Aphrodite's Embrace: Feeding your skin with natural beauty products (Go on, have a taste!)

GIVEAWAY! Scroll down to the end of the post for a chance to win a beauty care package with some natural cosmetics for organic beauty.

I was very touched to hear Tina Turner say in an not-so-new interview that she has never done drugs or smoked, nor does she drink a lot of alcohol, which of course all goes against the lifestyle she lives and the people she mingles with, notwithstanding a past troubled relationship. It gives me the courage to declare that neither have I ever done drugs, or smoked, or gotten drunk (I once drank a lot of wine at a NZ party because there was no water being offered with the salty food, only alcohol, but it did not make me drunk - it actually had a very sobering effect on me, making me very sleepy), and this is not because I'm some kind of prim and proper goody-two-shoes, as people often stereotype 'boring' people who have not lived their lives to full extremes: I simply didn't feel any desire to get drunk, take drugs or smoke.

I've always had a passion for natural foods and products, which I was able to develop to a great extent when I came to live in Crete. Here, it is very easy to live as naturally as you want/can, without making a great effort or spending a lot of money, as we are generally surrounded by natural substances which we take for granted. This desire for the natural things in life put me off embracing the well-established Western habits in the beauty products sector, such as using make-up or skin products (like the majority of Greek women who 'put on their face' before they leave home, as a friend of mine once said to me). Maybe I am just lucky to be blessed with naturally good skin, which, unfortunately, my husband and children don't actually share with me - they all have very sensitive skin, something that shocked me as I slowly became familiar with the changes in their faces. Genetical inheritances aside, I am very grateful that I don't need to use what I call 'gunk'.

No one is perfect though. My Achilles' heel is actually found close to Achilles' heel - I suffer from overly dry hard cracked skin on the soles of my feet, something I seem to vaguely remember only my father suffering from (but not the rest of my family). But I also know that that's just an excuse: I confess that I don't actually take care of my feet. I walk around barefoot in and around my home throughout the year (with socks only when it's really cold) and I hardly ever wear anything other than flip-flops during summer. I practically deserve to have dry cracked skin on the soles of my feet.

Whether this condition causes you pain, or you simply feel that it looks very unsightly, there is little you can do to alleviate the condition if you don't use some kind of skin softener. Natural remedies for controlling this problem are time-consuming and rather messy. Applying a mashed banana and honey poultice on a regular basis isn't cheap, nor is it practical to keep applying olive oil on the soles of your feet - imagine all the stains... In my quest to keep things natural, I bought two rather expensive products packaged in attractive clip-top preserving jars from a well known store... and found that they simply DID NOT work! These products put me off buying anything else for a long time. I then bought a cheaper supermarket product which worked much better than the expensive 'natural' stuff (which I realised was more about supporting good causes than actually being effective for what they were being sold as) but it contained ingredients that would only be recognisable to chemists, eg Benzyl Benzoate, Betaine, Cetearyl Alcohol, Myristyl Myristate, P-Anisic Acid... It's really sad to feel that you need to resort to smearing chemicals on your body on a regular basis to make you feel good.

In my search for a completely natural and cheap product for my problem, I came across Aphrodite's Embrace (after the Greek goddess of love) which promotes beauty products with the motto: "Go ahead, have a taste"! I contacted the site owner, Michelle Lasher, a young mother who created a range of natural beauty products during her pregnancy when she suddenly realised that she was using substances on her body that could affect her unborn child. She began experimenting with products she made herself, using completely natural substances, which she is now selling online. I think it's true to say that in this day and age, more and more people are turning back to nature, having tired of chemically saturated products that harm us in such subtle ways that we really can't work out which one causes our irritations, as we imbibe so many artificial products via so many manufactured food and beauty products, not to mention the general polluted state of the air through means of transport, chimneys etc. So Michelle's products are regarded as highly desirable in our times.

On hearing that I live in Greece, Michelle was overjoyed: her husband is Greek - now that is an amazing coincidence, especially since we really did not know anything about each other! She was also very excited to hear about my website and my interest in natural products. Michelle directed me to the product I could use to help soothe my cracked dry heels: her homemade organic Baby Bottom Antispetic Healing Cream (US$8), which contains just coconut oil, olive oil, beeswax, tea tree and lavender essential oil - and nothing else! I find all these ingredients recognisable and pronounceable.

Another important consideration is that the baby bottom cream has multiple uses, as Michelle explained to me: "It can be used for any dry skin, eg dry elbows, knees, lips, knuckles; it is very healing and can be used for sunburns, scrapes and burns; it has completely replaced other antibacterial ointments in my medicine cabinet. It can be used to prevent stretch marks in pregnancy. If I have any irritated skin, no matter what it is, that is the first thing I put on it. I have a friend that likes it for his eczema." Most of us are fooled by the labelling of commercial beauty products which usually designate a specific use, and we end up buying more products than we need when one product could have done more than one job. People are getting tired of being fooled by big business.

