Spring garden (Ανοιξιάτικος κήπος)

The days before Easter are often spent cleaning, not just inside the home, but also outdoors.

Labourer employed by the local council to whitewash the walls by the roadside in the village.

Time for a big clean-up in our garden, too; it's now ready to be planted with summer crops:

All that's left are the artichokes (top) and the celery (bottom)

The stamnagathi horta we planted three months ago have taken to our garden conditions quite well:

(Then and now shots of the stamnagathi we picked from Omalos)

The artichokes and strawberries have just started making an appearance:

The artichokes will be a perfect match for the broad beans:

The herb garden is doing well, thanks to my mother-in-law's care...

Fennel, mint, spring onion

... who may be 85 years old, takes no medication apart from a DEPON every now and then, and is never found far away from her walking frame (on her left), but still manages to cook like this:

Yiayia and her goat roast on Easter day, surrounded by my contributions of garden lettuce salad, Easter kalitsounia, traditional Cretan Easter meat pie and her family

Close-ups of Cretan Easter meat pie and goat roast

As we say in Greek, και του χρόνου - kai tou hronou - which basically translates to:

"I wish you the same happiness that found you this year"

If the relationship between diet and longevity interests you, The Fanatic Cook has some interesting facts about Greek people: Greeks in Greece, and Greeks in Australia. Beans and legumes are found to be most important food items in predicting life expectancy.
Thanks to Meg for providing me with the link.

©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.

Happy Easter! (Καλό Πάσχα!)

Happy Easter everybody!
Christ has risen!

Why are my red eggs speckled? A speckled hen must have laid them. The koulourakia are going like hot cakes, and this year...

... I used my tsoureki recipe in conjunction with Aussie Peter's idea of mixing the hot cross bun shape with the traditional Greek Easter bread; the result revived nostalgic feelings for my down under origins.

Χριστός Ανέστη!

©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.

Spring lamb (Αρνάκι)

Last chance to buy, before the most important religious festival in Greece takes place tomorrow...

Spring lamb is the order of the day for Easter. Roasting the whole lamb on the spit is the most popular choice of meal, but small family groups (like ours) will cook a roast instead, served alongside a range of traditional Easter favorites like kalitsounia and Easter meat pie. Beware of over-indulgence! This often happens after a fasting period, which is probably practiced for health reasons these days just as much for its purely religious significance (which, in any case, ritualised the health aspect of fasting in older times).

There is no shyness when it comes to selling meat in Greece. This photo was taken a few days ago at one of the biggest supermarkets in Hania. The local butcher in a village will display his wares in a similar fashion.

This photograph highlights the fact that all parts of the lamb are used; nothing is wasted. A traditional Easter recipe is associated with each part of the animal, even the intestines. Some of them are quite laborious but these days, with easier storage facilities, it is not a difficult task to partly prepare each of these delicacies in advance (so important for the busy household in which both spouses are working) and freeze them for cooking at a more convenient time.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Fennel fritters (Μαραθοκεφτέδες)

Imagine that, instead of 2009, it is 1949, and you were living in a village in Hania. Let's choose a low-lying village that's easy to get around in, like Fournes, rather than a village close to the Lefka Ori, high up in the mountains where my mother was born. Winter is about to depart and make way for the spring; the fields all around the few centrally located houses of the village are verdant with new life. It's time to think about what you're going to cook for lunch tomorrow.

It's a weekday afternoon (if it were a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon, work of any sort would be forbidden) and you've just woken up from your midday nap after the lunchtime meal. You know you've got to make a move on, because by the time you get to the place where you gather your food and get back home, it will be nightfall. Your main concern is to find enough food to feed your family of five children, and one or two aging parents, besides yourself and your spouse.

You leave the house and start walking to the fields, possibly wearing your apron with large in-built pockets, and carrying a woven bag. You won't need your milk pail and egg basket this afternoon; you milked the sheep and goats in the morning and collected all the eggs in the chicken coop just after lunch time when you fed them. In any case, the animals always live close to home, so that they can be protected against the elements. You can't use the eggs from the chickens, or the milk from the sheep, because it's Holy Week at the moment; it's still Lent and you're fasting, in which case you won't be eating any meat or dairy products until Easter Day. The eggs will be used for making koulourakia and tsourekia or saved for dyeing red on Holy Thursday, to be cracked as tradition dictates on Easter Sunday, while the milk will be made into malaka and mizithra, which will be used to fill your Easter kalitsounia and meat pie.

