Quilted pouffe (Πουφ)

As Greece faces crisis afer crisis, I'm just patiently waiting for the tide to recede. There's too much happening on all fronts in this country, creating widely diverging opinions and extremism. In the interim, we have to face the facts and get on with life. Crete is getting ready to become host to many millions of people starting from this week: not refugees, as we were led to believe given the various (non-)agreements between Turkey and the EU, but tourists, as the high season kicks off with an early calendar Easter. Let's see where this will lead...

To pass away the time, I've been working on little creative sewing projects to while away the quiet hours, the calm before the storm, so to speak. I poured out a bag full of scrippy scraps of denim cuts and starting plotting them onto a sturdy piece of age-stained vintage 50s calico cotton mad in Greece, originally used as storage sacks.

In essence I had made new fabric from old fabric.

I liked the idea of not wasting anything, but I have gotten tired of small projects. I still like to keep my creative fabric art functional, meaning that a finished product must have a specific use, hence the idea for a pouffe, which I first saw on pinterest, So I became a bit more adventurous ...

... until I ran out of scraps and needed to 'create' more! The last piece of of fabric had a more traditional patchwork look.

I have plenty of mattressing remnants from my local mattreess maker (which reminds me: it's hotel preparation time - there are probably HEAPS of mattress remnants going to the recycling depot...), which I used to stuff the pouffe. I also made a 'handle' from the wasitline of an old pair of jeans to pull or carry it when moving it around the house.

 

And here is the final product, something useful that will be enjoyed by many people.

It still needs a bit more stuffing, but that can be easily solved by sewing one side seam with a zip - taken directly from an old pair of jeans!!! No fuss sewing a zip on it from scratch!

It sounds easy enough, to tear up old jeans in order to embark on a similar project, but it's not that simple. This project started with a quilt made from large denim squares from old jeans:

The resulting scraps were turned into smaller denim squares form another quilt:

The pouffe was the result of the scraps of the scraps of the scraps.

It takes a lot of creativity to be both sustainable AND functional!

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Nouvelle Greek cuisine (Νέα ελληνική κουζίνα)

I'm in the kitchen, cooking my frozen garden-grown fasolakia...

... when husband calls out to me: "Come and see!" So I rush into the living room to see what he's watching on TV, which happens to be an ad for a new food programme (the man's-heart-stomach thing is not just a cliche). Dr Cook does leg of lamb, roasted floury potatoes, and other very pretty looking food that reminds us of nothing to do with traditional Greek food, but something from the web pages of the slick fashionable food-based webzines.

Post by Organically Cooked.
Nevertheless, Dr Cook (Yiannis Loukakos) represents the trend that Greek cooks are moving towards - international cuisine with pretty plating. This is also the way that Greeks want to cook.

Right after the Dr Cook ad comes along another ad featuring yet another new-TV-season food programme on the same channel: I've just come from the Polis - Από την Πόλη έρχομαι (as Greeks, we all know that 'Polis' refers to Istanbul when it was still known as Constantinople), which has been filmed entirely in Turkey.

Post by Organically Cooked.
Now, this cook (Μαρία Εκμεκτσίογλου) seems to be doing things along traditional lines, piling mountains of traditional food on platters, a bit like the way I present my own food in my kitchen. Although plating is also important in 'poLItiki kouZIna', the ingredients in combination with the spices and cooking techniques are what arouse the senses. And this is also the way urban Greeks like to think we cook, using an Asia Minor granny's secret recipes.

Both these two new shows, which are to start being screened on the same weekend, give us a hint of the dilemma most Greeks are facing these days - should I stay (traditional) or should I go (global)?

On the same channel yet again, another food show has already started screening: it's called No Recipe and it features the Greek celebrity chef Dimitris Skarmoutzos, often nick-named 'the chef with the tattoos'. he's teamed up with FAGE yoghurt, which uses his recipes on their packaging.

Post by Organically Cooked.

He uses a mixture of travel and food (a bit like Ilias Mamalakis used to do) to present his own recipes using unusual Greek ingredients.

Not everyone will be able to watch these Greek food shows, as they are only being streamlined in Greece. (If you do not live in Greece or you don't have a Greek IP address, you will need the help of a hacker.) This group of Greeks will be waiting to see what their local food markets will offer them in terms of Greek products.

Click here to see what's being sold abroad as Greek food - and take part in the giveaway, if you like, of a Greek product that is being specifically targeted for the foreign market.

