon sauce, which my husband was never a great fan of. I enjoyed them, despite the hospital atmosphere.

My husband laughed them off : "They forgot the tomato," he said.

"But youvarlakia aren't cooked in tomato," I replied.

(My mother-in-law still cooks youvarlakia in tomato sauce.)

"Yes, they are," he said as we looked at each other wondering whether we were from different planets.

When life became a little more normal in our house after the hospital episodes, I cooked youvarlakia with the tomato sauce my husband liked, which, of course, was the way he had been brought up to eat them. I didn't really like them, but then I've never been a fan of tomato-based sauces. I'd rather eat garbanzo beans (chickpeas) than fasolada; I prefer a carbonara to a makaronada; give me a lettuce salad rather than the traditional Greek horiatiki. This is the reason why I prefer an avgolemono meat dish to my regular tomato-stew meat dishes, and believe me, youvarlakia in avgolemono are delicious. I have found one recipe (in Chrissa Paradissis' Greek Cookery, 1983 edition) that insists on using tomato AND egg-and-lemon sauce together to make youvarlakia, but mixing tomato and lemon is a rarity.

Aggeliki's cooking probably got better once she went to Ameriki, because life simply became less mundane and the tasks she performed in Crete on a daily basis probably became automated in Ameriki. Her kitchen would have been more well-fitted, her food did not have to be sourced straight from the fields, her house probably never resembled a mud-hut. And Nikolas was probably a happier man once he moved to Ameriki, because he would have found better working conditions and an appropriate salary. But the food they ate together wherever they set up home would still have been traditional Greek food, even if the ingredients weren't easily available.

(The video shows how Cretan families from Kambi were living in California in 1948; Crete at that time was extremely poor, while Greece was in the midst of a civil war. To the average Cretan, this picture would have seemed like a scene from paradise; poverty remains the main reason why, up to the late 1970s, Greek people emigrated to the New Worlds.)

Galatia in California makes her youvarlakia in the traditional Greek way. I got the recipe straight from her son Nick, who could well have been Nikolas' grandson. The recipe is exactly as he related it to me, with a couple of exceptions. I added a large onion (I am a great fan of all Allium species: onion, garlic, and leek), I used only two eggs, and I added olive oil to the pot after cooking the recipe according to Nick's instructions. The reason why is a simple Cretan one: we cannot do without our olive oil. It may add to the calories, but it will also add to the flavour; it also removes the eggy taste that my family isn't used to in their sauces. The original recipe before adding the olive oil - Galatia's youvarlakia are just so good with that extra dose of garlic - reminded me of the way my mother cooked Greek food in New Zealand. When you don't have access to cheap, high-quality olive oil (as we do in Crete), you go without. Tough luck.

Since we don't eat youvarlakia often, you may be wondering if my fussy eaters actually ate this. As it was the first time I made this meal, I decided to soften it a little with a side dish of fried potatoes. I called the youvarlakia by another familiar name for mince balls, biftekia, which use the same ingredients, except that the rice is replaced with breadcrumbs. Next time I serve it, it won't be with potatoes, but with extra sauce to mop up with bread. After that, I might even call them by their real name, youvarlakia, and turn the sauce into a soup like Peter's. Evelyn also added a few chunky vegetables to it and turned it into a hearty meal for a cold day.

I know that, like leek and potato potage, first introduced to me by Ioanna, youvarlakia are going to become a firm family favorite. When I served up the youvarlakia for lunch, I had left the pot on the table. My husband asked me to take it away because "I could eat right out of it and not stop till I get to the bottom of the pan."
For the meatballs, you need:
1 pound of ground beef (about 450-500 grams)
1/2 onion, grated
4 to 5 garlic cloves (minced or grated)
1/2 cup rice (we use "Barba Ben's" long-grain)
1 egg
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt & pepper to taste
a little olive oil
For the sauce, you need: some butter, 3 eggs and 1/2 cup lemon juice

