Greek cheesecake (Τζιζκέικ)

Cheesecake in the sense that it is understood in modern culinary terms - a crumbed base, topped by a cream-cheese filling and decorated with fruit or jam - is not very Greek, even though one of the first cheesecakes was probably the 'plakounta' (placenta) made by ancient Greeks. Something similar to the plakounta is the simple melopita (honey pie), made on the island of Sifnos, a self-crusting egg-and-fresh-cheese mixture sweetened with honey. Traditional Greek cooking also includes a lot of sweet cheese-based desserts: in Crete, we have mizithropita (also known as Sfakiani pita) and other similar filo-wrapped pies.

Modern New York style cheesecake is now widely available in Greek patisseries, and is quite popular, possibly due to the heavy advertising of Philadelphia cream cheese, with a whole TV cooking show dedicated to its use. It's not an ingredient I keep in the house because of our preference for locally produced fresh cheeses. I decided to make a cheesecake with my leftover Greek Christmas cookies, melomakarona, which we got a bit tired of eating. For the cream cake, an idea would be to use a recipe for melopita which uses fresh cheese (mizithra). But local mizithra varieties have a distinctly savoury taste, which is why it isn't the best cheese to use when making a no-cook cheesecake. For this reason, I decided to use Philadelphia cream cheese, which gives a smooth texture, mixed with some other Greek dairy products.



For the base:
Break some leftover melomakarona (including crushed walnuts - I think I used about 10 melomakarona) for your base and mix them with about 50g butter. Press this mixture into a baking tin (I don't have a springform tin).

For the cream filling:
Place a small pottle of cream cheese (200g) with equal amounts of thick Greek yoghurt (known in Greece as γιαούρτι στραγγιστό - 'milk cream') and cream (known in Greece as κρέμα γάλακτος - 'milk cream'), 50g runny honey and grated orange zest. Once the mixture thickens (but does not set), pour it over the biscuit base and allow to set in the fridge.

For the topping:
Any kind of jam would do here. I decided to cook up a fresh runny jam, by heating about 100g of frozen red berries with 50g sugar for 5 minutes on high heat. I poured this hot mixture over the cold cream to get a slightly marbled effect. (Alternatively, let the jam cool down for a firmer top layer.) 

Another Greek idea for topping would be to pour some honey over the cream, sprinkled with orange zest and ground cinnamon, something I decided against at the last minute, because I was fast running out of honey after all my Christmas baking. honey also has a very sharp taste, whereas sugar is more neutral (it sweetens something without adding flavour to it, like honey does).

It's now St John's feastday, and there are still some more melomakarona (as well as kourambiedes) left over. An idea for a trifle, perhaps?  

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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.

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Sweets (Γλυκά)

Sweets from the zaharoplasteio are a very common gift when visiting friends. This is the main reason I don't make many desserts for my dinner parties: I know that we will end up with too many sweets in the house.


Galaktoboureko (custard pie) is a traditional Greek favorite, along with baklavadakia or saragli, which are mini baklava-style baked pastry shapes; both of them are syrup-drenched, made with very thin sheets of filo pastry.

The chocolate torte was filled with cream and hardly any sponge cake. It was the most popular dessert, which means that there isn't much left of it today. Leftover galaktoboureko makes a great breakfast, and the mini-pastries are good as an after-dinner dessert, especially since they had the added twist of being made with chocolate-flavoured filo pastry.

©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.

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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Bitter orange (Νεραντζάκι)

What does the Greek economic crisis taste of? One of the projects at the 2nd Symposium of Greek Gastronomy that greatly touched my heart was that of the bitter orange art project by Ino Varvariti and Persefoni Myrtsou. They harvested the well known bitter oranges in December 2012, January 2013 and March 2013 from the trees that line the roads of the largest cities of Greece, Athens and Thessaloniki, as a way to identify the taste of the crisis. Bitter orange trees are very hardy trees, and they make a spectacular sight throughout the period when the dark green foliage stands as a stunning background to the bright orange fruit that it is laden with.

Bitter orange trees in Syntagma Square

Bitter orange trees in an inner-city Athens street.

These bitter orange trees are used purely for decoration, as their fruit is too bitter to be eaten raw. They can survive in cold/low temperatures where sweet orange trees do not grow, even in highly urbanised settings. When they are in flower, they mask the polluted air of the city with the sweet smell of their blossom; when the oranges take on their bright colour, they look similar to a Christmas tree. Christmas is when they look their best.

"Their strength against harsh weather conditions and sicknesses, their fragrant flowers and their beautiful fruits, are some of the reasons why these trees are often planted in the urban centres of Greece in order to embellish the urban spaces. However, these 'urban' bitter oranges are rarely harvested by the citizens, due to the polluted environment of the cities and due to the fact that the origin of food is usually connected to its production in the rural space."

I thought that the historical centre's taste of bitter orange was a little more bitter than Syntagma's taste. By trying the different varieites, you are able to understand the effects of the crisis in each area through the bitterness of each variety. 

