Omelette for one (Ομελέτα ατομική)

My kids want the instructions for how we made omelettes recently.

You need:
2-3 eggs
a little bit of sausage (or ham), green pepper, onion, zucchini, aubergine, etc
grated cheese
olive oil
some bowls
2 medium-sized frying pans

1. Prepare your omelette fillings first: Peel and cut a potato into chips. Fry them in olive oil in a medium-sized frying pan on high heat till they are completely cooked (there is nothing worse than an underdone potato). They will need at least 15 minutes. When they are done, take them out of the frying pan with a slotted spoon and place them in a bowl.

2. Next, chop some mushrooms, green peppers, sausage, onion, zucchini, aubergines, etc (whatever you like) into small cubes - you will need only a little bit of each item. Fry them in a little olive oil on medium-to-high heat in another medium-sized frying pan till they are just cooked through. You can do this at the same time while the potatoes are cooking. This will need about 3-8 minutes. When they are ready, take them out of the frying pan and place them in another bowl.

3. Have some grated cheese ready in another bowl. You will need 2-3 tablespoons per omelette.

4. Break 2 eggs (or 3, if you are very hungry) in another bowl and add 3-4 tablespoons of water. Beat well. (If you have 3 eggs in an omelette, you shouldn't eat any more eggs - fried or boiled - in that week because it may be bad for your health - there are other foods to eat in the world apart from eggs.)

5. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan (the same one you used to cook the vegetables/meat). When it is hot, pour the egg mixture into it. Shake the pan a little to make sure the egg runs everywhere so that it will cook everywhere. Use a knife to lift up the omelette to let the runny egg go to the bottom of the pan. But DO NOT break the omelette - let it cook like a pancake.

6. When all the egg is cooked and not runny, place some of your fillings on top of the omelette on ONE SIDE ONLY. Then place the greated cheese over the fillings. Then fold the other side of the omelette over the fillings. Then slide the omelette onto a plate.

7. Place the remaining fillings and the fried potatoes around the omelette.

Enjoy your omelette hot.

©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.

Apple orange pudding (Πουτίγκα με μήλο και πoρτοκάλι)

At the moment, eggs are plentiful becuase they are in season. Go on, laugh all you like - during winter, hens don't lay so many, but as soon as the weather warms up, they do, and when it gets too hot, they stop again till it cools down, and they stop in winter. Last year, in one of Crete's coldest winters, I didn't get given many eggs. This year, in one of Crete's shortest winters (that wood fire stopped working at the beginning of March), I am constantly given eggs by friends and relatives, which means more omelettes and more desserts.  When you know the taste of real free-range eggs, you won't be able to go back to store-bought eggs in an omelette.

Although oranges are a year-round commodity, we notice that the summer variety (Valencia) is starting to ripen a little too quickly, again due to the good weather. So that's another seasonal commodity that needs to be used up creatively. Apart from fresh orange juice, orange can also be used a flavouring agent in sweets and savouries. 

We also had a lot of apples at home, due to the chidlren being given boxes of fruit at school under the asupices of the EU. They each brought home a box of fruit containing oranges, pears and apples. Unfortunately, the apples and pears were not in the best condition; they were OK under their mottly skin, but kids only notice the mottley skin. They went uneaten all through the week. 

In keeping with my frugal regime of using fresh produce creatively to ensure the family doesn't get bored with eating the same thing, I used our seasonal and abundant fresh produce and gifts, together with our own olive oil, to make a delicious dessert, based on a traditional recipe for English apple pudding.  

I recreated it in my Cretan kitchen, replacing (like I usually do) ingredients which I don't normally use (eg butter) with local produce (eg olive oil) in the batter (although I kept the butter in the syrup to make sure it congealed). Instead of milk, I decided to use freshly squeezed orange juice in both the cake and the syrup. The result was a heavily scented orange pudding, reminscent of the Greek portokalopita, a refreshing pie made with oranges which uses torn up sheets of filo pastry.

The syrup was poured out spoon by spoon over the pudding. What strayed to the bottom of the baking pan was eventually soaked up by the next day. 

This pudding made a fantastic breakfast to go with my sugarless morning coffee. All in all, it cost me a mere €1 to make. In this modern world, where we want to have more than we can afford but don't know how to do it without begging, stealing or borrowing, my thriftiness makes me feel that I can conquer the difficult financial hurdles that have been imposed on us. Since Thatcher's death, we are constantly reminded that the economy of a country cannot be run like a household:

Despite my dislike of Thatcher's policies, I could not help but have a regard for her commonsense attitude to good housekeeping, her wartime spirit of keeping the larder full of baked beans and dried goods just in case. Many economists despised this spirit, and warned her you couldn't run the country as you ran a household budget... (Guardian, 13/4/2013)

but at least I'm not trying to make my household go down the drain together with the country. And the country can be assured that I won't become Prime Minister.

 ©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.

Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Eggs with zucchini (Αυγά με κολοκυθάκια)

Here's a very frugal Cretan gardener's summer favorite dish - everything needed to cook it will be found in and around the garden, fresh from the soil. It is a variant of sfouggato. It is also useful in using up overgrown misshapen zucchini.

Cube some zucchini, roughly chop some onions, a couple of coloured bell peppers and crush a little garlic. Add this all to a large shallow frying pan with half a cup of olive oil. Saute till the zucchini is cooked through. Season with salt, add some diced tomato and if you like your meals a little spicy, add a dash of hot pepper (optional). Heat through.