Mix the meatballs ingredients together well, and then make into small balls (about the size of walnuts). The one thing I always keep in mind is to keep the meatballs themselves small, more of a walnut size than a golfball. It took me a while to remember that the rice will cook and puff up in size.
Melt the butter in a large pot and place the meatballs in a single layer on the bottom (if you've made more meatballs than can fit in your pot, you can stack up a second layer). Cover the meatballs with water, going about 1/2 inch above the top layer of meatballs. Bring to a boil and let them cook at a low boil/high simmer for 20 to 25 minutes (until the rice has cooked, but keeping careful not to let all the water evaporate - you need the cooking liquid for the avgolemono).
Mix the eggs with 1/2 cup lemon juice and beat until frothy. Slowly add in the liquid from the meatballs and continue beating. Pour the avgolemono mixture back on top of the meatballs. If the avgolemono is too runny, or if the meatballs have sat around for a while (which is fine, and I should add that the meatballs, even without the avgolemono, are delicious) you can heat the whole mixture back on the stovetop, either to thicken the avgolemono, or to bring it back to a warm temperature, or both.

This post is dedicated to all the Cretans from Kambi, my mother's village, living in Modesto and Manteca, California, where very many of them congregated. It doesn't matter where they were born, whether it was in Crete or America, or whether they continue to speak Greek or not; they are still Greek at heart, and they know it. Thanks are due to Galatia Aretakis and her son Nick, because without their participation in this post, I would never have made youvarlakia.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Home-made lemonade (Σπιτική λεμονάδα)

My aunt has just become a great-grandmother for the second time, to a baby boy living many miles away from her in New Zealand. The internet has made those miles seem like a short bus ride across town; I passed on to her some photos of the new addition to the family.

"Let me make you a coffee," she said to me, to which I passed, because it was early morning and I had just had my caffeine fix at home. Coffee can be a personal thing: some people (like myself) can only have a coffee the way they like it made, which is why I like to make it myself.

"Then have a lemonade," she said, getting up to fetch it for me. (If anyone thinks I need a new camera, donations are most welcome).

"I'll get it myself," I answered.

"Look for the Coke bottle on the fridge door," she instructed, as if I didn't know where it was. I've had many lemonades in that house for me to know exactly where to look for it. In fact, I once made some of this refreshing lemonade syrup for my family, according to my aunt's recipe. They weren't too keen on it, unfortunately, preferring to drink the readily available (and much sweeter) fresh natural orange juice straight from our trees. This is fair enough; my sweet tooth is less demanding than theirs (I don't expect otherwise from children). I was also scolded by my husband for using up all the precious lemons to make something that needs added sugar to make it potable. This is why I don't make lemonade at home any more - that, and also because I usually drink it all myself, in which case, I may as well stick to orange juice or water.

Lemonade syrup is really quite easy to make. The tastiest version is when the lemons are tangy rather than sour, and the whole lemon has been used to get as much flavour out of the fruit and into the syrup as possible. I like to grate the zest of the lemons, then juice them, and throw in the whole fruit into the saucepan with the sugar and water to boil up altogether. The cooled strained syrup is then bottled and stored in the fridge. To make a glass of refreshing lemonade, a few tablespoons of this syrup are placed in a glass, and cold water is poured on top, with a few ice cubes and a sprig of mint for the final visual effect.

As Delia Smith says, "there are a million and one commercial versions, but nothing can compare with the flavour of fresh lemons made into lemonade." And there are also a million versions of storable lemonade syrup for making refreshing lemonade in the summer which you can browse over the internet: some are for storing as a syrup, others are for drinking once you make it, as well as some single serves for those of us whose family doesn't appreciate home-made lemonade. And if you're interested in making something totally different, but equally refreshing, The Nicest Woman in the World™ once served me some kanelada, a drink often served up in Eastern Crete, which Mariana made recently.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Palm Sunday and the Holy Week (Κυριακή των Βαϊων και Μεγάλη Εβδομάδα)

In the run-up to Easter, to mark the beginning of Holy Week, my already-lenten cooking is simply going to become more traditional rather than more lenten. In a household that eats mainly vegetarian meals, with meat being served no more than two days a week, it isn't too difficult to get everyone to eat lenten meals during the week. For the uninitiated, here is a typical Holy Week menu for the main meal of the day. As far as breakfast and lunch are concerned, keeping things lenten is a little more difficult if you're used to eating luncheon meat or cheese in your sandwiches and milk in your tea or coffee. And just like an Easter menu has to be planned, so does a whole week of lenten meals. You can't just eat whatever is in the fridge, unless you are a practicing vegetarian.

