Youvarlakia soup (Γιουβαρλάκια σούπα)

Youvarlakia is Greece's version of a meatball soup, most commonly made with white sauce, although you will also see it made occasionally with tomato. The dish basically consists of meatballs boiled in a light water-based broth, with egg and lemon juice beaten into it once the meatballs are cooked. I make youvarlakia about once a month in the winter period. Since the kids have become avid vegetable eaters, I now add a lot of vegetables to the soup, together with the meatballs, and our youvarlakia soup turns into a very hearty and less meaty meal. My recent youvarlakia variation turned out to be the most popular version of the dish to date.

For the meatballs, you need:
1 kg minced beef (or pork, or a mixture of beef and pork)
1 large onion, finely grated
2-3 garlic cloves, finely grated
1/2 cup rice
a few springs of parsley, finely chopped
a few sprigs of mint, finely chopped
salt & pepper to taste
a little olive oil
some flour for dusting

For the soup, you need:
3 litres of water (or stock - I prefer water for a lighter soup)
50g butter (you can also use olive oil instead - I prefer butter because I don't use stock)
a few sprigs of dill, finely chopped
1/2 small cauliflower (or broccoli), broken into bite-size florets
1 large carrot, cut in small chunks
1 cup of peas
These are the vegetables I used in this version of the soup. You can use any vegetables that will keep their shape when cooked - I try to use only seasonal vegetables, especially if we grow them ourselves.

For the sauce, you need:
2 eggs
1/2 cup lemon juice

Mix all the ingredients for the meatballs (except the flour) together very well by kneading them. Make golf-ball sized balls, and roll them in flour. Set them aside while making the soup.

Boil all the ingredients for the soup together. When you get a rolling boil, add the meatballs, one by one, and continue to boil the soup until the liquid starts rolling again. It may need more water if the liquids have evaporated too quickly (you can make it as thick as you prefer). Turn down the heat to the minimum, place a lid on the pot and continue to cook the soup until it becomes creamy, for at least 60 minutes. Turn off the heat, take off the lid and allow the soup to settle for a quarter of an hour.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and lemon juice together. Pour a tablespoon of the soup into the egg and lemon mixture and keep beating the sauce (otherwise the egg will 'cook', like scrambled eggs). Pour another tablespoon into the sauce and keep beating. Keep doing this until the bowl is nearly full. (Don't try to hurry this step - you will spoil the soup by cooking the egg.) Now pour the sauce slowly into the soup. Stir it in gently. The soup is now ready. Serve it hot.

Youvarlakia soup is hearty enough to be eaten on its own with some thick slices of toasted bread. If you like to add a bit more protein to it, try it with a thin slice of feta cheese on the side, or crumbled into the soup. This soup will congeal once it cools down, but when warmed up, it becomes runny again. It also tastes good the next day.

©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.

Melomakarona (Μελομακάρονα)

What kind of Greek food blog is one that does not include a recipe for the traditional Greek Christmas shortbread known as melomakarona? An incomplete one for sure. As my sister is the melomakarona maker in this family, here is her recipe, which I made this year.

This recipe makes a lot of melomakarona - I halved it, and got this plate, as well as another half plate. It is a simple recipe, and an easy one to make in one afternoon. For modern eaters, this recipe is vegan (and can be made gluten-free by adding gluten free all purpose flour).

The olive oil, orange juice, honey and walnuts are all local products, all produced just 10-30 kilometres away from my home. Without being biased, these melomakarona are truly delicious: they taste like a whiff of Crete in every bite.

1 litre olive oil
1 ¾ kilos all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup orange juice, freshly squeezed (not from a packet/carton - the final product won't taste right)
some ground cinnamon  and cloves
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons semolina
Mix everything together, leaving the flour till last.

Bake at 180C till golden brown, about 30-40 minutes. When cool, dip lightly in syrup (recipe below):
1 cup honey
2 cups sugar
3 cups water
Boil everything together, till the syrup sets slightly (about 20 minutes on a rolling boil).

Either the biscuits must be hot and the syrup cold, or the biscuits must be cold and the syrup hot (I do the latter - it's easier to warm up the syrup after making the biscuits).

Dip the biscuits in the syrup and allow them to soak in the syrup for up to a minute, turning them over once. As you pull them out of the syrup, coat them in ground walnuts.

©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.

Old age (Γηρατειά)

Can anything stop us from losing our mind?

"Eating a Mediterranean diet rich in fish and vegetables may help prevent your brain shrinking for as long as five years, new research suggests."  http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/21/mediterranean-diet-may-slow-the-ageing-process-by-five-years

We are seriously wondering about this in our house, as we watched the terrifying consequences of the developments of our 91-year-old yiayia's senile dementia. Up until two months ago, she was cooking her own meals and cleaning her house. She watched TV and read the Saturday local paper. She also pottered around the garden, and kept the front yard immaculately clean.

It was around this time when she also started telling us about the living dead: so-and-so died, she'd say, proceeding to tell us the gory details of their death. As far as we knew, these people were still alive. Sometimes old people confuse things, we'd tell the children. But we got worried, and hired help, a neighbor who was looking for this kind of work, and had experiencing in looking after old people. But imagine what this feels like for someone who had always tried to live independently. The relationship didn't quite work out.

There was also that time when she kept waking up at night and phoning us, to ask why we hadn't woken up yet, because it was time to go to work (it was often in the middle of the night). Checking her kitchen clock, we wondered if perhaps she had simply confused the time: the clock was indeed showing the wrong time. So we set it correctly, and changed the battery just in case. But the clock still kept changing time. So we removed the button that did this, to make sure that the time-changing gremlins didn't strike again. Yiayia then removed the alarm button and popped it onto the pin that had been left on the time-setting button. So we were back to square one. When we removed that button too, yiayia chucked the clock in the bin. "It's broken," she told us. "No, look yiayia," we said, holding it to her ear, "it's still ticking." But she wasn't convinced: "Only barely," she replied. It's just old age, we'd tell the children. But we were worried, so we called in a doctor.