As you walk along by the side of the well-worn path next to the fields (you didn't use the donkey today, as it was already tired out from a journey your husband took over the last two days when he used it to go to the town), your eyes first catch sight of the plentiful mustard greens bordering the road. You keep on walking; mustard greens are everywhere, you have them as a salad for lunch every day. If you don't find any choicier pickings today, you can fill your apron pockets with these wild herbs on the way home.

You're not expecting to find anything new, just the same old stuff you find every day. But you have to come out and forage on most days because there are few ways to store your findings, even if you did manage to pick a lot and carry them on the donkey. Today, your finds will be as much as your hands and pockets can carry. They can carry a lot, but it's never enough: you're feeding at least eight people every time you prepare a meal.

I foraged the greens and the snails from the path leading to the river; this road faced fields of orange and olive trees on the opposite side. As you can see, my 'donkey' was my car.

I could have collected many snails on this trip, but we prefer to fatten them up at this time, rather than eat them freshly foraged (we start cooking them in mid-summer). They also taste different after they have been fed flour or macaroni. In the past, you made do with what was available; people probably ate a lot of freshly foraged snails than what we do in our time.

Your first stop is by the river. The fennel has just started to sprout tall. You start snipping off the baby stalks in the brightest green, carefully picking out all the dry bits. As you snip the fennel weed, you notice that the dry stalks of the previous year's fennel plant crop have become homes to the river snails, which have fattened up over the winter period, and are now large enough to eat. Their brown and white rounded shells are easy to spot among the green fennel stalks.

Your pockets slowly start to fill up with snails while your hands are filled with fennel whose aroma is fresh and invigorating, reminding you that very soon, all the snow will melt away from the mountains, and summer with its plentiful harvest is on its way. As you make your way back up the river and onto the main road, you notice your neighbour's orange grove teeming with sweet navel oranges. Your fields are about a half hour's walk, but you're getting tired, and you still haven't gathered any mustard greens, a staple of most of your meals these days. You 'borrow' a few oranges from your neighbour's field, hiding them in your blouse which is tied securely at your waist by the apron strings. (In any case, you know full well that he borrows Valencia oranges from your fields in the summer.) Then you pick a large amount of mustard greens to hide your pregnant-looking belly and make your way back home. There should be enough foraged material to make a decent meal for tomorrow's lunch, to be supplemented by the bread you baked last Monday, table olives, oil for dipping, and maybe a lentil stew.

Mustard greens; known as kapsanthous and vrouves

When you finally come home, you find the children in the midst of raiding the bread bin (most likely a shelf in the kitchen cupboard), so you throw everything you're carrying onto the floor and rush to pick up the 'xiliki' (the large thin rod used as a rolling pin for phyllo - filo - pastry) to shoo them away from the pantry; if they eat up all the bread, you'll have to start making and baking more all over again, and you don't want to start up the wood-fired oven too quickly, as there are other jobs to do.

"But we're hungry, Mama!" cries Number 3, the middle child from your five, perhaps the feistiest of the lot. You have to think quickly. Yesterday you made marathopites (fennel pies); you can't be bothered making those all over again. For tonight's evening meal, you'll try something slightly different (yet very similar) but much easier to prepare: marathokeftedes (fennel fritters).

*** *** ***

Fennel fritters are a delicacy passed onto Crete and the mainland from the Cyclades. They resemble the Greek bifteki (meat pattie) in appearance, but they contain no meat or eggs; hence they are often referred to as a kind of 'poor man's fritter', since they are composed mainly of flour and water. The basic recipe calls for fennel herb and onion added to a seasoned flour-and-water batter, but you can also add some other finely chopped herbs, spinach and/or spices, like cumin and garlic; without these little extra aromas, these fritters can taste very bland.

Fennel fritters are not the most exciting meal you will have. In fact, you might wonder how anyone could eat something so bland, unless they had very little to eat. This was probably the case during the last week of Great Lent before Easter, what is known as the Holy Week (the 'Big Week') in Greek: eggs, dairy, meat and fish were off the menu, while permissible seafood was only available to those who lived near the sea and had the money to buy shellfish. So it was indeed the case that there was little variety available at the time.