Break three eggs and beat till lightly mixed. pour slowly over the zucchini mixture - do not stir for for five minutes. Then slowly turn the zucchini lying on the bottom of the pan over to the top, so that the eggs are turned over and mixed into the mixture to cook through, like scrambled eggs.

Sourdough bread and wine are all that's needed to complement this amazingly nutritious and delicious meal. 

©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.

Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Omelette (Ομελέτα)

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.
 P3210017-26, Eggs are a very sensitive issue in our house. I buy them in standard paper or plastic egg boxes, but I would only use them in baking, or brushing over a pie. We never fry or boil store-bought eggs for eating. I grew up solely on store-bought eggs (I can’t remember if I had ever even seen a chicken in New Zealand), so I thought this was a strange habit of my husband’s, not to eat store-bought eggs, until I tasted (and smelt) the difference between store-bought eggs and farm-fresh free-range eggs. They really do not compare. Not to mention the alluring bright yellow colour of the yolk in a farm-fresh egg. This was the first thing I noticed when I first saw my aunt using farm fresh eggs in Crete over two decades ago. 

Supermarket and farm-fresh eggs don't look too different on the outside - what matters more can't be seen.

When we don’t have farm-fresh eggs available to us, as in wintertime, when chickens don’t lay so many eggs due to the cold, we simply don’t eat eggs, and we don’t do omelettes either. It may sound strange to call the egg a seasonal item, but that’s what it is. For a chicken to lay eggs in the winter, it needs a suitably warm environment, which is usually achieved through artificial means.  

When a colleague recently complained of an excess ‘crop’ of eggs, we exchanged a swap between us: I get a dozen eggs when I need them, in exchange for a small crate of oranges from our groves, where the fruit is now just starting to ripen. If we didn’t have those farm-fresh free-range eggs, we simply wouldn’t eat eggs.
It is said that eating too many eggs raises your cholesterol, so maybe this is how we try to keep our cholesterol in check: by eating eggs when they are truly in season. It sounds crazy, but eggs are seasonal. You may not be able to understand this if you don't live in the country.




My omelette recipes vary according to what is available in the garden, but however I make them, they are a truly frugal meal.  

For one large omelette for 1-2 hungry eaters, you need:
2 eggs*
1 onion, thinly sliced*
1 clove garlic (optional), finely chopped*
a few sprigs of wild tender greens* – at the beginning of spring, I was using the tender sprouts of purple sprouting broccoli, as well as the sprouts of a cabbage plant, after the cabbage head has been chopped off; if you don’t have access to these, you can use some spinach or swiss chard leaves instead
a couple (or more) of tablespoons of home-made tomato sauce (or 1 tomato sliced thinly)*
salt and pepper*
olive oil*

 Sprouting broccoli and cabbage: these tender stems make a good substitute for horta.

Coat the pan with olive oil. Saute the onion and garlic for a minute, add the greens and allow to wilt, than add the tomatoes and seasonings. Beat the eggs together and pour over the vegetables. Allow the egg to set over high heat for half a minute, then tip the pan up and down to make the eggy liquid run down the sides of the pan evenly. Cook for a further half a minute. Then slide the omelette off the pan onto a plate, and tip it upside down to cook the other side (it will be too heavy to do an egg flip). 

Serve immediately with crusty bread. Enjoy. And savour.

Total cost of meal: bugger all, about €1 for 4 omelttes like the one above. Suitable for crisis-ridden rural households.

Total cost of the meal for four people: less than €1. Suitable for crisis-ridden rural households.

©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.

Karidopasta-Amigdalopasta-Tourta (Καρυδόπαστα-Αμυγδαλόπαστα-Τούρτα)

The Greek community of New Zealand had its origins in a sequence of chain migration events. As one Greek arrived, (usually) he brought his family members over. By the time my mother arrived in New Zealand in 1963, and started her own little migration chain, the Greek community consisted of Greeks coming mainly from Crete, Cyprus, Mytilene, Macedonia, Akarnania and the Ionian Islands (mainly Kefalonia and Ithaki), with a few other regions also represented in the wider community. There was also a very sizeable group of Greeks who, up until the 1940s, had been living in Romania, and were displaced after WW2.

When my mother left her family in 1963 to go to New Zealand, she boarded a plane with a number of other Greek women, mainly from Crete. For any other woman, it might have felt like an exciting moment, but if I know my mother well, she was probably thinking about the family she had left behind: tired aging parents, two brothers and two sisters, all of whom were still in the village. Till my mother left the village, she had always lived among Cretans. Now finding herself outside her homeland, this was probably the first time my mother actually kept company with Greek people who were not from her own region. (Left: Cretan women working at the Wellington Hospital Laundry)

I suppose it must have been a strange time for my mother because she was used to being close to family and village acquaintances. But I believe she was probably very relieved: these women, like herself, had left the same homeland for the same reasons that my mother had left Greece. They came from similar backgrounds - poor people, from the Greek countryside, with primary school education at the most. They practiced the same religion and they all spoke (more or less) the same language; these are the elements of their identity that they shared. Unbeknownst to my mother, this would be a defining moment in her own identity: this was when she finally became Greek, as her passport stated - before that, she was very much a Cretan.


