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.

The Agora in Hania (Η Αγορά των Χανίων)

The central market of Hania, the Agora, is one of the most enticing places to shop for food.

The entrance to the Agora of Hania can be seen on both photos from inside and out.

Here, you will find everything needed to cook Cretan food, including all the recipes that I have included in my blog. It's also a good place to seek out locally inspired presents to take back home, plus the usual array of bric-a-brac souvenirs seen around most of the country.

A selection of mountain teas, spices and dried dessert figs, honey and locally made sweets. The knives are symbolic of the island of Crete and are often inscribed with mantinades.


Feeling hungry? The eateries at the Agora use the freshest ingredients; they open only during the day and never, never on a Sunday (as the song says).


Need some bread? Too tired to make muffins? Run out of cheese? Tempted into cooking fish?

Whether you came to Hania as a tourist or you live here, you'll need to come to the Agora at some point to buy certain food products if local cuisine and cooking techniques are your priority.

Everything, from souvenirs and packaged dry goods, to fresh products like olives and cheese.

I use it at least once every three weeks for most of my specialised local product needs. These photos were taken last year, but they are timeless: if you go into the Agora now, you'll find that the photos are very representative of what's happening in the central market in my town.

But if you want to find something out of the ordinary, you probably won't find it here. You'll need to search a little further away...

©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.

Braised octopus with pasta (Χταπόδι με κοφτό μακαρόνι)

Here's PART 2 of our adventures in Athens.

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

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



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



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

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



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



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

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



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

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

©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.

Cook the Books: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (Μαγειρεύοντας τα Βιβλία: Κουζίνα Εμπιστευτικό - 'Αντονυ Μπουρντέν)

This post is part of the Cook the Books blog event running until April 25, 2009, hosted by Ioanna from Food Junkie not Junk Food. Read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and cook something inspired by the book. Post your inspiration on your blog and link to Cook the Books and Ioanna's post.) Many thanks to Ioanna for lending me the book.

WARNING: contains a spoiler - if you don't want to know about the story till you have read it, don't read the post!!

Living in Crete for the last two decades, Anthony Bourdain's name did not hold much meaning to me, despite my Western world upbringing, despite my native language being English, despite my interest in food and cooking, despite my connections with other food bloggers round the world, despite my reliance on the internet for all my non-Greek sources of information. I doubt many people in Hania would know who he (or the Travel Channel for that matter) is. We remain unaffected by many of the dramatic changes taking place in the food world; the average Cretan still eats like their grandparents, supplementing the Mediterranean diet with a hefty addition of souvlaki, Goody's and fizzy drinks. This of course has also added quite a few kilos to the weight level of the average Cretan, but very few of the locals will make any apologies for their thick and chunky appearance; 'ο αέρας' they will say proudly (o aeras - the air).

When a food blogging friend first mentioned Anthony Bourdain's name to me (she had just seen a TV program where he was showcasing Hania), I felt as impressed as I would have been had someone told me Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver or Some Other Big Name TV Chef had come to Hania; in other words, big deal, and what would they know about real food, when all they do is showcase exotic creations in spacious well-equipped kitchens, while never getting their clothes or aprons dirty? After reading Kitchen Confidential, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Anthony also sports a certain disdain for those kind of cooks (but not necessarily the same ones).

What shocked me most about his book (it is a shocking book, no matter which way you look at it) was that most of the food-connected people that Bourdain describes in the restaurant trade are actually degenerates; troubled people with little education, living for the next day with very little knowledge of what the next week has in store for them, completely unreliable, usually in this trade for the money and not for the love of food, and weirdly enough, but perhaps not illogically, given the nature of the job - cooking expensive looking food for the fat wallets of fussy customers - they are mainly male. The world Bourdain describes is a planet away from the one I live as a university-educated mother-of-two (and wife-of-one) office worker, who prepares and cooks all her family's meals (just like my colleagues and neighbours), with an emphasis on freshness, health and tradition. I'm still cooking like my mother, a Cretan immigrant to New Zealand. But you'll be surprised to hear that Mum would probably have more in common to discuss with Anthony than I would myself.

My father is in his shop with one of his assistants.

My Cretan parents, uneducated and unskilled, came to New Zealand in the early 1960s, each carrying a half-filled suitcase with all their belongings. After being made redundant in their factory jobs in the late 70s, they became the owner-operators of a classic Kiwi fish and chip shop. They knew all about bad suppliers, late deliveries, working in damp musty environments, sweating it out under the deep dryers, fussy customers, complaints, the rush hour and unreliable staff (until they hired their own daughters - I was only 12 - effectively putting an end to the latter). This is definitely a period in my life that I would simply like to shelve, even though it probably influenced my personality and way of thinking more than any other time in my life; a ten-year involvement in the fish and chip shop trade, working closely with one's parents, cannot but leave an indelible mark in someone's soul. It was also the place where I ate my first fresh raw oyster, survived the experience, and went on to eat many more of them (until I came to Greece; the last time I ate a fresh oyster was five years ago).

