Orzo rice pasta with peas (Κριθαράκι με μπιζέλια)

The simplest photo can have the power to cause the most unexpected surprise. Last night, I put up this photo on my blog:

There's nothing special about this meal, except perhaps that the peas were picked and shelled an hour before I cooked them. (There would have been more peas, but they were quite tasty in their fresh state - I ate my share as I was shelling them.) But this photo caused a little bit of a riot. My facebook followers fell in love with it - I imagine they were trying to pick out one of the peas straight from the screen! My kids loved this meal so much, that I think I should immortalise it, despite it's unplanned nature and its sheer simplicity. It's also a good lenten recipe for the Holy Week that we find ourselves in.

You need:
a large cup (or two) of freshly shelled peas
5-6 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
an onion, chopped roughly
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
1-2 teaspoons of tomato paste
250g orzo rice pasta (half a packet - it is usually sold in 500g packs)
salt and pepper

Heat the oil, add the onion and garlic and cook till translucent on medium heat. Add the peas and stir them in to coat in oil. Do the same with the orzo. Now add the tomato paste and pour in 2-3 cups of water. Add some salt and pepper. Keep stirring over medium-high heat until the water is absorbed and the pasta is cooked. This is very important because orzo tends to stick to the bottom of the pan if left unattended. You may need to add more water. At any rate, the water will be absorbed by the pasta.

Once the pasta is cooked (it only needs about 10-15 minutes), let it stand to settle and absorb more of the liquids. It can be served both warm and cold (it goes well with yoghurt), and if you have the time and inclination, you can add other vegetables to it like cubed carrot and/or corn kernels.

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BOGOFs (2 + 2 δώρο)

Buy 2 packets of pasta, get 2 packets free, the special read above a supermarket shelf. Not the standard buy-1-get-1-free special, but pretty good nevertheless. No point refusing; pasta is one of those ingredients that rarely goes off past its expiry date, and it is very versatile. So I bought some spaghetti and some orzo rice (not all pasta shapes were on sale), which are both favorites in our house.

8x500g pasta = €0.55x4 = €2.20 for 4kg of 100% Greek pasta.

After picking out the few bits and pieces that I needed, I went to one of the cashiers to pay for them. I was surprised to see the owner of the mini-market in my neighburhood waiting in the queue. There is another branch of the same supermarket closer to his shop, but I suppose he feesl a bit embarrassed going there because it's a much smaller branch, and he would be buying out most fo the supermarket's stock of basic goods: I noticed he had filled up at least 4 supermarket trolleys worth of products, most of which were of the 'bogof' type - there were quite a few packets of pasta in one of the trolleys. The pasta was not packaged together with the classic warning about the product being sold as one item and each packet may not be sold separately.

The mini-market owner was buying supermarket stock on special, probably selling each item at the regular price, and making a 50% profit without any hidden expenses apart from fuel. The specials are distributed by brochure on a regular basis, so he knows when they are on. I only shop from mini-markets when I desperately need a product and the supermarket is not open, or when I want to pick up the local paper (if I were a smoker, I suppose I would use them more often). Otherwise, I always feel as though I am being ripped off in such places.

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Fettuccine with tomatini

Remember the 1000 tomatini I harvested recently? I've been cooking quite a lot with them, often making the same dish served in different ways. Cooked tomatini with pasta has been the most popular dish so far. (There are still another 500 tomatini to go, so I still need to think of more ideas.) It's very quick to prepare, which is especially helpful as an evening meal - in 15 minutes, you will have cooked the dish and it will be on the plate, ready to be served, so you can cook it for dinner after work.

For two servings, you need:

3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

¼ tsp dried basil

1 clove fresh garlic

16-20 cherry tomatoes

1/2 yellow/red/orange/green bell pepper

a pinch of chili powder

60-80g feta cheese

200g fettuccine

Boil some water in a large pot and cook the pasta. In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a shallow frying pan, add the finely minced garlic and cook for 1 minute. Then add the basil and cook 30 seconds; now add the tomatoes (cut in half) and cook for 5 minutes on medium heat. Finally, add the peppers (cut in short strips) and the chili pepper (very finely sliced), and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Mix in the feta cheese and turn off heat. The cheese will melt, creating a thick sauce.

To serve, ladle the sauce over the drained hot pasta. This delicious tomato dish can also be eaten as a dip, served with toasted bread, tortilla chips or nachos. It's best served warm. My kids added grated Grana Padano cheese over the sauce, which feels a little stodgy since the sauce already has cheese in it, but it was actually a very good addition.