I decided to place an order for the healing cream - the prices at Aphrodite's Embrace seemed quite reasonable - which Michelle said would be packed with a gift of her Lip Quenching Balm (US$2.50) containing beeswax, coconut oil, olive oil and peppermint essential oil. On opening the package (which conveniently fit into my mailbox and arrived only a week after I ordered from Texas to Crete!), I was also surprised to find some more gifts: some Honey Face and Lip Exfoliating Scrub (US$5) containing honey, sugar, baking soda, oatmeal, olive oil, tea tree and lavender essential oils, and a Deep Moisturizing Face and Body Lotion (US$6) containing coconut oil, beeswax  and lavender essential oil and extra virgin olive oil. "Try them," Michelle emailed me, "and tell me what you think." I couldn't wait!

I live in a hot country, but this package from Texas, USA came to Crete, Greece in perfect condition - despite being knocked about during transportation, nothing leaked or looked melted or seeped out of the packaging. The products in the above photo are exactly the same products that were photographed in Michelle's home in the smaller photos above. Michelle sent me - she had photographed them before sending them to me.  

The face scrub felt and smell so natural. The aroma it exudes reminds you of a forest full of honey. In two minutes, just a tiny bit mixed with a little water made the skin around my nose oil- and grit-free (in Greece, the hot summer climate gets muggy in September, and my skin usually feels the effects of the sweat mixed with natural airborne dirt). The moisturiser had a nice matte finish - even my very good skin could feel a difference. I used the lip balm by chance before I had a shower - it's highly waterproof!

And finally, the baby bottom cream: it's absorbed quickly by the skin, and again it leaves a nice non-oily finish, two qualities which are very important elements of a good foot skin softener. Once you apply it, you can't walk around much until it is absorbed, and you don't want an oily sensation because it leaves residues on your socks/shoes. Another very important feature of foot skin softener is how often you need to reapply it; it's simply not something you can do every day/night because it limits your mobility. I've used this product once this week, and I don't feel I need to reapply it until the week passes - I would need two applications with the chemically-saturated supermarket product. So it really is quite effective.

It's a nice feeling to know that I can feed my skin in the same way that I feed my body, with completely natural products, to achieve an organic kind of beauty. And at such a reasonable price.

Giveaway! Just leave a comment on this post for a chance to win this beauty care package!

And here's the best part: Michelle has asked me to host a giveaway contest for one lucky winner of a beauty care package from Aphrodite's Embrace, for anywhere in the world! Just leave a comment on this post and I will place your names in the draw, to be held in a week's time from now when I will announce the winner.

©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.

Doing it like TGI Friday's

Greek Food Blogs is organising a Greek food bloggers' cooking event, in conjunction with TGI Friday's Greece. The challenge is to create a recipe for TGI Friday's Greece that will be used in its main menu if chosen by the judges. TGI Friday's menu is based on American recipes and cooking techniques, which are radically different to my own cooking style.

Before you submit your recipe, you have to learn to cook in the style of TGI Friday's. By looking through the TGI Friday's Greece menu, I notice a heavy emphasis on meat-based dishes that are accompanied by a range of colourful salads and toppings. Most importantly, the meats are usually served with some kind of spicy sauce or piquante dip. That's quite different to what I cook in my kitchen on a daily basis, which is usually based on seasonal local food, not very much meat and what our garden supplies. But I liked the idea of a foodistic challenge, especially now that the garden is so full of high quality fresh produce.

Upon request, a mini cookbook based on TGI Friday's Greece menu was sent to me, containing recipes for TGI Friday menu staples such as wings, ribs and fajitas. My biggest worry about cooking American food in my Mediterranean kitchen was that I would not have the right ingredients at hand. When trying out a new recipe, I often look to replace unusual ingredients with local seasonal products, and prefer not to spend money on imported non-Greek food. However, there are some items that are always found in my kitchen (eg soya sauce) because I use them often, but there are a number of items that I don't stock at all (eg cider vinegar), while a number of items (eg fresh coriander) are difficult to source where I live. I knew I wouldn't be able to source all the ingredients in the recipes supplied to me, so I decided to adapt the recipes to suit my Mediterranean kitchen supplies.

I also set myself an additional facet to the challenge: can I cook a new recipe, learn a new cooking technique, use whatever is in my kitchen, cook the meal after work with no previous preparation and keep the meal frugal, without compromising on taste and quality? I printed out the recipe (on my new printer-scanner, after being dutifully served by my former eight-year-old model) as soon as I got home from work just after 3pm, and checked the ingredients and method. (Then I whipped up a boureki and a batch of tomato sauce, drove off to our fields to pick a crate of oranges and fill up our empties with ice-cold spring water, and then returned home to take the kids to the beach, while the boureki in the oven and the tomato sauce on the element were cooking at the lowest possible point, all part of a typical lazy Greek's summer routine.)

I began cooking the meal at about 8pm. I decided to cook the wings recipe, replacing the wings (a cheap commodity in Crete) with some tasty German sausages that I had in my fridge, whose expiry date was due very soon. This meant that I could cheat on time, because the wings needed special preparation and a longer cooking time. The sausages were simply drained and dry-fried on a pan, so that they became crispy-burnt on some parts.

