Zambolis apartments

Zambolis apartments
For your holidays in Chania

Sunday 11 March 2012

Aubergine with spicy yoghurt, onion, herbs and pomegranate seeds (Πολλά και διάφορα)

Tavernas (ταβέρνες) and restaurants (εστιατόρια) are two quite different things. A taverna is an informal eaterie which serves traditional Greek meals, while a restaurant often has a more formal atmosphere and the food served there may not be recognisable in the Greek culinary spectre. Tavernas are usually cheap, although I haven't been to one since the price hikes (we haven't been to one since last September). A full meal would cost my family no more than 12 euro a head, alcohol included. The food served for this price is mainly fresh, local and seasonal. Last year, I went to a pricey restaurant in my town; the meals there used ingredients not normally associated with Cretan/Greek cuisine.

Why must restaurant food be expensive? Fancy decor, high rents and plush furnishings don't warrant a high price for a meal. Not even the service counts: waiters should always be courteous, chefs should always cook decent food, and service should always be reasonably quick wherever you go.  People go out for a meal for different reasons. I never include eating local food at the top of my list when choosing to eat out, because that's what I eat most of the time. I'm not a locavore in the modern sense: I eat what there is to be found out of necessity, not necessarily by choice. My primary reason would be to enjoy myself, so if I have to pay a high price for the meal, I want to be sure that I am paying for the quality of the food, not the surroundings.

 In summer, I prepared some eggplant rolls filled with mint-flavoured mizithra cheese. To make the eggplant recipe I found ιn the Ottolenghi menu, I defrosted six pieces, scraped off the mizithra into a bowl, and pan-fried the eggplant. The minty mizithra was used to make the yoghurt sauce. 

Having recently used an Ottolenghi recipe, I checked out other items on the menu of his restaurants. The average cost of each dish was about £10. The dishes do not have names as such: they are described by their ingredients. The restaurant has a Mediterranean focus, and the ingredients are all fresh, but they aren't all British: according to the website, 'local' food is both British and European.  Judging from the reviews posted by different diners, you would order about three dishes per person (they are mainly vegetable-based, which means that they don't fill up your stomach too easily), with an average cost per head of approximately £30, which translate to about 40 euro per head. That is not at all cheap.

The description of the dishes goes something like this:
 Roasted aubergine with turmeric yoghurt,
crispy onion, basil, rocket and
pomegranate
£9.00

Some tweaks to the original description: I shallow-fried (instead of roasting) the eggplant slices to save time and energy; I didn't have fresh basil available, so I used fresh oregano instead; I preferred to use fresh ginger to flavour the yoghurt rather than turmeric because I had that only in powdered form; the rocket I used is a Greek variety with large leaves (small-leafed rocket is available, but it's imported and bagged - probably subjected to bleach for the purposes of cleansing). The pomegranate was the last local one I had managed to secure for the season (and I mean from Hania) - there won't be any more locally grown pomegranates until next year. That's what it means to eat fresh, local seasonal food - everything is eaten or preserved in its time.

It's not difficult to imagine what I'll be getting from such a description. But it's hard to work out if the ingredients are truly seasonal when they are found from a range of different sources. In Greece, aubergine is usually associated with summer, and pomegranate with late autumn or early winter; this was supposedly a February menu. At least one of those ingredients would have to come from a greenhouse or outside Europe (ie not local, according to the restaurant's definition). The cooking techniques sound quite simple - the final taste and quality seem to depend on the appropriateness of the combinations of the ingredients.

 
My initial idea was to photograph the finished dish with an olive grove in the background. Then I remembered the plants that actually gave me the aubergines: now in winter, they are dry stalks. They continued to produce eggplant up until early January, but the fruit was not the best quality.

The roasted aubergine with turmeric yoghurt, crispy onion, basil, rocket and pomegranate seeds was the first item I saw written on the sample menu card. My first thought was "I can easily recreate a dish like this in my kitchen", because all the ingredients are available to me: in fact, we grow most of the fresh ones ourselves - but not all at the same time! My second thought was: "Oh my God, so many different ingredients." It's freaky to rush around trying to find obscure items that can't always be located at one stop-and-shop place, especially when you really don't need to use them in great quantity; a lot of your purchases will probably not end up being used again for a while, kind of like bottled Asian sauces sitting in your fridge for a long time. And finally: "There's a lot of preparation involved in this dish." You need a lot of hands to create this kind of meal, as well as quite a wide variety of pots and pans and kitchen utensils.