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Greek-style simple comfort food: Orzo pasta rice with chicken and peas (Κριθαράκι, κοτόπουλο και μπιζέλια/αρακά)

Here's a picture that won over many people's hearts on my facebook site:

The vegetables were cooked separately from the pasta and chicken: I cooked them in this way, because some of us prefer the vegetables and the others prefer the meat and pasta. If I combined everything, it wouldn't have had the same effect on the family. It looks like double the work, but it gave double the pleasure. Both dishes are made in the same way - and it was terribly easy to make.

For the orzo dish, you need:
some chicken (I used about 500g of chicken with the bone, in small pieces)
1 onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 large fresh tomato, grated
3-5 glugs of extra virgin olive oil
350g orzo pasta rice
2-3 cups water
1 large red bell pepper (optional), finely sliced
salt and pepper

For the pea dish, you need:
500g mixed peas and other frozen vegetables
1 onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 large fresh tomato, grated
3-5 glugs of extra virgin olive oil
1 large red bell pepper (optional), finely sliced
salt and pepper

Proceed in the same way as described below, for each dish: Heat the oil, add the onion and garlic, and cook till transparent. Add the grated tomato, red pepper, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Mix till smooth. Lower the heat to minimum, then add the chicken/mixed vegetables. Cook till done with the lid on - the chicken will need about 30 minutes, the peas etc about 15. Add only a little bit of water if needed, to ensure the food has enough liquids to cook in and won't stick to the pan.

For the orzo, now add the water to the chicken and then pour in the pasta, mixing carefully so that the pasta isn't clumpy. Let it cook slowly on minimum heat, with the lid off. The water will be absorbed by the pasta - turn off the heat just when the water is almost absorbed, and you can still see some liquid in the pot.

You still have time until Sunday to add your name to the draw for a natural beauty package from Aphrodite's Embrace. 

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May Day

Looking back to last year's blog at this time on Holy Wednesday, I was discussing how terribly betrayed Greek people felt about what had been happening in the country, with all those revelations of benefit fraud, state mishandling of funds and no punishment for those had aided and abetted this situation.

This year, Greece saw a clean-up of the benefits system, there are now no more funds to be mishandled (they are doled out by our creditors under immesne scrutiny), and we all know what happened to a former defence minister and mayor.

May Day lunch - spicy prawns in tomato chili pasta  sauce, with artichokes for salad.

I think I can safely celebrate my optimism today for a better and more mature Greece.

Καλό μήνα, everyone.

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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.

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Bami goreng (Ινδονέζικα νούντλς)

Food can be cheap, but it never needs to be as boring as something out of a packet.

Just add boiling water and oil and Serves 2, the wording stated on the packet of the VITASIA Bami Goreng Stir-Fry Noodles (which, coincidentally, cost more than twice as much as what is shown in the photo - the one-time offer took place at LIDL in Greece at the same time as in Holland and Belgium). Sounds good, I thought to myself, taken in by the exotic-looking photograph. I bought two packets (Produced in Switzerland) and decided to prepare them for that night's evening meal.

This didn't happen as I discovered my husband preparing a big tomato salad, swimming in oodles of olive oil and decorated with slices of pungent onion and aromatic pepper. The air was redolent with the aroma of crusty bread slices. The table was already laid, centred by a plate of feta cheese. I put aside the noodles and forgot about them until only just recently when the weather had cooled down and we had begun to run out of tomatoes. I decided to prepare one of the packets for a quick fix meal.

The food in the bowl looks almost like the photo on the packet - all except the vegetables. The complete meal packet did not even fill a whole soup bowl!

The instructions on the back of the packet stated that approximately 10 minutes were needed to prepare the whole meal (less than the time needed to prepare the recipes in JO's latest collection). Instead of a wok, I used a saucepan. As I tipped the finished meal into a serving dish, I realised the whole meal looked enough for one, not two meals. It was closer to a snack than a meal. The appearance of the cooked food (80% noodles, as stated on the packet) had lost its exotic appeal, possibly due to the cooking speed. The finely processed vegetables (6.4% of the total meal) resembled lifeless papery fragments - bits of dried orange peel instead of carrots, limp rotted grass for mushrooms, camouflaged slivers of onions and Savoy cabbage - temporarily revived by the warmth of the liquids, with a buzz of radiance provided by the oil. Only the celery seemed to remind me of its fresh self.

I knew I could have prepared a more appetising version of this meal if I had devoted just a little more time than I needed to cook it straight from the packet. Most of the ingredients listed are staples even in an urban kitchen (eg pasta, onion, garlic) while most are cheap to buy. They are also the kind that we normally keep in the fridge anyway (carrot, leek, tomato). Recipes on the internet for bami goreng (apparently a very popular dish in Holland from their Indonesian influence) make the dish sound very easy to prepare. I used the noodles from the second packet that I had bought in conjunction with one of those recipes, to prepare a more colourful and much more enticing meal (not just a snack) for the whole family.

