Feidias' story (Φειδίας)

We are experiencing beautiful weather these days, maybe too beautiful for the month of February. We long for rain, which hasn't come in a while to Hania, and this worries us for the coming summer when our water needs are increased in the very hot weather. While we are waiting for Μάρτης γδάρτης to come, we decided to enjoy the good weather at the weekend with a trip to the small village of Sfinari on the west coast of Crete in the region of Kissamos. A friend had recommended to us an excellent fish taverna in the area, where only fresh line-caught fish is cooked by a family of four brothers, headed by their father Feidias. It was a perfect day to try it out.

On the way to Sfinari. The small island in the middle of the photo is Pontikonisi ('mouse-island'), located close to 'insanely awesome Balos', which is hiding behind the mountain.

The west coast of Crete is appealing for its isolation and remoteness, combined with its wilderness. It's basically off the beaten track. We would not have gone there ourselves had it not been for our friend's suggestion (he is related to the owners). Feidias' taverna is located by the sea, but during the off season in the winter period, when the sea is not so alluring, Feidias and his family operate the business from a building located on the main road of this very peaceful village, close to their home, and mainly at weekends. When we arrived, we found one of his sons preparing hooks and lines, while another was in the kitchen cooking. As Feidias explained to us, their customers are mainly friends, and friends of friends, who usually phone them beforehand to tell them that they are coming. Apart from one other couple, we were the only customers in the restaurant. By the time we left in the middle of the afternoon, some more of his friends had turned up.

Feidias

"Please excuse me," Feidias said, as he took a chair from a nearby table and set it next to me, joining our table. He was curious to find out who our friend was that recommended his restaurant to us. While we were talking, in his sailor's song-song voice, he told us his story, a story that carries great relevance for the times we are living in.

One of Feidias' sons, cooking and serving in the restaurant. 

"My father was a fisherman. I became a fisherman too, and my sons have now entered the same line of business. From a very young age, I was always involved with the sea. That was all we had here, and this is what gave us our food. My father fished for a living. He sold his fish to the residents of nearby villages. When I was young, I told my father that I wanted to join a fishing ship. He let me go. There was little else to do in those days and you took your chances. I sailed to Africa where I spent many months. When I returned, I spent very little time back at home before I was on another boat. By the time I finished my sailing years, I had been to many places around the world. There isn't an ocean that I haven't sailed in..

Another of Feidias' sons, setting up fishing hooks and lines

"My last journey took me to New York. I was 19 years old and looking for luck. So I jumped ship. It seemed the most natural thing to do. I knew I was an illegal immigrant, and for the next 18 months, I feared the sight of any figure of authority that got in my way. In those days, there was a lot of work available in America. I had spent many years working in the sea, and this was my first job working on firm ground. I landed work in the textile industry, with a Jewish employer who had a clothing factory. I worked 16 to 23 hours a day. It sounds like a lot of work, but I was young, and I had no idea how hard I was working then. Everything seems so easy when you're young.

Feidias and his wife

"I worked and worked, saving money and avoiding the police. I was always worried about the police. I came so close to them one day when I was in a shop buying food. Some people came into the shop and attacked the cashier. I was caught up in the robbery. The shop owner tried to close the doors quickly but the mechanism didn't work. If the doors had closed, I would have been stuck inside the shop when the police arrived. I could hear the sirens of the police cars. Luckily, I managed to slip out the door just in time.

Feidias' wife is cleaning salty sea greens, Cretan seaweed, which is pickled and served in salads.

"The robbery made me think about going back to the safety of my island home. I had travelled to so many countries around the world in such a short time, but I never came across a country I wanted to live in. Eventually I found a passage on a ship, and left New York. My first job back home was to find a wife. I married a fellow villager at the age of 22 and had six children, 4 sons and 2 daughters. I opened the taverna 40 years ago. My children love their homeland in the same way that I do, even though they never took to the high seas in the way I did. They've never felt the need to leave. Things are different now - in my youth, the need to get away from our background of poverty was great. But my greatest desire all those years away was to return to my homeland. I may not have made as much money as I could have, but I have a better quality of life here. My family continues to live off the sea."