"She's probably suffered a myriad of tiny strokes that were barely noticeable," he told us, and recommended donepezil and some sleeping tablets. It seemed to work, at least when she took it, that is. Yiayia had spent her life not just independently but also without taking any kind of medication whatsoever. All she ever took occasionally was paracetamol for a headache or other minor ailment. It was a shock to her that the doctor was suggesting that she take pills to live. "But there is noting wrong with me!" she kept saying. And she was right. Her blood tests showed no signs of illness. Normal reds, normal whites, normal cholesterol, normal heartbeat: in fact, normal everything. "She's really healthy," we told the kids, but we knew that there was something that was not really right.

She began moving the furniture around the house. She threw things out. We had to go through her rubbish every day: a cup, a plate, a bowl, even the remote control for the TV. And of course, food. "They've all been poisoned," she told us, howling with horror when we showed her what she was throwing out. "Get it out of this house immediately!" she'd cry, hitting her walking frame up and down on the floor. She was having psychoses. "It's a normal part of senile dementia," the doctor explained. "But she needs psychiatric help." At 91, I doubted that she would ever be able to receive help for her condition, not because the Greek health care system is broken, but because she would be unwilling to receive it. By this time, she had stopped taking all the medication she had been prescribed (we were giving it to her). She did not want our own help; how would she accept a change in environment and caregivers?

None of this terrified me personally as much as what was about to ensue, during her last week at home. Believing that we were poisoning all the food brought into the house, she stopped eating. She literally ate nothing all day. I checked her cupboards: apart from a few rusks, some olive oil, sugar, flour, rice and lentils, there was no other food. She had thrown everything else out, and refused to take anything we gave her. When she stopped eating our home-made meals, we brought in all sorts of other store-bought delicacies: she threw those out too, believing that the wrapping they came in was poisonous.

After three days, I insisted that we should take her to the hospital. Knowing that she wouldn't allow anyone to take her out of the house, I asked some big burly black-shirt-wearing relatives to help us coax her out. "You need to disarm her," I told them. "Take away the walking frame."  She had been using it like a deadly weapon, hitting anyone she had stopped trusting when they tried to approach her.

The doctors were very sympathetic. "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her", they said to us. "She's just senile." The A&E doctors called the resident psychiatrist who tried to give her some sedatives. But she refused to drink the water that had been laced with drops, nor did she accept to have anything injected in her. "We can't make her do anything," the doctors and nurses said, and we understood them to the tee: we couldn't make her do anything either. Yiayia went home, and continued her diet. For the last week of her life at home, she didn't take one bite of food.

How long can a person live without food before they faint, fall and create bigger problems than what they already have? It was either that, or residential care. State old-age care does exist, but it requires a lot of paperwork. For a start, the person entering state care needs to have thorough medical checkups before being admitted. Yiayia's issues did not allow us to go through this procedure. Private care differs not just in cost but also in terms of what kinds of cases they take on. We eventually chose a unit that is run by someone who has 40 years experience in geriatric care, 35 of which was spent caring for old people in state care.

Apparently, she's eating and has now started taking medication. But she's still not the yiayia we knew. I'm not sure if she will ever be again. The Mediterranean diet no doubt aided in her longevity. But it didn't stop her from the eventual decline that we all go through when we get old.

©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.

Brockwell Park honey (Μέλι από το Λονδίνο)

My household is a great consumer of honey. When I think of the amount of honey we get through in a year, even I am amazed - we buy about 15-20 kilograms of honey every year, which is consumed among the 5 of us. Yes! 15-20 kg per year! Is this too much? I don't know what to say... I just know that we do in fact get through that much and it feels about as normal as going through 150 kg of olive oil per year (again, among the 5 of us). What's more, I rarely (if ever) use honey in my cooking - honey is used in very limited ways in my household's food preparation:

1. a teaspoon in tea or milky coffee 
2. as a spread on bread and butter
3. a tablespoon poured over each individual sfakiani pita, a traditional Cretan dessert 
4. a couple of tablespoons slathered on top of pan-fried cheese-based kalitsounia, another traditional Cretan dessert (occasionally, mainly when I'm in the mood to make them)
5. making syrup (for Greek-style syrup desserts, eg karidopita, galaktoboureko - very occasionally, mainly for a party)
6. as a yoghurt topping

Lately, I've also used it in some savoury meals like fried chicken wings, and I've also tried it in biscuit batters. But generally speaking, we consume honey as a raw product, and rarely as an ingredient in our family recipes. 

All the honey we consume comes from one source: I have a cousin who is a beekeeper. He refills my jars year after year. He keeps beehives in forested area in Sfakia, and produces fresh honey in the summer. So it is fair to call honey a seasonal product. Cretan honey is said to be among the best in the world. But like any overly good product, it can also be prone to fraud. At the same time, it is almost impossible to tell at first glance whether a honey variety is very good or not - colour, smell, density and crystallisation do not indicate this. Beekeepers may also feed their bees sugar in the colder months of the year or when there is a lack of flora, which is 'against' international rules for honey production. But we can't ever know this - such information can only be obtained by a laboratory analysis.

