Melitzanopita - Eggplant pie (Μελιτζανόπιτα)

I was buying some (French) beef the other day, which I asked to be turned into mince. The woman at the supermarket counter asked me what I was going to make.

"Bifteki for the freezer," I told her, "and I will also leave some to make a makaronada for tomorrow's lunch."

"If you have some cooked mince left over," she said to me, "use it in a melitzanopita." She explained that aubergine/eggplant pie was her favorite pita. Her mother in law introduced her to it recently, making it into a large pie (made with filo pastry) which she served up as a main meal with salad, as well as on a buffet table for a party. These days, her daughter in law makes it into little pies enclosed in thick pastry (made with puff pastry sheets) and she takes them to the beach as part of a picnic lunch. "They freeze really well, too," she added.

I'd never made eggplant pie before, although I have heard of eggplant used in similar ways, eg vegetarian patties and fritters. Looking it up in my Greek cookbooks, I came across a couple of recipes for eggplant pie, made by some famous old-school Greek TV chefs. They were labelled plainly - melitzanopita - but neither used mince in the recipe: they both used dairy products (cheese and cream). One version (1990) - made by Ilias Mamalakis, who stated that the recipe was given to him by Dimitris Bliziotis, a Greek food historian - was made into a large pie while the other (1999) - made by Vefa Alexiadou (no history of the origin is mentioned) was made into individual fat cigars. Both versions used different thicknesses of Greek filo pastry and the recipes were very frugal in nature, with a clear focus on simple Greek flavours. Ilia's pie contained just coriander seeds to flavour it, while Vefa's used parsley and mint. The basic idea was to make an eggplant filling for a simple pastry casing, which could be rolled up in any way that the cook felt like making them.

Ilias' (left) and Vefa's (right) melitzanopita recipes

I thought this sounded like a nice novel way to use up the eggplant that is rolling into the house from our summer garden at the moment. It also sounded like something I would really like to make - when we hear of a new kind of food, we are open to it as long as it suits our taste spectra. Before looking up 'melitzanopita' (or 'eggplant pie', 'aubergine pie' etc) on the web - my first stop for anything that I don't know these days - I decided that it had to be a very Mediterranean taste combination, something that decidedly fits into the Greek taste spectrum. Melitzanopita sounds unusual, but the ingredients needed to make it are actually very common. Although the pie is not a well known Greek recipe, I bet that it must have been tried out at the very least on one of those morning TV shows that housewives watch, which screen while I'm at work. (By the time I come home, old Greek re-runs are playing, and then it's Turkish soap opera extravaganza time, as Greece can no longer afford to make her own.)

Sure enough, I came across a number of youtube videos from the private Greek TV channels, which often contain a mixture of make-you-feel-good topics for ladies of no particular occupation: a bit of fashion, some celeb gossip, a recipe by a home cook, with the show being hosted by strappy-dressed peroxide blondes. This kind of light-entertainment program features on most of the private channels, unlike the former Greek state broadcaster, still doing a pirate run on ebu.ch, which is now featuring no entertainment, and only political discussions, operatic music and other very politico-socio-cultural  formal types of Greek-style urban-context amusement. (I am hard pressed to understand if the operatic bits are what rural Greeks expected to suddenly be bombarded with on the pirate ERT - then again, they probably don't use internet to watch anything, ergo... pirate ERT is broadcasting not for the masses, but the minority. And let's not talk about the new public but not-quite-legal broadcaster that hit Greek TV screens a couple of weeks ago - it's quite simply an embarrassment.)

Vegetarian filling for melitzanopita

The melitzanopita was made into what looked like a delicious vegetarian pie using soft white cheese and home-made pastry (ALPHA -  June 2012). Admittedly, Vasilis Kalilidis made a really hash job of his pastry, but as I mention on my blog how trivial it is to worry about how perfect your filo pastry sheets come out: when you cut it, it's gonna get scrappy anyway, so the most important thing about making pastry is that your pie remains in one piece after it's cooked and you are serving it, whether on the plate or as finger food.

Melitzanopita with mince cooked eggplant and mince (made in the same way as for makaronada) 

The next link I found came from - yet again - another TV morning show recipe featured on the web, only a week after the previous one (ANT1 - 12 June 2012). Argiro Barbaridou's melitzanopita did contain mince, but it was quite a 'heavy' recipe: it also contained eggs and cheese, which didn't entice me to make it, as I prefer my pies simpler. Eggs, cheese, mince and eggplant, covered in carb-filled pastry, all in one dish reminds me of very rich meals like moussaka, which are better eaten during the winter in colder weather.