Instead of ham and shrimp, I used smoked Cretan pork, and went easy on the coriander. Ground ginger was replaced by fresh and sambal oelek is now seen regularly on supermarket shelves marked 'tastes from abroad'. This is influenced possibly by the source of imported foods for each supermarket chain: AB Vasilopoulos, for instance, relies on DelHaize, a Belgian importer. 

Bonus trivia: The nutritional value of 100g of the packaged contents amounted to 169 calories. Each packet weighed 125g net, ie 211 calories per packet. Only water and oil are added in the cooking process. Water is calorie-less, while olive oil contains approximately 120 calories per tablespoon; the whole meal therefore contained approximately 450 calories. If the meal were divided into 2 servings, that's about 225 calories per serving. The average recommended daily calorie intake is 1940 for women and 2550 for men. If the meal is meant to serve 2, it would have to be supplemented by other foods to constitute a complete meal. A small steak (or juicy sausage) on the side would have complemented it quite nicely!

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Seafood pasta (Μακαρόνια θαλασσινών)

Fresh seafood is never really the most frugal fish option in Crete, unless you are a fisherman. Frozen seafood is the best choice for something cheap. I recently came across a mixed bag of seafood chunks including mussels and calamari for less than €3, which I used to recreate a pasta dish that I tried at an expensive fish restaurant. The pasta sauce had a pesto base, which is usually made of basil, but if you're out of fresh basil, a good pesto can also be made with other green herbs.

You need:
a small bunch of parsley (I only had a little parsley available, so I also added purslane leaves and finely minced fresh green peppers)
a few cloves of garlic
olive oil - I use quite a lot, and I get a very oily dish; the amount depends on the tastes of the cook and his/her guests!
salt and pepper
a 300g pack of frozen mixed seafood chunks (cheap frozen seafood is usually not Greek)
350g linguine (or spaghettini)

Boil the pasta till al dente. I usually pour a tablespoon of olive oil into the pasta pot to stop it sticking while I'm preparing the sauce. In the meantime, finely chop all the herbs and garlic and place in a small saucepan; add the salt, pepper and olive oil to the greens. Heat the mixture and place the rinsed seafood (don't defrost it). Let the seafood cook for a few minutes on very low heat, till everything has just heated through.


When the pasta is ready, drain it, place it back in the pot and add the seafood sauce.



Serve with a fresh salad and white or rose wine.

Total cost of meal if you have access to your own supplies of olive oil, salad ingredients and herbs: €4-5 -about €1.25 per person (serves 4).

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Kids cook

I've tried to get my son to write a blog, but he much prefers writing and sketching.



A couple of days ago, instead of writing about his day, he wrote up the recipe he cooked.

And we used the  corn from the cobs that grew in our garden.



Although my kids are able to cook a few basic things, I still supervise them - being independent in the kitchen takes a certain amount of practice; they still need to remember to load the washing machine. (and I don;t really want to come home to a kitchen fire).

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500: Orzo purslane salad (Σαλάτα με κριθαράκι και γλιστρίδα)

When I phoned them, I wasn't even sure that their telephone would still be working. They assured me they would be home; I assured them that they did not need to go to any trouble before my visit. Old people never take no for an answer. When I arrived, I found my aunts quite busy: Sofia was stooped over the stove top, while her twin sister Agapi was laying the table. The cutlery tinkled against the plates as her shaky hand laid down each piece. They had aged considerably since I had last seen them, almost a decade ago just before my mother died. At the time, they still seemed sprightly, but even then, it was obvious that they were slowing down. Although their minds did not admit to this fact, their bodies were showing signs of wear and tear. My mother's unmarried twin sisters were the oldest children in the family. The only ones that did not emigrate, they had managed to outlive every single one of their siblings. Now at eighty-eight, they were getting on.

"Martha mou!"
"How wonderful to see you again, after all these years!"
"The spitting image of our Elpitha!"
"Sit down, my child, you must be tired after that journey!"

I set down my present of a box of chocolates from the zaharoplasteio on the corner of the heavy wooden table with the curved legs. It was still laid with the same crochet tablecloth that I remembered on all my visits. My mother had bought it for them on my first visit to Greece with her when I was only a child. A great to-do was made about how to keep it clean. A transparent plastic tablecloth was bought from a shop in the town for that purpose, and laid over the crochet to allow it to show. Ever since then, when they had guests, my aunts would cover the plastic with another embroidered white tablecloth where we would eat from. It looked crisply cleaned and ironed, despite some stubborn oil stains.

The table was set for three, with a plate and fork at each setting. I recall that they never used knives. One would always be found in the middle of the table, but there were never enough to go round to all the diners. In the middle of the table was a small bowl of sliced tomatoes swimming in olive oil, sitting next to a plate of feta cheese.