In Western Crete, the equivalent of marathokeftedes (fennel fritters) is marathopites (fennel pasties). All over Greece, every region - even the smaller islands, like Serifos, Mykonos and Tinos - has its own special 'poor man's' fritter and pasty recipe, which could be lenten (vegan) or dairy-based (vegetarian). The dairy-free version is perfect for the Holy Week when frugal meals are cooked using no meat, eggs or milk-based products. Fennel fritters are can also be made with the fennel root, as found in Trukish cuisine.

©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.

Gifts from Crete (Δώρα από τη Κρητη)

The little laughing olive tree
felt a tad homesick for Crete:
"When you come to visit me,
could you bring some Cretan cheese?"

So I filled up my suitcase
with the best food from my place:
some mizithra and graviera
and a thick slab of malaka.

To fill the gaps in my baggage,
I added a few oranges.
"Oh, thank you very much," she said,
"that'll keep us nicely fed."

And how much do you think I paid
to bring the bounty of my place?
2 kilos each of all that stuff
came to just over 60 (euro-)bucks.

"And when it's finished," I reminded,
"it's time you visited the island.
Which she'll do at summertime
when the weather's warm and fine.

*** *** ***

The above-mentioned cheeses are essential during the Easter period in Cretan cuisine, especially malaka (also referred to as 'tiromalama' by the more modest).

This is triple-A quality malaka (μαλάκα) from the Hondrakis (Χονδράκης) dairy station.
I guess you could call it 'hondromalaka' (χοντρομαλάκα).
If it was made by the Archakis dairy station instead, it would be 'archimalaka.'

For a better explanation of the unmentionable 'malaka', click here. 'hondro' means 'fat', while 'archi' means 'leader'.

©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.

Athens, the Acropolis and artichokes (Αθήνα, Ακρόπολη και αγγινάρα)

Here's PART 4 of our adventures in Athens. Click here for PART 1, PART 2 and PART 3.

When I first arrived in Athens nearly two decades ago, my greatest desire was to see the Acropolis. I had first visited it in 1974 when I was eight years old with my parents on my only trip to Greece before I came to live here on a permanent basis. After I had settled in at my relatives' house in Aspropirgos, I asked them for directions about how to get to the Acropolis. My aunt had no idea, as she never went into Athens herself, conducting all her business within the seven kilometres between Aspropirgos and Elefsina. My 20-year-old cousins didn't know either; the last time they went to see the Acropolis was when they were at school.

'Athivoles' from my first time in Greece

I asked them if they had a map of the area so I could locate myself on it and see how I could go there myself. They had no map. The only thing they knew was that the dirty blue buses that plied the main road near their home had their depot in Koumoundourou Square near Omonoia Square, a central location in Athens. That was about the best advice I managed to procure from them on how to get to the centre of Athens cheaply without trying to flag down a taxi whose driver would most likely rip me off, or walk the congested polluted Holy Road myself like the ancient pilgrims did when they paid homage to Dimitra, the goddess of the Earth, at her sanctuary in Elefsina.

Waiting at a bus stop on Athens Avenue: looking towards Elefsina (left), and Athens centre.

One day, I took took one of those dirty blue buses myself - on my own; no one else was interested in going to see the Acropolis with me. Why would anyone be interested in a pile of rubble in one of Europe's most polluted cities? My aunt knew it was located on a hilly site. "Can you pick horta there?" she enquired. "Probably not," I answered. "Too much rock."

I had chosen a cloudy grey day in November, hoping that it would at least stay dry until the end of my trip. The morning peak traffic hour had passed, so that the bus could tear along at great speed, as if the driver had never seen such an empty stretch of road. I had a seat, but still had to hang onto the top of the seat in front of me to steady myself.

The route was one long boring stretch of concrete, flanked by a few low-lying hills which form the Athens basin. I was horrified by what I saw: gargantuan-sized gas works, steel works, cement works, oil distilleries, all found within metres of what looked like residential zones. Dust flew everywhere, piling on the side of the road like mud, especially outside the cement works. No one wore masks; no one seemed to care that they were inhaling dust. I wondered how my family managed to stay alive all those years of living here. Does dust not damage one's health, as my mother had raised me to believe? Maybe there isn't any need to constantly dust one's house; maybe once a year is enough.

