Steak and kidney-less pie

One of our more memorable meals in London was taken on New Year's Eve at the Battersea Pie Station in Covent Garden. We had ended up there after attempting a walk along the Thames, starting from Cannon St. At Blackfriars, we were stopped by the crowd and safety control units who were policing the area and keeping people away from the riverside, due to the fireworks event that was schedule to take place later in the evening. Our detour away from the riverside took us through some very London sites of great historical interest. It almost felt Dickensian.

Poultry obviously takes its name from its former association with the chicken trade.

We were intrigued by what looked like a private function with a focus on seafood...

... and highly unamused by this vile-sounding Christmas food special! (It has been described as: "An overwhelmingly negative reaction, ranging from 'aggressively disgusting' to 'one of the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth'. It gets points for effort, attempting to combine virtually every festive ingredient, but it tastes like someone has pushed their Christmas leftovers into a blender and served them with rice.")

New Year's Eve is a very quiet day for London business people, but even when London is supposedly sleeping...

... it keeps changing looks, as it prepares for various events, and this time, the portaloos made it look like it would be welcoming the New Year with a heavy bout of drinking.

We eventually needed to use a bathroom ourselves, so I popped into a Pret-a-Manger and bought some Christmas mince pies which I'd really wanted to try while in London.

When I asked for the bathroom facilities, believe it or not, this place did NOT have toilets! So we held off, in the hope that we would eventually find a place to take a leak legally.

At The Strand, the former Aldwych tube station, often used as a film location, looked ghostly silent. This street was cut off to strollers due to the fireworks event.

Somerset House was looking very festive with its ice rink (where we found some free bathroom facilities).

I had a quick browse through the ridiculously overpriced Fortnum and Masons shop (it was sponsoring the ice rink) - 50 pounds for a set of 6 Christmas crackers, did I read that right?!

A short stroll away, we found ourselves at Covent Garden. Cold weather makes you feel hungry all the time. I chose the Battersea Pie Station, in the hope that I would find some steak and kidney pie (and Cornish pasty - another of my favorite pies in New Zealand). We weren't disappointed. My family lets me do the ordering most places when in London, because they know I know the food well enough. My early life in colonial New Zealand stopped abruptly just when New Zealand's food tastes became more international, so I still have fond memories of New Zealand old-fashioned comfort food, which were invariably British-based.

Chicken and mushroom pie, steak and kidney pie, and Cornish pasty - ~20 pounds, with a bottle of beer and a cup of tea.

Back home, when I decided to make a steak kidney pie myself, I found it near impossible to find kidneys! In Greece, the sale of beef and chicken kidneys has been banned since the mad cow furore - which started in the UK; yet, they aren't banned there! Although lamb's kidneys are still available for purchase here, when I tried to track some down, I found that they are never severed from the actual animal, so you have to buy the part of the animal that they are connected to. This is done for transparency reasons: in this way, the butcher is showing you that the animal was healthy - if the kidney is missing, the buyer may wonder whether the animal was sick. 

I used this very easy-to-follow recipe as the basis of my beef stew and pastry. The beef stew was cooked last night, the pastry was made this morning, and we had the pie for lunch with some leek and potato soup. 

To replace the umami taste of the kidneys, I bought a packet containing two slices of kavurma, adding some mushrooms and soya sauce (I was out of Worcestershire sauce) to my beef stew. I think the taste was successful, and the whole family enjoyed the pie, which will be made again eventually, because I froze half the stew. Slow-cooked food takes a long time to cook, so why not make a double batch and save your time later?

Bonus photo: A chat with the butcher where I bought the beef also revealed another mysterious EU meat regulation, which forbids lamb's spleen from being sold - but cow's spleen is permissible!

At any rate, if you have close relations with someone who raises their own meat, you can procure everything. I had lamb's spleen in sheep's intestine last week at an inner-city cafe bar, where the landlord-owner-cook prepares everything freshly and to order.

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Last posting

Happy Nameday if your name is Ahmed (Ahmad/Ahmet). It's St Ahmed's today in teh Greek orthodox church calendar.

What has happened to my time as of late? It flies, perhaps too quickly for my liking. I don't use it up so leisurely any longer. I was hoping to get a quick post in before Christmas, but I also know that whatever I would have written two days ago would have become obsolete by now.

I was woken up not by carol singers today, like we usually are on Christmas Eve, but by the mourning toll of the church bells. Since last night, I knew that Christmas had been cancelled in my neighbourhood, after the area was swarmed by cars parked on every available spot in an area that does not even have a footpath. How easily we change our traditions after a tragedy. "Να τα πούμε;" (Shall we say them?), as the saying goes concerning the question traditionally asked by carol singers before they begin singing, was banished here this year. If anyone asked any question, it would have been along the lines of "Δεν τα είπαμε;" (Didn't we say them already?). The event could have been predicted, sooner or later. Or perhaps the question was "Δεν σου τό 'πα;" (Hadn't I told you so?), since it could also have been avoided. We all knew it was bound to happen. Even his parents had predicted the event when they got rid of the motorbike. They gave him a car instead.