The recipe then called for a pico de gallo, which sounded very exotic, but it was actually a fresh colourful salad, consisting of tomato, peppers and onions of all colours. It just so happened that on the previous day, I had harvested a number of coloured peppers from our garden - how convenient was THAT?! While the sausages were cooking, I set about chopping up the salad ingredients into little cubes. All they needed was to soak in a little lemon juice, before being strained when the time came to use them. The recipe also called for fresh pineapple pieces as part of the salad, something which we never buy: fresh fruit is never missing in our house in the form of oranges, apricots, melon and watermelon (we don;t grow the last two). I omitted this step, but made up for the colour (maybe not the sweet taste) with the brilliant yellow pepper.



The recipe also called for a spicy meat glaze made with whiskey. This was the most daunting part for me: I've never made such a sauce before. The ingredients for the sauce included tabasco sauce, soya sauce, onion, cayenne pepper, brown sugar, whiskey, cider vinegar and beef stock. The cider vinegar was replaced with a light home-made red wine vinegar, and the beef stock was omitted (I simply added water). The point was to make a sauce as thick as syrup, which would be used both as a sauce and a topping. The ingredients needed about 20 minutes to reduce to a syrup.

The final look of the plate involved skwering the chicken wings (so I skewered the sausages),cooking them in some of the syrupy sauce, plating them with more sauce and topping them with the salad. This all looked good, but the plate looked a little empty, as I was serving this dish as a main evening meal and not an appetiser. I had some mini-pita bread rounds in the freezer, which I toasted lightly int he same pan I cooked the sausages. I also have a lot of eggplant in the garden at the moment, so I sliced a small one and fried it. (The aubergines were sitting on the kitchen worktop for three days, and had shrivelled slightly, which makes cooking them much easier, as they did not need to be salted and drained - Cretan garden-grown aubergines re much sweeter than commercially grown aubergine).  
 


Just after 9pm, the dish was completed, and the plate looked full. It was very tasty, as judged by my eaters, who asked me if I could make it more often. Yes, I suppose I could, although I wasn't happy about the addition of sugar in our main meals. I wonder if I could make the same sauce with honey as a healthy alternative.

Post-script: My husband particularly enjoyed this meal, and I was very glad I to have been able to offer it to him - he'd been stuck on the roof of our house all morning under a fiercely hot sun (we're renovating, and in Crete, renovating usually entails the house owner taking an active part in the work), and was too hot and tired to eat at lunch time (which consisted of a leftover meal - not very enticing if you are too tired to eat). After leaving for work in the afternoon, he realised that he would either crash the car or fall asleep at the wheel if he continued working, and he was surprised to find this meal ready and waiting for him. Just another day in the life of another lazy Greek.

©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.

The way we are: Survival (Επιβίωση)

Whether Greece continues to use the euro or not doesn't worry me at all. No matter what currency is legal tender in my country, I will be able to use it just like I did any other currency. Having said that, I acknowledge that there will be a few teething problems, so to speak, in the beginning, until we get used to the New Drachma, or the Greek Euro, or whatever it's going to be called. I suppose we will stick to 'drachma' and feel a twitch of embarrassment until my generation gets used to being the first one to have left their national currency and returned to it in one single decade - before others follow suit.

So what's going to happen in the interim period, between euro and drachma? Scenarios like no petrol and no medicine have been painted of a Greek default. Sounds like sci-fi to me. We can't go back to such a past in a globally connected world. No one really knows what will happen, but many people are speculating by using the past miseries of other countries' experiences, notably Argentina. Instead of looking at other countries as a model, it pays better to think like a Greek at times like this.

 A glimpse back in history by a witness of the 17th of November siege in 1973 of the Polytechneio by the junta regime: that was the last time Greece faced a serious internal crisis, which was a pre-cursor to the overthrow of Papadopoulos' junta regime. The newspaper article, from  the Greeneville Daily Sun, dated 30 November 1973, was written by American teacher Betty Blair (who was living in Greece from 1971-1977) one day after the siege took place, under the pseudonym Xenophon (= foreign voice); with no internet back then, the outside world found out what was going on in Greece with great delay. The article is highly relevant today.

As in the war, when inflation was out of control and a loaf of bread cost a million drachmas (or something like that), people will give up large sums of their stashed cash to buy basic necessities. The cities will suffer, as they usually do in times of crisis, because food becomes unaffordable. In the villages, there should be no reason to panic. People living in villages - and I'm thinking along the lines of middle-aged Greeks who live in remote self-sufficient villages - will be affected only slightly, like when they can't pay their electricity/phone bills, or when they want to buy medication. But they won't need to worry about bills in times of crisis - people who didn't pay the newly instated property tax still have electricity, so there is no doubt that there will be a relaxed outlook on the part of the authorities towards such debts. As for medication, it pays to stock up. I always have basic children's medication with me when I travel. I don't leave things until the last minute.