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Red, blue and purple food: berry sauce for meat and fish

A freind of mine recently asked me where I found the berries I used to make chocllate berry pots. She likes red, blue and black berries, like me, but they are not easy to find in Crete; we can only find wild-growing blackberries, which are a great pain to harvest because they grow on very wild thorny plants. What's more, these berries are never sold on the market as local products - you can sometimes fidn them imported from Mexico or Holland, but they are also sold at ridiculous prices, as are out-of-season strawberries imported from Holland - let's not mention the number of miles they have done to get to my location: was it really worth the effort int he first place?!

 When I decided to put my mind to experimenting with red foods, I was surprised to find so many in the house: apart from standard Greek items like tomato, pomegranate, beetroot, grapes and red wine, we can now also get goji berries, dried blueberries, caramelised hibiscus flowers )all pictured below), cranberries and frozen berries, all at very reasonable prices. Most of these fruits can (and in some places, are, for the specialty market) be grown in Greece - 'watch this space'...

Red foods are often known as superfoods due to their high antioxidant content and their anti-bacterial properties; some red/blue/purple foods have been investigated for their special properties, eg blueberry is now considered as helping against eye disease. Berries are now more readily available in Hania, mainly imported, but at very affordable prices: LIDL for example sells frozen berries (raspberries, blackberries and fruit of the wood mixtures) at very reasonable prices. What was once considered exotic and expensive is now common and cheap. This could be considered a crisis aftermath, but the reality is that this was probably the way the Greek world was heading in anyway.

Incorporating berries into Greek cooking is really difficult. We simply don't use such food in our regular cuisine, as do other cultures eg in Sweden, lingon berry is served with meatballs. Apart from fresh, and in sweets, berries can also be used in savoury sauces. I recall being served lamb with raspberry sauce in New Zealand and I loved it. But I admit it's an acquired taste in Crete to pair fruit with meat. Apart from quince with pork, I can't think of anything particularly fruity in savoury dishes, which are commonly cooked by home cooks. Such dishes are often associated with modern meals made for special occassions, although adding pomegranate and walnuts to salads is now very common. Pomegranate 

In my first attempt at making this sauce (which I used with tsigariasto lamb), I added grated tomato which made the sauce too savoury and disguised berry flavours. I also added goji berries as a garnish, which didn't really seem to bring out any special taste to the sauce. In my second attempt, I omitted the tomato and added pomegranate - the sauce tasted good, but the pomegranate seeds didn't excite me much either. The additions were to sweeten the taste, as these berries can taste rather sour. 

Now that berries are easy and cheap to get hold of in frozen form, I decided to experiment with them ot make a saucy topping for meat and fish. A sauce of this type should be thick enough to stick on the meat, as well as be just enough runny to 'dip' and 'swirl' the meat around it on the plate, to catch its flavour. And above all, it needs to be tasty. To create an appropriate flavour with the use of berries, I thought about how I make tomato sauce for pasta and meat dishes. It took me three attempts to get the flavour I wanted. 

 For approximately a cup of sauce, you need: 
1-2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil 
3/4 cup of frozen mixed berries (you could experiment with just one berry type, but this was the easiest option in my case)
1-2 tablespoons of red wine
1-2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon of demerara sugar
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon of finely minced mint (this is the magic ingredient that added the right flavour to the sauce)
1 tablespoon of cornflour
3-6 tablespoons of water
some berries and/or mint leaves, for garnish

The sauce here is a little thick, but it can be thinned by adding liquids to it eg, water or even beetroot juice for an added colour effect. Maybe I used too many berries for garnish, but I admit to being enamoured with berries. The sauce was just under perfect for taste (too many berries made it sour, which may be too sour for some people's taste. 

Heat the oil and add the garlic over medium heat. Cook lightly, being careful not to burn it. Add the berries, and let them soften over medium heat. Mash them lightly, leaving some chunkier, for the texture effect. Mix in the wine, vinegar, sugar, mint and salt. Add just enough cornflour to bind the sauce, ie just to thicken it. Add the mint. Let cook for 5 minutes or so, for the flavours to blend. Add just enough to water to get the consistency you prefer. 

In this version, the sauce is runnier (served with roast chicken). A clever way to get the most out of the addition of superfood is to add more of them to a salad, eg pomegranate with lettuce salad, served with the meat and berry sauce.  The final texture of the sauce is just visible in the bowl next to the plate.