"I don't know if you'll like our food today," Sofia apologised.

"We're fasting and we forgot you were coming, to buy some meat" Agapi explained.

I feel luck is on my side today. It's pointless reminding them that I'm a vegetarian. Sofia was now bringing a large bowl to the table filled with bright colours. The room took on an aroma of freshly pressed garlic.

 Orzo purslane salad - a favorite recipe passed on to me by a friend: 

Saute some garlic (and onion) in a little olive oil, then add chopped coloured peppers. Pour in a cup (or two) of orzo rice pasta, add water and salt, and cook till the pasta is done. Before serving, add the leaves of the purslane weed. 

"Smells so good, Thia Sofia!" I said truthfully.

"Mmm, but it's not ready yet!" Thia Agapi said. "We always forget to do at least one thing, don;t we, Sofia?" Sofia frowned, trying to remember what it was that Agapi remembered but she did not.

"I'll just go out and get the missing ingredient!" Agapi said as she made her way to the back door.

"Oh!" cried Sofia. "The purslane!"

"Yes!" Agapi laughed, with Sofia joining her just before she went out into the garden. "The orzo purslane salad isn't ready until we add some purslane to it!"

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Learning English through cooking (Μαθήματα Αγγλικών μέσω μαγειρικής)

The Greek economic crisis may have had a massive effect on people's income, but it still hasn't dealt a deathblow here in Crete in people's spending habits in private education for their children. Greeks still send their kids to afternoon language classes, to learn mainly English. Because I'm a native speaker of English and an English teacher myself, I felt it ethically wrong to send mine to such lessons when I knew I could be doing the job myself. Not only that, but all Greek children have English lessons at state school, at least twice per week. Some even have English lessons in the afternoon state school (like mine), which is optional, mainly used by children with working parents. Sending them to a private language school on top of the lessons they get at a state school (no matter how bad they are, as some Greek parents believe) is surely a mismanagement of resources, not to mention short-sightedness on the part of both parents and teachers. It's another good example of the highly unsustainable Greek system of getting things done.

A lot has been written about how parents should not take on the role of the teacher, but I find such discussions highly theoretical, and in modern times, they miss the point. Education is changing. No longer is it a case of  "open your books, turn to page X, start reading, now answer the questions", etc. You can do such work through the internet. Teaching is much more dynamic now than it ever used to be, and all because we live in the internet world where we do not need teachers all the time to tell us things that we (thought we) didn't know. Even at the research institute where I work, I no longer use pen and paper; all my students' homework is conducted online, including essays and exercises. I'm still working on testing them online internally in this way; where there's a will, there will eventually be a way.

The village school in the background

Unfortunately, not all children have the same opportunities. The biggest difference is not the country we live in, but the possibilities available in the different cities, towns and villages of a country. There is a distinctly rural identity in my children's school which, if developed positively, could encourage children to be more creative within their own environment. State teachers generally use the prescribed school books, using traditional methodology, and they teach according to national standards. All very well, but the truth is that most of the children in a village school are not being prepared for the global connected world. This is not necessarily the teachers' fault; most of the parents have a limited educational background and their contact with the outside world is generally non-existent.

Apparently, we've been promised a better educational system. But at this early stage in Greece's new revolution, it is too difficult to try to get a state teacher to change (most often) her ways, because the education system in Greece had a lot of cracks in it well before that, most teachers have not studied/been abroad and they do not have an all-round education. They themselves have been brought up within exactly the same academically-inclined system (and it worked for them).

Rather than change the Greek state school teachers, I simply try to change the messages that my children may be picking up from a school system which does not encourage children to nurture their critical thinking skills. There is little in the way of applied teaching. In this world, where the pace of life is very fast, it's easy to fall behind technology-wise, especially when you can't afford it. I get my children to apply their collective knowledge in multi-task purpose-set assignments. It's much more challenging for their young flexible minds than a worksheet for homework (I'll leave that for the state school teachers). To learn English effectively with their mother as their teacher, I need to make sure that they are listening, speaking, reading and writing as much as possible, exclusively in English. And there is always the internet, the best tool for learning anything when used in the right way.

Here's my checklist:
Listening: from me, English DVDs (no subtitles).

Speaking: with me, English-speaking friends, tourists.
Reading: reading material aimed at children their age (via Amazon orders, or electronic format), and internet material (eg games targeting children's development, exclusively in English); never give them information they can find on the internet!
Writing: diary writing (every day); never spell words for them - they have to use a dictionary!
Grammar: that's a really hard one - they need rote learning exercises for that. The only other way to do this is by getting them to start a blog where spelling/grammar errors will be shown up automatically by work processing programmes. (Watch this space.)