Greece doesn't have a humanitarian crisis on her hands, as the press (both Greek and foreign) leads us to believe. There's plenty of food, and it's getting distributed. People's health is mainly affected by stress, not cholera and other third-world diseases; the prostitutes being found HIV positive are mainly drug addicts looking for a way to sustain their habit.

 The slogans back in 1973: "Death to Papadopoulos", "Out with NATO", "Down with the Junta,", Out with the Americans," "USA-FASCISM". Thirty-nine years later, we have direct parallels: references to the EU or people/countries involved with it take the place of the US.

The way Greeks panic over money issues will be the cause of most of the problems Greece will face in the immediate period after Greece's exit from the euro. Most people will probably take out all their euro from the bank and keep it under their mattress. No doubt, it will be a good time for robberies in Greece. Burglar alarms are useless - the state will be in chaos and I doubt the police will bother with just another commonplace petty crime like a house burglary. Since most Greeks aren't about to go anywhere soon (as the press again misleads us into believing), they shouldn't really be worrying about their money - they will be able to use it to live in Greece the way they have always been doing. If they just left their money in the bank, Greece would be in a better position than she is, even now that Greece is still in the euro.

The day Greece defaults, I want to be prepared for the next week (or month) or so for really basic things like food and personal safety. I've got a home to live in, and I doubt that will be taken away from me. I probably won't go to work (and the children won't go to school) until things calm down. Even if my workplace or school is still open, for reasons of personal safety (or maybe because I run out of petrol), I will not leave the house, and no one will expect me to, either. They will probably be feeling the same way as me.

In the aftermath of the 17th of November, people went to school  and work as usual, but Greece is no longer run by a junta regime - I assume people will not return to work too quickly. The Acropolis was closed for the first time in modern times in 1973, which has direct parallels with Greece's current crisis. A curfew will probably be imposed: "for the citizens' personal safety", no doubt; by staying home, I won't need to worry about where all my family members are, unlike Maria (in the above newspaper excerpt).

 

I'll continue to process all the food I can off our little plot, having stocked up previously on flour, beans, rice and pasta (the kids like the latter). And don't forget the sugar and coffee, just to make our life more interesting. Thankfully we live in Crete, so I'll have plenty of fat (in the form of olive oil) to cook with and to make our food tasty. We'll probably get a couple of chickens to give us an egg or two from time to time, and maybe we'll even invest in a goat (only one) for her milk which will provide us with protein from the cheese we make out of it. We'll probably forget about meat for a while - vegetarians do well without it, so I don't see why we can't.

The 70-year-old woman (in the above newspaper excerpt - click on image to enlarge) probably never ran out of food because she was hoarding it; she had been through the wars and knew what to do in a crisis. Xenophon (who is actually Betty Blair) wrote: "One must always be prepared for the unexpected here in Greece. Housewives all around me ... had filled their arms with milk, sugar and olive oil. The prices would probably go up tomorrow and who knew how long this crisis would last."

While some people will be hoarding euro notes, US dollars, pounds sterling or gold, I'll be hoarding food. I won't be going anywhere, and I won't have to fear that anyone will rob me of my cash. If I am accosted in any way during the chaos that will ensue after Greece's economic downfall, at least I can share my food with them. But that would mean that my personal safety is not intact - during their moment of madness at not finding anything of pecuniary value, my attackers may simply tear up our vegetable garden. That would be my downfall, even if short-term; I'd have to start picking horta and snails to compensate for such losses.

 Postcard from 1971 - rebuilding the Acropolis had not yet started. Compare this view with a more recent one - not much has changed. 

I know I'm painting a really simple picture. But even though I am a much more complex person, most of the time, my life on this island really is simple, complicated mainly by other people's problems. As long as I have my health, I'll be able to look after my family. After that comes accommodation, food and safety - if I manage to have all that, I will survive. I refuse to create more worries than I have already. I may become poor overnight, but I won't go hungry.

*** *** ***

Thanks to the author of Suns, Seasons and Souvlaki: A glimpse of Modern Greece, by Betty Blair, who gave me permission to reprint her article. She told me that her mother (now 94 years old) lived through the depression in 1929 in the US. But since she was on a farm, she hardly felt it. I allow Betty to have the final word (taken from the last paragraph of the last excerpt above):

"But their spirit is not squelched, it simmers, indignant that such injustice has been wielded out against them. During the last 50 years, they have been able to survive five wars, including an exhausting civil war, at least two catastrophic population displacements, several violent earthquakes and chronic droughts. They were molded from the same clay as Pericles. Despite their sufferings, they would triumph. Not now perhaps, but eventually."

We're not done yet. 

©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.

Olive oil cookies (Λαδομπισκοτάκια)

Every weekend, I check which of my newly-acquired cookie jars is emptying the quickest, and by Sunday evening, it will be filled with something freshly baked. My home-made ladokouloura are much cheaper than any kind of good-for-dunking medium-quality semi-sweet store-bought biscuit (unless you buy the generic LIDL or EUROSHOPPER label, where you end up with lots of broken cookies as well as many crumbs - good for making a cheesecake base, if only cheesecake were part of the traditional Greek culinary repertoire).