Pomegranate and eggplant are two of my favorite natural foods (in their season). They are also messy to deal with. Skin contact with the white flesh of an eggplant (and the yellow inner flesh of a pomegranate) makes your fingers black. I should know: I have cut a lot of aubergine in my lifetime.  How to peel a pomegranate is the subject of many web discussions. At this particular restaurant, pomegranate is overused. Someone at Ottolenghi's must be peeling pomegranate for a good part of their day. I guess that's what you pay for when you go to an expensive restaurant: imported unusual ingredients, exotic looking food, a lot of manual labour and imaginative decor, whether it's in the premises or the food styling. The plating of the dishes is quite unlike serving a 'piece' of something from a pot or pan, like I do at home: a dish like roasted aubergine with turmeric yoghurt, crispy onion, basil, rocket and pomegranate seeds is all about food styling, artistic effect and detail.


 Plating the same dish at at a restaurant must feel like an assembly line at times. PS: This dish doesn't really need the pomegranate seeds - it would probably work better with a sprinkling of dried crushed nuts to complement the sweetness of the sun-kissed Cretan summer-grown aubergine.

The cost of making this dish in my kitchen was less than 1 (for both portions). This does not include a payment for the cook, leaving me unpaid. To recreate the roasted aubergine dish (together with the purple-sprouting broccoli dish), I needed to spend well over an hour in the kitchen. But I had all the fresh ingredients available to me. When I decided to make this dish, it was a Saturday morning, and I didn't feel like leaving the house. I had everything I needed to make it without having to spend time or money sourcing it. That's the advantage of living in a food-centric society in the Mediterranean. Although I wasn't paid for my own work in producing the dish, I can safely say that my kitchen fun turned into a very rewarding experience, judging by the comments I received from my 'diners': the plates were licked clean. 


A visitor from Iran recently landed on my blog with the search string: "why people prefer to eat out". Good question: cultural norms for eating out differ markedly between east and west, especially between underdeveloped and technologically dependent nations. When I want to eat out, I definitely want to eat something different to what I cook at home, which isn't as easy as it sounds in my own town; most local tavernas offer home-style food, using similar recipes to those of my own. The food doesn't have to be exotic or imported; the atmosphere needs to be fun and the food tasty. It should definitely be an accessible meal to all ages and pockets. The meal out needs to be an enjoyable way to spend time in good company. I'm looking forward to some Asian food in London soon...

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24 comments:

  1. Pomegranate and aubergine? Has all common sense gone out of the window? As you pointed out they are not even products of the same season. But I wouldn't expect less pretentiousness from a so called "meditterenean" restaurant in London charging 40 euros per head for vegetable dishes.

    What surprises me is how conservative english tourists are in Greece conserning sampling greek dishes and sticking only to greek salad when here they have the chance to sample true mediterennean vegetable dishes for 3-4 euros. I mean it would be absurd to charge 12 euros for 3 slices of aubergine and 10 pomegranate seeds not that they would ever appear on the same plate. German and French tourists are more adventurous. For the prices people are willing to pay in this restaurant for me it shows how distant they are from true food meaning knowing how little the ingredients cost and how easy it is to preapare it.

    Taking the pomegranate seeds out and reserving them for better use that's a great and simple dish. Plus frying the aubergine heightens its taste. Roasted aubergine still needs plenty of olive oil as a dressing. Aubergine without olive oil is like eating mashed paper. No wonder people who don't know how to prepare aubergine are not great fans of aubergine.

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    1. Please don't generalise about English tourists only eating greek salad - I know that there are a lot of them who are conservative, but there are also many of us who delight in the vast range of vegetable dishes available. For English vegetarians, Greek food is a paradise - so many varied and interesting dishes to choose from!

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    2. I write what I see in the summer in greek tavernas and I can tell you I steer away from mass tourism destinations so they are not even the typical English tourist. And it surprises me with all this hype about mediterennean food in the UK and the prices of the dishes in the mediterennean style restaurants in that country.

      Ok, maybe those tourists do it only for lunch but greek food is so cheap compared to 40 euros per head for the same dishes in the UK that I thought they could sidetrack from their habit of having only a salad or a sandwich for lunch and try sth more. And I said I compared them with German and French tourists sitting next to them. I mean we even start betting when the English tourists order but they are so predictable. I'm sorry if I'm generalising but as a greek saying goes the exception simply confirms the rule. The UK has a very long way to go to get people to be more interested in their food and especisally in preparing it.

      Anyway I'm glad you like greek food. I like english food, it's very comforting, like bread and butter pudding or fish and chips. I only wish it was healthier so I could cook more often with butter and cream.