As the bus approached the man-made Lake Koumoundourou, the scenery began to change slightly, with less industry and more bare hills on the left-hand side, while on the right-hand side I had a direct view of the sea which was filled with rusty ships. There was a small strip of land which looked like a beach area separating the coastline from the road and there were also a few signs advertising 'seaside' tavernas. The roaring traffic aside, this could otherwise have been a friendly looking place.

Not the prettiest sights on the Holy Road to Athens - isn't the sea supposed to be blue in Greece? The haphazardly placed signs outside the monastery mask its significance.

This pretty patch of forest stands deceptively like an oasis, smack bang in the middle of the up-built western suburbs of Athens and the horrendous industrial further westwards.

As the bus drove past the sea, I began to view evidence of a forested area, just beyond the 'lake district'. Pockets of houses had been built on some parts of the hill, making these areas look like picturesque Swiss villages, without the cows. The bus had now stopped at some traffic lights near a large junction. To my left was the mental hospital, a congregation of buildings erected in a purely functional style, while on my right, in total antithesis, were the remains of a former Byzantine monastery. The lights turned to green, and the bus driver careened out of control, rushing past the Western suburbs of Athens at lightning speed, braking hard at the bus stops to pick up or drop off passengers. Once or twice, he didn't even bother to stop when he was flagged down by a pedestrian waiting at a bus shelter. There were plenty of buses following him, going in pretty much the same direction.

After what seemed like a cartoon film strip showing the same scenes over and over again - light industry and shops surrounded by apartment blocks stretching up to the tops of the low-lying hills, one block after another - depicting the ritualised chaos that Athens serves up on a daily basis, I saw the mount of the Acropolis come into view. As the bus overtook a lorry, the view became clearer, and suddenly I saw the crumbling ruins of the Acropolis sitting at the top of the mountain. It was such a saddening sight to see it looking so lonely among the bad-taste high-rise buildings, all in different shades of filth, some brown, others grey, but most of them black. I was suddenly struck with awe as the history of the Acropolis over the ages passed through my mind. I thought of how she had been watching the wretched urban sprawl overtaking her environs for the last 2500 years and felt guilty for being a part of it. The marble edifice looked so out of place in the world as it had developed around her. I wanted to take her into my arms and cradle her, tell her how much I loved her and wanted to take care of her, that everything would turn out all right in the end, that the missing pieces from her frieze would come back and she would be intact once again. Then I felt foolish because I realised she was so much bigger than me. She wouldn't fit in my arms; I was making promises that could not be kept. What a fraud she must think I am.

Boy, those Greeks cause so much trouble ,for the loss of ancient marble

From the site of Parthenona; you would think it was a mecca
Of some kind, but wait a minute - to get in you need a ticket

To admire Greek works of art which will touch your soul and heart.

To see the Doric columns high rise above the clear blue sky

Like old stumps from olive trees. But what is missing? It's the frieze!

Yet still they stand proud on the hill where Paul preached goodwill to all,

Denuded of their jewel atop when Elgin heaved a mighty chop.

That man went to so much trouble to turn the frieze into mere rubble,

To gather and store the ancient stone so he could sell it off at home.
But no one wanted it for money, so he bequeathed it to the country

Who thought: "Good oh, now we have something that will look good with Egypt's mummy
And Chinese jade and Turkish weapons we chanced upon in foreign lands.

But where to put them - let us build the best museum in the world!"

And so they started scrubbing white the marbles so they shone in light.
Alas! Too late they realised the marbles looked like dynamite
Had ruined their outer appearance and showed signs that they were to perish

In that stately grand museum where all go if they want to see them.

And now those rabble-rousing Greeks insist on getting back those bits;

They don't deserve to stand alone with all the rest of them at home.
They need to be in company with all the other bits of frieze
Under the clear blue sky of Greece - let's have them back! Return them, please!

(A little poem I wrote a while ago)

I didn't go up to the Acropolis that day; I was too embarrassed to face the big rock. I waited for a day when I felt more at peace with myself, in the company of friends, on a sunny day, so that she wouldn't recognise me as the big-hearted ignoramus who broke her promise. She wouldn't notice me as I climbed up the smooth slippery steps; I would blend in with the crowds of visitors that had also come to see her and marvel at her beauty, basking under the Mediterranean sun under the clouds of smog that enveloped her.