In those days, this group of women were probably ignorant of the concept of Greek cuisine: they each had an idea of what food was eaten in their own regional cuisine, and it was probably quite different, according to the region where each one came from. Their rural isolation, coupled with little access to printed material in the form of recipe collections, and the lack of money to buy cookbooks, did not give them the chance to make culinary connections in their country. Each one cooked different food, according to the regional culinary customs they were familiar with. But when they came together in New Zealand, they were confronted with their differences; by living close to one another, making friendships on the basis of nationality, and sharing their most popular, more festive dishes in the Greek community of Wellington (where they mainly ended up after their work contract finished), they suddenly started cooking Greek food, rather than regional Greek dishes. This is about the time when my mother wanted to own a Greek cookbook, a tselementes, as we call them in Greek, after the (in)famous Greek cook, Tselementes, which she eventually bought, but never ended up using. (Right: my mother's cooking notes)

*** *** ***

I was reminded of my mother's culinary identity only recently during our road trip through Greece last month, when I was at a taverna in Gavros, on the road towards Proussos, located in the depths of Evritania, on the foothills of the Kalliakouda mountain range, near the Karpenisiotis river. Amidst this scenic landscape, within seeing and hearing distance of the river, we had a meal at the "Spiti tou Psara" taverna.

The view from the "Spiti tou Psara" taverna in Gavros, a small village nestled between two mountain ranges, with the river running beside it. There were a number of nut tress growing just below the taverna's balcony.

We had become friendly with the taverna owner who talked to us about the problems of living in an area like Gavros: "What can we grow here? It's very difficult to grow anything here. Look at where we are: in the middle of two mountain ranges. On the one side, we have Kalliakouda, on the other the Panaitoliko. And in the middle, running through the village, we have the Karpenisiotis river. We are blessed with nut trees and river fish, but the sun doesn't shine here very much. And it rains a lot."

When I asked her if it snowed as well, she had this to say: "Yes, it does snow here. But don't think it snows a lot. And when it does, it doesn't last for long. During the winter, people are able to choose between the Velouhi and Arahova ski resorts for sightseeing. They check the weather reports to see which one has the most open roads. If the television report gets it wrong, and they are misinformed, our business could go down the drain for the whole weekend. I remember hearing at one point last year that the road for Proussos was blocked with snow. We're only a quarter of an hour away from Proussos, and I could tell you that the road was quite clear. So few people passed through Gavros on that weekend. Instead of the Velouhi ski resort, they went to Arahova. That was in fact where the roads were blocked! So Arahova was empty because the roads were blocked, and Velouhi was empty because everyone was trying to go to Arahova. I call that sabotage."

At the end of the meal, as is customary in tavernas all over Greece, a dessert, compliments of the chef, is brought to your table when you ask for the bill. It consisted of two layers: a dark one on the bottom and a yellow one on the top. I immediately recognised that cake. It was the cake my mother made for my birthday (every single year - it never changed). One look at that cake, and I knew I was going to eat a semolina-based walnut (dark layer) and almond cake (light layer). My hunch was right, verified from the taste of the first bite - it was undoubtedly the cake my mother made in our house, the only difference being that my mother used to fill it with custard and top it with fresh cream for extra effect.

"The last time I ate this kind of cake was twenty years ago in my New Zealand home," I explained excitedly to the taverna owner when she next came round to our table. "My mother always made it for birthdays, Christmas parties and other special occasions. But she always used to finish it with cream to make it look more festive."

Mother's tourta: her children's birthday cakes throughout the 1980s

"Oh, that's a tourta (torte) your mother made, not a plain cake like this one." The woman understood exactly what kind of cake I was talking about. "When we make just the cake, we call it karidopasta if we add walnuts to it, and amigdalopasta if we add almonds. Βut when we fill it with cream, we call it tourta."

And there, in Evritania, the pieces of my past all came together for me. I was beginning to understand how my mother came to make this cake. It wasn't a cake she had learnt to make in her homeland, which explains why I rarely see it made in Hania. The Greek zaharoplasteia sell pasta, which vaguely resembles the tourta version, but these pasta cakes (pas-tes in the plural) come nowhere close to the taste of a tourta (possibly the progenitor of the modern Greek pasta): the former contain more (fake) cream, while the latter contain more cake than cream. Karidopasta (and amigdalopasta) are a local specialty of Evritania, which neighbours Aitoloakarnania (both regions are filled with streams and rivers, where nut trees abound), where many of my mother's Greek-NZ friends came from.

"Oh, I can't give you my recipe, dear," the taverna owner told me when I asked for it. "I make a huge tin for the taverna, so I use about 40 to 45 eggs! In your kitchen, you can make a version with just a dozen or so eggs, even half a dozen, if you want to make a small one just to try out the recipe and see what works for you. For each egg, you need a tablespoon of ground nuts, a tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoon of  semolina."

"What about butter?" I asked. I thought that possibly she had forgotten to mention it.

"No, no butter, this cake has no fat. Just remember the one-of-each ingredient list, that's all, it's so simple. You can add some flavour to it with some cognac or vanilla, and a teaspoon of baking powder to make it rise. Oh, don't forget to grease your baking tray with some butter and sprinkle a little flour over it, so that your cake batter doesn't stick to the tin."

It doesn't surprise me that this cake does not use any fat. The region is covered in mountains, and it freezes in the winter. Butter may have been made in small quantities, but it would mainly have been used as a cooking fat. Forget about growing olives here - they dont like snow... 