Kitchen Confidential's array of food covers a wide range of American restaurant dining styles which are heavily influenced by French and Italian cuisine, with an emphasis on meat and expensive seafood dishes. This view of 'fine dining' is, to my mind, very prejudiced; it confines the idea of good food as belonging to the cultural practices of one or two (namely white-skinned) societies whose idea of 'good food' goes hand in hand with well-padded pockets, linen tablecloths and crystal glasses, with complete disregard for the culinary practices of the rest of the world. I have never eaten in such a restaurant; does this mean that I have never eaten well? Towards the end of the book, Anthony finally discovers good food served outside this well-beaten paradigm, when he took part in a meal consisting of twenty courses, which he sampled at a restaurant in Tokyo.

I have no qualms admitting that I do not know how to make a pate and I'd never heard of a rillette before I read this book. I don't know what the difference is between a bearnaise and a hollandaise, while the only mayonnaise I know comes from a jar. If Crete had not in recent times become a worthy producer of avocados, I would still not know how to make a decent guacomole. Pastry making may be viewed as a highlight in the career of a chef, but that's probably because most chefs don't know how to make delicious kalitsounia (a Cretan specialty with Venetian origins). If ever I want to taste duck confit, saucisson de canard, confit gizzards, poitrine, foie gras, truffle oil and tarbais beans, I know where to go (Les Halles, New York), but I don't feel the need to anyway; I certainly wouldn't even dream of cooking with such ingredients in my own home, especially since I would have trouble finding them easily on my Mediterranean island above the Libyan Sea.

My regular cooking is mainly vegetarian, not for any other reason than the precious amounts of vegetables that we grow ourselves and try to make use of as much as possible. This is in complete contrast to those starred restaurants discussed in Kitchen Confidential which have a close relationship with special cuts of meat, fish and seafood. Anthony would probably laugh when he hears me tell him that in Hania, butchers simply hack away at the meat as if it were a log of wood; very little attempt is made to cut it into aesthetic-looking pieces, apart from pork chops, which most Greeks have a certain fondness for, especially when the curved one is still intact. Fresh seafood is only available for certain pockets; it's simply too expensive. We ourselves always buy frozen.

If I were to play kitchen hostess for Anthony the next time he pops round to Hania, I can imagine the dismayed look on his face when he first arrives at my Cretan home. One look at our vegetable garden and he'll think we might be that class of miscreants that he thinks vegetarians are, or worse still "their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, ... vegans." He needn't fear: no decent Cretan (and I mean none at all) would cook a meatless meal to a dinner guest, no matter how vegetarian they may be in their daily life; even during the Greek Orthodox fasting period, purely lenten fare is never served up to travellers and guests. This is a basic rule in Cretan hospitality, and this is probably why Anthony will love the Cretans for the way they truly share their best food with strangers.

Anthony loves the restaurant trade, but he also admits that eating at a restaurant may not actually be the ultimate dining experience in New York: this could take the form of a delivered Chinese meal eaten straight out of a white paper box while lying in bed and watching a movie. Isn't he so right? Don't we all love eating relaxing food in a laid-back environment? That's what gave me the idea about how to cook his book, but take note: my king-size four-poster bed is out of bounds!

Chicken wings and blue cheese dressing - celery sticks are more traditional than carrot sticks; dark green Greek celery (we grow it) does not have the same taste as traditional light green celery, which is why I replaced it with the more palatable carrots.

I haven't been to New York (yet), but I have had spicy chicken wings before, and I know how good they taste. While reading up internet recipes, I was delighted to discover that the New York chicken wing treat was 'invented' in Buffalo, a place I have heard so much about from a friend who lives there. I 'invited' Dimitra over to eat them with me, making her another of my virtual guests, along with Anthony. Just imagine two New Yorkers lying on the couch in my living room enjoying a good movie or sitting on my Mediterranean balcony overlooking the ferry port on a warm spring afternoon, eating Buffalo wings.

Mr OC really enjoyed this meal (look at the state of his oily fingers), which we had in the living room while sitting in front of the television; it reminded us both of a combination of fast food tastes - hot Asian food, Kentucky Fried Chicken, exotically appetising aromas. We're definitely having them again some time soon. It was paired with the classic Cretan dakos.

These chicken wings would go really well with a bowl of twice-cooked fried potatoes (the way my parents made them in the fish and chip shop - no wonder they tasted so good) and some very cold beer. Στην υγειά σας*, Anthony and Dimitra!

(*to your health)
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