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    3. Mariza, really, could you be anymore patronising, or ill informed in your generalisations?

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    4. Patronising is a very subtle concept for a Greek and we usually don't bother and just say what we think. It's very common these days for people to generalise about Greeks. Not all Greeks are corrupt but I'm not offended when foreigners say that Greece is a corrupt country because it's true. I don't take it personally so I don't see why you are objecting. Also having spent my fair share of time living and working in the UK I don't need to be informed by anyone, I have my own opinions about the good things and the bad things about Brits.

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    5. people of greek heritage dont have it easy these days - every single day, greece is in the headlines (has been for the past two years); who are 'the greeks'? they are what is seen on mainstream news, ie protesters and vandals in athens, they are also lazy tax evaders

      in NZ, i was taught never to say what i think becos it could be construed as offensive and ill-informed - when i came to GR, i realised that peopel did in fact express their opinion very democratically, despite not living in a true democracy

      what i really wanted to express in this post was my horror at the expensive prices blithely paid by diners to have a food experience, not just in the UK, but anywhere in the woerld, including greece (we have our own horror stories of such places); i also wanted to say that i (and my whole family) work extremely hard and have made a lot of sacrifices in order to be able to eat very high quality food, and maintain a standard of living in a society where we feel denigrated by greek politicians, western society and those 'greeks' that the world sees - but if i do that, i will sound as though i have a very high opinion of myself, something that i have been taught in my formative years as being a politically incorrect and pompous way to exhibit myself

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    6. Mariza, I'm not interested in getting into a debate about the relative merits of Greek versus British anything. My baseline is that maybe we should all be a little more respectful, and open minded when formulating our opinions. There are many of us, all over the world, engaged in debates, and working, trying to put the politics of food back onto the public agenda with regards to health, the environment, sustainability. We All, in the so called "developed world" have the same problems regarding food, we're fat, we're unhealthy, we're pumped with chemicals, we've forgotten what real food is, and have handed over the production of food to scientists and business. Greece and the UK currently lead the tables in terms of childhood obesity, none of us have much to be proud of.

      Just a couple of things re Ottolenghi, restaurant vegetarian food is expensive, it takes a lot more care, time and skill to create flavours than cooking with a slab of meat. His restaurants are in some of the most expensive parts of London, and rent in London anyway is crazy expensive, hence the prices plus a lot of people in London earn a lot of money comparatively. I doubt that people in Israel (where he's from) would find his food pretentious, and pomegranates and aubergines do grow together. We may not all be able to eat there, but it's always interesting to learn about other peoples' food.

      Maria, I agree with what you say, and we too live simply, work hard, earn bugger all and eat good clean food. My Cretan family think we're mad and don't understand why we don't buy it all from the supermarket and work in an office. It's difficult to explain that we choose the life they killed themselves to get away from. You never sound pompous, and your blog is interesting, provocative and endlessly useful, thank you.

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    7. oh, thanks, sometimes i need to be reassured about it all - but yes, just lately, i really do believe that we work extremely hard

      i found a photo of ottolenghi's original idea for this dish - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=350325978320623&set=a.350325858320635.88403.243885972297958&type=1&theater i must admit that pomegranate, aubergine and large floaty basil leaves do look a little unusual as a combination (i think i like my renidition); the photo reminds me of the gay diet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/jan/10/the-gay-diet something i would have problems mentioning if i hadnt discovered that ottolenghi was actually gay!

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    8. oops, sorry, one link missing http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/859313-masterchefs-yottam-ottolenghi-blurs-the-breakfast-boundary

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    9. I still can't get why you're objecting about my comments on Brits and food and why you see me wanting to get into a debate. I try to see the truth. I'm not defending anyone. I say Greece is a corrupt country, we have first to aknowledge that in order to correct it. Yes, Greek children are obese, you're absolutely right, cause apart from eating their bean soup (fasolada) they also stuff themselves with souvlaki and pizza. But Greeks having recent memories in their food culture of being an extremely poor and agricultural society still keep this heritage by consuming 756g/day of fruits and vegetables compared to 258 of Brits http://www.eufic.org/article/en/expid/Fruit-vegetable-consumption-Europe/
      And I hope the financial crisis will cut back children's pocket money for junk food.