*** *** ***

Have you heard the saying "Don't leave town till you see the country?" It was part of an advertising campaign in New Zealand during my youth, in a drive to get people to see more of New Zealand, instead of hopping off to the UK for their big OE (overseas experience) without having ventured through their own country first. I am just as guilty of this error in my judgment, having taken my children to the British museum on two separate visits to London to see the Parthenon marbles; you know the ones I mean - they were cut out, broken up and shopped away from Athens by a scoundrel that went by the title of Lord Elgin.

When I saw the stolen (beg your pardon, but that's what they are) marbles in the British Museum for the first time, it was as a foreign-born Greek straight from Sheepland. I visited them in that 'oh-look-that's-Greek' way that most foreign-born Greeks view elements of Greekdom in a foreign country. I may as well have been saying 'baa-baa'. But the second time, after having lived in Greece for over a decade before my visit to the museum, and having seen the Parthenon from up close, the moment I saw those parts of the Parthenon frieze hanging on a wall in a dark room, my heart felt a piercing sting, as though I was seeing someone imprisoned under treacherous conditions. Where was the Mediterranean sun to shine over the marbles like it had been doing all those centuries before Elgin came along? Some of the pieces were still just pieces, whereas if they had stayed in Greece, they could have been re-built into the main structure of the reconstructed Parthenon.

My heart turned to stone, not because the British had damaged the marble by trying to scrape it white (in Greece, it would have turned black from the pollution anyway), but because the room where the marbles were kept had that semi-dark appearance, rendering it barren and lifeless, completely removed from the cultural heritage it belonged to. If someone visits Elgin's marbles and not the Parthenon itself, they will simply never understand the reason why the marbles should be returned to the original setting. But if they first visit the Parthenon and then see Elgin's marbles, they will realise what a heinous crime he committed against the Greek people 200 years ago, while he was acting as ambassador of England during the last few years of the Ottoman regime. He didn't even need to ask the Greeks themselves if he could 'take' anything - the governing powers at the time were against them in the first place.

"Is this the Acropolis?" my son asked me when we visited the British Museum in London.

The genuine parts of the Parthenon frieze are in London... while the fakes are in the Acropolis metro station in Athens. Britain has the originals, while Greece has the phoneys.

Another shot from the metro station: compare this with the top left-hand one;
same figurines, different capital city.

When we visited the British Museum, we told the children that these marbles had come from the Acropolis. But since they had never been to the Acropolis, it meant very little to them. I realised that it was time to see for me to take them to see the original site before I took them to another foreign museum again.

This caryatid looks out of place here without her sisters, not to mention very lonely.

I took the children out of school for two days to make this trip to Athens. When we arrived in the capital city, we discovered, to my great dismay, that the temporary employees at the Ministry of Culture had been blocking the entrance to the Parthenon, barring all visitors to the site, in protest at the loss of their jobs, working on a contract (rather than permanent) basis, and back-pay that they had not yet received. The day was cloudy and rain was forecast. I wasn't sure if the strike was over, so I decided not to make the trip, in case I disappointed them and the trip fell short of their expectations. We took a stroll on Ermou St, where all the famous brand-name clothes shops are located in the inner city. We could see the holy rock rising above the city skyline as we dodged the rain; there was no sign of life on it. Whether it was the strike or the rain, I shall never know.

It's hard to make a living in a big city; can you spot some of the people 'selling air'?

Although Marks and Spencer has opened a store in Hania, the range of clothes is not as wide as in the Athenian branches. As a way to shelter from the cold (cold in Greece? you ask), we entered Marks and Spencer, more to browse rather than buy. Such a wide choice of goods, what to choose first? I found the street views more enticing than the high street fashion: a gypsy girl playing an accordion, a chestnut roaster, the human statue, the laterna player, the policemen (they seemed to be everywhere) and their motorbikes. Such is life in a big city...

The Acropolis stands tall and proud, even in the rain.
I took this photo from the rooftop restaurant at the Hondos Centre.

It did end up raining after all. When we couldn't tolerate the drenching any longer, we nipped into the Hondos Centre at Omonoia Square where there is a rooftop restaurant serving good Greek food at low prices. While we looked around the dining hall to find a table, the children spotted the Acropolis from the window which was covered in droplets of rain. The downpour did not obscure our view of the holy rock. Even during the pouring rain, it stands astute, bearing witness to the devastation of the rat-race and urban development that has taken place around it, notwithstanding the cruel blows it has itself been dealt by the various incursions savaged on it, leading to its desecrated appearance today.