During a recent trip to London, a friend presented me with some honey that he had helped to produce. Apparently bees find London a better place to produce honey than other parts of England because London is where more flowers are grown, at least this is what we were told. The honey we were presented with certainly did look and taste different to our regular Cretan supplies. For a start, it was very runny (ours is very dense), it smelt of mint (ours smelt of thyme), it had a very clear colour (ours is quite dark), and we were told it was prone to natural cystalisation, which we found quite interesting, because we've never seen honey crystallise in our house (it gets eaten too quickly).


The honey came from Brockwell Park, where there are community gardens and a group of beekeepers who strive to produce fresh natural produce in a city where most food is imported into the general area. Apart from honey, my friend also collects beeswax and makes candles, and he is also learning to make mead. My friend also showed us some older honey, which had crystalised, so that it looked like butter in a jar. It's still good honey, he reassured us, which we found amusing, because he still hadn't opened the jar, which contained only a quarter of the amount that are own jars usually contain!

He also showed us a large plastic tub of honey which he explained was not good for eating because it contained too much moisture and tiny droplets of wax. In fact, it did taste a little waxy to us, and it was not very sweet, mainly due to the excess moisture content, we were told. He intended to use it to make mead - this supposedly sub-standard honey could be used as an ingredient, he told us, but it could not be sold as fresh honey. He also gave us some buttery looking manuka honey to try, which as a beekeeper, he thought he should try. As there was no other honey in his house where we were staying, except the buttery honey varieties, we preferred to use the waxy sub-standard honey which was still runny. I used it to make a pear pie with pears I had bought from Crete, and a cheese pie using mizithra I had also bought along with me. In both cases, I used this waxy honey in the batter as well as a topping. We liked the results very much. 

My friend also gave us some Brockwell Park honey to take home with us as a present. When I went to the store room to place it together with our honey jars, I was surprised to find a jar of Cretan honey lurking in a dark corner of the shelf, which I had not used in due time. It wasn't runny, and it hadn't lost its colour or its texture, but I could tell that this honey had undergone some transformation form its taste - it did not taste sweet and it seemed to lack the thyme aroma that I was used to. That's when I got the idea to take some samples of each honey type - fresh London honey (FL), old Cretan honey (OC), fresh Cretan honey (FC) - into the MAICh laboratories at work to have them checked.



Honey is influenced by very many factors: the flower species, temperature, environmental conditions, age and storage conditions are just a few things that make or break a good honey variety. The floral species used in the honey give honey its colour and aroma, as well as its texture. Crystallisation is also a feature in honey of certain floral species (eg citrus). Honey is like olive oil - their properties undergo a negative change as they age. So honey is not like wine, whose taste could improve with age. Apiculturalists check for moisture content, diastase activity and hydroxy-methyl-furfural (HMF) content.

Water content crystallises honey more quickly, which explains why the London honey crystallised whereas the Cretan honey didn't. The environmental conditions of London are damper than in Crete. This in fact was proven in the laboratory analyses: of the three samples, FL contained the highest moisture levels (17.6, while the two Cretan samples (OC and FC) contained  the same moisture content (14.3-14.6). But FL was still within the limits set by international regulations, which state that moisture content in honey must be less than 20.

Diastase activity tells us whether the honey has been subjected to high temperature, which makes it runnier. This is a trick that honey sellers may use if their honey crystalises. Honey production does involve heating but only at appropriate temperatures. Diastase activity is lower in honey that have been subjected to very high temperatures. Of my three honey samples, LH had the highest diastate activity (19.9) while FC had 13.8. Both honey were within international limits, which state that diastate acitivity must be higher than 8. But OC was not within the limit: it had a diastase activity of just 6.7. Since I know my honey source well, and both OC and FC come from the same source, what could have gone wrong? Most likely, the storage conditions of OC were inappropriate: I had left the honey in a space which gets overheated in summer, whcih most likely affected it, since I had forgotten it there for over a year, something I rarely do with honey, given our high consumption levels.

Finally, the HMF content also tells us about whether a honey variety has been heated inappropriately. This should be lower than 40, and all my honey samples fell well within the limit - FL: 3.4, OC: 5.8 and FC: 3. So I am able to conclude that the storage conditions for OC were what reduced the quality of my old Cretan honey sample.

The MAICh laboratory was also able to give us information on the pollen sources of each variety of honey, by checking for the frequency of pollen grains from nectar giving plants found in the honey. More importantly, the pollen information can tell us whether chemicals or artificial feeding have been used in the honey-making process. Bees travel a lot, so they are most likely picking pollen from a wide variety of sources. Here is what we found for my honey samples:

LH: Eucalyptus occidentalis type (29%), chestnut tree (Castanea sativa) (17%), with 3-15% traces of Pyrus-Prunus type (e.g. almond tree), Malus type (apple tree), Trifolium repens type, Robinia sp. (locust tree), sporadic traces of Salix sp., Brassicaceae, Centaurea sp., Boraginaceae, Liliaceae, and pollen grains of nectarless plants: Quercus sp., Graminae, Hypericum sp., Cyperaceae, Pinaceae.
OC: Eucalyptus camaldulensis (40%), with 3-15% traces of thyme (Thymbra capitata) (14%), dandelion (Taraxacum sp.), heather (Erica sp.), Trifolium repens type, sporadic traces of Cirsium type, Urginea maritima, Parthenocissus sp., Satureja thymbra, Citrus sp., avocado tree (Persea americana), Brassicaceae, and pollen grains of nectarless plants: Verbascum sp., Olea sp., Cistaceae, Graminae, Hypericum sp., Vitis vinifera, Ephedra sp.
FC: Chestnut tree (Castanea sativa) (32%), with 3-15% traces of thyme (Thymbra capitata) (12%), heather (Erica sp.), Trifolium repens type, myrtle (Myrtus communis), Eucalyptus sp., Satureja thymbra, sporadic traces of dandelion (Taraxacum sp.), Cirsium type, Apiaceae, Urginea maritima, Oxalis pes-caprae, Centaurea solstitialis type, Parthenocissus sp.and pollen grains of nectarless plants: Verbascum sp., Olea sp., Hypericum sp., Cistaceae, Pistacia lentiscus.