Occasionally, I try to find English-language instructions for them to follow. My particular favorite is through recipes: they get fed at the same time. They still need supervision in the kitchen because of my fear of their using knives and playing with fire at such as early age. But they kill two birds with the one stone in this way.

Teamwork

Here's a carbonara recipe I adapted for them, which they find easy to follow. The changes I made to the recipe have also been clarified for them, eg:
- "Why do you use more oil than the recipe says, mum?" "Because we're Cretan."
- "Can we still make this if we don;t have pancetta?" "Yes, we have other similar local ingredients."
- "Can you really make this recipe using fewer eggs?" "Of course. You just did."

Don't forget that kids like numbered steps. 

To make a Greek carbonara, you need:
250g spaghettini
some olive oil
a few slices of Cretan bacon (known as apaki), about 3 per person (12 pieces)
2 garlic cloves (they like to hear the sound of the papery peel crushing against the pressure of the knife)
2 eggs
1 packet of cream (make sure it says '100% Greek' on the packet - FAGE produces it)
half a cup of grated cheese
salt and pepper

1. Put the spaghetti in a large pot with water and let it boil for 10 minutes.
2. Heat the oil in a small pot over medium heat. Add the bacon pieces and crushed garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring every now and then.
3. While the bacon and spaghetti are cooking, beat the eggs in a bowl. Add the cream, cheese, salt and pepper, and mix everything well. Don't forget to watch the bacon and pasta!
4. When the spaghetti is cooked, switch off the element and drain it very well in a colander. Then put it back into the same pot.
5. When the bacon is ready, switch off the element. Pour the bacon into the spaghetti and mix it in well. Then add the egg mixture and mix that in well too.
6. Serve the spaghetti hot.

English is a very important language in the world so I'm thankful I know it myself and can pass it on to my children. Although I learnt foreign languages at school, it was at a time when the world was very white: we were learning French and German in New Zealand, along with Latin. All very useful for making an interesting person out of you, but not so useful in preparing you to enter the New Zealand job market, not even in those days. I now can't imagine a world where Chinese or Arabic isn't being learnt. I've bought some material for my children to start learning Chinese. Now all I need is to learn it myself...

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Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Yiouvetsi (Οικονομικό γιουβέτσι)

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. 

Remember that cheap 'n' Greek 'n' not-so-frugal beef stiado you made last week? It was quite filling, so there must have been a portion left over, right? Well, that's all you need to make this very filling pasta dish: just one regular portion of well-cooked beef (or rabbit) stifado.

Frugal yiouvetsi (serves 4)
leftover stifado (beef or rabbit stew) (you've already cooked and saved that from a previous meal)
400g elbow macaroni (0.50 cents)
some salt (optional)

If you're going to use leftover rabbit stifado, first take the bones out of the rabbit - it will be uncomfortable for your eaters otherwise, and shred the meat. Throw away only the bones - don't throw away the sauce that the meat was cooked in. If you use beef stifado, mash up the meat in the sauce. For each hungry eater, add one cup of water to the meat, and 75g-100 elbow macaroni. Boil the pasta till done. If the pasta needs more water to cook in, add only a small amount, so as not to make the stew too soupy.

You might need to add a bit of salt once the pasta is cooked. These leftovers also work well with orzo rice pasta, used in the traditional Greek youvetsi.

Total cost of meal: less than 1 euro per person - the meat was, in essence, included in the cost of a previous meal. 

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Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Pastitsio (Οικονομικό παστίτσιο)

Every Friday, it's cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal Friday.

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. 

Classic Greek pastitsio (the Greek version of lasagne) involves cooking in three different pots. Beef mince (in Hania, over 10 euro a kilo) is cooked in a red spicy sauce, then poured over boiled pasta, topped with bechamel sauce and sometimes grated cheese. I recently made a successful one using just one sausage instead of mince. It's quick to cook and can be made with some of your leftovers.

Very frugal pastitsio (serves 4)
1 medium-sized onion, finely chopped* 
1 fat clove of garlic, finely chopped*
1 medium-sized sausage of your choice, chopped small (~1 euro)
~200g tomato sauce* (half a store-bought tin costs about ~50 cents)
300-350g tubular pasta (there is always a pasta deal at the supermarket; LIDL sells 500g packets of 100% Greek pasta for 50 cents)
a punnet of Greek yoghurt (~75 cents; I had some left over from a tub which no one wanted to eat)
2 heaped tablespoons of flour*
200ml milk (25 cents)
a few glugs of olive oil*
no salt and pepper needed (a spicy sausage will have enough of this in it)

Heat some oil in a small saucepan. Add the onion, garlic and sausage and let brown for a few minutes. Add the tomato sauce and stir. Cook on low heat for another 5 minutes.