*** *** ***

Having no notebook on hand (throughout my blog writing, I never use a notebook, relying only on my camera shots), I felt a little overwhelmed and wasn't quite sure if I would remember the recipe well enough to make it at home. To take the guesswork out of my kitchen experiments, I was lucky to come across the recipe in a book published by Δίρκη (Dirce), the Network of Tourist Enterprises in Evritania and Aitoloakarnania, which included the recipe for this very cake that we tried in Evritania. Interestingly, the name 'Dirce' was chosen for this network, as symbolic of the cooperation of the local enterprises, given that Dirce (in ancient Greek mythology, the daughter of Acheloos - the name of the river running through Evritania - and sister of Peirene) was the name of one of the two ferry boats (the other was named Peirene) which used to transport passengers and vehicles in the 1970s between Evritania and Aitoloakarnania over Kremasta Lake. This form of transport does not exist today since bridges connect the two regions by road - Tatarnas and Episkopi.


I'm presenting the original recipe, as found on the web and in the cookbook. Variations of this cake are found below the recipe.

For the cake batter, you need:
12 eggs, separated
12 tablespoons of roughly chopped walnuts (or almonds)
12 tablespoons of large-grain semolina (fine-grain if using almonds instead of walnuts)
12 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon each of ground clove and cinammon (I didn't use these flavourings - I don't recall them in my mum's cakes, so I omitted them from here too)
1 teaspoon of baking powder, dissolved in half a glass of cognac
grated orange zest
1 vial of vanilla

 

I made both an almond layer and a walnut layer, using only 3 eggs for each layer, and used the analogous amount of the remaining ingredients - when the cakes come out of the oven, they don't look different from the top because the cake batter browns and its inner colour is concealed!

To make the syrup, you need:
3 glasses of sugar
2 glasses of water
a slice of lemon
a cinammon stick (which again I omitted)

When the cakes come out of the oven, they are left to cool before being doused with very hot syrup. The bottom layer (walnut) is laid upside down on the serving dish (this is the same one my mum used to use for out cakes!) for a flatter finish when filling the tourta. I used a ready-to-make, just-add-milk creme patisserie,  although I recall that mum made everything from scratch - she used a different cream in the filling to the one decorating the cake.

Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar; beat well, preferably with an electric mixer. Add the walnuts, cloves, vanilla, cinnamon and cognac, and mix well. Now add the semolina spoon by spoon, and mix well. Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl. Add them to the yolk mixture, but beat them in lightly, just enough so that everything is mixed evenly. Pour the mixture in a large greased and floured baking tin. (I took no chances here; I remember my mother using baking paper!) Bake in a moderate oven at 200C until the top of the cake is golden and has formed a firm crust (approximately 35-40 minutes).

Boil the syrup ingredients together for 10 minutes. When the cake has cooled down, pour the hot syrup over it.

For a more impressive effect, make both varieties of the cake (like the taverna owner), halving the provided recipes to make each one. Pour the walnut batter into the baking tin, and cook for 10 minutes, so that the cake simply forms a crust on the top. Then pour in the almond batter and cook until the cake is done (approximately 30-40 minutes longer).

This truly was my mother's tourta - the layers were tall enough to be sliced through so that this two-layer cake can be made into a four-layer cake (in this way, the layers will soak up more syrup, which will come closer in taste to my mother's tourta - her layers were thinner).

The same cake can be made into a torte: When the cake is cool, take it out of the tin by shaking it upside down onto a large platter. Slice through the cake in the middle (my mother used to have me help her to cut the cake into three - not just two! - slices). Lay each slice on a separate platter and pour syrup over each one, one spoonful at a time, making sure you cover each slice without making them overly soggy. At this stage, it doesn't matter if the cake slices break (it will be covered with cream and no one will be able to see the breaks). And for a more spectacular effect, just make two different cakes: one with almonds and one with walnuts - the former is a yellow cake, while the latter is brown.

Make a custard filling, enough to put the slices back together again, one on top of the other. (You can use both vanilla and chocolate fillings for each slice if you slice the cake into three layers to make an impressive display of your culinary prowess.) Whip some fresh cream and cover the top and sides of the cake. The cake can then be decorated with more cream (again, my mother would frost the cake with chocolate whipped cream and decorate it with vanilla cream), adding cherries and chocolate snow if desired.

The cake is simple to make - the assembly requires a bit more attention than what I usually pay to cake-making, but it really isn't a complex recipe. This makes one of the best birthday cakes ever, and will be remembered by your children for the rest of their lives. I'm very lucky to have discovered this cake at this moment in my life when I have young children myself, especially since they never had the chance to taste their grandmother's baking. Although I've looked through my mother's cooking journal, I found some of her notes difficult to follow: she usually jotted the ingredients and left out the method. I've looked through my first-edition copy of Favorite Greek Recipes, produced by the Greek Community of Wellington, and found similar no-fat cake recipes, using almonds or walnuts, assembled as tourta, but none use semolina. If anyone has a Greek-NZ tourta recipe to share like this one, I'd love to hear from you.

Just imagine: if I hadn't been to Karpenisi on holiday this year, I would never have rediscovered this recipe!

©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.

Avronies (Αβρονιές)

Here's an unusual green that is very popular in Crete at the moment. It grows in the wild, and as yet no one is cultivating it. We can find it growing in our orange groves, but only in small quantities, which is why I usually buy a bunch before spring is out, when it won't be available after that.

