It's all Greek to them (Είναι όλα Κινέζικα γι' αυτούς)

Understandably, Greeks don't say "It's all Greek to me'; they say it sounds Chinese, which of course also carries the figurative meaning these days of 'fake'.

One of the themes I explored in my presentation on Greek Cuisine, Greek Identity and the Economic Crisis at the 2nd Symposium of Greek Gastronomy: Food, Memory and Identity was the significance of Greek food in international trade, and just what kind of Greek identity these foods actually carried. One of the most controversial topics concerning the identity of a Greek food product is - of course - no surprise! - the infamous Greek(-style) yoghurt, the yoghurt that Greeks never call 'Greek'; we call it strained yoghurt. Around the world's supermarkets, mainly where the Greek diaspora lives, but not confined to the main cities of the Greek diaspora, we see labels on plastic pots proclaiming that their yoghurt is Greek. But there are now court rulings in both the UK and the US against the use of the phrase 'Greek yoghurt' if the product is not found to be appropriately 'Greek' enough; the use of the phrase 'Greek style' is acceptable, but even then, how Greek(-style) is that stuff that being sold in the plastic tub?

My NZ aunt carried some home-made sweets in this tub when she visited Crete recently. Greek yoghurt, as the term is used abroad, is supposedly what Greeks call strained yoghurt. Strained yoghurt is NEVER easy-pour, and you certainly wouldn't place it ON muesli (you would place MUESLI ON strained yoghurt).  

Well, that dairy product in the plastic tub is probably about as Greek as the buyer wants it to be: we eat what we think we want to be eating, and when we buy that pottle of 'Greek-(style) yoghurt', we think we're eating Greek yoghurt. And if I happened to be coming along, and someone showed me the pot of 'Greek-(style) yoghurt' that they were eating from, and they told me "I'm eating Greek yoghurt", I'd say "Glad you like it."

I don't eat much strained yoghurt, because it's a little too thick; once little bowl feels like a full meal. I like to have yoghurt as an evening meal with some honey drizzled over it (which adds calories to it) and/or some fruit (more calories, no matter how good it is for you). But I much prefer the non-strained yoghurt sold in clay pots made from sheep's milk - now, that stuff is to die for, seriously. It's less fattening (so I can have it with some honey drizzled over it without feeling guilty), and as you take some yoghurt out of the clay pot, the remaining yoghurt in the pot strains itself slowly over time, so that you can see a build-up of whey waters in the clay pot as the yoghurt ages. So it eventually becomes a little strained, although it starts off its life much creamier than strained yoghurt. So my favorite Greek yoghurt is not actually of the kind labelled 'Greek-(style) yoghurt' abroad, but a locally made yoghurt. But when visitors come to Greece, and they try this yoghurt, they think "That's not the Greek yoghurt I'm used to eating."

Well, it's not the 'Greek' yoghurt they know, for sure. Their Greek yoghurt comes in different packaging; it may be sporting the Olympic crown of olive branches,

or the well-known lettering of ancient Greek writing,

or maybe a bit of a Doric column,

or maybe none of the above, simply bearing the word 'Greek', with a hint of 'organic' for good measure.

But whatever it is, it's got to be 'Greek' because 'Greek' sells well these days. So whether it's Turkish or American, it's still Greek to most people, even though it isn't made in Greece, nor is it made from Greek milk* or by Greek people.

Τι τσομπάνης, τι βοσκός - it's all γρεεκ to them.

Greek yoghurt sells, even if the syrupy fruit-filled sugar-laden easy-pour contents of the tub bear no resemblance whatsoever to the yoghurt sold in Greece...

Tzatziki, made with Greek yoghurt, sporting the famous Greek maiandros (where you guys get your 'meander' from...)

... because it's all Greek to them, whatever.

*neither is all made-in-Greece strained yoghurt made from Greek milk 

All the photos come from a supermarket somewhere in an American state. Thank you, you-know-who.

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Still on staycation

With my August visitors all wanting to use the internet on their own devices, I've lost bandwidth, making blogging impossible. Here's a selection of photos showing what I've been up to in terms of cooking and travelling. All the photo captions come from my facebook page readers.

First up, we checked out my husband's handiwork: grafting wild olive trees to turn them into domesticated spieces: 

And when I was a kid thought this was like magic. I was sure about my father having secret powers that affected nature in many ways and all this equipment was part of a rural 007 that was taking up cases that before the eyes of the clueless seemed like senseless.