The first time I used this sauce, it was freshly made, served on a fillet of salmon, decorating the plate with more red food items for added antioxidant content, as well as some greenery for colour contrast. When I heated the sauce the next day to use it over roast chicken, I found that it had congealed, and I mixed in some more water to make it runny. That was the perfect texture for me - thick, but with a soft flow over the meat. I would be tempted to try this sauce again with the addition of a small square of chocolate to replace the sugar, allowed to melt into the hot sauce...

I've created this dish for the TGI Fridays recipe competition, which you can find out more about on the Greek Food Blogs site.

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The middle is a hard slog (Δύσκολη η ανηφόρα)

The IMF admits it made mistakes in the way it handled its money-lending to Greece. This news is being reported as having made many people in Athens 'happy'. The measures that it asked to be taken were too harsh, they caused loss of faith int he banking sector, and the country lost 30% of its deposits.

While it's true that the IMF underestimated the impact of austerity on Greece, I prefer to look on the austerity measures as inevitable at any rate: there would have come a time when the political and economic conditions of Greece would have become untenable. Where a Greek would have had great difficulty trying to right the situation, an outsider would have had more success. As in any battle, there are some losers and there are some winners. So I'm not going to reprimand the IMF for what it did - it handled an extremely bad situation which looked irreparable most of the time in some kind of way that it thought would work.

In other less phlegmatic countries, their medicine may have worked. The reaqson why it didn't in Greece, though, has more to do with the fact that the IMF did not know Greece very well. It did not understand our culture. This is what led Greece to become a third-world country overnight, as well as the fact that all their measures were 'applied across the board' and they hit the poorest hardest - it was inevitable that something would give in the end.

As a Greek, I can partake the joy of the gleeful in Athens, and point my finger to the IMF as I say "We told you so!" But I refuse to do that because I know that there is a more positive way to look at what happened to Greece. As one of my followers recently commented:

"Or in another view: how the measures spawned a host of different ways to respond, from setting up food co-oops, to supporting bartering and time banking, making Greece that much more resilient."

If it weren't for the crisis, the crumbling walls you see below...

From my photo collection - March 2008

... would not have been transformed into the profitable little business it is now:

I had seen the transformation of this building taking place since some time last year - I saw the final outcome today on a short walk I took this morning.

The Greek economy has now reached the end of the beginning; the middle is a hard slog though...

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Greek ways with food

This post will be short, as we are in the middle of painting the house; put it this way: I only found my toothbrush last night...

Today, I came across the most appealing and original Greek food porn that I have ever come across, which I am sharing with you in this post.

Thanks, Margot and Demetra, for pointing out this photograph.

The last time I came across this array of mezedakia was at a taverna in Athens in the Plaka district. My friends invited me to come out with them to see Αθηναϊκή Κομπανία, a music group that was playing there (the name of the taverna escapes me at the moment, but it was wildly popular in those days). I saw waiters zipping in and out of the kitchen with tens of uniform-sized plates (in the same shape and size as those in the photograph) piled up high on their trays, each one full of a taster of good Greek dishes. The plates all carried the same price, and the plates were counted at the end of your evening to work out the price of the meal.  

Memories of a safe Athens (we would around in the evenings until the wee hours) and a carefree lifestyle, matched by equally carefree economics, flooded back at the sight of this photo. Can you name all the mezedakia? The answer lies in this link.

For more information, see trofos.com.

Traditional Greek cuisine doesn't use many flavourings. It's usually lemon- or tomato-based; keeping things basic is the best way to maximise the flavours of the main ingredients, while a sprig or two of fresh or dried herbs are used to enhance the flavours. Michael Pollan would certainly love Greek cuisine, given his belief in not eating anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce. 

This beautiful photo shows us the colour-coded simplicity of Greek cuisine: most Greek recipes can actually be made using lemon or tomato as a base. So you could make a tomato-based bean dish one week, and the next week you can eat the same bean dish using a lemon sauce. Exactly the same applies for vegetable and meat/fish dishes.

The Real Greek, London

What do you think of this novel way of presenting Greek food at a taverna? Love it or hate it, I think it's perfect for variety-loving Greeks who want to enjoy as many mezedakia as possible, but there is never enough space on the table! A cake stand (as one of my English readers pointed out, or a  vegetable basket, in my Greek reader's eyes - what you see depends on your culture, doesn't it?) looks completely foreign in this rather Greek context and treats the subject of food as if it is some kind of game.