Palm Sunday: Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the Holy Week. On this day, the fast is broken with fish, salt cod being the traditional fish of choice for the day, as for 25 March. This is accompanied by beetroot salad and skordalia, although we also eat taramosalata or guacamole instead. Bread is a must on this day for dipping into the (bread) roe dip, although it could also be made with potato. Prepare a large quantity of dip, as that can be eaten on most of the holy days in this week.
Holy Monday: This is a good day to prepare a large pot of bean or lentil soup and eat the taramosalata with it. Bring on the sourdough bread, and have some fried calamari ready for the hungrier or more carnivorous members of the family.
Holy Tuesday: A good meal for today is something like an octopus or calamari stew, using lots of fresh greens in season. Bread is a must for mopping up the sauce. You could also try a spag bog made with soy mince instead of meat (no one even suspected that I had made it with soy). If there's any taramosalata left, you need to finish it off because...
Holy Wednesday: ... today, no oil is allowed (for the devout). An oil-free watery tomato soup, some bread, boiled potatoes and olives, along with some boiled shrimps, should see you through to the next day, although margarine can be used if it doesn't contain oil.
Holy Thursday: How about some yemista or spanakorizo today? Rice, herbs, vegetables, all cooked in an oil-based liquid are a perfect way to fill up an empty stomach after yesterday's oil-free meal. Make a day of it, because...
Holy Friday: ... you can't have any oil today either. Today is a very dry day in terms of food. Oil-free fava and boiled seafood is again the rule of the day. Your taste buds will have started to get nervous, and you will be counting down the minutes to real food once again.
Holy Saturday: Today is NOT an oil-free day. Instead of another bean or rice dish (keep it simple - don't make large quantities, because you won't want your fridge clogged up with dairy-free food on Easter Sunday), you could make a salad and some fried chips to go with it. Tomato sauce is permissible, and if you're dreaming of big fat red juicy steaks, you could add some grilled octopus to the meal.

Bread is another must-have for the whole week. Sandwich fillings are not too difficult on oil-permitted days; you could easily spread olive pate to your rolls. Lenten hortopites need a lot of preparation; that's why deep-freezes come in handy. On oil-free days, try using non-oil based margarine instead. My biggest problem is going milkless in my coffee. Children and the ill or the travelling (as they once used to travel, on donkeys, for days, under the hot Middle Eastern sun in the desert...) do not have to follow the fasting period so strictly. Dakos rusk salad is a good snack, even without the cheese, as is a vegetarian pizza (ladenia) made with an oily yeast crust

Feel like a dessert? You should have a full supply of seasonal fruit in the house at this time. Delicious lenten desserts like apple crumble, apple pie and halva are easy to make and will keep everyone happy until Easter Sunday. Afghans and gingernuts can be made with margarine and are great with plain tea or coffee.

If your kitchen is well organised, you won't feel hungry, and you won't even notice that you haven't eaten any meat at all. Thank goodness for shellfish...

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE EASTER TRADITIONS:
Tsoureki
Koulourakia
Red eggs
Seafood
Lent pies
Bakaliaros
Clean Monday
Greek Easter in New Zealand

Shrimp boiled in lemon juice (Γαρίδες βραστές με λεμόνι)

Frozen shrimp always has a nasty habit of leaving its scent on your hands, clothes, kitchen surfaces, and anything it touches. No matter how hard you try to buy from reputable establishments, it's always a risky venture. Fresh shrimp is not cheap, and the supermarket does offer a fair price for these delicacies. We usually eat shrimp with a salad and fried potatoes, so I prefer not to fry the shrimp as well. To avoid tainting your hands and clothes with the smell that frozen shrimp may leave behind, try boiling them in plain lemon juice mixed with water.