I was looking for a new idea for a good biscuit with which to fill my newly-acquired cookie jars, when I chanced on this grandmother's blog. She put up a different cookie recipe for a whole year. In her first post, there was no photograph to accompany the first recipe, where she gives her version of Nestle's famous chocolate chip toll-house cookies:

"My next cookie memory would be the ever famous, possibly all-time favorite, the chocolate chip cookie. There is nothing better than to bite into a round circle of baked dough sprinkled with gooey melt-in-your-mouth chocolate. A chocolate chip cookie can dry tears, heal broken hearts, mend scraped knees and elbows and solve sibling arguments. Most of the problems in the world could likely be solved by a properly baked, right out of the oven, chocolate chip cookie. The power of a cookie is underestimated."

I feel the same way when I see my children dipping their hands into one of the cookie jars.

Toll house cookies are expensive to make in Hania, where neither high-quality butter or chocolate are cheap, so I've adapted the basic recipe by replacing the butter with our own supply of olive oil. It works very well. Chocolate chips are available in Hania only as cooking chocolate drops by Samouri and Jotis (except possibly in the wholesale trade to bakers, confectioners, etc); they didn't melt when cooked. I got get cheap, tasty, nice-looking cookies that everyone really liked.

Toll house cookies are a kind of 'drop' cookie - the soft batter falls off a teaspoon onto the cooking tray. From previous experience, I prefer to bake chocolate chip cookies so that they are firm all over. Greeks don't like chewy soft cookies (that's just part of their food identity), so I use more flour than the original cookie recipe. For me (and most Greeks, I'd say), a chocolate chip cookie needn't be eaten immediately, because Greeks don't eat hot biscuits (another food identity element). Greek cookies always need sitting time when they come out of the oven. At any rate, the batter can be prepared in different ways: as a cookie, slice or even from refrigerated dough. 

The best aspect of the original recipe is that it is very versatile. You can add nuts (whole, chopped or ground), dried fruit, grated coconut, dark or white chocolate, spices and cocoa to the basic recipe and get a whole host of cookie variations, not only in taste but also in appearance. That way, no one gets bored of eating your home-made cookies. It's amusing watching the kids rummaging through the cookie jar to reach their favorite one before anyone else gets it, especially if it's the last in the jar.

For the basic cookie recipe (yields 70-75 pieces), you need:
3-4 cups all-purpose flour (~ 70 cents; I used soft, ie low-gluten flour)
1 teaspoon of baking powder (minimal cost)
1 cup olive oil (our own supplies)
3/4 cup white sugar (~15 cents)
3/4 cup soft brown sugar (~20 cents)
(or just use 1.5 cups of soft brown sugar)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (~15 cents)
3 eggs (30 cents)
(The basic recipe also includes a teaspoon of salt - I don't use it)

Start off by combining all the ingredients EXCEPT the flour in a bowl and mix well. The oil needs to be beaten into the mixture till it emulsifies, as it often sits on the top because of its light weight. Then beat in the flour gradually, to get the right consistency for firm cookies. The amount depends on your location and the temperature, as the original recipe (see top photo, right) correctly notes. The mixture will look like a firm batter, or a loose dough. It's the effect of the olive oil. Don't let that put you off.

 

Classic dark chocolate chip cookies and snowdrop cookies (cocoa powder and white chocolate) 

Now comes the fun part: you can divide your batter/dough (depending on how much flour you added to the mixture) to make different cookie flavours. I usually divide it into two lots, to make two different cookie flavours. For a start, you can add 1 cup of ground walnuts, almonds or coconut for extra texture. Or, you could make any of the following combinations noted in the photograph caption below. I was able to make them with just half a batch of cookie dough, being extra careful to keep the cookies a regular shape and texture, in order to cook evenly. None stuck to the bottom of the baking tray (it was greased with olive oil).

If Bertie Bott (from Harry Potter fame) produced 'every flavour cookies', this is what an assortment pack might look like: choco-mint, quince spoon sweet, halva, choco-halva, coconut, chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip, orange, jaffa, walnut, coco-walnut, choco-nut, fig newton, ginger-walnut, and a couple more whose precise contents I don't remember.

Once you've made up your batter, drop your cookies with a teaspoon onto a baking tray. The dough can also be rolled in balls in your hand (as with my 'assorted flavours' cookies), which you can press down a little, to make the cookies spread out evenly. I can get about 20 cookies on one sheet, with enough space to spread. Bake the cookies in a moderate oven (about 180C) for 15 minutes for firm cookies, the way Greeks like them.

Happiness is... full cookie jars, and a weekly bundt cake for school lunches.

These cookies look almost festive for me, with their many colours, textures and flavours. The festive season is upon us and it came quite soon to Hania this year: winter set in early, following our early autumn's footsteps. By the middle of October, it was cold; by the beginning of November, we were using the heating system. Compare that to last year: in early December, we were thinking that we might be enjoying an outdoor barbecue on Christmas Day.

Cost per medium-sized cookie: about 5 euro-cents, if you have your own olive oil supplies.

©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.