Service in Greek eateries presents us with a tricky question to solve. It's a bit of a conundrum: in the summer, tavernas are filled with both Greek and foreign tourists. But Greeks like to be served in one way, and non-Greeks (our tourists, the people who leave money in our country) like to be served in another way. Greks are used to a particular informal style. Tourists are more open to novelties and they actually like gimmicks. They value them just as much as they value the food. Greeks may be surprised to see a vegetable basket arriving at their table, but I personally love it.

So now you know what my taverna would be like if I ran one: the food would be simple, it would all be served on small plates, and I'd bring it out on cake stands/vegetable baskets.

Καλή όρεξη and Στην υγειά σας!

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Kids in the kitchen (Τα παιδιά μαγειρεύουν)

I didn't expect to have to stop preparing meals for my kids at this early stage. I still cook the more elaborate slow-food meals for the whole household, but I don't have to prepare kids' sandwiches, lunches or snacks. They are doing this on their own. That's freed up some time for me, and I really appreciate that; it's also a sign that they are growing up very fast and in a few years, I won't be seeing them every day. But I can see that they even enjoy the preparation and cooking process. I think they see the therapeutic value in cooking; it also stops them from getting too bored, which did happen during the recent Easter holidays. It's just too bad that there are very few events organised for kids during school holidays when their parents are at work.

On a recent trip to the supermarket, while we were buying calamari, my son saw the fish fingers and asked if we could buy some to try. I told him that I didn't mind buying them as long as he cooked them himself.

They know that they won't find any ready food in the house, unless it's leftovers, which they don't always want to eat. Fair enough, I say: "as long as you know where the food is kept and you can create your own meals out of what we have in the house, you can eat anything you want." But 'anything' doesn't include crisps, chocolates and soft drinks, which are always consumed as a rule in company, shared among the family or with friends. (Having said that, I found a bottle of soda the other day on the balcony of the children's bedroom, along with a few chocolate wrappers under the sofa - I wonder how they got there, and how long they had been there.) Other than that, I let them eat anything as long as they can prepare it on their own.

Plating is an essential part of my kids' cooking. My son asked me if it was a good idea to place the fish fingers on the bread. I told him it was really quite OK, as I had seen it done before; it reminded me of a McDonalds fish burger.

They sometimes make toasted sandwiches, but they get bored of those too. I can see a more adventurous culinary flair building up. Unwittingly, I have taught them to cook without recipes: "Be resourceful; open cupboards and refrigerators; if you can't find exactly what you want, use a substitute that you did find; try to imagine where I'd look if I wanted to find an ingredient in the house." ("And if you really can't find what you want, then call me.")

I love the way my daughter prepares her favorite meal: she always prefers fresh ingredients.

It's difficult to work out where independence starts; I tend to think of it as a matter of food, money and personal safety. I like to think that we are tackling the first one at the moment. It's still a worry to allow children as young as 11 and 12 to use knives and heating apparatus in the kitchen, but when they are on their own, it can't be helped. As a parent, you will always worry about what your kids are up to when you aren't at home; but one day, they won't be at home anyway, and you won't be able to check up on them. Just as long as you warn them about the dangers, they need to be independent as soon as the time is right for them.

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Pork ribs (Χοιρινά παϊδάκια)

Today's Sunday lunch consisted of a novel meat cut that I;ve seen being sold in Greece for the first time in my years here: pork ribs. In Greece, pork ribs are always sold attached to the steak, so you can imagine my surprise last week when I saw a rack of pork ribs at the supermarket. The spare ribs were vacuum-packed, with a membrane stuck around them, and labelled χοιρινά παϊδάκια (pork chops) and sold for about €5.50/kg. 



Facebook friends tell me that this cut is also known as κορτεζίνα in Greece. But I bet most butchers would not even know it. Although it's a cheap cut, butchers would never sell pork like this: if you ask for it, they'll complain that they wouldn't be able to sell pork steaks if the ribs were missing. One way you can get access to them is if you ask the butcher to keep aside 'pork bone scraps'; but you have to tell him you're willing to pay for them, and that they are for your dog (and you will get them for less than what I paid for them).