Prepping Christmas lunch: A friend was asking me yesterday if she can find lamb shanks in Hania - as long as you know how to tell the butcher how to cut the meat, yes, you can find lamb shanks. Generally speaking, butchers hack it to pieces here, and the locals use it in this way. Forget about what you see in the Greek haute cuisine magazines: they show mainly urban cuisine, and what we aspire to, rather than what we really are. My contribution for Christmas Day lunch is: guacomole, roasted peppers and lettuce with kid avgolemono.

Now we can also make predictions for the summer. For instance, we can be quite sure that we will no longer be woken up at the same time in the middle of the siesta, and later on, in the middle of the night, by the garish sounds coming from the same car as it sped up and down the road, windows rolled down, car stereo full blast. The car is now scrap metal, and its driver buried under the earth, joining his young cousin who died under similar circumstances a few years ago. His young mother will wear black for the rest of her life, as will the mothers of the other two teens who died with him. The fourth one - who had just finished his teens a year earlier - is still fighting for his life. I predict he will make it, but he won't be the same person that he was.

Since the event, I have had to reorganise Christmas Day lunch. The mother's wails can still be heard. Tomorrow's lunch will now be pot luck, at a friend's house. Making as little effort as possible in order not to be seen or heard, we shall pack our pots and pans, and head out of the area. We'll be wearing our seatbelts, and only one of us will drink, to ensure that we can make it back home.

Life doesn't always go as planned, but that is no reason to get angry. Rearranging keeps you on your toes. You can't have everything you want all the time, but you can probably have everything you need. You may or may not be the perpetrator of all your own misery, but you can usually be the creator of all your own happiness.

Merry Christmas to all. I hope to be back in time for the New Year. Till then, more work to get through...

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Black Angus

My life is very busy as of late, noticeable by the times I don't go to the supermarket. Last Saturday, rather than traipse around town buying from my regular small-scale suppliers, I decided that life felt too short at this moment in time, to actively support the local shopowners, who I adore because they know me and my sharp observation skills, and I know them and their pass-one-over methods, and I get some great conversations out of them. So I headed down to the local supermarket to do the weekly shop and to pick up some meat for Sunday lunch while I was there.

Supermarket meat is often sold more expensively (at least, here in Hania) than small-shop meat, so I was aware that I would be spending more money in this setting. I wanted some mince for my freezer bifteki: Greek beef - €10.98/kg, Belgian beef - €9.59/kg. The Greek beef looked pinky-red, like it usually does, because it rarely allowed to 'sit' for longer than 2-3 days before it's sold, The Belgian meat looked just a little darker, but I preferred the shape of the cut. I chose the Belgian beef over the Greek, mixing in some Cretan pork (€6.78/kg) into the mince mixture - remember that in Crete, it is far more common to buy fresh mince that is prepared before you after you have chosen the pieces of meat that will be minced for you.

While I was at the supermarket yesterday, I also found US Black Angus at the same meat counter, selling at €9.69/kg. Like the Belgian beef, it was cheaper than Greek beef. Black Angus is one of the most highly rated beef products in the world, and we can get it for LESS than Greek beef! I've never tried Black Angus before, so I thought it was time we did. I asked the butcher to cut me three large slices.

I'm not sure what the problem is with Greek beef. Over time, it has developed a better texture. It's not as stringy as the foregin stuff. But you still can't cook it in a pan, like you can do with Black Angus. Although I'm not still convinced that beef should be eaten medium-rare with its pink colour, for the first time in my life, I am cooking beef in Greece in the oven, and I can already feel how tender it is, as the knife slides through so easily.

My first foray into Black Angus will be in a Greek-style recipe. After pan-searing the fillets, I placed them in the oven in a tomato-based sauce with the regular seasoning. It's cooking now. My husband keeps asking me: "Are you sure this will be edible?" Greek beef still has that nasty reputation of being tough. It needs a facelift if it's going to survive in this money-poor world, when cheap foreign imports are invading its domain.

UPDATE:
Black Angus stays tender throughout the cooking period and it is very juicy. But it lacks the aroma of Greek-raised meat. I guess it's true that you are what you eat - if grazing animals eat aromatic plants, their meat smells like it too.

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Beef on discount (Βοδινό σε έκπτωση)

Every Monday, I check out the protein section at one of the LIDL supermarket branches in the town. During my last visit, I was hoping to find another egg bargain, like the one I recently pounced on, something like 30 eggs for €3.30. (Normally, a dozen eggs costs more than €2.00.) Unfortunately, there was nothing in this way on Monday. So I carried on to the fresh meat counter (a relatively recent addition at LIDL), where I might be lucky to chance on some of those discounted prices for nearly-expired fresh meats: the price is reduced by 30%. There is nearly always something to be found in those 'fridge bins', as I like to call them, on a daily basis, and everything is packed in styrofoam and cling-film, so you can clearly see the contents. Whatever I find, I usually freeze as soon as I get home, unless I plan to use it sooner. I've bought cooked chicken wings from here before, as well as uncooked chicken wings, sausages and kebabs.