But the chef who started this eggplant pie craze appeared a whole month before the vegetarian and meat version (SKAI - 8 May 2012) - George Gounaridis' melitzanopita is vegetarian (it contains cheese). That's what I love about cooking - making the same food in different ways, to satisfy different tastes. The well known restauranteur made his own thin (perfect) filo pastry which he layered into a baking tin with a simple filling of cooked eggplant, tomatoes and onions. The finished pie looked very light and very appetising.

Don't worry about how scrappy your pastry looks; it'll break up easily at any rate once it's cooked.

So you get the picture: eggplant pie can be made any way you want - vegetarian or with meat, even vegan, with the addition of perhaps a binding agent (eg breadcrumbs, semolina or crushed nuts). The pastry can be home made or store bought, in any thickness. But the most important aspect is to make sure that the eggplant is prepared in some way before adding it to the pie. Either it is cooked in cubes, or it is cooked whole and the skin is scraped away before being used for the filling. Eggplant is one of those vegetables that needs a lot of olive oil to cook well enough not to taste like cardboard (which is probably why Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't like eggplant). To avoid the oil, it needs to be roasted. Either way, it needs some preparation time before being used in meals such as pies.

I decided to make my melitzanopita in the shape of a 'snail pie.'

After deciding what kind of filling you want, and what kind of filo pastry you will end up using, you can then choose which shape of pita to use. Whether you make a large pie to cut into pieces, or you make individual pies is up to you. I decided to make my melitzanopita into 'snail pies' - an idea I found from yet another recent melitzanopita recipe from a well known Greek TV chef (no date is given for Dina Nikolaou's pie, but I suspect it was as recently as 1-2 years) - as I really like shaping filo in this way, and it cuts up nicely into smaller pieces, for good portion control.

Sarikopita, Strifti, Kihi - they are all names for a round pie made up of pieces of filled pastry made in the shape of a snail's shell. 

While there is no shortage of melitzanopita recipes in Greek, eggplant pie is found in just a few non-Greek recipes. I have heard that Martha Stewart has some kind of Greek background, so I wonder if it was this aspect of her identity that drove her to make individual eggplant cheese pies in 2010. I think her vegetarian muffin-shaped melitzanopitakia look dreamy. Her recipe is not far off the one I used: I added strained cubed tomato, I didn't use coriander and I used crushed walnuts instead of pistachios. Crushed nuts are a great addition to pie fillings because they give pies an added texture, the nuts soak up excess liquids in a filling (the same job breadcrumbs and rice do) which often makes pastry soggy, and nuts act like protein in a vegetarian dish. The walnuts also had a sweetening effect on the eggplant, which can sometimes taste bitter, depending on the quality of the eggplant.

The cooked pies - vegetarian (top) and mince (bottom) melitzanopita

The important thing in an eggplant pie is not so much what you add to the filling, as much as the texture of the final filling. The creamier and firmer, the better, because it's easier to work with, and it cooks better. The fillings should be pre-cooked before being added to the pastry. I used Dina Nikolaou's recipe to make my vegetarian melitzanopita, while for the mince version, I simply fried some small cubes of eggplant in olive oil, drained them and then added them to some leftover makaronada mince. That constituted my meat-eggplant filling. Both pies worked well because the eggplant was paired with classic Mediterranean tastes. It all depends on what you want to make, how you want to make it, and the desired finished look of the pie.

Vegan melitzanopita for the 2nd Symposium: Food, Memory and Identity in Greece and the Diaspora taking place this weekend. The filling contains the same ingredients as the Gounaridis pita without the cheese; instead, I added some green peppers (with the onion), and a mixture of breadcrumbs and walnuts to bind the (cooked pureed) filling. It smells like mince - very cheap, very Greek and very frugal (the whole thing can't have cost me more than €1.50 to make - all the ingredients are found in most Cretan homes, and half would come from a small summer garden).

Melitzanopita, as it is made by Greeks, from the recipes available on the web, fits well within the taste spectrum of Greek food, using commonly associated combinations in Greek cuisine: eggplant and mince or eggplant and tomato, spiced up with parsley and mint, dressed in olive oil and encased in classic Greek filo pastry. It is an aromatic pie and makes a full meal, coupled with a green salad and some wine. More importantly, it's not an acquired taste and it is very versatile; these two aspects will make it popular among a wide variety of people.