The fact that this vacuum pack is being cut from Greek (and not imported) meat shows what people are looking for these days. Greeks still eat traditional Greek meals, but they also like novelty dishes like this, which they will have become accustomed to form travels and studies abroad. This kind of cuisine is essentially urban in nature; recipes for such 'novel' cuisine are also being passed around on Greek web sites and cooking magazines.

What could be difficult about cooking pork ribs? After looking it up on the internet, I found that this meat cut did prove to be a small challenge if you haven't cooked them before: dry-rub and glaze sauce are new concepts for me. Most recipes tell you to use your favorite dry-rub and your favorite BBQ sauce, both being things I am not familiar with, so I had to make them all myself. 

My version of a dry rub: mix together some salt, pepper, oregano, brown sugar, paprika.
My version of BBQ sauce: use a mixture of imported bottled sauces that I have in my fridge - hoisin sauce, mustard, worcestershire sauce, HP sauce.

I served the pork ribs with a garden-fresh coleslaw of red and white cabbage, finely chopped celery and carrots, made with mayonnaise and mustard. French fries were also on the cards for lunch, but I decided to serve the leftover pastitsio for carbs instead (waste not, want not). And that ginger beer we picked up from the supermarket the other day was perfect for a non-alcoholic substitute to our regular Sunday beer or wine. 

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Lycabettus (Λυκαβηττός)

We couldn't have wished for better weather while in Athens: brilliant winter sunshine without the sweltering heat of the summer, perfect for a leisurely stroll in the capital around one of its seductive points of attraction, and it has many to choose from. But walking is not everyone's sport. In deference to my Athenian hosts who are not great fanatics of leg power, preferring to strut around in their labelled clothing and high heeled boots, I bought a €7 return ticket to the top of Lycabettus Hill for a 2-minute ride in the cable car (which Greeks know as the 'teleferik', from the French). The cable car ride took me back to my student days in Wellington: I used the cable car to get to university during wet weather to save me from getting drenched. In this case, we took the cable car to avoid getting drenched in sweat.

On exiting the dark train tunnel, your eyes will be dazzled by the brilliant sunshine that tourists yearn to experience when they come to Greece (which makes Athens seem such a disappointment when it's raining!), while your mind is hypnotised by the panoramic views. As your eyes feast on the captivating vista, you wonder where you have been all these years, and why you didn't manage to get here earlier. The dazzling rays of the sun fall on the apartment buildings, giving them a resplendent look with an air of luxury. Living on the top floor of one of those buildings feels like being awake in your dreams. Once regarded as the ultimate in urban living, the 're-ti-re' is now seen as an unnecessary luxury due to the high cost of living. From this height, even the jumbled streets appear to lose their haphazard placement, since you can make out the lines of the roads, hiding the sprawl of the concrete jungle. So it's all a question of point of view, and if you are looking at Athens from the right place, this can improve your feelings about a city that has suffered an immense loss of dignity in recent times.

What do you first turn your attention to from this point in Lycabettus? Should you admire the rocky hill itself with the pine forest? Or maybe use the zoom on your camera to spy on the houses directly below the hill with the swimming pools on the roof? How about looking for the Acropolis instead, with the brilliant coastline in the distance? Or maybe visit St George's church first and light a candle? Or grab a table at the cafe before the crowds get to them and it's standing room only after that?

Sitting at an outdoor cafe is a very Greek way to pass the time on a fine clear day. As you sip your tea or coffee at Lycabettus Hill, don't be surprised if you find that time moves backwards. No, it doesn't stand still; it takes you back to the days of the romantic if somewhat melodramatic black and white Greek films of the 1960s, the ones that you (if you have Greek heritage, that is) used to watch with your parents at a Greek cinema night, or on a VHS, where women wore pointy shoes, and their menfolk wore suits and skinny ties, and they all went to the bouzoukia where they sat at a table and solemnly clapped to the music as they smoked their cigars and sipped their aperitifs. In those days, everyone was happy even if they were poor. And in their angry or sad moments, they still managed to laugh and smile, even the ones that didn't emigrate, but stayed on to watch their children emigrate 40 years later.