Pumpkin bougatsa and pumpkin galaktoboureko (Κολοκυθομπουγάτσα και κολοκυθογαλακτομπούρεκο)

Pumpkin has never been hugely popular in Crete. It doesn't have the fame here that it does in Northern Greece, or the American continent, where cooking with pumpkin is a common feature of the respective cuisines found in each area. I'm often lucky to be given one, but this year, that hasn't happened. I think it's related to the reason why we didn't find any quince on our trees, while all the bitter oranges that I usually make into a spoon sweet have also disappeared. Times are hard, and pumpkin now tastes good...

I still like to cook with at least one pumpkin every autumn because it's part of the seasonal nature of my cooking regime. Pumpkin is also very versatile, meaning that you can make it into any kind of meal you like, both sweet and savoury, both pie and soup. The one I bought wasn't too expensive - 2 kilos for 2.50 euro. My friend Demetra recommended a recipe that her sister had given her. She called it a pumpkin bougatsa, and told me it was one of the most amazing pies she had ever had. Bougatsa is a kind of cheesy/milky pastry pie, served all over Northern Greece; in Crete, it has its own variant, notably, bougatsa Iordanis.

OK, I told her, I'm interested in giving it a try. She then insisted once again that it was the best pumpkin pie that she had ever made or tasted. Interestingly, when she passed on the recipe to me, there was no photo showing the cooked dish. Most people look at food photos on the internet or in a book and cook from the accompanying recipes, using the photos as a gauge to what they should expect.

Sometimes, though, you chance on a recipe that you know will be good from the way the recipe is written. It isn't often the case at all, but I was convinced that this pumpkin bougatsa would turn out to be a good one, despite its simple ingredients, from some of Demetra's instructions:  

"... keep aside ¾ cup of your cooked pumpkin. It will be a gorgeous orange color. Enjoy that... Keep on low heat to thicken. Stir here and there... don’t let it stick on the bottom of the pan.....stir... clean your kitchen.....stir occasionally....stir.....enjoy the gorgeous color and aroma....and once it becomes thick, take it off the burner..."

You can tell the writer actually made this recipe, and enjoyed the whole process, not just the food. I asked Demetra about the origin of the recipe: her sister came across it at a women's monastery near Montreal in Canada. Apparently, the nuns serve it to guests in the afternoon on a regular basis. The recipe has made its way from Canada to Boston to NYC to Athens, and now to Crete!

When Demetra visited her sister recently, they cooked a lot together. Just before Demetra was due to leave, her sister "absolutely insisted" that she could not go away without having tasted the pumpkin bougatsa recipe that she had gotten from the monastery: "She managed to fit this one in at the end. It was so last-minute that I nearly missed my train. But I didn't and all's well that ends well, AND I had HOT PUMPKIN BOUGATSA on my Amtrack ride from Boston to NYC. I opened the container on the train and the smell literally wafted through the entire train car. I understood why my sister had insisted." So now, you will understand why it's a good idea for you to make this pita soon...

As I was making the bougatsa myself (with home-made filo pastry of course!), I realised that the same pastry and filling, layered in a slightly different manner, could easily make two different kinds of Greek pita: bougatsa, and galaktoboureko. Each pita is served in its own unique way. And you don't have to choose which one to make before it goes into the oven - you can do that while it's cooking!!! I halved the recipe because the original made a very large pie. Even then, I was still able to make both kinds of pita in the same cooking session.

 

 I had to juggle between the stove and making my own filo pastry. To prevent it from drying out, I dustead each sheet with cornstarch, then folded it in half, and then in half again. I put the sheets aside until the filling was ready.

To make Demetra's sister's basic Greek-based pumpkin pita, you need:
2-3 cups cooked mashed pumpkin
2 cups milk (or 1 cup cream mixed with 1 cup water, which is what I used)
1/2-3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
5 tablespoons of flour
some vanilla flavouring (I use vanilla essence in liquid form; there are many different ways that vanilla flavouring is sold, including vials and sachets of vanilla-flavoured sugar)
1 tablespoon of butter (I always use olive oil these days)
a packet of filo pastry (these days, I make my own filo - no, it's NOT that difficult!)

The recipe above is enough to make both pies. I layered the larger pie (which I turned into a galaktoboureko), by lining the ceramic dish with three sheets of pastry, then a thin layer of filling, then another two sheets of pastry and some more filling, and finally another three sheets of pastry on the top. For the smaller pie (which became bougatsa), I laid two sheets of pastry on the bottom of the tin, the remaining filling, and another two sheets of filo on the top, oiling all the filo.

 

Put aside 1/2 cup of pumpkin and heat the remaining with the milk and sugar. (As Demetra says, it will be a gorgeous orange colour - enjoy it.) In a bowl, mix the eggs, flour and vanilla, then add the remaining pumpkin, and mix well. Pour the egg mixture into the milk mixture and mix quickly. Don't worry if the mixture curdles (make sure the milk mixture isn't too warm and the egg mixture isn't too cold).