      One thing I disagree with you is vegetarian food having to be expensive and complicated in order to be tasty. And I'm afraid vegetarian restaurants as any other restaurant, promote this idea in order to overcharge their dishes. In Greece they can't do it because common sense prevails so restaurants go heavy on meat, seafood and fish, that's why you don't see vegetarian restaurants in Greece. What needs to change in order to promote vegetarian and healthy food in the western world is people's palates. I agree meat is a safer bet for quick cooking and taste but it depends on what kind of taste you 're after. Greeks still have the advantage on being raised on very very simple tastes. Take chickpea soup for example. Water, 1 onion, 1/2 kg of soaked chick peas, a cup of olive oil, l tomato optional. No spices, no sausages (fake or real), no herbs. Just the chestnutty taste of this year's chick peas slowly simmered for a couple of hours and the rich taste of olive oil. So in my opinion vegetarian tastes should be very simple tastes in order to be feasible by anyone. If you want more complicated tastes you end up paying them over the top. For me Ottolenghi restaurant and recipes are interesting in the way I would try any other middle eastern dish with its exaggeration in tastes and presentation. But it would be really time consuming to try to recreate them in my kitchen compared to the chickpea soup I serve which my children love. I think greek and italian vegetarian dishes are simpler and more feasible for people to recreate but how much could you overcharge my chick pea soup in a restaurant. I also see this with other non vegetarian chefs. The number and quantity of ingredients they use for a dish, I would cook 2-3 dishes with them. They don't want people to cook their recipes. They want them to eat them in their restaurants or buy their ready made meals. Vegetarian chefs are doing just the same thing and middle eastern cuisine can lend itself more easily for this purpose.

      I apologise to Maria for the overuse of the space she provides for my comments.

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    10. actually, i quite like debates, esp from people who have really thought hard about the food we put into our bodies

      i'm glad mariza mentioned the issue of fasolada served with souvlaki on the side - many people argue that the greeks have changed their dietary habits, but in fact, they have not: they have simply added the junk to the good stuff

      i've always wished i could run a vege restaurant in crete - not that i'm business minded, but i know that only tourists would be interested in the food i'd serve (dishes would probably be modeled on ottolenghi's food, whose recipes i DO in fact like using!) - but cretans and probably most greeks rarely would be prepared to fork out on intersting vege dishes; doesnt that say a lot about us? we would choose imam baldi at a taverna, but not egglant and pomegranate, possibly becos it doesnt have a 'name', it's just 'eggplant, yoghurt, rocket, basil and pomegrnate' - greeks are brand-lovers, and it shows in their food!!!

      PS: i initially booked ottolenghi's restaurant for a possibly forthcoming family trip to London but in the end after suffering an internal battle with my senses, i knew that it was outrageous to spend so much money eating imported food that i can and do cook myself - i've asked our host to find a good Korean restaurant for a more culturally inclined culinary experience (i will simply fantasise on what i'm missing out on...)

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    11. After I wrote my last comment I found out with surprise in the last link Maria gave that Ottolenghi's dad thinks his son's food is too busy and he himself only uses 3 ingredients when cooking. More along with what I wrote above I guess his dad is closer to his no nonsense childhood food memories and he doesn't need a lot of frills to enjoy his food.

      In the same link the dish Ottolenghi suggests of "Slow-cooked chickpeas with tomatoes, diced carrots, coriander, chorizo and a fried egg" shows that despite of what he says that his dad's sensibilities have stayed with him, he is carrying on the typical western misconception that pulses can't stand on its own in terms of taste and need to be paired with sth spicy as sausage/bacon and their fake versions for vegetarians. I'm afraid you can't go very far in vegetarianism if you're after such complicated tastes. It becomes too difficult, expensive and time consuming. And I'm not trying to play it smart here, only wanting to contribute with my food experiences and a non typical westerner's look on what is vegetarian food after all. For me it is cooking very very simply with vegetables and pulses and hence very frugally as Maria keeps teaching us in her blog and reeducating our palates to feel happy with simple tastes.

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    12. Maria, I think Greeks would be very interested in trying Ottolenghi style dishes in a veggie restaurant as long as they are charged 5-6 euros for a good size portion compared to 4-5 euros they would pay for a greek style dish. I don't think you would get them to pay more for veggie dishes because the dishes would seem so familiar they know that in fact they are simple to prepare with inexpensive ingredients. Where Greeks are completely tricked in restaurants in being overcharged is fish and shellfish dishes.