But the fruit of these trees, despite being too bitter to eat raw, can be used in a number of ways:

"After a certain procedure and with the addition of sugar, it is often used for the making of marmalades and sweets. Also, the leaves, the flowers and the skin, due to their fragrance are used for the making of confectioneries, in alcoholic beverages and in aromatology."

In Crete, the juice of the bitter orange can be used to flavour dishes or to marinate meat and fish, in the same way as lemons. Bitter orange juice is also used as a curing treatment and preservation for olives. The peel of the fruit can be dried and candied, to be used as dried fruit in sweets, pies, savouries and salads. But most of the time, the peel is turned into a typical Greek dessert known as the γλυκό του κουταλιού, the spoon sweet, where an array of bitter or under-ripe fruits are turned into a syrupy dessert.

Bitter orange spoon sweet is typically served in Greece as a refreshment with a glass of water, sometimes together with black coffee. This is considered a special treat for guests to one's home. Therefore, it serves as a medium for discussion

The harvest points of Persefoni's and Ino's bitter orange spoon sweet were some well known spots in central streets running through Athens. Most of these areas carry some emotional weight in the minds of all Greeks:

"The selected urban areas (around Syntagma Square, the historical centre and Kypseli in Athens; Agiou Mina, Vassileos Irakleiou, Proxenou Koromila and Mitropoleos streets, as well as the “Upper” town in Thessaloniki) are spaces registered in the personal and collective subconscious as agents of historical memory, but they also remain alive parts of the cities in the present. Now the marks of the economic crisis are visible in these spaces."

So Ino's and Persefoni's bitter orange, harvested from the urban areas of Greece most heavily bruised by the economic crisis, takes on a symbolic social character:

"The spoon-sweet still maintains this [hospitality] attribute, and thus becomes the point of departure for the creation of new associations and construction of new meanings. Furthermore, it enables an open dialogue and exchange of ideas in relation to the crisis in Greece."

By turning the urban bitter orange into spoon sweet and serving it in the village of Amari, Persefoni and Ino brought the taste of the crisis to the Symposium and to the village of Amari. It had also previsouly travelled to Berlin, as part of the exhibition “Domestic crisis” at the Institut für alles Mögliche. There, the audience, being predominantly German, had to be shown how to eat the bitter orange spoon sweet, because, being German, they were not familiar with this tradition, unlike at Amari, where the bitter orange was more well known to the participants and the subtle differences in taste among the different areas where the fruit was harvested (they were all prepared separately) could be appreciated.

The bitter orange spoon sweet project was directly associated with the economic crisis, as was my own presentation (Greek food, Greek identity and the economic crisis). If I lived in the middle of the crisis-ridden neighbourhoods where the bitter oranges were harvested, I would probably be the first to use them. Therefore, I can relate to Persefoni's and Ino's urban bitter orange spoon sweet - it's all part of the frugal food lifestyle that the crisis has forced us to adopt.

All the photos (except the first two) come from the artists' personal archive. The photos of the bitter orange trees in urban Athens have been taken from the blogs credited to them below each photo. The italicised paragraphs come from Persefoni's and Ino's exhibition work.

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Cafe bar (Καφέ-μπαρ)

When we arrived at the cafe bar, we couldn't see our friends. We looked around at the tables located near the children's play area, where we had once sat the last time we had come to this 'poly-entertainment' centre, so that we could watch them playing on the trampolines. But our friends weren't there. Then we realised that there was much more to the cafe bar than just the children's play area: we discovered seating areas at different levels, indoors and outdoors. The space near the bowling parlour was empty, understandably; the weather was too good to stay inside.

We found them sitting at a large table, chatting with people we did not know. We live in a small town, and yet we don't know everyone in it. We do not even bump into each other occasionally; some of us are neatly tucked away in our own little corners of our own little world.. We only know a certain section of the population, and naturally, we keep company with people who are similar to us; it was instantly obvious that this group of people were not like us.

For a start, they seemed very comfortable sitting around a table at a cafe bar, and not just any cafe bar, but specifically this one. They could not be imagined sitting at the crassier places near the tourist area close to our house. It would be the wrong stratum, despite the fact the our friend's BFF lived on the other side of town, close to us: "Well, I already had a house, " she meowed, "and my mother lives there too, on the ground floor," - purr, purr - "so I couldn't bear the thought of moving up here, even though it is where my husband would prefer to live," she explained.

"MARIA MOU!" my host was screeching (she is well known for her very loud voice), "come and meet Ev-do-XI-a!" There was no need for me and my husband to come and meet Evdoxia; Evdoxia had already been placed before us whether she wanted to meet us or not. Our host had moved to a different table, pulling aside only Evdoxia from the previous one. She came to sit with us, as only a good business person would. Being well versed in public relations, she did not look uncomfortable sitting with the hoi polloi.