In this weather, the new open-top sightseeing buses in Athens aren't the best option.

"I'd like to go up there one day," my son said. "But not when it's raining."
"Good idea," I replied.

*** *** ***

The Hondos Centre has a self-service restaurant which serves Greek snacks like tiropites (cheese pies), which my children ordered, and family meals such as biftekia and potatoes (my husband's choice) and artichokes in a lemon sauce (my choice).

I had a bit of my husband's biftekia with my peas and artichokes; I can't imagine any child in Greece who hasn't been brought up to honour a good tiropita.

This meal is simple and light. It is best paired with cheese and some bread. It is perfect as a lenten meal, especially for the Holy Week before Easter; the peas and potatoes provide plenty of carbohydrates, while the dill and lemon juice give it its tangy flavour. Note that in Greece, artichoke hearts are not frozen with the stalks, nor with the leaves, but they can be used if the artichokes are tender enough. This meal can be made with either frozen or fresh artichoke hearts. Canned Italian-style artichokes (they are usually small and have some tender leaves stuck to them) are not suitable for this dish.

You need:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion chopped chopped roughly
2-3 cloves of garlic (optional)
2 large potatoes chopped in large chunks
8 large artichoke hearts cut in halves
2 cups of peas
a small bunch of dill, finely chopped
the juice of 1-2 lemons
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a pot and sauté the onion and garlic. Mix in the potatoes till they coated in oil. Add the artichokes, peas and seasonings and pour in just enough water to cover the vegetables. Place a lid on the pot and let the vegetables cook until the vegetables have softened. The potatoes may break up at this point, so be gentle when stirring. Now add the dill and lemon juice, stirring them evenly into the pot. The broken potatoes will act as a sauce thickener. Cook for another 5-10 minutes and serve hot.

I made this dish as soon as we got back from our trip. My artichokes look a rather dull brown colour; this is because they are from last year's garden, and I froze them at the end of their season. Commercially frozen ones are usually whiter (they are processed in some way).

This dish is made in the style of artichokes a la polita. Carrots, spring onions and leeks can also be added or used to replace another vegetable that you may not have on hand. This meal can also be made using tomato juice (add it to the pot instead of water, and don't use lemon); while we were in Athens, one of our cousins served us freshly-made soutzoukakia-style meatballs in tomato sauce, into which she had added commercially frozen artichoke hearts.

At the roof garden restaurant at the Hondos Centre in Omonoia Square, we ordered two tiropites, a serving of artichokes and peas, a serving of roast potatoes and biftekia, 2 sodas and 2 beers. Total cost: 25 euros.

It's the start of the Holy Week today in the Greek Orthodox church. With this kind of meal, you won't even realise you are fasting.

This post is for you, Sifi.

©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.

Palm Sunday (Κυριακή των Βαΐων)

It's Palm Sunday today and the traditional Greek menu for the day is as follows:



- bakaliaros (fried salt cod)
- skordalia (garlic dip)
- batsarosalata (boiled beetroot salad)

The Holy Week starts tomorrow, culminating in Easter Sunday. It's a week when most Greeks will usually try not to eat any meat, fish, eggs, cheese or milk. Fasting is supposed to be a time when you concentrate less on the specifics of what you eat, and more on the spiritual aspect of the act of fasting. I personally find it very hard not to think hard about what I eat when I am restricted, especially when staples like milk and cheese come out of my daily dieat; my vegan cooking is always more elaborate than my non-lenten cooking.

Happy fasting for those who are entering the Holy Week, and Happy Easter to everyone celebrating it today.

Nikos Garidadiko in Egaleo City (Γαριδάδικο Νικος - Αιγάλεω)

This post forms PART 3 of our Athens adventures; for more Athens stories, see PART 1 and PART 2.

When people think of Athens, they probably have a vision of the rock where the Acropolis is located, the laid-back dining atmosphere in Plaka and the cheap souvenir shops in Monastiraki (check out this site for some great photos of it, taken at the same time as I was there). Maybe they also recall going up Lycabettus Hill to get a bird's eye view of the capital city, which is where they discovered that Athens is a concrete jungle: aesthetically distasteful apartment blocks cramped into a tight space, unsightly television aerials on their roofs and air conditioning units marring every balcony. Pireas Harbour is where you will start an island hopping tour (unless you take a chartered flight directly to an island). The modern cruisers make you feel like you're Aristotle Onassis jet-setting around the world, but look across from the port to the street, and you'll remember precisely where you are. Some of the more cultured among us might also remember that Athens has some interesting museums and galleries displaying Greek antiquities and contemporary art.