©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.

Lahmacun (Λαχματζούν)

To feed a family frugally with healthy frugal home cooking, you need to keep them excited and surprised by what they see coming out of the oven or the pot. The food has to look enticing and different - it may be made with the same ingredients, but it must look enticing and different.

I had some leftover pizza pastry from our last pizza making session a couple of nights ago where we'd made pizza and peinirli (boat-shaped baked sandwiches), but now it's time to get back to tackling the garden spinach before it starts to warm up. I made some spanakopita filling which I turned into vegetarian peinirli.

The main meal for the next day was makaronada (Greek-style spaghetti bolognaise). This gave me an idea for another pizza-based meal: Turkish lahmacun, the Middle Eastern equivalent of pizza. The chef at MAICh makes this on a rotating basis for the staff and student lunch, with both a vegetarian and meat version offered for students to choose.

Lahmacun is usually made with an egg-based pastry topped with a spicy mince sauce. Our Middle eastern students often roll it up a bit like souvlaki after having stuffed it with some salad and yoghurt sauce. So it's a very versatile kind of pie. I spread some of my home-made tomato sauce on teh pastry before spreading the mince sauce. The topping sticks to the pastry and does not break or roll off the pastry.

The spanalopita peinirli and lahmacun were all cooked together. The lahmacun was brushed with olive oil while the peinirli got an egg wash, a bit like a spanakopita, topped with some seasame seed. To check if they have been cooked, I simply turned the pastry over to see if the bottom of the pies had browned. They don't need a long cooking time - about 25 minutes in a hot oven.

We are eating delicious food made with similar ingredients on a daily basis, but no one seems to notice when you use the same ingredients in a unique way every time.

©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.

Hamburger

A picture post today, which says it all.

From the freezer... 

... to the oven...

... to the burger bun, and all very well cooked, not a 7-minute job on a fast-food restaurant grill.

My hamburger recipe is available here.

First, there was meat, and then there was mince. 

People made burgers until machines made them and people laughed at those who still made them (or simply looked down on them). Soon they'll be walking on four legs. 

©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.

Filled meat patties (Μπιφτέκια γεμιστά)

What Greeks call 'bifteki' looks on first sight to be what Americans would call a hamburger. The difference between them is enormous. A bifteki is an aromatic meat pattie, which can be pan-fried, cooked on the grill or even roasted in the oven in a baking tin with potatoes. It's a popular children's choice in tavernas, where it's often served with fried potatoes. I make them in bulk on a monthly basis, store them in the deep freeze, and cook them once a week for lunch, served with a salad. It's a staple in most Greek homes, and an integrated part of modern Cretan cuisine.

A delicious variant of bifteki is the filled version, μπιφτέκι γεμιστό (bifteki yemisto), 'filled/stuffed meat pattie', what could be called the adult version of the basic dish. Again it is a taverna favorite. I make it only on the day when I am making a large batch of biftekia for the deep freeze. they are the ones we'll eat for lunch, while the other plainer ones are for our regular weekday meals.

Filled bifteki is very easy to make. You'll probably enjoy making and serving them, as they are like little meat packages with a surprise waiting inside them.

You need:
a batch of my basic bifteki mixture - the recipe is reprinted here for convenience:
500g or pork or beef, ground (I always use a mixture of the two meats)
1 cup stale bread crumbs soaked in water, then strained by hand
1 large onion, minced
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 sprig of mint, finely chopped
1 sprig of parsley, finely chopped
salt, pepper, oregano or cumin
For the filling:
some think slices of yellow cheese like Gouda, Edam or Emmenthal (I use Cretan graviera; you can use grated cheese if you prefer)
some tomato, thinly sliced
some slivers of green bell pepper (I used banana peppers from our garden)

Mix the bifteki as given in the recipe for biftekia. Shape the mince mixture into a large flat pattie. Lay the filling ingredients on it. Now curl up the sides of the pattie, and bring the mince mixture towards the centre from all sides. Then flatten it out as much as possible without breaking it open (which won't affect the taste of the cooking procedure anyway, especially if cooked in the oven). Some people roll out another pattie on top of the filling ingredients, but I prefer not to do this, as it makes the pattie rather thick and it won't cook homogeneously.