This time, I found something else: 2 packets of (French) chuck beef were sitting in the fridge bin. I checked the weight and price of each packet with the use of the various machines that most supermarkets have these days in their customer areas: they weighed about a kilo each, and they were selling for just €3.50/kg. We haven't had beef (except in mince form) because it's usually quite expensive to buy it in Crete.

I found some heat-n-eat cooked marinated chicken wings which are useful for a quick meal  I bought 2 packs: 500g for €1.74 each - at that price, it's cheaper than cooking them yourself - and some cheap beef selling at €4.99/kg. Two of the three beef packets that I bought were discounted by 30% due to being close to their expiry dates. 

In the past, when I used to buy fresh beef at the supermarket counter, it usually contained very little fat or fibrous bits. But it got very expensive, whether Greek or French beef, so I just stopped buying it. The discounted beef was priced at less than half the usual price of French beef, and a third of the usual cost of Greek beef. So I decided that this offer could not be passed up. I bought both the packets, even though I could see that the beef contained a bit of sinew. What worried me most was if it would cook till tender, so that it melts in your mouth; will it be stringy and chewy with all that sinew?

When I got home, I unpacked the beef and began cutting it up into chunks. I found that this beef was rather tough, even when cutting through it with a sharp knife. Perhaps I had just fallen into the trap of false economy. But there was not much I could do about it, so I set to work cooking one of the packets into a stifado. As it stewed away, I cut up the other piece in the same way (and that too was rather tough), to get tt ready for the freezer.

Not quite done...

While the beef was cooking and spreading its aroma through the house, the family began to drift in and out of the kitchen.
Stifado? Mmmm, I'll have all the onions, my daughter said.
Stifado? I can smell the orange peel cooking in it, my son said. (I add dried peel.)
Stifado? Finally, we're eating beef again! my husband said.
He asked me about the price. I explained to him where I found the cheap meat, and how I make it a habit now to check out LIDL's discounted meat section. This trend hasn't caught on at other supermarkets, in the same way that it operated in LIDL. There are some products marked down due to a close expiry date, but they are usually highly processed packaged foods, like chocolate and crisps. I want primary ingredients with which to cook, not ready-to-eat food.
I would have bought out the stock at that price! he said. You can imagine how pleased he was when I told him that this was in fact what I had done.

Ready!

I let the beef cook three hours on a very low heat on top of the stove, testing it with a knife every now and then to see how much it was cooking through, occasionally adding some water to the pot to make sure that the meat did not stick to the bottom. The beef cooked down to a perfect texture, and it practically broke apart when pressed. Not only was it tender, but if it wasn't the best meat to begin with, the cloves, cinnamon, orange peel, onions and garlic concealed this fact very well.

This meal reminded me of a recent trip to London where my hosts let on that the meal they had prepared for the six of us at the table cost less than five pounds in total. The organic (if the labels are to be believed) chicken alone cost just two pounds. They shop after work, and they know when the specials start to become available, and what is usually going at which supermarket. I remarked how this kind of shopping was not possible in our town. That was less than a year ago - we didn't take long to catch up, did we? Not only have certain food items become cheaper, but they are being packaged in more convenient ways. Even though we are a small town, the idea of shopping after work for your evening cooking needs is now becoming well entrenched in our life too.

Buying food on special - and knowing when and where it will be on special - is not a sign of being poor or stingy. It isn't even a sign of being on a low income (my London hosts could not be described in this way). It simply shows how careful you are in your spending habits. In Greece, it is also a sign of Europeanisation. It may not always feel nice, but it's what people are doing in Europe's opposite extreme corners. Being able to eat red meat is also a healthy sign; in the western world, this is used as an indicator of poverty. Finally, it also could be said that the UK and Greece are becoming ever more similar in terms of the poverty levels being reported for each country, as well as the distorted statistics used to present optimistic accounts of how the recession in each respective country is receding. In her early EU days, Greece was in a rush to catch up with the western world's wealth; now she's also catching up with the western world's problems.

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Splinogardoumo - spleen sausage (Σπληνογάρδουμο)

I recently saw a photo of a dish that I have not enjoyed in a long time... not for at least 15 years. It made me realise that I would no longer be able to savour this dish in our times. Even if I wanted to make it, I cannot. And yet, I used to help my mother make this dish, from a very young age, throughout my teens. The way the world has changed since those times does not allow this to take place for most of us.

Splinogardoumo, before it's cooked

The spleen of a lamb or goat is sliced into one long strip (which sometimes breaks, but you try hard not to let this happen), which is then stuffed into the large intestine of the animal. I used to help my mother to do this: I held the spleen from one side and she held it from the other. Then she used a knife to cut it at one point. As she sliced downwards, she'd pull the strip away from the rest of the spleen which I was holding onto, so it could be cut into one big long strip.