Mind you, you don't have to sit at a cafe and order expensive drinks when you reach the top of Lycabettus. But a place at a table is an iconic part of Greek life in general, and any trip to any point of attraction in any part of Greece will include this. The tables beckon you to come, almost as if seducing you; it's difficult to deny their charm and turn them down. At any rate, it may be a while before you return to this spot (it took me nearly two decades to return to Lycabettus), and you need to live the experience there and then. By taking a seat at a cafe, even if you have no Greek hertiage, you will suddenly find that you have become Greek yourself, and there is no better place to go Greek for a day than at the enchanting hill of Lycabettus, as you recall the words of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Odysseus Elytis, when he wrote that to be Greek is to feel the same way whether you are standing next to the Parthenon or next to a lichnari (oil-lit lamp).

A man of letters once said that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, but I say that if a man has not visited Athens at some point in his life, then he hasn't lived life at all. And when he experiences Athens from the top of Lycabettus, even if he is an atheist, he will understand the sign at the entrance to the cable car tunnel:

"Great and wonderful are Thy deeds, O Lord God the Almighty!"

If you like this post, you may like this one too.

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Spanakopastitsio (Σπανακοπαστίτσιο)

After making the spinach pie last night, I had quite a bit of filling left over, which I could have turned into kalitsounia (Cretan specialty). That would involve rolling out more filo pastry, which I didn't feel like doing this evening (it's a little hectic at home at the moment).

A Greek cooking show was playing this afternoon, which gave me this idea of filling canneloni with spanakopita mixture, and topping with bechamel sauce. The result: a kind of vegan pastitsio.

This recipe would also work very well with the classic pastitsio recipe which uses No 2 tubular macaroni. There is no real recipe here - I made most of it up as I went along, picking up a packet of canneloni from the supermarket to get me started. After filling the whole packet of 250g canneloni, I simply piled them into the baking vessel, poured over a bechamel sauce made of butter, flour and milk, and finally added some oil and water to just under the level of the canneloni. A little grated cheese was sprinkled over them, and the meal was cooked in the wood-fired oven.

I had this excellent meal with a glass of Roditis Sauvignon Blanc - great pairing of wine and meal, but I'm still not a wine connoisseur enough to be able to tell you why it paired so well.

If you liked this recipe, you will probably also like Laurie's green pastitsio too.

©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. 

Afghan pastitsakia

From a sun-filled Christmas, we went to a rain-filled New Year, and Epiphany saw our first real storm for this winter, making all other bouts of bad weather this winter look tame. The priest was very brave to some out in this weather. After the church service, the priest passed through our neighbourhood and sprinkled holy water in our house, even as the rain bet down onto our roofs diagonally, so that as we opened the door, the rain doused us before the wet sprig of basil in his hands. The last Christmas holy day turned out to be a day spent indoors; in this weather, with the whole day's temperatures being in the single figures, there was not much left to do except stay warm and dry, and cook and eat.

We had a big dinner at a friend's place the previous evening consisting of bbq pork steaks and chicken in their fireplace. Their home felt like a cold stone house. It is nothing less than a villa in magnitude - but it was freezing. The radiators were not working due to the cost of heating fuel, and the only thing we had to keep us warm in this gigantic open-plan house by the sea was an ornamental fireplace. Heating a home with wood will cost half the price of heating it with liquid fuel - but all it heats is the corner of the room where the fireplace is located. If your back isn't covered by an armchair, you end up feeling very chilled. Fireplaces look good in a villa, but they don't so much for keeping you warm in one. I had to borrow a jacket at one point.

Heating is the main issue of this Greek winter. Just when smog-choked Athens had stabilised to decent levels in urban pollution, the city is now being reported as being smoke-clogged, with people gasping for breath outdoors, and a yellow toxic cloud hanging over the city. Although winter was much colder last year, people's supplies of heating fuel lasted them through that particular winter before they began feeling the pinch in their purse. The government didn't expect that the consumption of liquid heating fuel in Crete (for example) would drop by 85%. Liquid fuel for heating has risen to the same level as running a diesel car - only 2-3 years ago, it was priced at half the cost.

This is a major embarassment for the government who thought that Greeks would simply continue to keep paying the steep tax-filled prices for heating fuel that the government imposed, at a time when Greeks have also seen their savings completely milked away from them. The state thought that the newly introduced taxes for heating fuel would fill its treasury coffers, but it clearly seriously misjudged the average Greek citizen. Not enough money for heating fuel? No problem: just chop down a few trees and use another form of heating. The same thing happened with the 2013 road tax fees. Not enough money for the high road tax imposed on luxury cars? No problem: just turn in the licence plates and you won't have to pay any road tax at all. The state's plans did not show any foresight, and worst of all, they didn't take into account the Greek identity trait of lateral thinking and an adamance not to let the state take away funds without a struggle.