Octopus, sun-dried and grilled, slightly chewy with a soft interior

Marida Spicara smaris, a kind of sardine, lightly fried

Cuttlefish, grilled

Cod (European hake), fried

(plus the usual fried potatoes and fresh seasonal salad)

All the fish were caught by Feidias and his sons. The reason why we didn't order any calamari or shrimp is because they hadn't caught any at this time.

Feidias' story of his travels over the sea, his desire for self-improvement, and his eventual return home have a certain resonance with the major crisis that Greece is living through at this very moment. Whether the human convoy of moving people are refugees, economic migrants, or opportunists, they all share a common desire to live a better life, which may be found in another country far from their own. At the same time, we can't underestimate the yearning of most people in the world to live a quality life in their own homeland.

Most of Feidias' family still live in Sfinari. The ones that don't have gone as far as Kissamos town. They all fish for a living. Whatever fish are not needed for the taverna continue to be sold in the villages of the region by car. They will soon be moving to the premises of the summer taverna by the sea, once the summer tourist season kicks off. They will definitely be seeing us again some time soon.

For more photos of our drive, click here: https://www.facebook.com/maria.verivaki/posts/10208488101017083?pnref=story

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The Greek Collection: Achilleas seafood taverna (Αχιλλέας ψαροταβέρνα, Νέα Χώρα)

I begged for a day off from cooking last night, longing for something tasty which I hadn't cooked myself. At my suggestion, we went for Sunday lunch to a seafood lover's paradise located very close to our home, the seaside suburb of Nea Hora, which means 'new country'. On the recommendation of a friend, we decided to try Achilleas taverna.

Nea Hora was the first western suburb of the town to be built outside the old walled town, ie the original 'old town', to accommodate the growing population around the turn of last century. Before that, Nea Hora was where the Jewish and Muslim cemeteries of a mainly Christian population were located. It's now a highly congested residential area mainly full of apartment blocks, stretching from the coastal road which has a few hotels and rooms - it is naturally very popular among tourists, since it borders the coastline - to the main arterial routes of the town. Nea Hora's beach is very pretty, with very safe waters for family fun in the sea. And this is all within walking distance from the town, so this beach is highly accessible to the majority of the town's residents.

The coastal road of Nea Hora is lined with cafes and tavernas. It is one of the most picturesque places of the town, well-loved by both locals and tourists. Most of these eateries stay open all year round; Nea Hora is busy throughout the year with locals. This is in contrast to the area of the old Venetian port (only 600m or so away from here), which takes on a closed-down look after the summer season. That shows the basic difference between the two areas: the latter is for tourists, while the former is mainly for the locals.

My husband lived in the town centre in rented accomodation until his mid-30s. He went swimming in Nea Hora every day throughout the summer, with his friends, as soon as school closed. His mother would sometimes come here with neighbours, and they picknicked on the beach in any shady spot they found. When his uncle from Ohio came to Crete on holiday, he would often take my husband for lunch here with him and his wife. In fact, they would often eat at the very restaurant where we sat today. It is ironic that we don't do this ourselves, regarding an outing at a seafood restaurant as a rare treat.

The restaurant has changed ownership over the years. In my husband's youth, it had outdoor seating space that reached the other side of the kerb. (The indoor seating area is only used in the winter.) There was no road in front of the restaurant in his youth, and there were few cars then at any rate. And of course there were no umbrellas for hire in his day.

Lazaretta island on the right, Thodorou island in the distance on the left. My father used to swim out to Thodorou island, which is close to the beach in Platanias, where he lived, until he left Crete and went to live in Athens, before emigrating to New Zealand.

As we watched some people swimming out to the rocks, he told us that he used to do that too. He'd also swum out to the little island of Lazaretta, and he recalls a funny story that was talked about for quite a few days after the event. A fishing boat ran into some problems near Lazaretta, and radioed for help. But most locals would often swim out to Lazaretta from the coast. So it sounded hilarious that a fisherman would ask for help at such close distance to the shore. The 'Lazaretta shipwreck' was a common joke in his day, alluding to a low level of skills among the fishermen concerned.

We had a delicious seafood meal at Achilleas: fried calamari,

shrimp pasta,

fried skate with skorthalia (bread and garlic dip),

freshly fried potatoes, a green salad

and some ice-cold beers served in ice-cold glasses, as is customary in Greece: they are kept in a freezer all of their own, in order to keep the beer very very cold as long as possible.