The spleen, cut into one strip, and the twig on the right, waiting to be used to stuff the intestine. It is seasoned with salt, pepper and oregano. 

Then, the spleen is stuffed into the large intestine (the colon), using a special technique. The thin intestines could not be used as they were too flimsy to be stuffed (they were turned into something else). You need to use a twig chopped from a tree, which I also remember my mother used. My cousin explains the technique in detail:

First you take the intestine and you hold it open under the tap and let water, a lot of water, run throught it so it gets very clean. This is important because there may still be some droppings in it, as it always keep some due to the fact that is the last part of intestine, and we need that exact part of the intestine to use for making spinogardoumo. Once it's clean with the water, then you hold the one end in your left hand, and with the right hand you take the twig and the spleen together and you press it onto the end of the intestine you are holding. You press it hard and with your left hand you start bringing the intestine down. Once it's all brought down, you will realise it's already inside out. Then your splinogardoumo is ready to be cooked. It needs a lot of skill to do this so the intestine does not break.

The combination of the spleen and intestine produced the splinogardoumo - spleen sausage. This was added to a red or white stew (depending on whether you used tomato or lemon), together with the small intestines, but it could also be roasted.

Stewed splinogardoumo

When I came to Crete, this dish was still available on restaurant menus, and I remember having it a couple of times when we went out. But it has since disappeared, being available only when made to order, or perhaps to the special diner who specifically orders (and pays well for) it. The Greek relationship with intestines is now limited mainly to home-cooks and people who raise animals for their own eating. You can't even buy spleen at a butcher, possibly due to EC regulations which demand that it be disposed of hygienically and not eaten to avoid the risk of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), despite the fact that Greeks have been using these parts of the animal as human food since ancient times. Even when I have been lucky enough to get my hands on an animal's innards, the spleen and large intestine were not passed onto me, for these very reasons.

Food politics play a major influence in what and how we eat. As I explained, I can't really make this dish because the ingredients are not readily accessible to me. Even through the photos, I can still taste the splinogardoumo that my mother used to make. She cooked it in a similar way to my cousin's as we are descended from the same family and region. The photos in this post were taken only just recently, by my cousin, who made the splinogardoumo with her father. Spleen sausage is also made in other parts of Greece, but in a different way, and it is more often called splinadero (σπληνάντερο).

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The remains of the day (Τα απομεινάρια μιας μέρας)

Yesterday's lunch ...

... yielded these leftovers ...

... which went into a baked macaroni dish.

The remains of our days often end up woven into the next day, providing continuity and posterity. The evenings are always the best part of the day.

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Crisis food

I got the supermarket early enough before the peak hour, which is how I managed to get hold of some πλατάρια - chickens' ribcages and necks.

In the pre-crisis days, when a butcher/supermarket boned various cuts of meat (which are usually sold in styrofoam trays and wrapped in plastic), this part of the animal was usually thrown away. When I bought meat, I would ask for 'some scraps' (this the kind of thing I used ot be given) so I could cook them up for my pets with some pasta or rice.

Since the crisis, these scraps are no longer thrown away - they are sold. They are popular (I can only find some when I am in the supermarket early enough). Not everyone uses them for their pets - they are seen in the same light as fresh food good enough to eat. They were selling at €1.57/kg - I bought 4, which works out to about 25 cents each.

When I bought them, the assistant asked me if I was going to turn them into soup. Greece is not really a soup culture (and it's 30 degrees Celsius today), but it is not unusual to find interesting vegetable-based soups which use meat stock on the menus of modern-style casual eateries these days, so I guess this will be a category which we could describe as 'watch this space'.

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Ethical meat

Some friends invited us to their house for lunch a little while back. I knew what kind of food to expect there: in Crete, meat is the norm when preparing a meal for guests, our friends like barbecue, and they also like to prepare a lot of food, which often turns out to be too much and is left over and not eaten. I always feel sorry for the animals involved in such food preparation practices because I also know that our friends often tell us that they "don't do leftovers", which I suppose means that they end up chucking out food (usually by feeding it to their pets: they also give us doggy bags to take home, if that is any consolation).

Our latest meat purchase came on Sunday - 9.5kg of free-range lamb, sold to us at €5/kg. The meat pictured here is from half a sheep (ie one side); the animal weighed close to 20 kilos. The cost per kilo is very low compared to store prices. But there are many many reasons for buying meat in this way; it is not all about the price.

Well, I wasn't far wrong in terms of what I expected at the lunch party (there were 10 diners). There were barbecued pork steaks (one for each person, plus a couple of extras, for good measure) and  barbecued chicken (two hens), barbecued pork sausages, barbecued lamb chops and even a barbecued lamb's head. The lamb got in there because they had also cooked a lamb roast in the oven, together with roast potatoes; literally no one touched either, possibly because our host decided to fry some potatoes as well: 'για τα παιδιά,' she insisted (for the children) - her own ones are beefy teenagers. That meal could have served 20 guests, together with the green and tomato salads they served, which disappeared as fast as the bowl was set down on the table.