There are three different bifteki in the baking vessel; the two largest are filled bifteki, while the others are plain bifteki. The green one is kolokithoketes (zucchini pattie). When they are cooked, they do not look too different from each other.

The patties are now ready to be cooked in the oven, on the grill or in a pan. If you cook them in the oven, you can add some par-boiled potatoes to roast together, with a little oil and water placed in the pan so that they don't burn. If you cook them in the pan, be sure to let them cook well enough for the filling to blend with the pattie. Beware of the browning on one side - that's not a sign that the pattie has cooked through. I always cook them in the oven, because it's easier for me to prepare a salad while they are cooking. No need to double on my efforts!

©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.

Fragrant meatballs (Μυρωδάτες κεφτέδες)

Here's a quick and easy recipe I found for fried meatballs, from one of those Sunday newspaper supplements (the Ethnos Cookbook), which will one day disappear with the demise of the paper-based media, in the same way that Gourmet folded recently.

You need:
1 kg beef mince
1 egg
1/2 cup olive oil
2 onions, grated
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 small bunch of fresh mint, finely chopped
1 tsp oregano
2 spring onions, finely chopped (I didn't have any on hand, so I used a leek instead)
the juice of a lemon
1/2 glass of white wine
2 tbsp of chopped parsley
1+1 shot-glasses of ouzo (or tsikoudia, if you are Cretan)
2+2 shot-glasses of water
100g bread
salt
pepper

Mine got a little singed, but don't you let that happen to yours when you make them...

Soak the bread in 1 shot of ouzo and 2 shots of water. Mix all the other ingredients together, till everything has combined very well. Add the bread and mix that in well. Set the mixture aside for 3-4 hours for the fragrances to combine, then shape into small rounds the size of a golf ball. Roll the balls in flour, and let rest for 2 minutes. Fry the balls in very hot oil, turning over all sides until a hard crust is formed, then lower the temperature and cook till the meatballs are cooked through and are well browned.

These meatballs are hard and crisp on the outside but soft and tender on the inside. They can be served with a salad and some fried potatoes; we had them with beetroot salad and some galotiri dip.

©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.

Kebabs (Κεμπάμπ)

When my family visited London a few years ago, after touring the Greenwich area on a freezing cold Sunday in March, before heading back to the train station, we decided to stop somewhere to have a bite to eat, in the hope that we would feel warmer. I've never appreciated a hot meal as much as during that first trip to my favorite holiday destination in the world; it rained very little during our ten-day stay, but the temperatures were lower than 5 degrees Celsius most of the time. We found a diner on the main high street in the area with the word 'kebab' written on the sign. Finally, I thought, I'm getting a chance to eat at a Turkish restaurant. We all ordered kebabs, and came out of the restaurant at the end of the meal wondering if there was any essential difference between 'kebab' and 'souvlaki'.

Our first trip to London, March 2006 - temperatures ranged between 0 and 10.

Both 'souvlaki' and 'kebab' have the same modern Greek meaning: 'skewered meat'. The original meaning of the word 'kebab' is 'fried meat'; this meaning is retained in stew-like meals such as 'bowl kebab', but not in the Greek sense. The word 'souvlaki' means 'little souvla'; the big souvla is where Greek-style lamb is cooked at Easter, over a hot fire on a spit. Kebab is most likely Arabic in origin, and is used in the Turkish language for the same kind of food that we call souvlaki in Greece. Both words are used in Greece, but each one denotes something different. So it's really important to know what to ask for when ordering at a taverna, as Matt Barrett points out; his Tale of 2 Souvlakia makes an interesting point about using the right phraseology so that you can take back happy food memories from a Greek holiday.

When ordering souvlaki pita/yiro, you can ask to omit one of the garnishes, eg onions. When I make souvlaki at home using leftover BBQ meat, my kids prefer them without tomatoes and onions. Shame really, but hopefully, they'll learn to eat them as they were meant to be eaten once they get older.

When Greeks ask for a 'souvlaki' from a takeaway bar, they usually mean pita bread wrapped round slivers of roast pork meat (you can also ask for chicken instead) that have been sliced off an upright rotating grill, topped with slices of onions and tomatoes and some yoghurt, and sprinkled with red pepper (paprika), and maybe a few fried potatoes added to it as well. But the same word can also mean cubed pork meat on skewers, cooked BBQ style, which is often served on a plate, although it can also be served wrapped round pita bread (skewer removed) with all the regular toppings. When buying freshly prepared skewered meat from a butcher, Greeks will ask for souvlaki; it's highly unlikely that they were expecting a cooked meal from a place like this!