Avronies are an asparagus-like spear which grow very long and spindly. They aren't easily spotted because they snake along the earth, giving themselves away by their slightly furry tip which sticks up like grass. Only the tender parts are used (the remaining part of the plant is too woody), and their taste is rather bitter, which is why avronies are usually boiled to remove their bitterness before being used in a meal.

After I boiled the avronies (below, left), I had to discard some of them because they were still too woody and stalky to eat. The tsimoulia (bright green in the top photo) were simply washed (they were tender enough). 

I've presented this dish before, but I think it's worthy of a second mention. It's mainly a forager's specialty, and it's usually cooked with eggs, like an omelette. I haven't changed the basic recipe from the last time I made it, but because I didn't have enough avronies, I also added some more edible greens called tsimoulia, the tender flowery stalks of the cabbage plant, which grow once the cabbage head has been cut off the base of the thick stalk.

Thick asparagus spears of the type available in Western supermarkets are now also available, grown in Northern Greece; both the white and green varieties are sold in Crete. They have a different taste from avronies, but they can easily replace the wild variety in the omelette I made.

Conventional asparagus, now grown in Northern Greece, sauteed with mushrooms and onions, makes a delicious vegetable-based filling for an omelette.

I used Greek asparagus in the meal I prepared on the 5th of May, as I waited for my husband to come home at 3pm as he usually does when he is on day shift. I laid the table at his usual place, taking care to fill a pitcher with cool water because it was a very warm day and he would come home feeling parched.

The table was set expectantly...

My husband came home on time and I served him the meal p. He picked up the remote control and asked me which channel the news was on at this hour. Even though he usually sits down to eat his midday meal at about this time, he can never remember which one it is. I reminded him that there wold be no TV news that day, as there was no school for the children, because the teachers and the journalists were on strike. So we didn't watch any TV that day. While three people were being pulled dead out of a burning building, we were having lunch, unaware of what was going on that day.

Those people would also have been getting ready to return home, after their work was done. They would have been going home at this hour to a similar seat at their table, and someone would have been waiting for them to come home. For the three who died in the bank fire, their place at the midday table would remain empty that day and forever from now on. I will remember this for many days to come. Whenever I lay the midday table, this thought will creep into my head like a disease, and it won't go away easily, unless I find a way to numb my mind on purpose.

The asparagus and mushroom omelette is the last meal I cooked since that day. As the saying goes, tomorrow is another day. Maybe it will be better. In any case, life continues.

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Sfouggato (Σφουγγάτο)

Sfouggato is a simple one-pot summer dish using eggs and garden vegetables. The word 'sfouggato' is derived from the same word for 'sponge'; the dish sometimes turns out like an omelette, while other times it comes out looking like scrambled eggs, depending on the amount of liquid the final dish contains. This dish also goes by other names, like strapatsada (which means something like 'distorted') or kayana, in various parts of Greece. In Hania, courgettes are usually added to it.

This dish requires little cooking time, and it can also be cooked in two installments. Once the zucchini are done, you can turn off the cooker and come back to add the eggs when you are ready to serve the meal, as this dish tastes its best when served freshly made.

For enough to serve two people, you need:
1/2 cup olive oil (don't be sparing here, you will regret it)
400-500g of small zucchini (they are more tender and cook more quickly)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 medium tomatoes, freshly grated
sea salt, freshly ground pepper and oregano
3-4 eggs, yolks and whites beaten together lightly

Wash the zucchini (to make sure they don't have any grit stuck on them) and chop them into large cubes (or small chunks, if the zucchini have almost turned into marrow). Heat the oil in a wide shallow saucepan and saute the onion and garlic. Add the zucchini and coat them with oil. Turn down the heat, add the tomato and seasonings, cover the saucepan and let the zucchini cook to your liking. (Some people prefer them crunchy and underdone, others like them soft.) When the zucchini are ready, add the beaten eggs, but don't stir. When the egg starts cooking (it will start to set), begin to mix it into the sauce, in light folds so that it doesn't turn into a soup, but comes out looking like scrambled eggs.

This dish may look a little messy (in Greek, we say something is 'strapatsariasmeno' when it's been distorted, hence 'strapatsada'), but it is pure ambrosia.

Sfouggato really needs to be made with fresh high-quality ingredients. The eggs really do need to be free-range, otherwise they won't have the right colour, they may smell 'eggy' (ie suplphuric) and all this will contribute to the dish smelling off-putting. The tomatoes can't be underripe or green; they need to exude summer in their appearance and aroma. This dish can also be made with fresh aubergine (before its interior becomes too seedy).

Don't forget to have some sourdough bread handy to mop up the sauce (forget about calories when enjoying this dish) and some wine (in Crete, most people have access to home-brewed rosé wine).

In the winter, the same dish can be made with zucchini-like vegetables that keep their shape, such as asparagus. It can even be made simply with onions, like the dish featured recently on the Hungry Bear.

©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.

Youvarlakia (Γιουβαρλάκια)

Dear Ms Verivaki,

I must congratulate you on your magnificent prose and excellent cooking skills. I am a regular follower of your Hania blogs (I read them both every day), and there has never been a moment that I have been disappointed by the food you present and the stories you write. I have fond memories of spending summers in my youth in Crete, and I feel as though I am right there with you when you describe village life, the beach, the weather, and daily life in that splendid Mediterranean town where you live.