Based on the pollen examination, the London honey was classified as multi-floral while the Cretan samples were honey blends because they contained honeydew elements from pine trees, whereas the London honey contained no honeydew. This tells us a little about the insects that survive in the general area where the honey is produced. Honeydew, a honey blend of flower nectar and pine honeydew, also gives the darker colour of Cretan honey, which is highly prized in for its reputed medicinal value: in Greek mythology, méli, "honey", drips from the Manna–ash, (Fraxinus ornus), with which the Meliae, or "ash tree nymphs", nursed the infant god Zeus on the island of Crete.

However, the diastase activity of OC was below the honey legislation limit, so that particular honey sample can only be characterized as 'baker's honey'. Although I don't use honey in my baking, I am now using this honey in my cake batters and syrup making, instead of sugar to use it up without wasting it. Even my friend's high-moisture waxy London honey was still edible - it just wasn't marketable. Another interesting point is that the famous thyme honey of Crete can only be called 'thyme honey' when the thyme pollent content is at least 18%. Therefore, my thyme honey samples, while smelling unmistakably of thyme, cannot be called thyme honeys in the market sense because they contained only 14.6% (OC) and 13.4% (FH) thyme pollen.

I passed on the tests to my London friend who took them to his apiculturalist's club, who were very pleased to get them. Such tests are not available to small producers in London, mainly due to the cots involved. They were very pleased to read that their honey was of the highest quality that could be produced anywhere in their country. As for my own honey samples, I couldn't have been more pleased - and next time, I'll be more careful of where I store my honey jars.

Many thanks to Slim Blidi, whose thesis on the topic of "Effect of thermal treatment on the quality of Cretan honeys" I had the pleasure to read, whcih helped me to better understand the magic of honey, and enabled me to write this post.

©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. 

Choices and decisions (Επιλογές και αποφάσεις)

It was getting rather late. Late for Londoners, that is. Most Greeks would be arriving at a restaurant after half-past nine (it was something like a quarter to ten) on a warm September evening, even if it were mid-week. The kebab house was typical of the style of London kebaberies: photos of Turkey, Aladdin's lamps hanging from the ceiling, arabesque red hues covering the walls, with a row of Tunisian wall tiles dividing them, and Greek music playing softly, all alluding to an exotic Mediterranean melange, which in reality does not exist.

"A table for five," I said to the black-garbed staff member who greeted us at the door. Black is the colour of service workers in London. The kebab house staff wore black shirts and black trousers, the staff at Primark where we would go shopping the next day also wore black, as did the staff at the Italian restaurant where we would have a quick lunch in between visiting exhibitions. Only the Muslim women staffing the museums and clothes stores weren't wearing black shirts and trousers - they wore black floor-length chadors instead, covering their whole body except their hands and faces.

The waiter waved his arm around the room and told us in his accented English (another London service worker's characteristic) to sit anywhere we wanted. The place seemed empty, save one occupied table. I felt embarrassed entering the restaurant so late, as if I would be keeping the waiters past their knock-off hour, but our host had warned us that some of the takeaways in the area might have already closed down by the time we got there, and he had chosen the closest eaterie to home. (I suppose we could have come earlier, but our previous view was rather exciting and we lost track of time.)



The table was already set, and the menu cars were brought to the table for our perusal. The word 'meze' featured prominently on the card, as it did on the paper placemat. Meze is used in many languages to mean the same thing. But when a Greek sees the word meze, it will be all Greek to him. And our Greek was at that point exploding from our mouths. We sounded just like a Greek TV news broadcast, where the news reader sits in the middle of the screen, with four little open windows on each corner with different people all speaking all at once. Our Greek chatter was immediately picked up by the waiter who came to take our orders.



Έλληνες είστε? he asked, with a big smile on his face. Standing before us was the epitome of Adonis (let's call him Adonis in this post): a tall, handsome, muscular young man, with an unmistakable fluent not-Cypriot Greek accent. He possessed the perfect proportions of a Greek statue, and in our eyes, his especially good looks and hospitable demeanour represented, precisely and unarguably, the archetype beauty of our country and people. Whatever trepidation I may have expressed initially about the restaurant before we entered it ('it's our first night in London and we're having a souvlaki?'), standing in front of us was proof that we could not have chosen a better place to dine. We felt, in our minds, as if we were in the home of a fellow Greek.

We got talking, in that Greek διασπορά way, where we all ask each other how we ended up in the non-Greek world. Indeed, everyone could tell a different story in answer to this question, even if they are from the same family. Most of us were born in Greece, some were born as Greeks in a faraway land, and one of us was a Greek who wasn't born Greek. Adonis was a Persian Greek. I recall a group of Persians of the Baha'i faith living in New Zealand; they spoke perfect Greek, having lived a few years in Athens after being granted refugee status there. I don't know how they arrived in Greece, but Adonis probably does, according to the stories his parents might have told them about how they came to Greece. Eventually some of the people Adonis' parents arrived with were given the right to travel and live and work in New Zealand. I am guessing that Adonis was born to refugees from the same stock as the people I had met in New Zealand, who never called themselves Iranians. They called themselves Persians.

Adonis had never been to Iran, and had only been in London for two years, as he explained:

"I was born in Athens. I lived in Greece all my life. My parents ran a small shop in an Athens suburb, selling car accessories and sound systems. And then the crisis came. So you can imagine how quickly we went out of business. No one was buying anything any longer. There were no jobs for any of us, my parents and my sister. My brother was still at school.