While at the village, we harvested the first round of figs from our trees:

 It's difficult to resist when you have a bucket of fresh figs

I'd always wanted to make carob drink, called haroubia (χαρουμπία) in Crete. My haroubia was a little astringent because I harvested the carobs rather early, but I know what to do and where to find some good carobs when they are at their best:

One of my favorite spoon sweets is that of sour cherry - I made a jar of this when I found sour cherries being sold at the market (they don;t commonly make thier way to Hania, as they are not grown here):

Quote by YIANNIS MARKOPOULOS: "Greeks want a computer by their side for their daily needs, but at the same time, they want to be able to plough their land."

One day, when I had some leftover cooked vegetables, I heated them in a small pan and stuck an egg in the middle - I recently found out that this is called φαγητό της ακαμάτρας (meaning you cook what you've got in the house and stick an egg in the middle):

I remember my mother cooking similar rustic meals when we were younger when the influences of her Greek village upbringing was still fresh.

While my sister was staying at my house, she helped me to roll up some dolmadakia - something she has never ever done before, which may surprise many of you...

Right after we cooked our dolmadakia, we went to Stavros beach, where Zorba originally danced the first sirtaki:

Just half a dozen kilometres away from Zorba's beach is the bay of Kalathas, where the swimming (and the surfing) was better - there is a tiny green island close to the shore that many keen swimmers swim out to: 

On the way back home, we stopped off at one of Hania's most famous landmarks and a good lookout point over the city - the Venizelos tombs, which have a view out to the Venetian harbour:

The next day, we visited a friend from NZ who repatriated to Greece like ourselves - he lives in a tiny neighbourhood in a small village near the south coast of Hania:

Then we hit the south coast - without a doubt, Elafonisi has to be one of the best beaches in the whole of Europe. Don't be deceived by the photo - half of Europe seemed to be holidaying with us on that day...:

We stopped off at the picturesque village of Elos, where 5 people ate a meal as big as this for 45 euro in total: 

I often remind myself that Greece is made up of a collection of images that play out as quickly, one by one, one after the other, as mere glimpses - if you blink, you may miss them. But when I pinch myself, I can feel the bite.

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Dolmadakia with The Kitchen Table in Athens

I've never really written anything about microwave ovens in my blog. But a microwave sits on my kitchen benchtop, not because I ever thought I'd want one, but because it's convenient. My husband particularly fell in love with it since the first one (it died a few months ago) entered his life as a wedding present; I can't say it isn't helpful when we come back to a full stove-pot or oven-tray of cold food. I don't actually cook a meal in it - it is only for heating things up; I don't think I can cook anything in it that would resemble our regular daily food.

But microwaves are the norm in the restaurant trade. Tourists like their meals hot, even though many Greek dishes taste good at room temperature, especially those known as λαδερά (la-the-RA, meaning 'oily food'). The problem is that tourists to Greece are generally used to hot meals in their own cooler climates, and it's hard to convince them to eat certain meals at room temperature.

Greek ladera dishes are often slow-cooked and sitting in the pot on the stove or in the oven tray in its own heat which slowly dissipates over the day. But there are also the cheats' methods of making ladera: restauranteurs can just open a can of gigandes, fasolakia or dolmadakia (all considered ladera), pour the contents on a plate, heat it up in the microwave, and voila, you have a hot Greek meal ready in a jiffy. This would probably never happen in a taverna which serves mainly locals as opposed to mainly tourists. Locals' locals are also most likely to remain open throughout the year, without closing in the summer, except for a month before/after Christmas for a break.

Giorgos (right) at The Kitchen Table

Why do tourists like their food hot? I was speaking about this topic with Jeffrey from The Kitchen Table - Athens, who, with his friend and business partner Giorgos, is involved in one of the many new and alternative food projects to hit the Greek market since people started to search for novel business approaches: "One of the best ways to experience Greek food is to be invited to someone's home, but this is not always the case for most tourists and visitors to Athens. We created The Kitchen Table to offer an alternative. It's a small,  private space on Thiseos St near Syntagma where Giorgos and I (both food professionals passionate about Greek home cooking; Jeffrey trained as a chef in New York City) serve either a lunch or dinner family style that we've prepared ourselves for a group of 4 to 10 people using local products (most come from the Agora). We use the tried and true recipes of friends and family that we've come to love over the years. We prepare the meals by hand,  from scratch. Nothing canned, or prepackaged. Everything fresh, honest and wholesome. We even make our own filo daily. Our oil comes from a family friend's small grove in the Peloponnese. We begin each meal with a chat about the basic elements of Greek cooking, how Greek people like to eat, seasonality and regional cooking, similar things to those you discuss in your blog. We keep that part brief because we feel the best way to learn about Greek cooking is to eat Greek cooking!  So in summary, we're not a restaurant, and we're not a cooking school... we're something different." 