Evdoxia had long peroxide hair, which she had had styled in the shape of a 60s bouffant beehive hair-do. Her teeth had been whitened professionally and she wore a long tapered white sundress over her waif-like figure. Around her neck hung a large diamond sea-blue pendant on a silver chain. Her short calculated steps were taken in high-heeled cork platform shoes, which completed the coordinated 60s look. It was like seeing Twiggy sitting before me. I not only felt under-dressed; I knew I was badly dressed. My Primark jeans had that cheap functional look to them, and my crinkly Indian cotton gold-embroidered top looked unironed (it looks unironed even when I do iron it, so I don't usually bother to iron it in the first place). But my outfit choice matched Evdoxia's in that we were dressed in similar period costume.With my flower-power hippie look, straggly split ends to match, we were from opposite ends of the same spectrum.

"I've known this little girl since she was knee-high!" our host proclained as she smothered Evdoxia in her busty embrace. Indeed, Evdoxia still looked like a little girl, not a day older than 25. I couldn't work out what she'd botoxed, as it was done quite discreetly. Evdoxia smiled widely and laughed softly the whole time she sat with us. She showed interest in our names and what my husband did for a living. She did not ask what I did for a living, presumably because she thought I did what she did, which was nothing except to look pretty. (Since I wasn't doing a good job of it, she avoided me the embarrassment of asking.) But she could probably tell that I did my own housework and cooking, which she probably doesn't do, presumably because she has one of the few Filipino maids still working in hania (they're so much less demanding than Albanians, I've been told), her mother lives downstairs, and she is probably spending an awful lot of time preening herself.

I imagined Evdoxia's kitchen to be very clean because waifs don't eat, and if they do, it's probably salad or something from Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook, not the puff pastry delights her husband's multi-million-euro business was producing. But being a high-profile businessman's wife, she probably did have kids - she can't have gotten away with that one - and she was sure to be much older than 25, as our host was 55 herself, and she'd known Evdoxia since she was a teenager. I presumed that her children were bouncing away on the trampolines on the other side of the complex. They would no doubt eventually appear at the table by her side, perhaps when they wanted some granita, ice-cream, crisps, pasta, tourta or soda. Or simply some more money for the games.

Evdoxia politely sat with us for long enough to show solidarity towards the lower classes, after which she got up slowly, shaking my husband's hand (not mine) and bidding us a good evening. She went back to her παρεούλα, right above where we were sitting. The up-theres were now drinking aperitifs in long glasses with multiple straws in various colours and psychedelic umbrellas. We ordered our ice-creams and drinks at the same time that I noticed a large platter of mezedakia making its way to Evdoxia's table. This time, Evdoxia was sucking at a cigarette, and letting out the smoke in an upwards motion by tilting her head back towards us. She now looked in her element - less formal and more open - leaning over the table to have a heart-to-heart chat with another female member of her troupe.

Eventually the troupe's children arrived at the table. The girls were all wearing BFF T-shirts. A chubby early-teen wearing black leggings sat by Evdoxia's side. She looked very much like her mother; her mousy brown hair told of what colour her mother's peroxide roots were. She weighed more than her mother, presumably because she was eating her dad's puff pastry delights.

Just as we were finishing off our ice-creams, a plate of something that looked like a deconstructed ekmek arrived at our table. The shredded pastry rounds were delicately filled with walnuts and very lightly doused in syrup. The arrangement was plated beautifully with little balls of ice-cream around it, chocolate sauce drizzled over it in fancy patterns, and puffs of whipped cream in the corners of the plate.

"Κερασμένο από την κα. Ευδοξία," the waiter said, and we all looked in the direction of Evdoxia's table. Our host picked up her coffee glass and swung it high in the air in Evdoxia's direction. But Evdoxia didn't notice, as she was obviously engrossed in the conversation taking place at her own table. She was sitting right behind us, so she had her back to us and couldn't have seen the arrival of her κέρασμα. The desert looked and felt just like Evdoxia - light and fluffy, airy and breezy. As it melted in our mouths, it left behind the rather heavy feeling you get when you've had too much of a good thing. We were having ice-cream followed by ice-cream. There is definitely a moment when it actually feels too much.

I am so annoyed I forgot to take a photo of the ekmek ice cream dessert. You will have to be content with my description; at the same time, you need to use your imagination.  

PS: Time for a blogging break (because I am really really busy with 'real' work). See you later...

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Chocolate truffles (Τρούφες σοκολάτας)

At Greek schools, there are no restrictions on mothers bringing a home-made sweet for a celebration. So I make all the treats that my children carry to school with them for their birthdays and school functions. Although I rarely make spectacular cakes in my own home (you would have seen them on the blog if I did), I have apparently gained quite a reputation among my children's school friends and their teachers as a maker of very good cakes.

Working with chocolate ganache can be messy - I prefer to use two spoons to scoop it out once it's set. Then I press it in the tin to give it a round shape, before rolling it in coconut or sugar hail. Using your hands to make perfect round balls means you'll end up licking them a lot. 

I make (apparently, as rumour spreads) the best chocolate cake, the most amazing cupcakes, incredible muffins and the tastiest home-made birthday torte that my kids' schoolfriends have ever tried. My cakes and sweets rarely have a spectacular appearance, but they are all made with few ingredients and hardly any special techniques or tools; all the recipes can be found online.
 