When we asked for a second beer to be brought to us, we were told it was on the house, treated to us by the owners. I don't know why they did this; I can only suspect it was because I was taking so many photos.

Bracelet: from the Aegean Collection, by Nancy Chadis - eperocha

Upcycled Greek symbols denim shorts bag: the tassels were made by my mother on a Cretan loom. They initially decorated a hand-woven body towel. 

You see, every time we go somewhere new, I take items from The Greek Collection with me, to photograph them in a nice setting.

That's what I was doing before the meal, until the plates started arriving, and the table started to get oily. To get a good idea of how much olive oil a Cretan family gets through per day, look at the bottle in the photo below.

Among the four of us, we used all the olive oil missing from this bottle. Some was drizzled over the bread slices, and the rest went into the salad. This amount does not include the olive oil used to cook the meals we ordered. This olive oil tasted really good - not that our olive oil doesn't taste good, but this stuff tasted 'even better'.

We finished the meal with some melon bought to us on the house. And you can see from the bill that the whole meal didn't cost the earth - it roughly worked out at €13.50 per person.

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School shark (Γαλέος)

I was at the street market today where I spotted some γαλέος, a member of the 'big fish' family, selling at €7/kg. Galeos is a good choice for fish because what you buy is all edible, except for the round bit in the middle of the steak, which is a bone. Very little bone comes with each steak, and the bone is easy to pick off.

There were four medium sized pieces, a small piece, and a scrappy end piece. I asked the stall holder for the four large pieces. I could tell that the fish would weigh in at about 2 kilos. I got out my purse, and it was at this point that I noticed that all six pieces were missing from the display: the dirty rat fink has stuck them all in my parcel!

- I'll give you the lot for €15, he said.
- No scrappy ends for me, thanks, I said. And take out that small bit - it's not even a fillet. 
- I can't take that bit off, he insisted. It's attached to one of the fillets. (Indeed it was, by a thread.)
Forgiven, I thought, but I still didn't want the scrappy end bit.
- How much do the four fillets weigh? I asked, looking sideways at the display sign on the electric scales.
- They're just a little under 2 kilos (ha! I was right!), which makes it €13.50. 
- Perfect, I said.
- And if I add the scrappy end bit for €0.50, you'll pay me just €14.
- OK, I said, lips pursed. 

I didn't bother to remind him that he initially asked for €15. I know a bargain when I see one. And I love the way I can always land a good price for whatever I buy these days. This goes for anything, from food to household items. Life is as cheap as you want it to be.

The fish was baked in the oven, with a tomato grated over it, some sliced fresh onion from the garden, a spot of olive oil, and seasoned with salt and pepper. And the special ingredient, to stop the fish from burning on the top: I placed fennel weed from our orange grove ont he bottom of the pan, and on top of the fish (this was removed and discarded at the end of cooking time), which gave the fish a very alluring Mediterranean aroma. The fish served the five of us very nicely - Yiayia said it was really good.



The fish was accompanied by a garden-greens salad (artichoke, onion and purslane), with some of the tomatoes I bought from the street market. My son also made the tzatziki, now that the cucumbers are back in season.

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Herring - Renga (Ρέγκα)

Thinking back to my New Zealand days, I was not really deprived of my culture's culinary specialties. My mother cooked most of them, and for the things she couldn't cook, there was a Italian delicatessen near our home (which was primarily known for its European immigrants at the time) where we could pick up Spanish olive oil, sardines preserved in salt, Greek table olives, Italian salami and salted herring, which we called 'RENG-ga' (ρέγγα). Renga was one of those specialties which we bought once in a while, and ate a tiny bit of as an accompaniment to bean dishes. The renga was prepared and kept in the fridge.

Nowadays, we are all better informed about healthy cuisine, and we generally know what's good for us and what isn't. Salty food is not really good for our health; nevertheless, we still like to break the rules every now and then. Salted herrings are one of those every-now-and-then foods that we like to to eat, mainly to remind us of older times, and people who are no longer with us. These delicacies are widely available in most deli counters at the supermarket and most of the main markets in the town. It's been two years since we last bought renga - I decided that it was time to revive the renga tradition in my own home once more time this year.