For a start, clean frozen shrimps while they are still partly frozen, as it is much easier to work with them (they are not so slippery or limp). Chop off the head and squeeze the flesh till the black vein is visible. Pull it out (it should come away easily) and discard it (the heads can be used for making stock). Squeeze a dozen lemons straight into a pot. Toss in the shrimp and let them cook till their flesh has gone from creamy transparent to pinky red (the colour change will be obvious). They only need about 10 minutes. Let them cool in the lemon juice.

When they are cold enough to handle, shell them, leaving the tail intact. They can now be dressed with olive oil, or used in any other way in a meal. Shelling them before serving with the tails attached helps eaters keep their hands and fingers clean while enjoying them.

This post is dedicated to Christine Senior, who told me never to boil shrimps in plain water.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE SEAFOOD RECIPES:
Bakaliaros - bakaliaraki
Octopus stew
Mussels sauce
Psarosoupa
Squid stew
Squid fried
Taramasalata

Goat and cooked lettuce in egg-and-lemon sauce (Κατσίκι φρικασέ - αυγολέμονο)

Spring is so much in the air these days in Hania. I just spent the whole morning in town and the whole afternoon in Platanias, a seaside village, at a hotel which was hosting the regional inter-school chess competition for Western Crete. A splendid time was had by all, despite the fact that the children and their parents spent five hours in an exposed section of a summer resort hotel, with long wait times in the strong cold wind that prevailed. These hotels abound in Hania, but remain closed during the off-season, when there are no European chartered flights available, and hence no tourism. Living in Hania, I don't get the chance to view these buildings from the inside; I only see their façade as I drive past. Therefore, it was a bit of an eye-opener entering this marvellous edifice which simply screamed summer everywhere you looked, with its bamboo deckchairs, mosaic-tile swimming pools (not in operation at this time of year) and umbrella light fixtures. The apartments looked like miniature villas with marble staircases and terracotta pottery gracing the gardens which were full of expensive greenery. The hotel must have been specially opened for the weekend's event, but all hotels will gradually start getting ready to greet this year's tourists when the season opens up at the end of the month. Seeing the hotel from up close, I felt very thankful to have a home in Hania close by to the places where people spend a few weeks of their annual pay to stay at for a couple of weeks a year.

The event was free, but not without its problems. It ran over the time expected, and no food or drinks were provided. 400 schoolchildren had registered for the event. I learnt my lesson: tomorrow morning (the second half of the event), I shall make sure to bring along some water and a few edibles, because I don't want to pay a euro per half litre of water and 2 euro per toasted ham and cheese sandwich; a right rip-off. There were also some pricey but filling brown bread rolls (the one I ate contained lettuce, feta cheese and olive paste), and the usual refreshments. But the rest of the food available was clearly junk - chips, chocolates and sweets.

There will be no time to cook tomorrow's Sunday lunch, the only time we eat meat in our house. Not that I don't like meat, but there's just so much healthier food available, so why overdose on cholesterol? We are getting ready to plough up the garden to make it ready for the coming spring months. Time to find a way to eat up the Cos lettuce my mother-in-law planted in winter. Cos lettuce is the main lettuce variety grown in Hania. It's something I couldn't get used to when I first came to Greece, as I could only dream of the curly iceberg lettuce we used to eat in New Zealand. But I slowly learnt to like coarser stiffer Cos (sometimes called Romaine) lettuce, and I have to laugh at the sign above the iceberg lettuce sold in the foreign produce section of the supermarket: it's often named 'salata'. Aren't all salads called 'salata'?

After arriving home at 8pm, we ate our evening meal as a family (spanakorizo) which I had managed to cook in between the trip to Hania and the chess competition (tired and hungry children will eat anything, even if it does look very green). When everyone had had their fill, they went off to doze in front of the television while I cleared away the kitchen table and started cooking tomorrow's Sunday lunch: φρικασέ (fricasse). This is not a difficult dish to cook, as long as you have prepared the meat and vegetables. Lettuce is an unusual ingredient in a stew; the lettuce is cooked with the meat. Other leafy greens can also be used in the same dish - spinach, stamnagathi (spiny chicory) and swiss chard, among others - with an alteration in the flavour. My mum used to cook this meal for the midnight feast after the first Easter Sunday service (ie the one that starts on Saturday night and finishes in the wee small hours of Sunday morning). She'd cook the meat with the vegetables, and when she came home from church, she'd make and add the egg-and-lemon sauce. In this way, I'll be able to enjoy another day at the posh hotel, and still get a decent meal on the table in a reasonable amount of time.