I rolled the truffles in chocolate hail, grated coconut or coloured sugar hail, at the request of my daughter who thinks this will be the most popular truffle. The ganache was made using this recipe. I added crushed semi-sweet biscuits to the mixture before it set in the fridge to make the recipe go a bit further (I got 44 truffles; without the biscuits, I would probably have only 25-30). 

Most parents in Crete would be very surprised to hear that home-made sweets are banned in many schools in places like the US. They would also be horrified to know that one of the reasons for this is due (apart from allergy problems) to the fear of low hygiene standards (don't all kitchens getmessy when we cook from scratch, whether they are home kitchens or industrial ones?) and the fear of children being potentially targeted or inadvertedly affected by via food poisoning. There is still some innocence left in us here.

For a Cretan twist to chocolate truffles - click here for a recipe for chestnut truffles.

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Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Greek-inspired waffles (Βάφλες)

Prices are in euro (valid in Hania). All ingredients are Greek or locally sourced; those marked with * are considered frugal here because they are cheap and/or people have their own supplies.

While we travelled through Northern Europe last month, we tasted our first waffle. I've never made waffles before because, like poffertjes, waffles need special equipment, which is only used to make that specific dish. I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea to buy single-use equipment, but since I invested in a special Dutch pancake tin while I was there, I decided that a waffle maker is something I had to have after all, especially if you have children. Apparently you can make waffle batter into pancakes - but they wouldn't be waffles, woud they? And like poffertjes, waffles are fun to make and easily enjoyed by everyone and they provide happy memories.

I bought a cheap waffle maker in Hania, made in China. It cost €25 with a one-year guarantee. (That's expensive for a cheap import, isn't it? Prices in Hania are always much more expensive than elsewhere in Greece.) The waffle maker doubles up as a toasted sandwich maker too (the irons come out), but since we already have a toasted sandwich maker, it's unlikely that I'll use my new gadget other than as a waffle maker. Such equipment make me feel materialistic, so I look for ways to get the best use out of them.

I've been given a good recipe by my friend Uta for waffles. Uta's original recipe is especially clever in that grated apple is added to it to make the waffles stay moist and juicy until the next day, so you can have them as a dinner treat and then enjoy the remaining for breakfast the next day. By replacing various ingredients in the batter with local ingredients, notably olive oil instead of butter, I've come up with a Greek-inspired waffle recipe.

You need:
125g olive oil* (instead of butter)
70ml orange juice* (instead of milk - or you can use a mixture)
125g flour (I used a mix of white and brown flour - ~25 cents)
1 small teaspoon baking powder*
1 apple, grated (~25 cents), OR: 1 small zucchini, grated (it basically does the same job - it keeps the batter moist - in the autumn, I also use pear)
2 eggs*
2 tablespoons sugar*
vanilla flavouring (I omitted this, since I was using fresh orange juice - you can add orange zest for more flavour)
 
Mix ingredients together to make a thick batter. Heat the waffle iron and bake the waffles until golden brown. The mixture is enough for 6 waffles (or 8 smaller ones, with missing corners).

Waffle batter containing grated apple

Waffle batter can be flavoured or kept moist in many different ways. To avoid buying apples (something we don't grow ourselves), I used fresh zucchini (we cut the first one from the garden on the 15th of May). Grated zucchini is used in sweet treats like zucchini bread and zucchini-chocolate cake. This is a very clever way to keep children eating healthy food.

 

A teddy bear's picnic with Greek toppings - the cream, the organic strawberries and the chocolate topping are all products of Greece.

The first time I cook something new, it's to get the hang of it. The second time I make the same thing is never like the first time I made it. This time, I divided the batter and added grated zucchini in one lot, and grated zucchini with cocoa powder in the second lot. The plain zucchini waffles tasted good with cheese - great for people who aren't too keen on sweet snacks. Savoury waffles make a great meal.

Waffle batter containing grated zucchini and cocoa powder - I added just enough cocoa to give the waffle a rich chocolate colour.

Waffles have very little to do with Greek cuisine, but when made in a healthy way with Greek ingredients, they can be enjoyed as a Greek-inspired twist.

All the different waffles I've made so far have been very successful. The same recipe can be adapted in many ways to ensure that you're not just eating a fatty hi-carb sweet treat.

The waffle batter can be made at night, ready to pour the next day into the waffle maker, so you can start the day off with home-made fruit and veg waffles: before you leave the house, you'll have had a good dose of olive oil, eggs, orange juice and zucchini, topped with some home-made jam and organic fruits from the garden. (I usually halve the recipe when I keep the mixture overnight in the fridge.)


Cost of 8 waffles: about €1, eaten once as an evening snack and the next day for breakfast, among four people. Together with the toppings, each serving costs about 50 cents.