This is not the Athens that the majority of its inhabitants know. Most Athenians do not even go into those parts of town at all. They may commute into the centre for work, but their free time, family time and leisure time will be centred near their home. The choice about where to live is not a random one: priority will be given to the area where most of one's family resides, after which work will take precedence. Fewer Greeks will choose to live closer to work than those that choose to live closer to family.

View Larger Map

When I landed a job in the Western Athens suburb of Egaleo, I decided to go and live there, instead of commute the less than 5 kilometres needed to get in and out of the city centre. I was separated from my central Athens apartment and my job by one of the most congested and underdeveloped roads in Athens, Leoforos Athinon (Athens Avenue). The main problem getting to work was the amount of time it took the bus to get out of the city centre and onto the main arterial route, which was a multi-laned dusty grey road with a host of unappealing businesses and buildings located on it. When there was a bus strike, I had to take a taxi, which wasn't at all expensive (Greece has one the cheapest taxi fares in Europe); the trouble was that everyone was flagging down a taxi during (frequent, almost regularised) bus strikes, and I could never find one to take me to an area where the driver wasn't sure of finding a fare to get him back into the city centre. It's against the law for a driver to choose his fare, but few people at the time would have bothered to report such an incident (this has changed slightly).

The sign that greets you as you approach Egaleo by underground

Going to live in Egaleo wasn't based solely on the grounds of work. Some of my extended family lived in the neighbouring suburb of Peristeri, a sports rival of Egaleo, while the rest lived further away on the same bus route, so it seemed a logical choice, even if I didn't visit them often. But moving to the western suburbs of Athens is not a choice most foreign-born Greeks like myself would make, not then, and not now; at the time, all my colleagues (Greek women from the USA and Australia) lived in the city centre, not further than 1-2 kilometres away from the centre of Athens, but never westwards. The junkyard of Athens starts from the minute the bus veers west of Monastiraki; it is one of the most aesthetically unappealing areas, as well as suffering from the highest rates of pollution in the city. The western suburbs of Athens are where most industrial plants make their home.

The main roads - Athens Avenue, the Holy Road and Thebes Avenue - are where all the shops and businesses are located, while the roads behind the main arterial route are residences. I rented this yellow house.

Some people entertain a very romantic idea of living close to the Acropolis, in that same way that some people want to live near the sea, even though they can't afford it: they are all suffering from the "Mommy, I want a puppy for Christmas" syndrome. Others like the idea of living near the friends they have made at work. In both cases, we are talking about loose relationships based on loose connections, with high expectations; circumstances could easily change from one minute to the next, for instance when someone meets the love of their life, or suddenly has to leave their home and job to attend to ageing parents. I felt sorry for my friends who insisted on living in the centre, as they were binding themselves to a life of loneliness, trying to build non-existent connections based on fragile foundations. (The trend nowadays is to move to the southern suburbs near the sea because of the good night life in the area; more superficiality.)

My boss was thrilled when I told him that I would be coming to live in Egaleo. He had enough trouble finding university-educated native speakers of English to come and work for him in the Western suburb where his private English school and publishing house were located. Both he and his wife had lived most of their adult lives in the area, while their parents also lived close by. He was always having trouble with teachers who arrived late for work because they couldn't find a taxi or the bus was slow. After a while, they'd resign and go and find a job inside the centre of Athens. He was constantly asking me if I knew of any reliable teachers myself who would be willing to come and live in the area; he even helped me to find a place to live, a ground-floor flat with a garden, only a two-minute walk from the school. When I eventually left for Crete, I helped him find another reliable native-English university-educated teacher who lived close to the area by choice; that was how he hired most of his staff.

. .
My former workplace (I took this photo on a day when there was no rubbish collection)

Egaleo is a misunderstood area. It is equated with high unemployment rates, pollution and low income earners. Its first permanent settlers were refugees from Asia Minor after the forced population exchange poured 1.5 million people into Greece. Nowadays, economic migrants have also entered the area, but this is hardly surprising given the industrial nature of the area. The many forms of light industry make Egaleo a good choice for unskilled people to find a job in a difficult economic climate like today's; who would believe that this area was once a paradise full of fields and trees, located on one of the holiest routes in Athens?