Potatoes

"Paying the rent suddenly became difficult. We were always worrying about being evicted. We were also worrying about the lack of food. If you live in the centre of Athens and you don't have any money, you won't have any food, either. We had put a little bit of money aside from our business. We never thought of savings as something you spend or fritter away on daily living expenses. So when things got really tough, we had to think of a plan. Staying in Athens was not an option. Staying in Greece wasn't an option either. We were urban people, and we couldn't make the transition to the rural parts. At any rate, jobs in the rural areas are always seasonal. We'd still have problems paying rent and bills.

Potato soup (with leek)

"Eventually, we made a decision to leave Greece. We had friends in London, and they told us that there were plenty of jobs there for anyone who wanted to work. We left as a family, the five of us. The most important thing for us was that we could remain together. We miss Athens, but we couldn't live there the way things were. We are all working now, and life isn't easy anywhere these days, but we are all working, we have a roof over our head, we aren't hungry.

Boiled potatoes

"For some time before we left Athens, we didn't have much food in the house, and we didn't want to spend our savings on daily living expenses, so we ate whatever we had in the house. At one point, all we had was potatoes. My mother cooked the potatoes in different ways. One day, we'd eat them boiled, the next day we'd eat them mashed, the next fried if we got hold of some oil. We had food, but we knew we were eating the same food all the time. We just got so sick of eating potatoes, but we could not do anything else about our predicament at the time. We just waited patiently for a better moment to come..."

Mashed potatoes

Adonis asked us where we were from. "Crete... oh, you're all better down there. There is tourism, there are jobs, you have food at your doorstep." We could not disagree. I asked him Adonis if he had been back, and he told us he had:

Potato cakes (with some leftover corn)

"I go back periodically for a visit. All my friends are there, I left a whole life behind in Athens. Sometimes the weather gets you down here. But it's hard everywhere and all places have their good sides and bad sides. It's hard... But it's also scary. Whenever I am returning to the UK, I get stopped at border control. My passport is Greek, but my name isn't, so I'm always asked to stay behind while they conduct their searches. I get delayed by about two hours before I get through..."

Fried potatoes

Adonis told us his story while simultaneously serving our meze (or more correctly, mezedes, in the Greek plural). "I told the chef to give you the works," he assured us, "I hope I haven't forgotten anything!" His smile was never absent while he spoke to us. Our appetite had of course diminished somewhat on hearing his story, but we did our best to eat everything up, to give a good impression, which was not really that hard, since the mezedes were very tasty.



I don't think we will ever forget Adonis. If we travel again to London, I intend to look him up. If I find him at the same place, that's a good sign. If he's left, that's even better. It means he will have advanced in his life and not remained stagnant.

©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. 

The privilege of advanced studies

Having understood the stress that the students were under when we told them that they would not last longer than Christmas at our institute if they did not show signs of improvement in their English tests grades, Omar from Syria (a second-year student) came to find me, to tell me about how he went from scoring a very low grade to obtaining not just a passing grade, but something higher than that, in just two months. He asked me to tell the first-year students to find him and he would tell them what he did. I asked that, instead of students going to find him (which they wouldn't do anyway, mainly out of neglect and - dare I say it - laziness), Omar should come to my class and tell them what he did. He agreed.

What did Omar do to attain such a grade? Here is his story:
"I would go to bed every night at 9.30. I didn't attend any of the social events that the students organised. Then I'd get up at 4am, splash cold water on my face to wake me up and take my laptop and notebook downstairs to the computer study room (so that I didn't disturb my roommate). I would start studying at 5am, never before, because I wanted to treat myself to waking up slowly, so I didn't tire myself out. I studied English systematically for 3 hours every morning, never less, never more, for two months. I used the teaching materials provided (ie my materials), and a book of exercises, all on the computer, nothing on paper. If I didn't understand any words, I'd write them in my notebook and look them up. I made an effort to learn three new skills every day. In the first few days it was hard. After the first few weeks, it got easy. By the end of the two months, I was simply practicing - and answering successfully - everything I learnt."

At the end of the 20-minute seminar, Omar pointed out that this was his way to improve his English skills, and it won't work for everyone, but everyone should be able to tweak the program to find one that suits them. While Omar was speaking, I would interrupt him (we had agreed on how to do this) to reinforce some of his points, eg you don't really need paper tests, you can work on the computer; you don't need to learn things off by heart, you need to study at the RIGHT time, with the RIGHT materials and in the RIGHT way; you don't need to spend hours in a classroom studying English with a teacher, you need to know what questions to ask your teacher when you see her, or better still email her with your query. Teaching and learning is not like in the past when we had a teacher, and books, pens and paper: it's more dynamic now - and much much faster.

At the same time, I had to ask some of other students to stop talking amongst themselves while Omar was speaking. I also had to remind them (while they laughed, especially on hearing 'no socialising' and 'wake up at 4am') that, actually, they have their meals cooked, their rooms cleaned, and their expenses paid while they are here, so there is no excuse for not being a hard-working student. 

Studying is a privilege these days. You need to show some good results to those who give you that privilege. Otherwise, we can bestow the privilege on other more deserving people.

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The Mediterranean Diet as a lifestyle (Η Μεσογειακή Δίαιτα ως τρόπος ζωής)

Here is an article I wrote that has just been published as a leaflet, for distribution at the second Mediterranean Diet Fair, which is being held next month at Tavira (Portugal) between the 5th and 7th of September, 2014. The leaflet is being produced by the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (my workplace) since it has been charged with the responsibility of the Coordination Point for the Mediterranean Diet until April 2015. You're getting a sneak preview of it. 