Salted herrings are an imported product in Greece. These fish had always been popular in old-time Crete, especially among villagers who could not get access to fresh fish on a regular basis. Thus, they bought salted fish back to their homes in the remote inland or highlands, which could be stored without refrigeration, as was common in older times. The fish could be kept for as long as necessary, wrapped up in a piece of paper and placed in plastic. Salted fish was popular on certain feastdays during fasting periods, eg 25 March and Palm Sunday.


Salted herring is slightly burnt over an open flame, basically to heat it and remove the skin. The cooking process involves high heat to give a smoky taste to the herring. This is best done with a gas flame or even just a piece of paper set alight, with which you scorch the fish all over. Once you do this, you then open the fish and break it into small pieces, peeling away the remaining skin. The bones need to be carefully removed although they are soft and don't sting; the head and tail are generally not eaten, although gourmets may tell you that they contain the most taste.

If there is any roe in the fish, this is carefully removed, so as not to lose any. Lemon juice and olive oil are beaten together to create an emulsion, and the roe is placed inside this. With a fork, the roe is broken down and beaten into the emulsion. Then the broken fish pieces are placed into the mixture, as a marinade which removes some of the saltiness of the fish.

The renga is served like a side dish, mainly to accompany bean dishes. Renga is also a comfort food for the winter.

I prepared my renga last night to go with a curried black-eyed bean soup, but as it's a bit of a smelly and oily business, I wasn't able to take photos easily. I'm showing you my cousin Eirini's photos instead; it was she who inspired me to prepare renga for one more time. Eirini mashes the roe into the olive oil and lemon juice marinade, which thickens it slightly. In my own photo (below), the liquid is clearer because I had no roe to mash in. My fish is also whiter as I did not smoke it for as long as Eirini did.


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Honey rosemary salmon

Salmon is very popular in Greece, and you will often find it at the fresh fish counter in most supermarkets. It's easy to cook quickly and it has a high beneficial oil content. It's a mild tasting fish, living in both fresh and salt water, so it could do with a bit more oomph to it. When my fellow food blogger friend Laurie Constantino wants a Mediterranean taste to her salmon, she uses a simple combination of honey and rosemary to make a dressing for salmon lightly fried in olive oil. It's all in line with the transparent natural flavours of Greek cuisine.

I posted this video on my facebook site in the morning, and by lunchtime, my good friend Eirini had already cooked it: "A beautiful aroma in my kitchen from the honey and rosemary and a divine flavour! So fine, so juicy and tender - I followed the directions exactly. And when my daughter came into the kitchen while I was cooking, she asked me what smells so good!" Her family loved it. 

All you need to make this dish is some honey, rosemary, olive oil and salmon fillets. Note the salmon in Eirini's photo: this is how most fresh salmon is sold in Greece, in slices. This fish is imported so we have less choice. As Eirini pointed out to me, it's not always the best salmon, so this honey rosemanry dressing is a good way to get the most flavour out of it. And that dressing looks like it has more uses: I can imagine it used with other large meaty fish slices, as well as chicken.

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Holy Saturday (Μεγάλο Σάββατο)

It's time to get the kalitosunia ready for tonight...






... and to get rid of our lenten food to make way for Easter lamb. We bought these made-in-Greece seafood sausages (containing NZ squid and Greek octopus) on a whim.



Interestingly, they are a Greek product which is made for exporting, mainly because the idea of eating a sausage not made with meat is not really a Greek concept. It is a popular idea in countries whose cuisines are more open to such novelties, hence this is an export product. Even the labelling is purely non-Greek - a sticker has been pasted on the back over the English wording. The appearance of such novelty products is a sign of the times: creativity in times of need, the mother of invention.



Although it seemed quite expensive at €7.76 for four pieces, I believe that this kind of product will be popular in its destined market (USA). They were tasty, I can't say otherwise, but I probably wouldn't buy them again, because I have no need to avoid meat. Perhaps in countries where the food chain is very long, there is a greater need for such products, including vegetarian sausages, when you want to avoid eating unethically grown/raised meat products. Then again, the consumer is relying on the labelling and the trust that they have in the origin of a product.