Athens Central Market

One reason - a rather obvious one - why tourists probably view hot food as better when it's hot is the Western world's aversion to germs, Jeffrey says: "I think there is an aversion by tourists who don't know any better to eating food that's at room temperature. It's a germ-a-phobe thing I think. They just don't know about the beauty of the flavor of ladera dishes once they've cooled down to room temperature after cooking, and that the oil is a preservative. They think they'll get sick from eating room temperature food, even if it's handled correctly. But microwaving ladera kills the flavour dead. I cringe in any taverna when I start to hear the "beep, beep, beep" of microwaves going off in the kitchen. Having said that, I know I could never serve the kind of ladera dishes the way I'd want to at a restaurant in New York City (Jeffrey's from New York) because of the somewhat insane health department codes..."  

Jeffrey and a Cretan yiayia, making dolmadakia

One of Jeffrey's favorite Greek meals is dolmadakia: "I was taught a lovely, simple recipe by a friend's mother from Crete.  We used fresh-frozen ambelofila (grape vine leaves) which she had frozen herself the year before. Practically speaking, at the Kitchen Table, we didn't have the freezer space nor the time to pack the amount we would need away for the entire summer. So, when we were at this food expo, we thought we'd check out one producer of brined vine leaves from Thessaloniki that was recommended as a good alternative to fresh leaves. This producer of jarred leaves is now also well known because they have "perfected" a way to freeze packaged pre-made dolmadakia which they sell to tavernas - you simply defrost the whole package in the microwave! I tried some of their dolmadakia at the expo. They tasted kind of OK, not repulsive, but not like home-cooked dolmadakia. With the sales rep standing before me I started reading off the ingredients on the back of the package of pre-made dolmadakia. I was horrified - they were made with... vegetable oil! I looked up at the sales rep over the top of my glasses and he could not understand for the life of him what the problem was! Anyway, we haven't found any brined leaves of the quality we want to use, so for now, we only serve dolmadakia when we can get the fresh leaves at the laiki in season."

While Jeffrey was in Istanbul on a visit, he went to Ciya Sofrasi, a restaurant run by Musa Dağdeviren  who was featured in Yotam Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Feast: "Meeting Musa was an amazing experience - he doesn't speak a speck of English! Musa makes kolokithoanthoi (zucchini flower parcels) in a similar way to Greek  dolmadakia (the meat filled ones), but with a twist: he places unripe green grapes in with the slices of tomato for flavoring. One of my yiayia friends who grew up in Crete told me that in summer when there were no lemons in her village they used unripe green grape juice for a sour taste to replace lemon in dishes."   

Stuffed zucchini flowers by Musa Dağdeviren, Istanbul

Jeffrey likes his Cretan friend's mother's dolmadakia recipe: "Kiria Maria's recipe is the one we use at The Kitchen Table. It's very simple, and typically Cretan. We don't precook the filling: onion chopped finely in equal mass to the amount of raw rice - the Karolina variety; it's very important with the amount of onion. It might seem like too much, but it's one of the things that make this recipe.  One cup finely chopped onion, one cup rice. Then loads of chopped parsley and mint (not to be confused with spearmint), a grated tomato stirred into the rice and herbs, a few tablespoons of oil proportionate to the rice, and the juice of one whole lemon, salt and pepper. I always taste for seasonings before I roll the dolmadakia. Then I pour a wine glass of olive oil over that and add very little water, just to the halfway mark of the first layer of dolmadakia, some more salt and pepper, and cook them as usual. The trick is the lemon in with the grated tomato for the filling, as well as making sure you have plenty of chopped onion. The taste of the finished product is amazing, especially the next day when all the flavours have blended." 