Fricasee in Greece basically means meat cooked in a white sauce, which isn't necessarily creamy. Egg-and-lemon sauce is the classic Greek white sauce, also used to make chicken soup. It is a perfect sauce for spring dishes; its creamy yellow colour goes well with green vegetables. Lamb or goat meat is the meat commonly used in fricasse dishes in Hania, and today I've preferred kid meat, because it is very tender and less fatty than spring lamb.


For the stew, you need:
1.5 kg of tender goat meat, preferably kid (or spring lamb), chopped into large chunks
a dozen spring onions, chopped small - I prefer a mixture of red onions, leeks and spring onions
2 large heads of Cos lettuce (but any lettuce will do, and many cooks in Hania use different kinds of horta, stamnagathi - spiny chicory - being the most popular), torn into large pieces
1 cup of olive oil
a few sprigs of dill, chopped finely
1/2 glass of wine
salt and pepper to taste



Prepare the meat by boiling it to skim off any impurities. If the animal was very young, you don't need to do this. Drain it well if you do. Heat the oil in a pot and brown the meat all over. When it is done, add the onions and let them wilt in the juices of the meat. Add the salt, pepper and wine. Cover the pot and let the stew simmer for half an hour. When you take off the lid, if you used a mixture of onions, your nose will be smitten with the most wonderful springtime aroma, reminiscent of green hills covered with wild flowers, with frolicking young animals (like the one you're cooking) gamboling over them.











Now add the dill and lettuce, and mix them in well. The stiff leaves of Cos lettuce need to wilt before they will fit snugly into the pot, so let the stew cook over a high heat and turn the ingredients over in the pot so that they will cook more quickly. Once the lettuce has reduced, reduce the heat to simmering point, cover the pot and cook for at least an hour, or longer, until the meat is practically falling off the bone, and the cooked lettuce melts in your mouth. There is no set time for this; it all depends on the meat. Now you can switch off the heat, and either continue on to making the egg-and-lemon sauce, or wait till you are ready to serve the dish and prepare the sauce later. And if you really like your food light, skip the sauce altogether, add some lemon juice, stir it around, and enjoy this meal as it is (my personal preference). If you do decide to postpone the addition of the sauce, you need to heat up the stew so that the liquid is warm enough to cook the egg-based sauce; adding cold stewing liquid to an egg sauce means that the egg won't cook.











For the egg and lemon sauce, you need:
2-3 eggs, separated
juice of 2-3 lemons
If you prefer a thicker sauce, add more eggs. I add more lemon than eggs, for a lighter, tangier taste. Whisk the egg whites until they are frothy (not stiff). Now add the yolks and lemon juice. Add large spoons of liquid (at least two soup ladles full) from the stew into the egg mixture, and stir vigorously to blend the liquids. This is not a tricky sauce to make if the liquid from the stew has cooled down, but it can be quite a challenge if the liquid has not cooled down enough. Raw egg will cook in hot liquid, so beware when mixing the raw egg sauce into the stew's hot liquid. The sauce should not have cooked egg bits in it!











Once the egg and stew liquids have been blended, slowly pour it into the pot, over all the meat. Stir it in very gently, shaking the pot form side to side to distribute it. Let it set a few minutes before serving. This dish does not need many accompaniments. It contains everything required for a balanced meal. A few fried potatoes go well with it. For the healthiest option, just have some village bread handy for mopping up the juices.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE LEMON(-AND-EGG) RECIPES:
Artichokes in a lemon sauce
Dolmades
Poached salt cod
Lemon cake
Potatoes lemonates
Shrimp cooked in lemon