Over the past year that I have been following your blog, I notice you have been cooking everything the way my dearly departed grandmother cooked (she was from Kambi); the same meals, the same ingredients, the same method. Your family must revere you for the feasts you conjure up in your kitchen. The photos seem to jump out of the screen, screaming "That's my grandmama!" to me.

There is one recipe that I haven't yet seen on your blog, and that's youvarlakia. It's my favorite Greek dish, the one that my mother makes for me and sends it from California via courier to my apartment in Connecticut where I'm studying IT, in a tupperware container which she has frozen. When I receive it, I simply warm it up in the microwave and eat it on the same night that I received the packet, saving one serving for the next day. It tastes so good, and it always makes me feel homesick.

Here is my mom's yourvalakia recipe. It took me a few times making it before I turned out a batch that I was even satisfied with. In my mind, my mom's yourvalakia are always smaller and lighter than mine, and the avgolemono is always fluffier and more nicely balanced in flavor, but I continue to practice, and some day I hope that it'll be good enough that I can serve it to my mom and she'll be proud of it.

I thought that it would eventually turn up in your recipe list, but it's been over a year, and I understand that you cook according to a strict cyclical repertoire of recipes. Maybe your family doesn't like youvarlakia? Well, all people are different, aren't they?

I have never felt closer to my second home than through your stories. I'm looking forward to being comforted by more of them this winter.

Your loyal reader...

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Kambi, 1919

Nikolas had heard the word 'Ameriki' mentioned many times in the village. Ameriki was the land of a poor man's wildest dream, something akin to utopia, where everyone is happy, employed and rich, like his brother, who sent one single postcard to his family since he left Kambi.

When Nikolas' older brother Grigori returned to the village from Ameriki, he had enough money on him to buy 90 acres of land in the village, and live happily ever after. After working in the restaurant trade for five years in New York, being the patriot that he was, Grigori decided to return to the mother country to buy the land his family could not afford to give him and to complete his Greek military service, at a time when Greece was under attack from an enemy.

"In Ameriki, people are prepared to fight for their freedom. How can I stand and watch when my country is in danger?" he replied to his family when they pleaded with him not to leave so soon after his arrival. His betrothal to a blooming village girl arranged (as befitted his financial position), he had no sooner invested his money in buying land than he left again, this time to Thesaloniki where his knowledge of English earned him the rank of officer. He managed to survive the Battle of Skra, only to die from malaria two months before the end of the campaign, having never set foot on the land that he had worked five years on foreign soil to buy. It was shared unevenly among his siblings: his four sisters received a large share each as a dowry, making them attractively eligible for marriage, while Grigori's brother ended up with the remainder, a mere pittance of the original amount.

Nikolas received 10 acres of the land that had been bought with his brother's money from Ameriki, along with the beautiful bride his brother never married. He married her out of pity; even though her engagement did not constitute a marriage (there was no marriage to consummate in the first place), she would have a hard time finding another husband after being betrothed once already. Word would have spread that she was engaged to be married; her fate had already been decided. Who knows when the next offer would come? Nikolas also felt that she had partly inherited his brother's fortune, so that she deserved to be in on his good fortune.

Aggeliki, for all her outward qualities, was not the most useful woman around the house. She had been raised in the 'mimou aptou' way, as if her beauty did not permit her to cook, wash and clean the way a less attractive woman might conduct herself with respect to these duties, lest by applying herself to such tasks, her beauty may deteriorate, fade away, disappear, as if age could never play a part in this demeaning process, and it was all to do with how often one's hands touched the soil on the ground or how much sunlight shone on a woman's face.

Nikolas' land was fruitful, especially once he had cleared most of it from the thyme and dictamo bushes, after which he set about planting it with olive trees. He hunted hares and wild birds, plentiful in his own fields, but the cook was wonting in culinary skills; the rumour spread all over the village, with its population of 500, that Aggeliki was a hopeless cook. Nikolas didn't know who to feel sorry for more: himself for earning such fate, or the oven-charred or water-sodden carcasses that came out of the kitchen, sometimes sporting their fur or plumage. When he sat at the kafeneio with other men from the village, and listened to their chatter about how their own wives conducted themselves at home, his gut tightened.

"Give her time, Nikola, you're not even into a year of married life," the others would comfort him. But he neglected to tell them that Aggeliki entered the marriage in this way right from the start, and that his clothing was now almost ragged and Aggeliki showed no sign of replacing them for him before they had become tatters. He felt that the land - and possibly Angela's inviting appearance - had cursed him into the misfortune of a loveless marriage.

*** *** ***

When Aggeliki became engaged to Grigori, she had hopes of leaving the village for good. She knew that Grigori had made a lot of money, but she didn't realise that he had invested it in the mountainous territory that made up the village of Kambi. She expected that, once he had finished his military duty, he would move to lower ground - as most villagers who prospered did - and build a suitable dwelling for them to live in. After all, this is what he must have been accustomed to living in in Ameriki; everyone there apparently lived in fully furnished houses and had their clothes made for them by tailors and seamstresses. They did not need to shear sheep, spin yarn, or weave cloth on the argalio, which would eventually be turned into bedsheets and men's shirts; like cooking, sewing was not Aggeliki's forte. So it was to her greatest disappointment that Grigori did not return from Thesaloniki. She knew what fate had in store for her.