George Zambetas sang all night until the next morning in what is now the bakery on the corner behind the silver van, on Thebes Avenue (Leoforos Thivon).

Over 120,000 people live in Egaleo, which also happens to be the birthplace of George Zambetas, a famous popular Greek singer and bouzouki player, adored by the working class because he was one of them, and loved by Greeks all over because he sang songs about them. He was the first person to call the area 'Egaleo City' (after he gave a performance in London) suddenly changing its status from a low-class suburb to a maccho man's territory and elevating its image to a more positive one. Zambetas was the people's hero, epitomising the Greek street-wise μάγκα (manga - 'maccho'). A very moving account of life in Egaleo during Zambetas' time there is given by Mirandolina (in Greek). Coincidentally, Katy Garbi, a contemporary pop singer who once represented Greece in the Eurovision song contest, was also born in Egaleo, and the area boasts a high ranking soccer team, which is about the only reference you will find of Egaleo in English over the internet, despite my efforts during the three years I spent teaching there!

Egaleo is no different from any suburb in Athens in terms of the services and facilities offered. Due to the polytechnic school based in the area (thereby attracting students from all around the country), there is no lack of entertainment facilities: bars, clubs, discos, cafes, tavernas, fast-food outlets all operate day and night in congested streets. Given the working class nature of the area, there are plenty of shopping opportunities with moderately priced stores. Maybe it's not high street fashion, but at least it's good value. Housing consists of one- or two-storey terraced dwellings, with pretty back yards and gardens. I lived in this kind of house myself. Rents were cheaper than in the city centre. All the big supermarket chains operate in the area, while every Friday, Egaleo is home to one of the largest street markets in Athens, taking place on Iera Odos, the Holy Road (the avenue linking the Acropolis with the goddess of the Earth Dimitra's sanctuary in Eleusis, the present-day Elefsina), where a metro station has now been built.

*** *** ***

The residents of Egaleo do not need to go far in search of a good place to eat out. As in all areas, there are some eateries that have become well known for the good food they serve, and even people from outside the area will come to eat there. We ate at one of those places on our recent trip to Athens.

Do you get the feeling that you've gone back in time to 1960s Athens?
This is what the houses looked like right outside the taverna.

Nikos' taverna (you can't get a simpler name than that) is located on the border between Egaleo and the neighbouring suburb of Ayia Varvara (which translates to Santa Barbara, as it is sometimes nicknamed), two urban working-class areas with high unemployment rates, a most unlikely location for a well-known fish taverna specialising in shrimps. It is a family-run business, the premises look ancient, and there is little if any attempt made to modernise them. What struck me was how large the indoor seating area was. But Greeks never choose the place where they eat by the decor alone; they choose by numbers, and when we arrived, the place was just starting to fill up. I was told that the specialty of this garidadiko ('shrimp house') was fried shrimps in a mustard sauce.

The calamari was fried in large pieces instead of being cut into rings. It was soft and tasty, and not at all oily. The mustard sauce was a little too piquant for my liking, but the fried shrimp was superb. The crab had a light taste, but it was rather bland for my liking.

After we came back to Hania, my husband asked me if I had noted the address of Nikos taverna so that we could come back to it on a future visit. "There's no need to," I replied. If you come to Egaleo, just ask any kiosk owner where Nikos Garidadiko is, and he'll direct you to it (you might need to ask a few more people for further directions, if you get my gist). Everyone knows each other in these places even if there 120,000 people living there, so everyone will know Nikos' shrimp house.

The food was simple, well cooked and very tasty. Nikos taverna is a good place for seafood; despite the distance that separates it from the sea, the shrimp house is always busy, meaning that there is a high turnover, which of course means that the seafood will not have been hanging around in the fridge or freezer for a long time. When we were ready to leave, there was hardly a spare seat left in the taverna. Both the indoor and outdoor seating areas were full.

There were seven of us: we ordered 3 servings of fried calamari, three plates of fried potatoes (these two dishes were the children's favorites), a bowl of taramasalata, a plate of barbecued crabs, one serving of large fried shrimps and one taverna special, shrimps in mustard sauce, a beetroot salad, a mixed green salad, toasted bread, house wine and soda. Total cost: 108 euro.

This post is for you, AA.

©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.