Since there was no cooking needed to be done on Sunday due to last night's hefty meal, this gave me a chance to do some creative baking. Use of the oven serves a dual purpose these days: it provides us with food and it heats up the kitchen. I make sure to use the oven when I need both food and heat, otherwise it seems a waste to use so much energy.

It's been a while since I made my mother's pastitsakia, something I call a biscuit cupcake. The dough is baked in a cupcake case but it comes out firm like a biscuit, not soft like a cake. This year's pastitsakia were made with olive oil instead of butter, with the addition of some grated orange zest to flavour the dough. After baking 30 on one tray, I decided to add some cocoa powder and some crushed cornflakes to the remaining dough. This turned the biscuits into a cross between pastitsakia and afghans, which I filled in the centre in the same way as the pastitsakia with almond meringue (afghans are normally topped with chocolate icing).

Life in Greece is all a question of home economics these days. To keep your house and family in order, you need to keep in mind some basic issues of domestic science, in order to cope not just with the financial hardships you will have to face, but also the social problems that will arise in the family unit due to the money issues. If anything is keeping me sane at the moment, it's my will to view life in very basic terms.

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Choco and Niouk Yen

My uncles like to plant unusual vegetables, for the pure fun of seeing something sprout out of the earth. They are willing to try planting anything, even if they aren't interested in eating it. The other day when I visited them, I found a choco sitting on the kitchen table. They told me that they grew a choco vine round the chicken coop. Apparently there were quite a few chocos, but when the summer garden was removed to make way for the winter garden, they simply mulched the whole vine down and kept one choco as a souvenir. I took it away with me to see if I could use it.

A bit of reading on the internet tells us that the choco is not the most exciting vegetable around. It's rather common, and there are more preferable vegetables to take its place. You can eat it cooked or raw, peeled or unpeeled, fried or baked, or even grated into a salad. It tastes like a cross between a savoury melon and woody cucumber. Not particularly highly sought after, but I'm a sucker for free fresh food. I felt sorry for the choco, as I worried that it might suffer the same plight as some kumquat a friend of mine recently gave me. Same goes for the arbute berries I found in the village. They're all interesting edibles but not particularly delectable.



In my choco search, I chanced on an excellent blog that showcases the island of Mauritius, where the choco is used in the cuisine of the Chinese people of Mauritius:

“Niouk yen” is definitely a candidate for the national dish of Mauritius. More popularly known as “boulette” on the island, this rounded steamed dumpling is primarily made of choko vegetable(chayote) and mince pork. “Niouk yen” is a traditional Hakka food and the recipe has been passed on by Chinese Mauritians for generations. There are many variations of this dish – instead of choko some people use green papaya and the pork can also be substituted with beef.

Making Chinese dumplings is not an easy task; I imagine that it is something a Chinese cook uses the whole day to do, or a few people get together and make them as a group. So much preparation is involved in making them - finely chopping vegetables, cooking meats and finely chopping them too, making the pastry and rolling it out thinly into rounds, filling the dumplings and finaly cooking them - only to see them devoured in seconds!!!



The work I put into this meal was worth every second. Despite the recipe taking a long time to execute, it is not a complicated one. It does not contain many ingredients, or too many strange ones, or new techniques. Substitutions can be made. Since I didn't have much choco at my dispoal, I decided to add some finely grated cabbage for extra colour; I used boiled minced turkey instead of pork; we can't get dried shrimp in Hania, so I used fresh frozen shrimp. The flavour of my dumplings would therefore not be very intense, but this is only a matter of availability.



With the bamboo steamer a friend sent me, I made some delicious dumplings which needed very little to complement them, save a sweet 'n' sour 'n' hot 'n' sticky sauce. I also turned some dumplings into pot stickers by squashing them flat, which I pan-fried in olive oil. The sauce was made with whatever ingredients I had at hand: some hoi sin sauce, my own home-made garden-grown pepper sauce, a little bit of saembal oelek and a sachet of pickled ginger that a freind gave me. This is what that one single choco did - I And some ideas are born out of such simple things, like a choko.

I can't describe how good it feels to be able to eat good Chinese food in my house. If I don't make everything from scratch, I can't enjoy this luxury.

©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.