After removing as much fat as possible (you can see it in the pot), I divided it into portions, which I placed in plastic bags, ready to put it into the freezer. Some portions are bigger than others - some will make one family meal, while others will make enough for two meals (hence, no need to cook the next day.)

Our hosts were only trying to please their guests, presenting the best of the best that they could possibly afford, and it seems that they could afford a lot: meat is not a cheap commodity these days. But the whole idea of excess during a crisis simply fuels my belief that it is not an economic one - it is an identity crisis, or as my husband put it the other day when we were discussing it, a crisis of values.

I personally abhor this kind of cooking to excess; we only cook what we know we are going to eat, particularly when it comes to meat - I have made it a firm habit never to cook too much, because when there are too many meat leftovers, it simply means that we will end up eating many portions of meat over the week. We limit our meat consumption for health reasons, but I also like to keep in mind the ethical issues involved in eating meat. 

Ribs are a good choice for barbecuing - but not if they are as free-range as this meat (you are better off slow-cooking this as an oven roast with potatoes).

In Greece, I think it is true to say that ethics are not an issue at all in Greek people's minds. Greeks don't view the eating of meat as an ethical issue, and neither do they understand the concept of ethical meat. To their credit though, I can say that Greeks do have some understanding of the different kinds of meat available on the market, and what meals they are used for; that is a good foundation for their (eventual) understanding of the issue of ethical meat (when the issue eventually becomes one in Greece).   

From what I know, my hosts do not buy non-Greek meat, even though it's cheaper. The belief that Greek food is better than non-Greek food is still quite prevalent. This is of course a good thing for the economy, with added benefits for Greek identity; but it remains a subconscious belief - Greeks have not quite grasped the idea of building confidence through their own home-grown values, despite the foreign market's great interest in Greek food. (It seems to me that they are still looking at the outside world to shape their identity, identifying who they want to be rather than understanding who they really are. Greece has the potential to be great - it's all about the confidence shown in her by the Greeks themselves.)  

Tail - after the horse meat scandal broke out, I have a politically incorrect sense of superiority when I cook with meat whose body part I can immediately recognise on sight.

The meat we ate at my friends' place was not necessarily grown under ethical conditions: for a start, the chickens were from their own coop, a small, rather restricted caged area. But they were three or so months old whereas most mass-produced chicken on the market is slaughtered at 6 weeks old, so one could say that they had a reasonably long life before they became food. Pork is always a sore issue in terms of the ethics involved in raising it in Greece - pork is one of the most popular (and cheap) meats all over the country, and there is such over-consumption of it (at least in Hania), that we even import great quantities of it (a lot of supermarket pork these days comes from Holland and Belgium - it is cheaper than Greek pork). 

Lamb sold in Crete is, most of the time, Greek. The taste of Greek lamb is unique, because it is nearly always free-range, not necessarily organic, but definitely fed on a lot of natural food. Sheep and goats are often seen grazing on roadsides, so it's not hard to understand why the taste is so good. But lamb (and even more so goat) is more expensive than pork, which is why it is not as popular as pork. (Beef is the most expensive meat in Crete and it mainly comes from mainland Greece.)

Lamb's legs - if you can tell which one is the front leg, and which one the hind, you're doing well.

We had a bit of a discussion about lamb while we were eating. One host asked us where we buy it from. We explained that these days, we always buy it straight from the producer. It is of course cheaper to buy meat in this way, but we have a totally different reason for buying straight from the producer (which will become apparent as you read along). My husband mentioned the person he bought meat from the last time we purchased it. Our host said that he had also bought lamb from the same producer, but he didn't like it: "It was rather tough and sinewy," he said. That is a sign of free-range meat, I thought. The animal hasn't been cooped up in a restricted area; it's been allowed to roam freely in an open space, making the meat tougher. The more natural food that it eats also makes the meat taste better, having been scented by the wild herbs and foliage of the Cretan (and generally the Greek) countryside. Just as importantly, the animal had a reasonably long life (about 12 months) before it became someone's dinner, and it was slaughtered in the way that animals have been slaughtered for many centuries - it died in the area where it was born, away from the eyes and ears of other members of its species. It was led to its death without having experienced the concept before it eventually died.

"How did you cook it?" I asked him. It was immediately obvious to me what the problem was that my host found with the meat he bought from the farmer. When we buy this kind of meat, we cook it for a long time. Often, I boil it (to remove fat - the stock makes an excellent pilafi, so even that liquid is re-used), and then I place it in the pot or the oven (according to the chosen recipe), and it continues to cook till it falls off the bone, having soaked up the herbs and spices I added to it.  