Boil the pasta in a large pot and drain well. Place the pasta in a baking tin and pour over the sauce. In the same saucepan where you cooked the sausage, place the yoghurt, milk and a glug or two of olive oil. Heat and stir, to blend liquify the yoghurt. Add the flour and stir constantly over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Pour this over the pasta. Place the baking tin in a moderate and cook until golden, about 35-40 minutes. Take the cooked pastitsio out of the oven and let it solidify a few minutes before cutting to serve.

We had it with a tomato salad (the tomatoes under the 'greenhouse' are doing well despite the cold) and some home-brewed wine. A slice of bread to dip into the extra virgin olive oil salad dressing makes this meal a very filling one.


Total cost of meal: about 3 euro; less than 1 euro per person.

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The perfect Greek roast meat (Το τέλειο ψητό στο φούρνο)

Our New Year's meal - much to my chagrin - was cooked in the conventional oven. I was looking forward to using our wood-fired oven heater for cooking on New Year's Day, but my husband decided against it. The rain started before we could install a T-pipe on the outside flue pipe, so there is simply what looks like a spout coming up like a chimney. As the smoke comes out of the flue pipe, some condensation is returning into the chimney and running back down into the oven. It seems like only a trickle at the moment, and it certainly isn't making its way into the oven... but any liquid being made by mixing the cold outside air with the hot inside smoke will be mixed with smoke and dust and anything else that may be produced in the chimney spout. This could be dangerous for our health - until we get a T-pipe installed outside, so that any condensation, however minor, runs out of the vent instead of dripping back into the heater, we won't be cooking in it.

Our New Year's lunch consisted of a roast, cooked with tomato sauce, and some orzo pasta added towards the end of the cooking time. This very simple-sounding dish is known in Greece as γιουβέτσι (yiouvetsi). It does not look or sound like a gourmet dish, although in Greece, it's very popular. Tourists often see this dish on taverna menus; it's usually served in a clay pot. Food looks enticing when served in an exotic way, kind of like a sizzling Szechuan hotplate.

Our New Year's Day meal - roast pork cooked with orzo rice to soak up the juices, green salad with pomegranate and cheese, eggplant risotto and feta cheese (it goes with everything).

The current popularity of Greek cuisine is due in part to the freshness and high quality of the ingredients. All of these can be found/bought in other countries too, so that a dish can be recreated outside Greece. But there is something else about traditional Greek cuisine that cannot be bought, and that is the cook's know-how. Although Greek cuisine is known for its simple cooking techniques, there are some skills that require experience. It's true that anyone can cook, but you also need to know what your eaters are expecting. Here's how a home-cook in Greece would go about making sure that this dish meets the expectations of her eaters.

Yiouvetsi - serves 4-5
1 kg of pork, chopped into large chunks
1-2 cups of pulped tomato
1-2 cups of water
1/2 cup olive oil
salt and pepper
200g orzo rice pasta

Let's start with the meat. Not all meat is the same. Depending on how it was raised, it will have different cooking times. Free-range meat raised in Crete (like this pork) is tougher than the meat of animals raised in an environment where the animals have less space to move around. So the cooking time in a recipe for yiouvetsi can only be approximate. We used free-range pork. It took a long time to slow-cook it (between 2-2 1/2 hours). Speaking of which: pork isn't the only meat that could go in here. You could use beef, lamb, goat or chicken, all commonly used meats in the Greek kitchen. A Greek home cook would use whatever is available.

It's better to keep some fat on the meat since this meat is going to be slow-cooked, otherwise your meat will come out too dry. You can remove it after it's cooked. If you remove it before, the meat will dry out too quickly as it's cooking, so that it won't reach the tender stage. This is why I prefer meat cooked in large chunks: it stays moist throughout the cooking time. It doesn't matter if the meat is boneless or not. Too many bones just will take up too much space in the baking vessel.

If you're growing your own tomatoes, you can use as much pureed tomato as you want. Yiouvetsi can be made with tinned tomatoes if fresh tomatoes are too expensive or not seasonal. We use a lot of tomato in our food throughout the year because, even in January, we still have tomatoes growing (under cover) in the garden.

If the meat is fatty, you might say that adding olive oil isn't necessary. A Cretan wouldn't agree with you. 

To cook the meat, I simply placed it on a baking dish and seasoned it well. Then I added the liquids, whose measurements are only approximate. (Only the orzo rice isn't added at this stage.) The amount of liquids depends partly on the size of the baking dish. The meat chunks should be sitting in water, half-way up. That way, they'll be soaking up the liquids and tenderising on the bottom, while they brown on the top. But as the liquids are taken up, more liquid needs to be added so that the sauce doesn't dry out. If you add all the liquids together, the meat won't be given the chance to roast; it will look oven-boiled.