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Ice cream (Παγωτό)

After a long cold wet winter, the welcome spring weather has given my whole family a chance to go on walks again. My favorite walks are through the countryside where there are no shops and hence no temptations, so there is no need to carry a purse. But we live in what is generally known as a semi-rural area, so the urban part of the town creeps into my landscape and I do not need to be reminded of this by my children, who much prefer the town for their strolls.

The Venetian port is their favorite place to go for a long walk. It's probably one of the only places in the town where they never complained of tired feet. How can they, with so many temptations on offer? The tourist shops are now all open and waiting for your money. The children also like to stroll through the modern town of Hania, which I find preferable at the weekends when allt he shops are closed, since you can only go window-shopping then. Our walks often begin in the modern town and end up at the Venetian port. At some point along this route, mother's purse will inevitably come out for the customary ice cream on such excursions.

 

A lesser known ice-cream flavour: green lemon ice-cream - tangy and refreshing

Greek ice cream is generally quite good: the globally well-known range of ice cream can all be found here too. Soft-serve cones, ice-cream on a stick, small pre-packaged tubs and rocket cones, as well as family-size tubs in a range of flavours are all sold at supermarkets, mini-markets, tavernas, cafes, and kiosks. All zaharoplasteia sell ice-cream made freshly on the premises, available in a cone, a cup or freshly filled tubs according to your preferences. Whichever ice-cream you prefer to buy, take note that it's not cheap in Greece, unless you buy it from supermarkets like LIDL, where the price also denotes the quality you will get.

After a sunny day's stroll, it's hard to miss spotting the mounds of ice cream at the front of the stores that sell it all over the town. If (like myself) you think pre-packaged ice cream is expensive in Greece, wait till you see the prices for one ball of ice-cream, being sold from the gelaterias. They range from €1.00 to €1.70 a ball! This issue was a good opportunity to teach my children a ltitle home economics recently.

Ice cream from a zaharoplasteio costs the same price, whether you eat it at one of their outdoor tables or you take it away on a cone or in a plastic cup (spoon provided). We all had a ball of ice cream recently at a zaharoplasteio (€1.60 each), after our monthly book purchases. 

I usually park the car on a central street in the town on our weekend strolls, as the parking there is free at this time, and the streets are not congested. Most people will now be found by the harbour, rather than mid-town - the streets here tend to be quite deserted, apart from the usual crowds at the souvlaki shops, most of which are now selling souvlaki for around €2 (cheaper than in the past). As we walked from one gelateria/zaharoplasteio to another, I kept an eye on the prices: €1.70 a ball close to the Venetian harbour, €1.50-1.60 just a few metres away from the harbour, €1.30 at a mid-town zaharoplasteio, and €1.00 at a modern centrally-located cafe.

 Oreo-flavoured ice-cream in a typical gelateria display

Bear in mind that all places serve similar kinds of ice-cream, and they are all very tasty. The same price is paid whether you buy a cone or a cup. Toppings (eg chocolate sauce) are served with the cup, not the cone. The size of the scoop is generally the same everywhere; well, most of the time... The more expensive places sometimes (but not always) offer outdoor seating. The latest trend for ice cream flavours leaves a lot to be desired: globally well-known cookie/chocolate-bar brands (eg Oreo, Lila Pause, Rocher, etc) mixed into vanilla or chocolate ice-cream. Bad taste, if you ask me, and not very Greek.

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Lazarakia (Λαζαράκια)

It's Lazarus Saturday (Σάββατο του Λαζάρου) today. The Holy Week, the last seven days of Great Lent, begins tomorrow on Palm Sunday. According to the story, Lazarus was resurrected by Jesus and bought back to life after four days of being dead.



It's difficult to discuss death with children because it feels awkward. My children have reached the age where they know that death is inevitable, but they have not come close to death themselves. Two of their grandparents had died well before their parents married, another died when they were too young to have any recollections of their grandfather in living form, while the remaining grandparent is very old but seems to carry on as if she were half her age. Every now and then, we hear of an old or sick neighbour who died, but this kind of death does not carry the same weight, nor does it have the same significance as a death in one's own family. When death comes, we find that we are all quite unprepared for it, no matter how much we accept its inevitability.

There is a time for everything. Although I've never made lazarakia before, I now feel the need to. The making of lazarakia, a Greek food custom associated with Lazarus Saturday, is a somewhat appropriate way to introduce the topic of death to children. These spice breads are made to remember Lazarus who was raised from the dead. The dough is made without any animal products - as we are still in the fasting period of Great Lent - and then made into shapes of legless men, whose arms are tied around him, as was the custom in older times, when the dead were wrapped up, so to speak, in a sheet before they were buried.

 

"Aν Λάζαρο δεν πλάσεις, ψωμί δεν θα χορτάσεις" (Greek saying)

If you never shape dough into Lazarus, you will never have your fill of bread

Lazarus' experiences gave rise to the customs collectively known in Greece as Lazarika. The history of the Lazarika and lazarakia, while all-encompassingly Greek in nature, is not as common in some parts of Greece as it is in other parts, which explains why I'm not familiar with it myself. Most web-based recipes seem to come from the island of Kalimnos, where they are a steadfast tradition. At the children's primary school, they only make koulourakia in the run-up to Easter, never lazarakia, so I believe it isn't a Cretan tradition in the same way that it is in other parts of Greece. But Lazarus' story is an important one as Easter approaches. Lazarus died, and when he came back to life, he told people of what he saw there. Lazarus' death and resurrection forebodes Christ's; it is also the last miracle that Christ performed before his own death and resurrection. Hence the story of Lazarus teaches us that death is a form of new life.