The Mediterranean Diet,
as inscribed by UNESCO
in the List of Intangible Heritage

2014

Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania

The Mediterranean Diet

When talking about the Mediterranean Diet, emphasis is often placed on the actual food consumed by people who live in Mediterranean countries. This emphasis is perhaps misdirected: the Mediterranean Diet should be seen as a lifestyle, not a diet in its literal sense:

“The Mediterranean Diet – derived from the Greek word díaita, way of life – is the set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions, ranging from the landscape to the table, which in the Mediterranean basin concerns the crops, harvesting, picking, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly sharing and consuming the cuisine. It is at the table that the spoken word plays a major role in describing, transmitting, enjoying and celebrating the element.” (UNESCO)

Therefore, safeguarding the Mediterranean Diet in modern times is not based on the safeguarding of specific recipes; it stems from the rapid breakdown of a changing social fabric which once helped to safeguard the continuity of a lifestyle passed on from one generation to another, making it difficult to pass on this knowledge to future generations. Without a community base, there would be no ‘Mediterranean diet’; it would simply be called 'Mediterranean food'. The food of the Mediterranean is also found in other parts of the world, and can easily be copied, but this is not true about the lifestyle - it is actually the way of life (δίαιτα) that UNESCO wants to protect as Intangible Heritage under the general title of the Mediterranean Diet. 

Origins

The origins of the phrase "Mediterranean Diet" are founded in Ancel Keys' well known 1960s study about the food habits of various Mediterranean people, which took place not too long after the devastation caused by World War II when many European countries were still underdeveloped, people lived on the farm, and there were many food shortages. Their food habits, which constitute the Mediterranean Diet, were regarded as healthy due to the low incidences of chronic diseases, such as heart disease and high cholesterol. Additionally, high life-expectancy rates existed among populations who consumed a traditional Mediterranean diet. Therefore, the Mediterranean diet gained much recognition and worldwide interest since the period after the original study, as a model for healthful eating.

Seen in the old town of Hania, outside a taverna.

Ancel Keys' Mediterranean Diet pyramid is based on the healthy eating and lifestyle habits of the people living in southern Italy and the Greek islands, notably Crete, in the early 1960s.

A modern Greek meal is like taking a trip through Greece's history. Food names, cooking methods and basic ingredients have changed little over time. Bread, olive oil and wine have constituted the triptych of the Greek diet for many centuries, just as they do today. The first cookbook was written by the Greek food gourmet, Archestratos in 330 BC, which suggests that food and cooking has always been of great importance and significance in Greek society, which remains true even today.

The Mediterranean Diet as a lifestyle

Food events in the Mediterranean are an integral part of the Mediterranean people’s socialization; they are a perfect display of the Mediterranean lifestyle. They invariably involve a group of people who all play their own role in ensuring that a seasonal food event takes place according to plan. From the soil to the plate, each stage in the process is followed. Omitting any stage can sometimes be the cause of misunderstanding, although it is possible to alter a stage to suit the conditions. The alterations to such seasonal activities are how traditions are formed over time in each of the individual communities involved. The Mediterranean Diet is, therefore, not limited to terrain or particular food products: it is a shared understanding of the continuity of traditional values associated with eating patterns. Every different Mediterranean country has its own rituals and traditions associated with food, so there is no single diet. It is a coincidence that similar food items are often used, although they are combined in different ways according to many factors, such as one's locality, religion, available seasonal produce, customs, etc.

Many of the lifestyle events involved in the Mediterranean Diet are one-off occasions. They cannot be repeated due to their seasonal nature, and therefore their results will be lost for the year if they are not conducted accordingly. When things don't go to plan, there is always a Plan B to follow, so that the ritual's offering will not go wasted. The Mediterranean lifestyle revolves around the same seasonal activities that, at any given moment, are being done by different people at exactly the same time, and this is what is so special about the Mediterranean Diet: this is in fact the Intangible Heritage that UNESCO wants to protect under its label. It is not just the food, but the way of life that the food revolves around which needs to be protected.

The Mediterranean Diet in food security

In modern times, there is a great need to protect the Mediterranean Diet, due to the fact that it is now under threat from the forces of the globalisation and internationalisation of lifestyles. These movements cannot be prevented, nor is it desirable to stop them from taking place. But they are the main reason why the farming populations of Mediterranean countries are gradually being reduced, hence the reason why the Mediterranean people are losing contact with the land as they become more urbanised. These events are also accompanied by an increasingly homogenized and globalised food production system that disconnects food from its natural landscape.

It should therefore be seen as a vital goal to promote the Mediterranean Diet in its place of origin (i.e. in the countries of the Mediterranean basin) in the framework of a lifestyle. Our lives are becoming interconnected, and we are merging in many ways, but there are some things that will keep us distinct, and they are to be treasured, for that is where our sense of uniqueness comes from. The aim of the Mediterranean Diet newsletter, in conjunction with the Mediterranean Diet website, is to initiate discussion into how to maintain and preserve this unique identity.

In the process of being editeds

Intangible Heritage - UNESCO

Upon the completion of negotiation rounds headed by the Ministry of Rural Development and Food of the Hellenic Republic, Greece has been assigned the coordinating role of the Network of the seven Member Countries subscribed to the Mediterranean Diet in UNESCO's representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, from 1 May 2014 to 30 April 2015. At an intergovernmental meeting held in Agros, Cyprus, on 28-29 April 2014, which was attended by the National Committee of UNESCO, the proposal of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food of the Hellenic Republic to undertake the coordination of the Network was adopted. November 16 has been set as the Flagship Day to celebrate the Mediterranean Diet.