To slow-cook a roast, you don't need to turn the heat up too high. Once the pan goes into the oven, for the first hour or so, it doesn't need checking. After that, I check it every 20 minutes to see if there is enough liquid in the pan. When there isn't enough water, the tomato puree will start sticking to the pan, and the meat will start burning. When adding liquids to a roast, it's better to use hot water, so that the roast isn't cooling down every time you add liquid to it. At the same time that you check (and add) the liquids, the meat chunks will need to be turned so that they are all given a chance to brown all over. In this way, the side of the meat sitting on the bottom of the pan rises to the top, and the browned meat doesn't burn. This is very important for a consistent look.


Greeks like their meat to fall off the bone. Because meat isn't raised in uniform ways, as mentioned above, and the cooking was done slowly, in moderate heat, my roast took about two hours to cook. Every time I checked on the meat, I prodded it with a knife. If the knife isn't going through with ease, neither will your teeth. At the same time as prodding and turning the meat, I would add just enough water (or tomato juice - this is costless for us, as we find ourselves at the source) just to keep the meat roasting without boiling/burning. 

When the meat was done, I pushed it to one side of the pan and covered it with a piece of foil. Then I tilted the pan and placed a thin piece of metal (the cover of the electric elements) under the place where the meat was to keep the pan tilted. I added the orzo rice and as much water as I thought would be needed for the pasta to cook. Oven-baked pasta needs about 20 minutes to cook when the oven and the liquids are both very hot. 

But the pasta also needs checking time, because it's difficult to gauge how much liquid is already in the pan. I checked the pasta every 5 minutes, adding more water, so that the orzo cooked and soaked up all the liquids, and left only the oil/fat in the baking tray. When the pasta looked ready, I switched off the oven and took away metal that was keeping the pan tilted. In this way, the juices and pasta settled again evenly throughout the dish. 




I would have taken more photos, but the meal was scoffed down very quickly. Leftovers (if there are any, and in our case, there was this little little ramekin-sized portion, which is how I ended up with one more shot of this meal) make a good meal the next day. Baking pasta with olive oil ensures that it doesn't get soggy. 


It looked like a simple meal, and it still can be, as long as the cook gives it the necessary attention.

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Pasta tricolore (Μακαρόνια τρίχρωμα)

Stand up and be counted; don't be afraid of the big bad wolf. 

I am spending a lot of time these days cooking family meals, rather than dishes that I personally would like to try. These two things don't always coincide - not everyone in my house eats new greens on the market, nor does everyone want to be the guinea pig and be the first to try something totally different, but we all have to eat something, so I have to continue cooking. But every now and then, in order not to bore myself silly with the regularised Greek family meals that I am always cooking (that's usually when I start to cook badly), I like to try something new, at the risk of hearing all manner of whining and winging at the lunch table.

I was recently tempted to buy these colourful bell peppers, which are nearly always imported to Greece. The imported ones are usually produced in Israel (a strange place to grow water-needy crops, since Israel has a serious water shortage) or Holland (another strange place to grow anything, since Holland has a shortage of land; most of their exported crops - and they do export a lot - are grown hydroponically). Both these countries have a high level of technology, which is how they can grow their fresh produce - and a more powerful network of trading partners, so that they can sell their produce profitably.

Israeli produce imported to Greece consists mainly of familiar food items that are being grown or distributed out of season (Israeli pomegranates and loquats are commonly found on the shelves of Cretan supermarkets), so it's highly unlikely that I would need to buy such produce, since I would have had my fill of these in their season. When the time comes for endives to be cultivated in Greece, I'll probably stop buying Dutch products too. There's a growing awareness of food origins in today's society, and since we generally like to know where our food comes from, it pays to know that many products labelled as Israeli may actually be grown in Palestine (both by Palestinians and Israelis occupying the West Bank). Food labels also make political points, as the following contributor to a BBC Have Your Say discussion states:

"I'd rather know where everything came from, be it food, clothes, electrical goods etc. At the end of the day if I'm opposed to Israeli settlements then I should know if someone is trying to sell me food from them."

In the same vein, one of Europe's greatest citrus importers is, surprisingly, Holland - but she grows none herself. Holland picks up the produce from other countries and then re-distributes them, making her look like an exporter. People generally like to make informed choices for their purchases. Food labelling by country of origin doesn't just reduce sales; by labelling the origin of food correctly, it could also increase sales.

Getting back to those colourful bell peppers, they are most often sold at the supermarket pre-packaged, each packet containing one pepper of each colour: red, orange and yellow. Why they hardly ever include the green bell pepper in that packet is another of life's marketing mysteries: Is it that it adds to the price that the consumer is willing to pay for this kind of thing? Isn't the number four a classic food marketing number?