This is really confusing for some people who expect to be served the sandwich style souvlaki at a taverna, but get the skewered souvlaki on a plate. Because of that politically correct tendency that English language speakers and Northern Europeans carry with them when they travel, to accept what they are given without question, most tourists simply thank the waiter and try to hide their dismayed looks, but inevitably, they go away thinking that Greece isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Souvlaki served to children at a day camp site; freshly prepared souvlaki is available from any Greek butcher's shop on a daily basis.

If you want a souvlaki wrapped in pita bread with greaseproof paper, you should ask for a 'pita yiro'; yiro' means 'round', so the souvlaki will be wrapped in pita bread and held with the hands. These are to the Greeks what the hamburger is to the American, or fish and chips to the British. Many takeaway places also serve them on a plate at the table, not just as take-out meals. If you really do want the skewered meat, then say 'xilaki' or 'kalamaki', which both mean 'little stick', meaning that the souvlakia will be cubed meat (still on the skewers), served on a plate; the normal serving size is two 'xilakia/kalamakia' per person. If the taverna is more up-market, a metal skewer is used instead, and you'll probably get one large souvlaki.

Souvlakia in Greece are hardly ever referred to as kebabs. The Greek 'kebab' (a word adopted into the Greek culture from the time of the occupation of the Ottomans) has come to denote compacted minced meat with herbs and spices added, wrapped round a skewer and cooked over an open fire, just like the souvlakia on sticks. So if you ask for a 'kebab', don't be surprised if the meat on the skewer looks like one long sausage without its casing; that's what you asked for. If you ask for a 'pita kebab', then that sausage will come inside some pita bread (minus the skewer) with all the trimmings, just like the 'yiro' described above.

*** *** ***

For a truly Athenian food experience, you mustn't miss out on al fresco dining, under one of the most famous monuments in the world, at one of the kebab houses located in Monastiraki, in the centre of Athens. If you've been through Athens without doing this, then you've probably missed out on the greatest traditional culinary experience that this city has to offer.

Bairaktaris, Thanasis and Savvas all serve really good juicy kebabs that very few cooks can imitate in their own homes. The secret is in the large quantities they make and their own special blends of herbs and spices that they have developed over the decades. Some kebab shops serve mainly (or only) kebabs, so that their product is always fresh, given the large turnover of the same product. I've been to all three of the kebab restaurants mentioned above, and I found the food served at all of them equally good. Savvas seemed to have the most friendly staff and there was no hawking for customers (at least on the day I was there).

These kebab houses on Monastiraki Square are located in the same area and have a very respectable reputation; they are always crowded with diners eating delicious succulent kebabs served on pita bread with onions and tomato. Salad, fried potatoes and tzatziki are always served on the side ,and some of these places serve little else.
.

To make kebabs of the highest order, you need a good recipe, the right cooking facilities and possibly some good cooking skills learnt from experience. Making kebabs is a little like making biftekia; you can use a basic meatball recipe, but the kebab mixture must be super smooth and sticky, so that it will stay put when you stick a skewer into its centre. Make sure all the ingredients are so finely cut or ground that when they are rolled into a ball, they will look like one big reddish brown mass.

I'm still perfecting my kebab recipe in terms of spice combinations. A perfect kebab needs to be smoother in appearance than mine, it should be cooked over an open fire, and it should retain its juices.

Lamb mince is unusual to work with in Greece, since not many butchers will mince lamb for you (and this is the preferred meat, along with beef, that is used in Turkish kebabs, due to religious practices). I found some lamb mince recently at AB Vasilopoulos, although it was imported from France and mixed together with beef mince. I added some onion, garlic, herbs and spices, shaped them into rissoles, skewered them and grilled them in a hot oven, turning on all sides to get them as browned as possible. We had them with a fantastic tzatziki and a Greek salad; it made an excellent meal during a heatwave in early June this year, with Joy and Bryan for company, who accepted my blog intro's invitation: "If you're ever in Hania, come and join us for lunch...".

©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...

*** *** ***

.

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.

*** *** ***

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)

*** *** ***

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.

©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.