Greek food has always seen some level of confidence invested in it, so companies like FRESKOT are bound to do well in the foreign market. It's a matter of finding the right niche, as with the seafood sausages - they may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I envisage that there are people outside Greece who would buy such products. I also envisage a huge demand for vegetarian Greek products. Again, Greeks aren't vegetarian in general, but the non-Greek market is ripe for 100% vegetarian Greek products, especially after the recent food scandals. And Greek food has generally enjoyed a good reputation.

Things are looking up for the Greek economy. Slowly, the optimism will trickle down to the people too, but there is a lot more work to do in that sector. Happy Easter to everyone, Καλή Ανάσταση.

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Pangasius - Catfish (Πανγκάσιους)

The media are again telling us that we are not eating what we think. First it was beef, now it is fish. What's more, we're eating fish species that were never eaten in the past. What we are not told (or reminded) is that people in the past were the ones paving the way for us to eat much of the food we are now eating, testing it in a way for us; so if we are now eating more newer flora/fauna species, we are simply doing what our ancestors did - we are paving the way for more food sources for our future generations.

Fish and chips - and the ubiquitous salad

Pangasius fish, otherwise known as catfish, is one of the newer species of fish that perhaps our grandparents didn't eat. It is farmed mainly in Vietnam and shipped all over the world in frozen form. It is a meaty white fish that can be used for roasting, frying or poaching. Due to its versatility and low price, pangasius is the fish of choice used when my workplace names fish on the menu for its resident students and staff.  

I rememebered potato fritters from my time in New Zealand - if only I had some time to make some tartare sauce.

It is said that cod is often being substituted with cheaper fish like pollock and pangasius in traditional fish and chips in Britain. As I've mentioned before on the blog, when you are not doing the cooking, you can't really expect not to be fooled. If it cooks up and tastes almost the same, you can't really tell what you are eating. And if the price is cheap, you can be sure you are being fooled.  

Pangasius looks good and tastes good - as long as it's fried.

Pangasius does not have a very distinctive taste, nor does it seem to smell much of fish. I've used pangasius before in my cooking and I find that it tastes good only when it is fried. I cooked fish and chips for the family  using this fish species. The fried catfish came out moist and the batter and olive oil gave it a good flavour. Pangasius is cheaper than bakaliaro (salted cod) and much easier to work with. Neither are in essence sustainably farmed or caught - but if you want to eat a cheap fish and chips meal, you won't have much choice: either your conscience or your pocket will rule, and these days, it's usually your pocket. 

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Fish and chips

After a shopping trip at a cheap clothes stores in Picadilly Circus, we headed off in the bitter cold of March towards Greenwich where I promised the children a trip to London's Planetarium*. As we came out of the  Cutty Sark station, we caught sight of the splendid ship. I would have liked to get closer to it, but the weather was dismal: grey sky, with dense fog hindering visibility. It felt more appropriate to be indoors, preferably somewhere warm and cosy. The cold makes you feel hungry.

"Can we have fish and chips, Mum?" my daughter asked me. She had spotted the big sign hanging on what looked like a grand old pub across from the station. The family was finally going to be given a chance to try fish and chips, which they had heard a lot about, branded as the national dish of Britain. 

Secretly I was very pleased that my daughter had noticed the sign. I have always wanted to introduce my family to fish and chips, but Crete is not the right place for it. Such a meal is available in other parts of Greece that were subjected to British influence (eg Kerkira/Corfu, where ginger beer is produced and cricket is played), and some tourist areas frequented by the British. Even though Hania is a popular summer resort for cheap package tourists, it's only very recently that fish and chips has made an appearance in the area, although we haven't yet had the opportunity to try it. And since it's easy to cook it at home, we will probably stick to cooking it there.

I had grown up with fish and chips; throughout my teenage years and then a bit, I worked alongside my parents in their fish and chip shop in Wellington. My family knew that my parents - the children's grandparents - operated their own chippie, but they really have no idea what this means exactly, and in our times, they will not be able to find out. Things have changed over the years in this sector to the extent that you can't easily buy yourself a greasy old-fashioned fish and chip meal, mainly due to health and lifestyle changes. No one would dare use newspaper nowadays to wrap food in and the demand for greater transparency in the food chain has meant that most fish and chip shops now try to name the source of origin of their products. Back in my days, no one questioned such things. Fish and chips was a once-a-week ritual for most families in New Zealand, the standard fast food. It was never regarded as junk food in those days; I even remember regular orders of fish and chips being sent to my primary school at lunchtime.  