Λάζαρος απενεκρώθη, Lazarus became undead,

Ανεστήθη και σηκώθη. Was resurrected and arose.

Λάζαρος σαβανωμένος Lazarus was shrouded

Και με το κηρί ζωσμένος And all tied up.

-Λάζαρε πες μας τι είδες "Tell us Lazarus, what did you see?

εις τον Άδη που επήγες; When you went to Hades?"

-Είδα φόβους, είδα τρόμους "I saw fears, I saw terrors

είδα βάσανα και πόνους. I saw troubles and pains.

Δώστε μου λίγο νεράκι Give me a little water

Να ξεπλύνω το φαρμάκι So that I may wash off the poison

Της καρδίας, των χειλέων From my heart, my lips

Και μη με ρωτάτε πλέον. And don't ask me anything else.
(From Magdalini's blog)

You can use your own favorite sweet bread dough to make lazarakia, as long as it's lenten (ie there are no eggs, butter or milk in the recipe). The original recipe that I used is in Greek. I've adapted it for my kitchen.

You need:
500g strong flour (or all-purpose flour)
1 sachet of dry yeast (in Greece, this come in 7g packets)
about 3/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup sugar (I used pure maple sugar, a present from a Canadian reader)
3/4 cup raisins (I didn't have any in the house, so I used bitter orange spoon sweet, chopped small)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
some whole cloves (these are traditionally used for the eyes)



In a small bowl, place the yeast in the water, add 2 tablespoons of the sugar and 4 tablespoons of the flour, and mix till the yeast dissolves. Allow the yeast to show signs of rising (about 20 minutes).
In a large bowl, place the flour and sugar, spices and raisins, mix them together, make a well in the middle of the bowl and pour in the yeast mixture. Knead well, adding flour/water appropriately to get a dough that is not sticky. Place the dough in an oiled bowl in a warm place, covered with a tea towel, and allow to rise for two hours in a warm oven. (I left the dough in a cold oven and allowed it to rise overnight.)

Shaping the dough is an important task. Divide the dough into ten balls the size of a mandarin (they would each weigh about 100g). From each ball, remove a small piece which will be rolled out like string. Divide this in two (for the arms). The remaining dough ball is shaped into a long oval loaf. (You can make an incision on one edge with kitchen scissors to form legs if desired.) Place the dough string crossed over the body, sticking it down on the underside of the bun. Place the cloves on the other edge, making them look like eyes.

Place the lazarakia on a lightly oiled baking tray and allow to rise for 30 minutes, covered with a tea towel. Brush them very lightly with orange juice or water. Cook them in a moderate pre-heated oven for 30 minutes.


Shaping the lazarakia is a fun way for children to pass their time. People who like to shape cookie, bread and pastry dough will enjoy this exercise. The lazarakia have a special shape, which, thanks to the internet, is not difficult to copy. Even if you can't make your lazarakia today, don't despair. It's not too late to make them tomorrow, because they can be eaten throughout the whole of next week (if indeed they last that long), as they do on the island of Kalymnos.

©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.

Chocolate lava pots (Λιωμένες σοκολατοπιτούλες)

We've had a long spell of very cold weather in Hania. Our wood-fired heater is working every day to keep us warm. This means that the oven compartment is always working. There is now so much free cooking heat which means I don't have to keep relying on the whims and fancies of the Greek public power corporation, the infamous DEH.

The DEH bill was where the new property tax was added, in order to be collected. Those who didn't pay itwere threatened with disconnections (something I haven't seen being done yet in Hania among those of my acquaintances who insisted that they will not pay). A rise in the cost of electricity was recently announced, put into effect this month, which will be reflected in our next bill. DEH also has one of the most powerful worker's unions in the country, so when DEH decides to strike, the disruptions are felt everywhere.

 An olive grove after the harvest: the nets are lifted, the field is cleared of branches and the weeds are mulched for organic manure.

We've always used gas for cooking on an element, but DEH has always powered my oven, until just recently when the wood-fired oven began working. For the winter at least, I won't have to worry about not having an oven to work with. I don't have to worry about not being able to cook my culinary creations when there is no power. We can heat both ourselves and our food with more sustainable forms of energy.

But firewood isn't free, nor is it cheap, even when you have your own supplies. It's just like the olive oil Cretans produce from their fields: that's not free or cheap either. To produce your own olive oil, you need to give up a lot of your own time and use up a lot of your own energy by laying nets, thrashing branches, gathering the olives, sifting them to get rid of the leaves and twigs, sacking them, taking them to the olive mill, gathering the oil into containers that you can carry to your home and filling up your coffers with it.