So when I found these bell peppers all being sold singly, AND bearing the label 'ΚΡΗΤΗΣ' (and not israel or Holland), I exhaled a sigh of relief - now I feel justified to buy and use these peppers.

Having said this, slice those peppers in half and take a closer look at them. The green pepper (commonly produced all over the island) has a thinner flesh than the red-orange-yellow varieties - that's partly a sign of the method used to produced the coloured varieties. They probably get more chemical fertilisers, they are probably more sensitive plants and they are more likely to be grown in greenhouse conditions. They are also more expensive than the green ones. They tasted sweeter than the green pepper, but the latter smacked of pepper flavour, whereas the other ones had a sugary water taste to them. And worst of all, they were more vulnerable than the green ones - they began to soften too quickly, before I could use them all up. Their high water content made them go mushy in some parts very quickly - this kind of mould spreads very quickly on vegetables.

You can't really win when you buy new varieties of crops, even if they are local. Eventually these varieties will adapt to Greek soil, but it will all take time. Till then, you'll just have to enjoy what's on the market. I used my peppers in a simple pasta sauce made with olive oil, onions and garlic, and a seasoning of salt and pepper. There were too many to go into the pasta dish, so the remaining were used as an addition to a cabbage salad, and spaghetti bolognaise.

Whatever the politics that went into these dishes, the outcome was very appealing.

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Lumen accipe et imperti (Λάβετε φως και μοιράσετέ το)

Here's a very summery recipe to use up an over-productive zucchini crop. Zucchini pate is very simple to make and can be used in a variety of ways, as Ruth Pretty notes, whose recipe Michelle led me to.

Although I enjoyed the zucchini pasta, I loved this pate spread on bread. I could survive on this throughout the summer.

Lumen accipe et imperti ("receive the light and pass it on") was the school motto for WGC. Ruth, Michelle and I are all "old girls" of this state school in Wellington. All the schools in Wellington had nicknames, used mainly by pupils of other schools. Ours was "Wellington Grills". Most immigrant Greeks sent their children to state schools, but that's not where their grandchildren are being educated nowadays, a sign of upward mobility in the next generation of Wellington Greeks. Most are now attending private schools that their parents probably made fun of when they were young, places like St Farts and Snots Porridge. They have clearly moved up the ladder in Kiwi society, forming the middle classes of Kiwiland. This is not surprising; Greeks are a remarkably progressive race when they get out of their own country, taking up any opportunities given to them to make good, and instilling similar expectations in their children.

An old girl posing with her parents on Prizegiving Day before the end of the school year, November 1981.

Rachel also recommended the same pate recipe to me, spicing it up with onion and garlic, which is how I made it for a bit of added flavour.

You need:
a quantity of grated zucchini to suit your needs (courgettes and marrow may both be used)
a few tablespoons of olive oil (I used more than a few; zucchini absorbs oil very quickly)
a coarsely chopped onion
1-2 finely chopped cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the onion and garlic. Cook till the onion has softened. Add the grated zucchini (if the zucchini came with the flower still attached to it, you can also add that chopped in thin strips) and let it stew away until most of the water has evaporated and the mixture looks like a thick paste. Season with salt and pepper, and serve on grilled bruschetta, toast, hot pasta, or even as a dip (alongside tzatziki) with crunchy vegetables.

Michelle tells me that this paste freezes well. All I can say is I'll be glad when I see the end of this year's zucchini crop...

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Braised octopus with pasta (Χταπόδι με κοφτό μακαρόνι)

Here's PART 2 of our adventures in Athens.

The little laughing olive tree
went into mourning recently.
"We're fasting from most meat products,
until the forty days have passed."

(When loved ones die, tradition states
that one must fast for forty days.)



So when I saw her up in Athens
I wondered what she'd find to feed us.
As I opened up the fridge
a great big octopussy grinned



right back at me from in its bowl.
"Is it alive?" I began to howl.
"Oh no," assuringly she said.
"Believe me, it's as good as dead."

"What are you going to do with it?"
"It's on the lunch menu," she said.
"And how do you intend to cook it?"
"According to the book with favorite



Greek food from Kiwi homes down under;
Just look in here: I think you've got one."
She passed me the book with the recipes
collected by the NZ Greek community.



And then she cooked the octopus
with some tomato and pasta tubes.
"What will your children eat?" she asked
"Just say the octo's sausages

and that this kind of macaroni
is coming soon to shops in Kriti."
We all partook of this great dish;
Kalofagas cooks just like this.



(P.S.: My kids begrudgingly ate the fishy pasta, but weren't convinced about the 'sausages'.)

For more Athenian adventures, check out PART 1; PART 3 is coming up.

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