The weather was not really conducive to strolling along the streets before choosing where to have our fish and chips. I was happy to take the first place we came across. A menu was pasted on the window of the pub - the prices looked quite reasonable, the food sounded familiar, and the indoor atmosphere as viewed through the window looked quiet and quaint. The Spanish Galleon is housed in a beautiful old well-maintained building, giving it an inviting appeal, although there were the usual signs of modernisation: the bar, the furniture, the standardised menu all point to some kind of gourmet upgrade. It's really hard to find the old-fashioned pubs and chippies of the past, but the pub provided a good combination of the two. Maybe it wasn't quite the traditional pub meal that I was really looking for, the kind that we read about in stories, but that's probably because I was looking for the past in the present time. We are too well read and expect too much from modern life, more than it can give us.  

We chose a range of dishes on the menu: fish and chips, sausages, minced beef pie and 'doorstep cut' club sandwiches. Most of the meals came with a serving of mushy peas, whose comforting taste was an unknown quantity to all of us; I explained this delicacy as the British idea of a bean dish (I admit that my husband does have a point when he says that fasolada is superior). I cook battered white fish in our Cretan home, but only in olive oil and the fish is more often desalinated salted cod. British-style fish and chips is a completely different experience. This meal took me back to my New Zealand days, as I remembered my father filleting large white fish, removing the bones, then cutting up the fish into even-sized fillets, stirring up the batter, flouring and dipping each piece into it before dropping it into a boiling vat filled with beef dripping. We even sold tartare sauce in sachets. My son was surprised that the sausages were battered - I wasn't surprised at all, since that is how we often cooked them by request for our customers. He was also surprised that the sandwich contained bread slices cut from a loaf - that's the effect of the gastronomification of the food business all over the world (pre-sliced bread is inappropriate in the gourmet trade).

I still can't get used to room-temperature English beer; it may have been close to freezing outdoors, but the room was warm and the food was comforting, so the beer could have been colder!

This meal cost us a very reasonable 51 pounds, including fizzy drinks for the kids and beers on tap for the adults. As we were there at lunch time, we got to see the range of customers that the pub attracts: shoppers who wanted a warm bite, locals who were having their lunchtime tipple, working people conducting meetings over lunch, and a few tourists like ourselves. During the peak hour, the dining area filled to capacity; as soon as lunchtime was over, it slowly emptied out. That was almost like an attraction for the tourist - it's never just abut the food.

* Few people realise that the Planetarium in Baker St no longer exists and only the Greenwich Maritime Museum houses a Planetarium in London. 

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The fish that became fishes

Sorry, no recipes in this post, but I hope the photos help. March 25 is the traditional day to eat salt cod - known as bakaliaro - in Greece.

This piece of boneless bakaliaro (salt cod) has ben desalinated by lying in fresh water, changed on a regular basis, for two days. It needs to feed 5 adults and 2 animals.



The skin of the fish is removed - it's a little too tough for chewing, but a cat and dog will be able to manage it easily. Half of the filleted fish will be cut into small pieces, while the rest is flaked.



The cod pieces are set aside, while the flaked fish is mixed with onion, herbs, spices, breadcrumbs and an egg, to bind it into fishballs.



The fishballs are moulded and fried in hot olive oil, in small batches (to keep the oil at a high temperature).



The fish pieces are small; to make each bite bulkier, they are floured and then dipped in an egg batter.



When they are fried, they come out much larger than the original fish pieces, making a more substantial meal out of each piece, so that each bite counts as two.



I got 13 pieces of fish and 14 fishballs from one 800g fillet of salt cod (€~8/kg on supermarket special).



The skin and remaining batter can be fried in the oil that was used to fry the fish. Nothing is wasted because nothing needs to be wasted.



It may sound like too much food to add fried potatoes and Greek-style coleslaw to this dish ...



... but if you have made such an effort to cook such a good meal, why not go one step further and create enough for more than one meal? Preparing this kind of meal requires a lot of effort. If you are working, you really can't do this every day.



There were just enough leftovers for another meal the next day. Cooking a fresh meal every second day is what I call a bargain.

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