Every part of an animal is useful. This time, we only got one kidney (which came with the half-side that we bought); the other innards (including the head, guts and stomach) were not sold to us because another customer wanted them. As I was cutting the meat into portions, some of it came off in shreds - I will use these bits to make things like spring rolls, etc where only a little meat is needed.

"On the barbecue, lamb chops, just like these ones" he replied, pointing to the rather charcoaled meat in the serving platter (they often burn it accidentally; the pork chops were cooked better because - if I may say so - my husband cooked them). How long do barbecued lamb chops need to cook? About 15-20 minutes in total, I suppose. It's been a long time since I barbecued lamb chops (we do mainly pork chops, and just lately, even that has felt like a hassle to me because you end up feeling rather hot, tired, smelly and sweaty). So our host was trying to cook meat in a quarter of an hour, from an animal that had had a year of life in rumination. He was right in saying that the meat didn't taste good - when meat is cooked in the wrong way, when the cook does not take into account the method that was used to raise the animal, then for sure, the meat will not taste good. The only way to cook such meat is slowly. 

I didn't enjoy my meal on that day at my hosts' home for this reason. It isn't at all the case that I think too much - my husband didn't enjoy the meal much either, but for different reasons to mine. Whereas I was thinking about all the wrong choices my hosts were making, he was thinking "I've eaten better barbecued meat than this." (See what I mean about the subconsciousness factor involved in Greek identity? He's taking for granted what I regard as a marketable aspect.)

Mind you, we didn't need another lamb's head - I have one sitting in the freezer at the moment. What gets up my nose about the Western civilised world's abhorrence to images such as this one is the price they are prepared to pay to eat this at a high class restaurant: top-to-tail restaurant food is very expensive in Western countries, whereas in Greece, it is the norm for taverna food. A lamb's head costs just 1 euro these days at the supermarket.

Maybe I shouldn't think too much. But I'm still glad that I cook the way I do, and I prefer the food choices that I make, and that I choose slow-cook taverna meals when we go out for dinner. It's so much healthier and so much more sustainable than anything I eat elsewhere.

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Τσικνοπέμπτη (Tsiknopempti)

Some of my old photos (they make me wonder where I used to find the energy).

If you don't indulge in red meat often, today is the day to do it. It's Tsiknopempti, the Thursday before Cheesefare Week which precedes the 50 days of Great Lent in the Greek Orthodox calendar. Tsiknopempti is the first food-related tradition in the run-up to Holy Sunday, Easter Sunday.

Tsiknopempti is generally reserved for char-grilled meat dishes. So get your chops stuck into some juicy steaks, or spicy sausages, grilled chicken or maybe a souvlaki (or two) with all the toppings. It's a good time to go out tonight, and a souvlaki is a cheap way to enjoy the evening as you sit in the souvlatzidiko people-watching.

We're probably going to have one of the latter somewhere in town and enjoy the revelry as we see it take place. For the last two years, Thursdays have been set

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Packet soups

There were always packet soups in our house when we were growing up. My mother never used them in the way that instructions stated on the back of the packet: she used to add them to her own recipes for extra flavour. In this way, she used a tomato soup sachet to make a thick soup with rice, a chicken noodle sachet for avgolemono, and stock cubes for giving pilafi rice cooked in chicken stock an extra kick. Now that I'm cooking for the family, I can understand why she did this. Had there been paximadi, high quality olive oil and free-range chicken available in New Zealand during our time there (similar foods that she had learnt to prepare food with when she was still in Greece), soup packets would probably have been unnecessary. But soup was still a popular meal in our house, possibly due to the New Zealand climate.

At times, I've bought these sachets myself thinking I would use them when I didn't have time to cook 'properly'. Although there have been many times when I have not been able to do just that (cook properly) for various reasons (lack of time or will), those packet soups have never come out to be used as a meal and they are still lying in my cupboards. There's never really been any reason to add this salt-laden flavouring agent to any of our meals because they already have a high quality taste and flavour without them; I may be cooking similar meals to my mother's but our vegetables usually come from our garden.

When there isn't enough time to cook, a boiled or fried egg, or maybe some cheese with some bread and a salad will suffice. If they can't find any ham and cheese in the fridge, the children will whip up a dakos; when he's on his own, my son prefers thick slices of sourdough bread drizzled with our own supplies of extra virgin olive oil, lemon from our own trees and oregano presented to us as a gift.  Packet soups and sachet meals are always found at the supermarket, but they are never sold as cheaply as one would expect, for such meals to catch on. Soup in general is seen as a winter food, but soup has never been popular in contemporary Greece in the first place.  

I was doing a pantry clearance the other day when I came across the packet soups. I felt rather guilty about the fact that they've been lying there for over a year and I know I'll never use them. I know I can use them to cook our pets' food (which I am now doing), but even that feels strange: I'm feeding our pets food that I consider inferior for human consumption.  