This effort of the Greek government and specifically the Ministries of Rural Development & Food, and Culture & Sport, regarding the need for a coordination tool, was launched in 2011, immediately after the recognition by UNESCO of the Mediterranean Diet as Intangible Cultural Heritage, following the submission of a portfolio to the UNESCO Committee. On the Greek side, Koroni in Messinia was chosen as the flagship of the Community, an area rich in agricultural products such as olive oil, olives, wine, raisins, figs, a large variety of vegetables, herbs and aromatic plants. The Member Countries and Emblematic Communities of the Mediterranean Diet as Intangible Cultural Heritage are Koroni (Greece), Brač and Hvar (Croatia), Agros (Cyprus),  Cilento (Italy), Chefchaouen (Morocco), Tavira  (Portugal) and Soria (Spain).

The Ministry has assigned, as the coordination point, the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (MAICh/CIHEAM), which has the necessary scientific and research expertise to undertake joint actions and initiatives, both to preserve and disseminate the values of the Mediterranean Diet.

If the Mediterranean Diet is seen as just a pyramid of a suggested diet regime, then we are only looking at the food and not the lifestyle. The significance of the Mediterranean Diet includes so much more than just the food.

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The Mediterranean Diet as an Intangible Heritage

Food events in Greece are an integral part of the Mediterranean Diet, in the way that they exhibit the Mediterranean lifestyle. They involve a group of people - never one sole individual - who all play their own role in ensuring that a seasonal procedure goes according to plan. From the soil to the plate (or from the farm to the table, if you prefer to phrase it that way), each stage is followed, and a stage cannot be omitted. Omitting any stage in the process can sometimes be the cause of misunderstanding, but it can be altered to suit the conditions. The alterations to such seasonal activities are how traditions are formed, according to the time period.

The plan was to sit outdoors and have the meal...

Many of the lifestyle events involved in the Mediterranean Diet are one-off occasions  They cannot be repeated due to their seasonal nature, and therefore their results will be lost for the year if they are not conducted accordingly. When it doesn't go to plan, there is always a Plan B to follow, so that the ritual's offering is not wasted. The Mediterranean lifestyle revolves around the same seasonal activities that, at any given moment, are being done by different people at exactly the same time, and this is what is so special about the Mediterranean Diet, which is what UNESCO wants to protect when it labels it as Intangible Heritage. It is not just the food, but the way of life that the food revolves around which needs to be protected. Every different Mediterranean country has its own rituals and traditions associated with food, so there is no single diet. It just happens to revolve around similar food items that are combined in different ways according to many factors, such as one's locality, religion, available seasonal produce, customs, etc. The Mediterranean Diet has its base firmly grounded in the unique lifestyle, climate and landscape of the Mediterranean basin, combining festivals and celebrations related to the production of food. These events become the receptacle of gestures of mutual recognition, hospitality, neighborliness, conviviality, intergenerational transmission and intercultural dialogue.

The reason why the Mediterranean Diet needs to be protected as an Intangible Heritage is that it is now under threat from the forces of the globalisation and internationalisation of lifestyles. These movements cannot be prevented, nor is it desirable to stop them from taking place. But they are the main reason why the farming population is gradually being reduced and also why people lose contact with the land as they become more urbanised. These are accompanied by an increasingly homogenized and globalised food production system that disconnects food from its natural landscape.


We sometimes feel less secure about what we see on our plate because we don't always know its origin. This should not cause so much anxiety in a highly technologically advanced food system (except when things go wrong, but this is usually picked up quickly), but for some of us, it is matter of principle and pride to know where our food comes from, especially when our local food is directly linked to our identity and vice-versa. But our food is becoming more simplified and more processed these days, as we seek ways to reduce the time spent in the kitchen. Industrial farming is imposing new landscapes that are disconnected from the local people’s lives and the natural seasons, resulting in our alienation from our historical roots, and towards a change in diet based on rapid high-calorie sustenance.

The word 'diet' is associated in modern times with a low-calorie food regime; it can also mean the food that somebody eats on a reular basis. But the word actually comes from the ancient Greek δίαιτα, which means:
1. way of life in terms of nutrition, clothing, survival
2. what is required to survive, meal, food |food regime, specific nutritional program for health reasons, diet |medicine 
3. abode, residence |animal's abode 
http://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/ancient_greek/tools/lexicon/lemma.html?id=60
Hence, the Mediterranean Diet is a way of life, not limited just to food intake.

It's now official: In a recent intergovernmental meeting held in Agros, Cyprus (a flagship community), on 28 and 29 April, Greece was given the task of coordinating the Mediterranean Diet as Intangible Cultural Heritage (as defined by UNESCO), and my workplace MAICh (www.maich.gr) will act as the coordination point for the Mediterranean Diet for this year until April 2015. Thanks are due to the Portuguese contingent, who used Greek letters for the logo design: the M stands for the mountains, while the γ for the sea should be interpreted as δ, which stands for Μεσογειακή διατροφή (= Mediterranean diet).

Can the Mediterranean Diet (read: Mediterranean lifestyle) be protected by institutions such as UNESCO? Cultural heritage does not end at historical monuments, landscapes or artifacts. It also includes traditions, customs and life expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts, and above all, a sense of community, which directly leads to a sense of identity. Fragile, intangible cultural heritage is an important factor in maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization. An understanding of the intangible cultural heritage of different communities helps intercultural dialogue, and encourages mutual respect for other ways of life.

I personally see it as a vital goal to promote the Mediterranean Diet in its place of origin (ie in the  countries of the Mediterranean basin) in the framework of a lifestyle. It is all very well to say that people can choose their lifestyle, but when our choices are gradually being eroded by the natural forces of internationalisation, we are forced to choose among alternatives that may not satisfy us (a bit like the state of Greek politics these days - we dislike the politicians we have, but we are required to choose someone among them to lead our country). In order to have good choices, we need to maintain what is dear to us, so that these choices will remain available, not just for us but for future generations too.