Most people working in another job during the day (like us) don't have time to harvest their olive crop on their own, so they hire someone else to do all this work for them (these people are nearly always Albanians). If they have a suitable vehicle, they just pick up the sacks full of olives and take them to the mill to pick up the oil that is produced from them. The people who did the job for them are paid according to the harvest - they get about 40% of the oil (which they can take home for their own use, or they can leave it at the olive press and be paid for it), the olive mill gets about 10% of the oil (for the work they did to produce the oil) and the owner of the field gets the remaining 50%. One litre of olive oil costs a litre of olive oil to produce. At the moment, Greek mills are paying out about 2 euro per litre. If you are paying less than that for the olive oil you are buying in a country that doesn't produce olive oil for its own supplies, then you can guarantee that someone else is suffering.

 This olive tree is believed to be the oldest olive tree in the world - and it's found here in Hania.

Our firewood comes from our own fields. The olive trees need annual trimming to maintain them with an umbrella-like shape, which makes it easier to harvest the crop. The umbrella shape also keeps the tree healthy, allowing it to 'breathe'. If the canopy of the tree is too dense, the tree will harbour a lot of insects amidst its branches, notably the Mediterranean dakos fly which favours olive trees, and the oil produced from dakos-infected crop will not be of a very high quality, as dakos infestation rasies the acidity level, ie the olive oil risks losing its extra virgin quality.

An olive grove located on a mountain slope, which makes harvesting very difficult. Most olive groves in Crete are located on slopes.  

To collect the firewood, you need your own appropriate vehicle; to run your own vehicle, you need diesel fuel; to buy diesel fuel, you need money - it can't be bought any other way in Greece. And once you bring your firewood home, you need to chop it into small enough pieces that fit into your fireplace or wood-fired heater. If you don't have the appropriate tools to cut your wood into suitably sized pieces, your arms are going to hurt a lot (my husband was off work for a week due to an inflammation in his shoulder - he couldn't change gears or turn the sterring wheel).

Our supplies oif firewood are as plentiful as the energy required to gather the wood and chop it. If worse gets to worst, and we can't afford to buy engine fuel, we won't be able to bring it home.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

*** *** ***

Using our own supplies of olive oil and firewood, I made these delicious chocolate lava pots. The recipe was based on a French one in Lunch in Paris by Elisabeth Bard, using butter and a conventional oven. But everything that requires butter can also be made with olive oil, as I've shown in other recipes. Even if you don't have a temperature gauge on your wood-fired oven, you can learn to gauge the heat, so that you can work out if something has been cooked and is ready to eat. You also need to know what the final product must look like.

You need: 

8 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (use some good stuff - low quality olive oil may have a bad odour or rancid taste, which will ruin the final taste)

200g cooking chocolate (I used the 55% variety - Greeks generally don't like their chocolate too bitter)

a pinch of sea salt (even though I added just a few grains, my kids could taste it - 'don't add it next time, Mum')

3 eggs (or 2 eggs and 2 yolks - my version is more economical)

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons of flour

Melt the chocolate in the olive oil on very low heat (you won't need a double boiler). Add the salt and stir it in. Put the chocolate mixture aside. In another bowl, beat all the eggs with the sugar until light and fluffy looking. Add the egg mixture to the (slightly cooled down) chocolate, and mix it in well. The result will look like a thick gooey batter. Then add the flour and mix it in evenly, but lightly, careful not to overmix.

I used an old metal baking tin to place in the oven. I'm afriad that my purex and ceramic dishes might crack if I place them in the oven without some form of protection. Metal tins may warp and discolour, but they don't break.

Pour the batter into 6 ramekins. If you want to remove the cooked deserts from the ramekins before serving, you need to grease them first. I served them straight from the ramekins, but some people may prefer to place them on a decorative plate and pour some cream over the desert - but I've had the same desert at Pizza Hit in Iraklio, and it was served in the ramekin, with pouring cream on the side. 

To cook the ramekins in a wood-fired oven, place them in a baking tin to which you've added two centimetres of water. To check the temperature of the oven, open it and place your hand insde the cmpartment, carefully so that you don't touch the walls. Ask yourself: 'does it feel warm?' or 'does it feel hot?' or 'does it feel very hot?' If it feels too hot to even leave your hand in for two seconds, that means that the oven will burn whatever you put it in it. (It's happened to me once, with a cake.) For the chocolate lava pots, you want the oven to feel 'very hot'.

Definitely done - the one that lost its shape looks as though its centre is gooey.

Place the tin holding the ramekins in the oven compartment of your wood-fired oven (this ensures that even when the oven is too hot, the lava pots won't burn). The chocolate pots will need no more than 10 minutes to be ready. You will realise that they are cooking correctly when you see the water in the tin boiling away. Not only that, but you will also see the chocolate pots rising slightly, and creating a cracked crust on the top. When you think they are done, take them out of the oven to test them for doneness. NB: don't touch anything with bare hands - the tin and the ramekins and the water will be at burning point! Use you finger to press the top of one of the chocolate pots. If it looks like a biscuit on the top and feel like a cake when you press it, then it's ready.