(Crete in the 1960s, four decades after Aggeliki and Nikolas emigrated; the photos come from CRETE 1960, by John Donat, Crete University Press)

Aggeliki had not wanted to marry her fiance's brother, but there was no question of that now that Grigori was dead. Had she been married to Grigori before he had left for Thesaloniki, she would have inherited his land, a mixed blessing if ever there was one. She would have become a rich woman, highly ineligible for marriage; what man in the village would have been able to match her wealth? As it was, she suffered the cruel fate of being labelled a widow after Grigori's death anyway, even though she had never married; such was the nature of life in the impenetrable snow-capped mountains of Kambi, at the foothills of the Lefka Ori.

She looked around the house Grigori had built in roughshod style a short while before they were married: two simple stone-built rooms with openings for windows, blocked by wooden shutters to stop the winter cold from entering. There was an outhouse a little way from the house and an earth oven built next to one of them rooms. This was not the Ameriki she had dreamed of, nor was it the town of Hania that she had hoped to move to after her marriage. It was true that she had never known better than the village life she was born into, but no one could stop her from dreaming, which is what she did most of the day when Nikolas was away, clearing scrubland, planting olive trees, hunting hares and grazing sheep.

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Kambi, 1921

Nikolas was sitting at the kafeneio. He usually sat on his own these days, as he had little to share with the locals. It was almost three years since he married Aggeliki and still no children. He had by now grown accustomed to the way the kafeneio chatter died down when he entered the shop, and the compassionate smiles of the other men sitting in groups around the tables. He picked up one of the newspapers that had been left on the fireplace, to be used for kindling a flame. Although he had not finished primary school, his reading was at a reasonable level. He did not write anything apart from his name; there was no one to write to, in any case, and no one interested in reading anything that he wrote.

He had not grown tired of working the village land. What tired him most of all - and he seemed to have aged a decade since his wedding day - was that he was working with no future in mind. So what if he had thousands of olive trees; so what if his coffers were filled with olive oil. There was no one to eat it, and no one to sell it to; people were too poor in the village to buy more as their own stocks ran out, so they simply used it more sparingly. The economy of the country was still engaged in a new war effort; there was no interest in trading olive oil. So much effort for very little reward; produce-rich but lacking currency.

Every morning started off the same, as every evening finished. Routine after routine, with very little variation. Nikolas saddled the donkey, which lived in a makeshift shelter next to the main house, along with a group of six goats and sheep which Aggeliki milked each morning, and left for the hills. The land he had inherited had never before been touched by human hands. He worked most of the day with some paid labourers clearing the land of the scrub wood and rocks, digging it up, tilling it, and planting it with olive trees. Aggeliki had filled a woven bag with bread, some olives, a chunk of graviera and a carafe of wine for Nikolas to curb his hunger, before he came back home at midday. It was usually too hot to work after that; the sun did not rest even in winter. The midday meal was a very silent affair, one that always heightened the void between the couple. They could not fill the space between them with their presence. They had little to say to each other; their world had become static.

Without offspring, there was no one to work for but himself, and his wife, of course, who, at times, seemed to live in her own reticent world. Apart from his requests for better food and clean clothes to wear, he had very little to say to her. Yesterday, she had cooked youvarlakia in a tomato sauce, using the anidres tomatoes he had hung on the rafters of the house to dry for the winter, while the lemon tree was bulging from its own weight, laden with fruit. Hadn't she ever had youvarlakia? Didn't she know how to make an avgolemono sauce?

"What were you thinking, using the tomatoes I was saving for the winter? Where are we going to find them when we need them, woman!" He could hear the rumble in his own voice as he shouted at her. Usually the house was so quiet. He wasn't used to hearing himself speak like this. He left the house feeling more angry with himself than his wife.

(Kambi village, 1974)

Things were not looking good in Smyrna: according to the front page, war was imminent. His mind immediately conjured up the image of his brother leaving the village to fight against the Bulgarians. What was it that his brother had said? "In Ameriki, people are prepared to fight for their freedom. How can I stand and watch when my country is in danger?" Did he understand what he was fighting for? Had he thought about whether the cause was worth fighting for? Did he know how close the war was to the end when he lay sick and dying? Nikolas did not share his brother's patriotism. He did not want to fight a war that he hadn't started. He did not wish to be one of the victims of war like his brother. Now seemed a good time to leave the village, maybe even the island, and why not the country if it got to that stage. The shame of childlessness could be avoided if he simply lived elsewhere, far away from anyone who knew him. Nikolas put it in his mind to seek a passage to Ameriki.

(The kind of Crete Nikolas and Aggeliki left when they decided to emigrate to Ameriki; these photos are more recent than the first set above. The photographs are works by George Meis, taken from a souvenir calendar of Crete)

(END OF PART ONE)

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Aggeliki may not have been too far wrong when she made youvarlakia with a tomato-based sauce. (In any case, her cooking improved once she went to Ameriki.) Youvarlakia is a meatball dish, in which the meatballs are made with rice, and cooked in an egg-and-lemon sauce, which turns them into a light main meal. My aunt in New Zealand used to make them, but not my mum; they simply didn't become a favorite in our house, along with, funnily enough, pastitsio, an all-time favorite Greek pasta dish.

The next time I had youvarlakia was in a hospital in Iraklio where my new-born son was under observation for an extremely rare blood disorder: at the age of two months, we discovered that he wasn't producing enough blood to supply his body with, which did thankfully clear up on its own when he was ten months old. He had six blood tranfusions in between this period. The hospital youvarlakia were cooked in the tradtional egg-and-lemon sauce, which my husband was never a great fan of. I enjoyed them, despite the hospital atmosphere.