Now listen to Demetra: "Keep on low heat to thicken. Stir...stir here and there... don’t let it stick on the bottom of the pan.....stir... clean your kitchen.....stir occasionally....stir.....enjoy gorgeous color and aroma....and once it becomes thick, take it off the burner and add the butter. (You will not have to stir non-stop if the heat is correct; just stir from time to time, keeping an eye on the heat so the mixture doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.)" At this point, taste a little of the mixture (watch out - it may burn): you could easily eat it before it becomes a pie...

Grease a pyrex dish or baking tin and lay half the filo pastry sheets on the bottom, greasing in between each layer. Then pour in the filling, which may look runny, but don't worry about that because it will eventually cook like a custard. Then layer the remaining filo sheets on top - don't forget to grease each one! Fold the overhanging pastry, greasing them too. Score the pita with a knife, making cuts for each serving (it will make it easier to cut the filo pastry afterwards when the pie comes out of the oven). Bake at 180C for about 1/2 hour, until the filo turns golden. When taking the pie out of the oven, let it rest for a quarter of an hour before cutting, to allow the custard to solidify.

Pumpkin bougatsa

If you turn your pita into a pumpkin bougatsa, you only need some sugar and/or cinamon for sprinkling over it (or none at all, depending on how sweet you like your pita to be). Bougatsa is served warm, and can be re-heated the next day. It makes an especially delicious breakfast meal.

 Pumpkin galaktoboureko

If you plan to make a pumpkin galaktoboureko instead, you need to make a syrup, by boiling a cup (or more) of sugar and 2 cups of water, together with half a lemon (and/or a cinmamon stick for flavour). Make the syrup while the pita is cooking. As soon as the pita comes out of the oven, pour the slightly cooled syrup over the hot pita (or the other way around - if the pie has cooled down, the syrup must be hot).

I'm posting this recipe in time for American Thanksgiving for a pumpkin pie idea. If you're celebrating Thanksgiving in Greece, this is the pita that will make this year's feast a memorable one. If you're celebrating Thanksgiving in America, this pita marries Greek cuisine with the American feast. Even though I don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Greece, I have plenty to be thankful for, not least of which includes the availability of high quality cheap food. If you make your own filo, both the above pies will cost you less than 5 euro to make in total.

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Chocolate chip cookies revisited (Και πάλι κούκιζ)

The last of the chocolate chip cookie dough that I had made recently was frozen in little balls, ready to be cooked, after thawing a little (I simply defrosted them without allowing them to thaw completely). I thought I would be glad to see the last of them, after all that strife they caused me when I first made them. Even if our dog were to enjoy most of them this time round, at least the freezer would be cleared and I would have more space for more 'useful' things.

"These ones are better, Mum."

This did not happen, after all. This time, I followed the advice of all the people who commented, and made a crispier version of these cookies (as opposed to biscuits!), the more preferable cookie/biscuit texture for the Greek palate. (Mine burnt around the outer rim, but we simply chopped off the slightly blackened bits. If I had watched over them more carefully, I could have avoided this.) And yes, success! They were good - perhaps, a little too big, but delicious all the same (Greek cookies are smaller, just big enough to dunk in milk or coffee, enjoying two or three in one sitting.)

Chocolate chip cookies can also be bought very cheaply at the supermarket (the red packet was on a buy-one-get-one-free special at 0.69 cents). They are completely different in taste to the home-made version of this American favorite, made for the Greek palate.

These cookies are a wonderful alternative to our normal breakfast, preferably on a cold Saturday morning, when they can be served warm. The dough can be frozen, ready to cook whenever you want, and chocolate chip cookies do not need a long cooking time, even if you prefer them crispy. The recipe does not need to be changed; the cooking method needs to be altered to suit the culinary customs of the eaters.

Thanks to everyone who commented and helped me to enjoy the globalised chocolate chip cookie in its freshest form.

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Chocolate chip cookies (Μπισκότα με σταγόνες σοκολάτας)

A while back, I saw some large chocolate chip cookies prominently displayed in a bakery in the town centre. They were about the size of a desert plate. I decided to snack on one as I was doing my jobs around he town.

"Would you like me to heat it up for you?" asked the shop assistant. What's she talking about? I wondered. It had never occurred to me that a biscuit could be warmed up before it was eaten.

"No thanks, I'll have it as it is."

She carefully picked it up with a pair of tongs and put it into a paper bag.

"Be careful, it's soft," she warned me. That got me a little worried: a hot crumbly biscuit wasn't what I was expecting to be eating. I had visions of dropping crumbs on the front of my blouse, and in the middle of a town like Hania, that would make me look like a monkey that had escaped from its cage.

Make or break: new casual eateries are opening and closing all the time; this one seems to be doing quite well - it's all about location.

After a brief discussion with the shop owner, it transpired that the shop assistant had been trained to tell customers these things. He explained that the biscuits were made using a prepared dough sold by (if I remember correctly) Pillsbury, who had given him instructions on how to prepare, cook and serve these chocolate chip cookies, a novelty for Cretan tastes. The store where I bought this rather large biscuit was also selling other international forms of pastries that have become part of the global cuisine: American-style donuts, filled sandwich rolls made with ready-to-cook pre-risen bread dough, and muffins, among others. These places never last long enough in our town, unless they offer something 'trendy' and 'different'; this store probably didn't manage to get the message across very well, because, after changing ownership, it eventually changed product line and began to sell more conventional (for Greek standards) snack food.