My chocolate lava pots could have done with less cooking time - it all depends on how molten you want the interior to be.

Allow the lava pots to cool down enough to allow you to handle them. You can cool them down more quickly by pouring some cold water in the tin. Enjoy your chocolate pots 'neat', or with some cream or ice-cream or dried fruit and nuts, or even some Greek spoon sweets, in the same way as depicted in the Greek-style custard pies I made recently.

This poverty thing doesn't mean you can't have your cake or eat it.

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Dutch donuts - oliebollen (Ολλανδέζικα ντόνατ)

It's Chinese New Year's Day tomorrow, and the Year of the Dragon begins. As with most cultural celebrations, symbolic food will be cooked and eaten: 

"The food eaten during Chinese new year celebrations is steeped in tradition and symbolism. Long noodles signify long life, chicken represents good fortune and served whole indicates family unity, and duck symbolises fidelity. Some dishes are eaten at new year because of the sound of the word in Chinese - fish, for example, (yú) sounds like the words for 'wish' and 'abundance', so eating fish dishes at the new year meal is a wish for plenty. Similarly, nian gao (traditional rice cakes) are especially popular at the spring festival as the name sounds like the words for 'higher year'."

New Year's days are associated with special dishes in most cultures of the world. Here is a Dutch New Year's treat: oliebollen. Tomorrow's Chinese New Year's Day is a good excuse to make them as any other.

 

Oliebollen are a no-fuss way to make donuts. The original recipe includes currants, raisins and finely chopped apples, but I didn't have these on hand; instead, I used finely chopped Greek quince spoon sweet and a finely cubed banana. These donuts aren't too sweet and they make a really nice evening snack for a cold evening. Because they contain yeast, the batter needs some time to rise, so you need to be a bit organised. 

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Replacing butter with olive oil (Αντικαταστώντας βούτηρο με ελαιόλαδο)

I'm not against using butter in my cakes and pastries, but it's very expensive to buy good butter in Greece. Whether local (Cretan) sheep's milk butter, or Greek cow's butter (eg Olymbos), or imported butter (eg Lurpak), butter costs about 10 euro a kilo. Olive oil costs about half the price, which is why I use it in all my cooking.

Every single dish on this table was prepared with olive oil, including the dessert (halva).

 We produce enough olive oil for our own needs - but only every second year. Olive trees are alternate-bearing, which means they don't produce enough fruit one year, while the next year they are laden with fruit. Olive oil once commanded high prices but now the price has dropped to about 2 euro/kilo for the producer. When we don't make enough olive oil from our own trees, we buy it straight from another producer at 2.50 euro/kilo (bring-your-own containers). Buying olive oil from the press will cost about 3-3.50 euro/kilo (bring-your-own containers), which is still much cheaper than the cost of olive oil from the supermarket, where olive oil packaged in metal containers will cost you more than 5 euro/kilo when bulk-buying. The only place in Greece where prices lower than 4 euro a kilo for 'extra-virgin' olive oil have been seen were at LIDL supermarket. It sounded too good to be true; go figure. (The fraud, which made use of labels worded 'Crete' and 'extra virgin', didn't take long to be detected.)

Olive oil chocolate chip cookies using the well-known Nestle Toll House recipe

Greeks use on average 26 kilos/year of olive oil. In Crete, this figure is higher; in my family alone, we need 150 kilos of olive oil per year - divide that among five people, and that comes out to 30 kilos/person. When you ask yourself how on earth we can go through so much olive oil per person per year, when the average consumption for other countries is much much much lower, and the global average is just half a litre per person per year, just think about how and where we use olive oil. Everything you make using butter can be made with olive oil.

• stews, soups and roasts
• cakes and biscuits
• pastry and pie making
• dipping our bread and feta cheese (twice a day, every day, all year round)
• salads (both hot and cold)
• frying (everything)
• greasing all cooking vessels

Still not convinced that all these activities warrant the use of so much olive oil? Well, if you aren't eating any ready-prepared food apart from bakery bread, then you have to roast/stew/fry everything yourself. The need for so much oil comes form the amount of cooking we do at home - we eat very little ready-prepared food. You need some kind of fat to make your food tasty. If olive oil is all you use (no butter, no mayo, no prepared dressing), then you will use a lot of olive oil! If I continued the practice of lighting the kandili, I would be using much more!

Olive oil cupcake icing, using non-artificial flavours and colours

Over the years, I've gotten quite good at making desserts using olive oil, especially using non-Greek recipes that usually call for butter. One of my most popular recipes is for olive oil cake/biscuit icing.

 Choux pastry balls with olive oil instead of butter
 

Wherever butter is stated in a recipe, I use the same amount in olive oil instead. The taste difference is minimal when you use a high quality product, and in my household's case, we only use organic extra-virgin olive oil. The only real difference in their use is that one is a solid while the other one is a liquid. Because of the different texture, you may sometimes need to experiment when using.

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