My husband laughed them off : "They forgot the tomato," he said.

"But youvarlakia aren't cooked in tomato," I replied.

(My mother-in-law still cooks youvarlakia in tomato sauce.)

"Yes, they are," he said as we looked at each other wondering whether we were from different planets.

When life became a little more normal in our house after the hospital episodes, I cooked youvarlakia with the tomato sauce my husband liked, which, of course, was the way he had been brought up to eat them. I didn't really like them, but then I've never been a fan of tomato-based sauces. I'd rather eat garbanzo beans (chickpeas) than fasolada; I prefer a carbonara to a makaronada; give me a lettuce salad rather than the traditional Greek horiatiki. This is the reason why I prefer an avgolemono meat dish to my regular tomato-stew meat dishes, and believe me, youvarlakia in avgolemono are delicious. I have found one recipe (in Chrissa Paradissis' Greek Cookery, 1983 edition) that insists on using tomato AND egg-and-lemon sauce together to make youvarlakia, but mixing tomato and lemon is a rarity.

Aggeliki's cooking probably got better once she went to Ameriki, because life simply became less mundane and the tasks she performed in Crete on a daily basis probably became automated in Ameriki. Her kitchen would have been more well-fitted, her food did not have to be sourced straight from the fields, her house probably never resembled a mud-hut. And Nikolas was probably a happier man once he moved to Ameriki, because he would have found better working conditions and an appropriate salary. But the food they ate together wherever they set up home would still have been traditional Greek food, even if the ingredients weren't easily available.

(The video shows how Cretan families from Kambi were living in California in 1948; Crete at that time was extremely poor, while Greece was in the midst of a civil war. To the average Cretan, this picture would have seemed like a scene from paradise; poverty remains the main reason why, up to the late 1970s, Greek people emigrated to the New Worlds.)

Galatia in California makes her youvarlakia in the traditional Greek way. I got the recipe straight from her son Nick, who could well have been Nikolas' grandson. The recipe is exactly as he related it to me, with a couple of exceptions. I added a large onion (I am a great fan of all Allium species: onion, garlic, and leek), I used only two eggs, and I added olive oil to the pot after cooking the recipe according to Nick's instructions. The reason why is a simple Cretan one: we cannot do without our olive oil. It may add to the calories, but it will also add to the flavour; it also removes the eggy taste that my family isn't used to in their sauces. The original recipe before adding the olive oil - Galatia's youvarlakia are just so good with that extra dose of garlic - reminded me of the way my mother cooked Greek food in New Zealand. When you don't have access to cheap, high-quality olive oil (as we do in Crete), you go without. Tough luck.

Since we don't eat youvarlakia often, you may be wondering if my fussy eaters actually ate this. As it was the first time I made this meal, I decided to soften it a little with a side dish of fried potatoes. I called the youvarlakia by another familiar name for mince balls, biftekia, which use the same ingredients, except that the rice is replaced with breadcrumbs. Next time I serve it, it won't be with potatoes, but with extra sauce to mop up with bread. After that, I might even call them by their real name, youvarlakia, and turn the sauce into a soup like Peter's. Evelyn also added a few chunky vegetables to it and turned it into a hearty meal for a cold day.

I know that, like leek and potato potage, first introduced to me by Ioanna, youvarlakia are going to become a firm family favorite. When I served up the youvarlakia for lunch, I had left the pot on the table. My husband asked me to take it away because "I could eat right out of it and not stop till I get to the bottom of the pan."
For the meatballs, you need:
1 pound of ground beef (about 450-500 grams)
1/2 onion, grated
4 to 5 garlic cloves (minced or grated)
1/2 cup rice (we use "Barba Ben's" long-grain)
1 egg
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt & pepper to taste
a little olive oil
For the sauce, you need: some butter, 3 eggs and 1/2 cup lemon juice

Mix the meatballs ingredients together well, and then make into small balls (about the size of walnuts). The one thing I always keep in mind is to keep the meatballs themselves small, more of a walnut size than a golfball. It took me a while to remember that the rice will cook and puff up in size.
Melt the butter in a large pot and place the meatballs in a single layer on the bottom (if you've made more meatballs than can fit in your pot, you can stack up a second layer). Cover the meatballs with water, going about 1/2 inch above the top layer of meatballs. Bring to a boil and let them cook at a low boil/high simmer for 20 to 25 minutes (until the rice has cooked, but keeping careful not to let all the water evaporate - you need the cooking liquid for the avgolemono).
Mix the eggs with 1/2 cup lemon juice and beat until frothy. Slowly add in the liquid from the meatballs and continue beating. Pour the avgolemono mixture back on top of the meatballs. If the avgolemono is too runny, or if the meatballs have sat around for a while (which is fine, and I should add that the meatballs, even without the avgolemono, are delicious) you can heat the whole mixture back on the stovetop, either to thicken the avgolemono, or to bring it back to a warm temperature, or both.

This post is dedicated to all the Cretans from Kambi, my mother's village, living in Modesto and Manteca, California, where very many of them congregated. It doesn't matter where they were born, whether it was in Crete or America, or whether they continue to speak Greek or not; they are still Greek at heart, and they know it. Thanks are due to Galatia Aretakis and her son Nick, because without their participation in this post, I would never have made youvarlakia.

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