In the past, it was easy to get bones and offcuts for free from butchers and the meat counters at supermarkets, but these days this is difficult. The last time I asked for them at a top-end supermarket, I was told that anything that isn't sold (including trimmings) is sent back to the main offices of the chain (I wonder what they do with them.) And if you aren't actually buying much meat in the first place, then you have no reason to be at a butcher or meat counter asking for scraps. 

For the next month, our dog cat will be trying a new range of pasta dishes, all cooked with finely chopped garden vegetables, olive oil and sachet flavours: tomato, spring vegetable, carbonara, thai green curry, red curry paste, chicken stock and even vanilla pudding. I started with the tomato soup packet the other day. Usually they scoff down their meal as soon as the food hits their plate. I was a little worried when the dog left hers lying in the old frying pan that serves as her plate. I felt some relief to see the food missing the next morning. Maybe this kind of food is just a little more difficult to digest.

Having been raised in a household where packaged highly  processed food of this kind did have its place, it should come as a surprise to most people that I could live without them. Living in rural Crete, I know why there is no need for such food to exist at all.

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Bifteki - Hamburger patties (Μπιφτέκια)

The day after making my regular monthly batch of bifteki (hamburger patties), I opened the freezer tray where I had laid them close to each other side by side to save space, placing a few meatballs in the spaces in between, made with a ball of mixed mince that wasn't quite large enough to turn into a meat pattie. I tapped the tray to unstick the frozen patties from it, and was expecting to see a few patties break off. But this didn't happen: the whole tray of patties came unstuck, creating a stained glass window effect as I held up them up over the kitchen sink.

It takes a certain kind of person to appreciate meat when used as an art form. Some people are open-minded enough to label the use of a dead animal as a medium in art work as a form of expression. We have seen meat in its raw form used in fashion - remember Lady Gaga's dress? - and as a decoration on a building (does anyone remember that one? I have searched the internet in various ways for a link, but it seems to be well hidden in cybersphere), both of which caused a global outcry and utter outrage at all levels.  

The revulsion was sparked mainly by the ethics and morality issues involved in the killing of animals that were not used to feed people, while at the same time people die of hunger, starvation and malnourishment in various parts of the world.  

I'd always wanted to post my own raw meat art work, but could never think of a good reason why I should do this. The only reason I took the photo of the frozen biftekia was because i thought it looked nice. I wasn't sure if anyone else would agree. With the present outcry and outrage that the horse meat scandal has caused, I'm sure there will be many people that will appreciate this photo, together with the recipe.

In Greece, pork mince is much cheaper than beef mince: the former costs half the price of the latter, whether imported or local meat is used. I never buy frozen mince to make biftekia because of the dangers of refreezing a frozen product. I always buy non-fat meat which is minced before us after we choose the piece that we want. Lean meat is used not just for the health aspect, but also because I believe I am getting more value for money: if there is no fat in the meat, the bifteki are very lean and they do not retain juices when cooked. A little olive oil, some tomato paste or wine usually make the bifteki a little more tender. By adding olive oil, I am adding some kind of fat to the meat, and this is now being done by sausage/ham/cured meat producers (MAICh has tested this in our laboratories and our M.Sc. students have written theses about it - they are healthier according to the tests done on them.


For about 25-30 hamburger patties, you need: 
1500g or ground pork or beef (I always use a mixture of the two)
half a loaf of stale bread pieces soaked in wine or water, then strained by hand (you can use 1 cup dry breadcrumbs if you don't have any stale bread)
1 large onion, minced
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
a few sprigs of mint and parsley, finely chopped
1 carrot, grated (this is optional - it toughens the patties a little)
1 finely minced green bell pepper
1/2 cup olive oil 
salt, pepper, oregano and/or cumin

Mix everything together really really well. You can only do this with your hands. Shape into patties. Place in the freezer in separate layers. That's it. 

If I want to pan-fry the patties, I need to defrost them. If I want to cook them in the oven (with potatoes, vegetables and/or tomato sauce), I don't defrost them. You cannot cook them in the microwave (at any rate, I NEVER microwave raw food for immediate eating - the microwave oven is used only for re-heating food). 

At various times in the past, I have tried ready-made fresh and frozen hamburger patties, and have never been satisfied with them. I once grilled them till they were nicely dark on the outside and was absolutely shocked to see how pink they remained inside (I did not give them to the family - I was revolted by the pink and black uneven look of the final product). Another time, I was put off by the amount of fat that congealed around them as they lay in the pan after they had completely cooled down. 

I never question the food I buy because I have to believe what I'm told, which may be a lie anyway. For all I know, the beef I buy could actually be horse, in the same way that pork traces were recently found in the halal meat of a UK prison. If you don't grow/raise/produce it yourself, you will never really know what you are eating. If you don't have any other choice, you rely on lying, cheating profit-oriented, market-driven suppliers. It's a fact of life that you can never get away from. 