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    13. re-education: if only i could re-educate the whole of greece, wouldnt it be a great place to live in after that? notice i called greece 'it' (i usually refer to greece as 'she')

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    14. This is less of a discussion about vegi food versus meat but one of restaurant food versus home cooking, At no point have I suggested that in order for vegi food to be tasty it must be complicated and or expensive. What I did say was that restaurant vegi food can take a lot of skill and time to prepare, because surely nobody goes out to a restaurant to pay for things that they could make easily at home, You're right, most vegetarian dishes are not expensive in Greece because there is a limit to how much you can charge for a plate of gigantes, plus we all know exactly how much it costs to make and how to do it.

      Why should vegetarian food de facto be any more simple than food that involves meat. There is a difference between everyday food, food for fuel and those occasions when we want to be excited and experience new tastes, and thank the Food Gods that there are chefs out there with the imagination and skill to provide us with those experiences.

      Maria, I am very interested in your Korean food experience, I've never tried it and know nothing about it. Maybe if you pass an Ottolenghi during the day you could treat yourself to some takeaway food, not cheap but much more affordable than the evening. Have a look at Leon's too if you don't know them. An added bonus is most takeout food is exempt from 20% VATax, the negative is eating outside in the cold and the rain.

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    15. HA! i will definitely do my best to pass by ottolenghi - as we say in greek, χορτασα με το ματι - i really do want to see what is on display at the window (i amn already feelins very dickensian - like the hungry children staring at a bakery window full of currant buns and gingerbread men) - i'll look up Leon's too

      persoanlly, i do think cooking meat is easier than cooking veges - they need so much more preparation and imagination - i must admit that ottolenghi's food is very inspiring: how else would i have created the dishes i made? through his pictures, menu ideas etc of course

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    16. PS" something else i'm going to try while we're there is PRIMARK, MATALAN and PEACOCKS - there really ISNT anything like them here in hania, is there?!

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    17. Bizarley, there is a Peacocks in Heraklion! One of the problems with these "one wear" shops is that after one wash the arm hole is where the neck once was and the side seams are now running down the front and back! If you have the mental strength! TK Maxx is worth the battle, for previous season clothes from good department stores and designers. Sometimes they have nothing other times it packed with brilliant stuff, particularly shoes. Marks and Spencers is also great for basics and at least 50% cheaper (often more) than their franchises that operate in Greece...... I have turned into my Mother!. Please don't feel obligated to post this in your comments!!

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    18. PS: OlyveOil - thanks for all that advice about the clothes stores - all points taken and WELL-imbibed!!!!!

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  2. after making a few ottolenghi style dishes in my kitchen, i've realised that too many flavours in the same meal really is not necessary - at one point, i felt as if i was emptying out my pantry...

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  3. Even after 15 years in Greece I never really came round to liking aubergines - to me they taste like paper whatever you do with them. Pity - makes me feel excluded. One reversal in my tastes was beetroot. Before I lived in Greece I loathed it, but after eating it with skordalia I became a big fan.

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  4. First try cooking only with summer aubergines. Slice them lenghtwise 1/2cm thick and soak them in heavily salted water for 2 hours. That draws their water out and leaves space for the olive oil to enter their flesh when cooking them. Then drain and squeeze the water out of them. You can try simply frying them in lots of olive or sunfower oil and enjoy. Or you can grill or roast them. If you skip the step of soaking them in the salty water for 2 hours and fry them straight away after slicing, they absorb much more olive oil and they don't become crispy which is fine by many Greeks, me included, who are in a rush to cook and don't mind a lot of olive oil in their fried food. Also if you don't soak them first, when roasting/grilling they get all their water out in the oven and boil instead of roasting/grilling hence you get the wet paper taste. I mostly go for frying when preparing aubergines.

    Aubergine puree, melitzanosalata, is also great, no mayo added please too heavy, and the best I had was in a friend's house in Constantinople where they keep the aubergine flesh white after peeling it by dipping the aubergine in water with lemon and make this exquisite mash which shows that the tradition of good cooking in Constantonople is alive and not just a myth. Too much work though.

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  5. Είδα μελιτζάνες και μπήκα! Πολύ ενδιαφέρον άρθρο Μαρία. Όλη μέρα προσπαθώ να το διαβάσω και όλο πάω κι έρχομαι και συνεχίζω. Μου άρεσε ο συνδυασμός και θα τις κάνω κι εγώ κάποια στιγμή. Πράγματι το να έχεις τη δυνατότητα να τρως λαχανικά στην εποχή τους, είναι τέλειο! Όσο για τις τιμές στο μαγαζί, ναι. Είναι τσουχτερές. Τέλος, να πω ότι κι εγώ έχω να πάω έξω για φαγητό από τον Οκτώβριο. Σε ποιον περισσεύουν πια;

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