To better understand what is meant by the Mediterranean Diet, we can take as an example a food festival that occurs in the region. I will use the little feast that was celebrated on a completely local scale to make the world's biggest dakos, in order to make it into the Guiness Book of World Records. The fact that the feast centred on food was only part of the 'diet' - it involved the way the people congregated, every one setting out a chair to take part in the feast, watching the cooks prepare the dakos, then lining up (in the Mediterranean way - τουρλού τουρλού!) to be handed a piece of the dakos, making the meal communal, and finishing off the evening with live Cretan music and dancing made the feast a whole one.


The rain dampened the Plan A - Plan B was then executed (we went indoors).

The work that needs to be done in terms of safeguarding the Mediterranean Diet is to remind the older generation of their duty to the younger generation, and to educate the younger generation by encouraging a cooperative spirit among them and the local authorities who are entrusted with maintaining the cultural and traditional aspects of a community. The scientific community plays its part by ensuring that the modified food chain is traceable by continuous monitoring. At the same time, I don't believe the Mediterranean lifestyle will be completely lost if these actions are not taken, but every concerted effort helps to ensure that continued erosion does not destroy what we have. Our lives are becoming interconnected, and we are merging in many ways, but there are some things that will keep us distinct, and they are to be treasured, for that is where our sense of uniqueness comes from.
The photos were taken last September during the grape harvest to make the new year's wine supplies. The giant dakos was made at the end of August last year.

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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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Chocolate berry pots

We were entertaining an Italian friend (he is from Southern Italy) last week. It was a warm night, and we sat outdoors; we had a feeling that it would turn out to be the last al fresco evening meal for the season. Our Italian friend had brought with him a little present - he was clearing out the contents of his fridge because he has now finished his study period in Greece and is going back home soon. So he gave me all the cured meats and cheese that were left over form his last visit back home. I was in for a surprise - the cured meats were prepared by his parents. The family owns a piece of land, where they tend animals. They actually live far away from it, in an apartment block in a town. But traditions die hard among Mediterranean people and they continue to maintain close contact with ancestral land. The cured meat was particularly fascinating: it was packaged in the same way that one would expect high quality export products to be packaged, yet this was done in a private home. This kind of packaging has only recently (and I mean very recently) been adopted by Greek producers. Packaging denotes image, and this was one of the main drawbacks of Greek exports, which is slowly being rectified - Greek products often lacked image.

We served our own home brewed wine with the meal, which these days, looks quite cheap, even to me. I should not really have been worried though: our guest told us that this is the kind of wine he drinks at home too - it's the same kind of thing his father makes. The Mediterranean bond between us grew even stronger when our Italian friend told us that he was from Pisticci, which is located in the area of Italy still remembered from its past when it was known as Magna Grecia ("Big Greece").

At the last minute, I decided to prepare a dessert, something I haven't done in a while. Perhaps the cooler weather made me feel like cooking more. I invented this recipe for chocolate pots on the spur of the moment, based on another recipe for chocolate lava pots, when I realised I did not have the correct ingredients for what I intended to make. Still, it worked better than the original version, mainly for cultural reasons.

You need:
5 tablespoons of butter (Carrefour Marinopoulos is now selling a very tasty French butter under its own private label, which is also priced very well - Lurpak seems to have disappeared off its shelves)
150g chocolate (I used milk chocolate, in the form of flakes, as I had nothing else at hand; the original recipe used 70% chocolate which I have stopped buying - my family has tried it often enough to confirm their dislike of the product!)
a pinch of sea salt (as the original recipe stated - this is really unnecessary, I could hardly taste it, maybe due to the kind of chocolate that I used)
2 eggs (the original recipe stated 2 eggs and 2 yolks - I only had two eggs at home, so I tweaked the recipe)
1/4 cup sugar (as in the original recipe)
3 tablespoons of flour (the original recipe stated 1 tablespoon of flour, but I added more, together with 1/4 cup milk, to act as a binder since I had used less egg)
1/2 cup of mixed frozen berries (this was not in the original recipe: LIDL now sells them as a standard product in our local stores)

Melt the butter, add the chocolate and let it melt (and stir in the salt if you are going to use it). While it's cooling down, mix the eggs with the milk and sugar - keep beating till you can't hear the sugar crystals scraping the bowl. Gradually add the egg mixture by the spoonful, mixing well after each addition (to avoid 'cooking' the egg). Now mix in the berries, and then add the flour and stir in well.

Divide the mixture into 5 ramekins and place them on a baking tray with a little bit of water in it. I began the cooking process at a very low temperature because I was still having dinner, and these chocolate pots cook quickly, so I kept the temperature low enough until it was almost time ot serve them. Just when I thought that we had finished our dinner, I raised the temperature and let the pots cook for another 10 minutes. As long as you don't burn them, this is a very forgiving recipe.

When the chocolate pots were done (I tested one to see if it was set in the centre, by inserting a knife through it), I took the tray out of the oven and left the ramekins to cool in it. The ramekins are too hot to pick up at this stage, so I allowed them to cool before I served them. The original recipe stated taking them out of each ramekin (or throwaway single-use foil cup) and serving them in a different bowl. I couldn't fathom the idea of doing more washing up afterwards - there really is no need to serve them upside down.

The texture of the dessert was soft but not gooey and the taste was semi-sweet rather than bitter, as in the original recipe. Some recipes don't work culturally. I'm glad I have worked that one out early enough, to save torturing my family; if you like a particular taste very much, there is no real need to change it.

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