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Eating out, vegetarianism and Cretans

Half the PTE examination topics in English as a Second Language which took place in Crete last weekend contained discussions about food. The interlocutor (interviewer) always takes the opposing view of the test takers, in order to test their ability to maintain their point of view in a discussion. One group level was asked:

If you have a special occasion, like a birthday,  is it better to eat at home or in a restaurant? What do you think?

So if they say they prefer to eat at restaurant, we interrupt them and mention that it's much cheaper and more convenient to stay at home, restaurants can be noisy and expensive, you know what you are eating, and you feel more relaxed at home. But if they say they prefer to stay at home, we cut in and tell them that a restaurant makes the celebration more special, the food is more interesting, and it's more relaxing to have someone cook and clean up for you.

No need to ask what nearly all students chose - people now stay at home for dinner, even on special occasions; it's too expensive to go out.

Another group was asked:

Is eating a vegetarian diet healthier for us? What do you think?

If they say that vegetarian diets are healthier for us, we tell them that it's natural to eat meat, meat contains protein, it's not unhealthy when eaten in moderation, and vegetarians generally object to the moral reasons of eating meat, not the health aspects. But it was hardly necessary to be given these arguments in the test script, since this is the view that most Greeks take: despite the fact that meat contains unhealthy fats, vegetarian food keeps you slim, and you can get vitamins and protein from food other than meat, meat was regarded by all the students asked as a necessary food item.

Although Greeks do like to fast for religious reasons, certain "meat" products (like shellfish) are permissible when fasting. So the concept of vegetarianism is not really being embraced in crisis-hit Greece, despite high prices being demanded for meat. A meatless diet is still not part of the Greek culinary identity.

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Salami (Σαλάμι)

There are some very strange gaps in the Greek food system. Greek food constitutes a complete cuisine with its plethora of ingredients and home-grown techniques, so it rarely needs to be supplemented by cuisines from outside its own borders in order to provide a range of varied and interesting dishes. But what happens when you've come from the 'outside', with your own ideas about what constitutes good food?

Marmite sandwich with cheese and lettuce

Take marmite or vegemite, for example. It's a completely unknown quantity in Greece. So if you come from Australia or New Zealand, where you've grown up with the stuff, you might be surprised to learn that no one knowns what you're talking about here. Of course, there are many other good foods to take the place of marmite/vegemite (depending on which 'camp' you're from) on your toast or in your sandwich, eg tahini, but if you've come to think of things like marmite/vegemite as staples in every home in the world, then you'll be quite disappointed.

Salami as I remember it in NZ

Salami is also one of those things that you won't easily find here in Hania. Many things labeled 'salami' are actually more like luncheon meats, and they are often sold pre-sliced. Although they are made by various companies around the country, they are recognised as an imported technique rather than a home-grown one. So they rarely come up to the standard of a good Italian salami like the kind that my parents used to buy in New Zealand (imported products excluded). Although my parents had probably never eaten any kind of salami before they migrated to New Zealand, they acquired a taste for it in the melting pot culture of their adopted homeland and it was considered a staple product of our weekly diet. We usually ate it with beans as a side, and my mother would put it in our sandwiches every now and then.

Dillon is an accomplished cook, and he loves Mediterranean food. I'm often inspired by his food photography (above) which pays due respect to the setting and the environment.

Even though I had grown up with some salami regularly kept in our fridge, it wasn't something I missed having once I moved to Greece. There were many other strong tastes and dense meat textures that easily compensated for the lack of good salami in this country. But when I saw a friend's photo of home-made salami, it immediately conjured up an image in my mind of the Italian salami I ate in my younger years. (I can even see it in its white paper, the way the delicatessen used to wrap it, tucked away in one of the shelves on the fridge door.)

Greek producers from islands very proudly use the map of their part of Greece to identify it.
These salami sausages cost about €3-4 each. The one with the map seemed to be missing something from the taste of salami that I had grown up with. My memory was revived when I cut the second salami - whole pepper spice (it is visible above, left, under the skin)! Pepperoni!

On my next shopping trip, I found some Greek salami being sold at a top-end supermarket: it's made on the island of Lefkada, which is noted for its salami making and the supermarket also packages its own choice with its own brand. Lefkada is in the Ionian islands, sharing the same waters that separate Greece from Italy. These islands were not conquered by the Ottoman regime, but remained heavily influenced by Venetian rule. It's no surprise that pork salami is made in this part of Greece.

The sign above read: "Traditional soutzouk:made form a mixture of beef and goat meat, in natural intestine wrapping. €10/kg - lean, Greek." The butcher told me that his father (also a butcher) passed on the recipe to him. In the past, the beef used was from a breed of local cow.

This kind of product is not produced in Crete. In Hania, we have a moist equivalent. Since it isn't dried, it can't be eaten as is, like a salami (it must be cooked). A local butcher in the central town market makes a thick fat beef (not pork) sausage, called 'soutzouk', from the Turkish language, which hints at its origins. Where there was more Ottoman influence, there was more soutzouk. 

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