American-style chocolate chip cookies are also sold in convenience stores, mini-markets and kiosks around the town, found in the same place as the XL chocolate-filled croissants, fake apple pies, and packets of potato crisps; in other words, the junk food counter. The kind of people likely to buy them are the ones who also buy their frappe coffee from a kiosk; definitely not cookie connoisseurs.

*** *** ***

My daughter recently found a chocolate chip cookie recipe in one of her little-girl magazines and asked me to help her make them. After checking out the recipe, I decided that it wouldn't work (it contained yeast and what looked like disproportionate amounts of butter and flour). She pleaded with me to make them, but I couldn't bear the thought of wasted ingredients and effort, so I got out my trusty recipe book (my laptop with its wireless internet connection) and found Ioanna's recent post for chocolate chip cookies. There are some cooks and recipe sources you trust, and there are others that you don't trust, and I've used quite a few of Ioanna's recipes.

Yeast, 50g flour and 80g butter? Try asking the gremlins for an explanation...

So I gathered the required ingredients and Christine offered to mix them. The children were more interested in the chocolate drops than anything else: chocolate in any form always has that kind of effect on people. We mixed everything together and left the dough in the fridge (this recipe requires making a dough which should be refrigerated for one day). The next day, we cooked a batch of chocolate chip cookies. When they were ready, I wrapped a cookie in a paper towel for each child.

Mama's little helper

"How's the cookie?" I asked my son.
"Tastes like popcorn," he replied.
"How about you?" I asked my daughter.
"Why are they soft?" she asked back.
"And why are they hot?" asked my son.

The children thought these cookies were rather 'different'. They did not 'smell' like a Greek biscuit (a koulouraki usually smells of orange essence or cinammon).

Making the cookies

In general, I can't complain: my children take an interest in what they eat. But they have been indoctrinated into the Mediterranean taste regime, not just through their mother's cooking, but from the society they live in: their school lunches are similar to their schoolmates', party food has a well-known form wherever they may find it, even the smells of other people's cooking in the neighbourhood are familiar to them. Their taste spectrum may sound limited, but it is historically and culturally linked to their home. Their idea of what constitutes 'good food' was formed from a very early age, influenced by the culturally-based diet they've been raised on.

This will change as they get older. Crete's dietary patterns are also changing for both the better and the worse; more foreign food is making it onto people's plates on the island these days due to the island's large non-Greek resident population, more foreign dishes are being introduced in restaurants and other food establishments BUT: children are eating less healthy food, more junk, and more no-cooking required ready-to-eat mass-produced snack food. Crete's food is altering in line with the trends of global cuisine.

We cooked up another batch of chocolate chip cookies with the dough the next day (this dough can be kept refrigerated for up to three days). This time, we let the cookies bake until they were much more crispy. Then we let them cool down completely before we had them with warm milk and tea, making them much more palatable in the Greek sense. But the damage had already been done: first impressions count tremendously in kidzone. Eventually I'll remake them, but I might call them something else (or at least find a way to tweak the recipe).

Eating warm soft chocolate chip cookies for the first time can be quite challenging...

If you follow the directions of the original recipe to the letter, you will make 18 overly large biscuits from this dough (I followed Ioanna's instructions and made smaller cookies: we got 28 biscuits). By the time we got down to the last few balls of dough, we had tired of the chocolate chop cookie idea, but I can guarantee that the dough balls freeze well and can be cooked afer being slightly thawed out of the freezer when required.

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Strawberry chili jam and cheddar cheese (Μαρμελάδα φράουλας με τσίλι και τυρί τσένταρ)

Remember the good old wine and cheese days? There was always a bunch of grapes on one side of the platter, and most times a selection of nice crackers to go with the range of cheeses which always included camembert, while the wines being served invariably carried French names. This was my first introduction to pairing cheese with fruit. I was also a great fan of a salad served at the Victoria University student cafe, consisting of green apple slices with grated cheese. This salad was served just like that, with very few other ingredients. The apple slices were never brown, suggesting that they might have been tossed in some lemon juice to stop them from browning. Watermelon and feta cheese is also a great favorite in the summer among Greeks. Another well known cheese-and-fruit combination in international cuisine is fig and salty cheese. I love this on wholemeal crackers, accompanied by some white wine.

Strawberry chili jam is sold at the Philadelphia local market.

I was recently given some strawberry jam from Philadelphia, which contained an unusual ingredient: chili pepper. "Try it with cheddar cheese on toast," my friend helpfully informed me. She was absolutely right; this taste has kind of grown on me now.

Thanks to Joy from PA for the lovely gift of strawberry chili jam and for introducing me to a new taste; and Petros from the UK for my favorite cheddar: Cornish Cruncher from M&S.

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