I was quite proud to hear Jeffrey talk about Cretan cooking: "Of all the regional cuisines in Greece, Crete has to be my favorite. I love the simplicity and brilliance with which they combine the minimum amount of ingredients for the maximum of taste and nutrition. A friend just recommended a recipe for kolokithokeftedes (zucchini patties) from Crete that uses ONLY mint. No onion, no cheese, no egg, no other herbs. Of course it's lenten, but it actually lets the flavor of the zucchini come out and not be overwhelmed by herbs, breadcrumbs etcetera." 

As a food professional, Jeffrey has his own ideas about Greek food: "I'm absolutely in love with the food here and have been since I first arrived here six years ago. I'm talking about the real Greek food that yiayias have been making for eons out in the villages without any fanfare, following the rhythm of the seasons."

I think he's summed up my own ideas about the kind of cooking I enjoy too. 

If you'd like to try some Greek home cooking while in Athens at The Kitchen Table, Jeffrey and Giorgos can be emailed at ktathens@outlook.com or call +306942780190. Bookings are needed at least 24hrs in advance.   

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Staycation

The only thing that will keep me away from blogging on a daily basis is...

Pork and salad, pita and fries = home made souvlaki.

... cooking for my extended family of ex-pat Cretans who have invaded the island in the height of summer that the month of August receives, every year without fail.

It's staycation time for me, enjoying my hometown from a different light.

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Semi-rural very poor

Most of my extended Greek family in Crete is, by western standards, 'rural poor', which often means that they live in a rudimentary kind of house, living off a small income made by selling their own produce, combined with a pension of some sort if they are senior citizens; their daily routine involves subsistence farming to a certain extent. My parents came from such a category of people.

My remaining Cretan family is, according to western standards again, mainly 'urban skilled upper working class-lower middle class' - the men are employed in some kind of trade (eg mechanic, engineer) while their wives may or may not work outside the home. Most of those that work outside the home are not insured, while the others are often registered as 'farmer', due to the pension scheme they belong to (people who own some kind of land - usually having inherited it - and live in the countryside can be registered as farmers, paying into the OGA pension scheme for health insurance purposes). Then there are my Athenian relatives, who were always very difficult to classify because the western social class classification system never really applied for them anyway (Greece has never really had an established middle class). These days, in the pervading socio-political climate, it is even harder to classify them into established social strata - their property ownership does not match their income or occupational status.

The worst thing that can be said about the Greek bourgeoisie is that it doesn't exist. The Greek self-called 'aristocracy' are in reality the few real bourgeois - from well-to-do families. The nouveaux-bourgeois are in actual fact European-costumed (and bewildered) peasants. And the few remaining peasants are perhaps the only genuine Greeks. 

The word 'poor' does not have a standard global meaning; it all depends on what kind of country you are talking about: western industrialised, developing and undeveloped countries all have different definitions of poverty. Haridimos (H) and Yiouli (Y) are some of my poorest Cretan relatives with young children (the other poor ones no longer have dependent children). If I were to phrase the term in the Greek context, I would class H and Y as 'semi-rural very poor' (SRVP). They live in an urbanised village, which acts as a political centre for a large, predominantly rural area.

What does it mean to be SRVP in the Greek context? For a start, it doesn't mean that you go hungry. In Crete, that's hardly likely. Y keeps a garden in the back yard of their rented home and also raises chickens on inherited land. Secondly, to be SRVP does not necessarily entail debt; rural poor Greeks generally don't use loans, let alone credit cards. They are, generally speaking, money-poor and resource-rich. H's work has now been reduced to 2 or 3 days a week (alternately) at a small private enterprise. Y never really entered the work force; apart form irregular stints in cleaning and packing jobs, she has been, for the most part, a housewife.

On the question of their heritage, I would separate the Greeks into three categories - the aware, the semi-aware and the unaware. Those (very few) in the first category have first-hand knowledge. They have felt the awful burden of their heritage. They are aware of their ancestors' inhuman level of perfection in both word and form. And this crushes them... The second category (the majority) do not have direct knowledge. but they've 'heard say'. They are like the sons of the famous philosopher, who are unable to understand his works, but see that those who do know them respect them and prize them. It bothers them, yet the same fame flatters them. They always swell with pride - when talking to others... The third category - the unaware - are chaste and pure (meaning uneducated...) They've heard about the ancient Greeks in myths and legends that they have absorbed like popular folktales. It is these pure types who created the folk tradition and folk art. These alone lived without the anxiety of their heritage.

But SRVP does include notions often included in international standards that describe similarities among very poor people, eg 'low educational background'; neither H nor Y finished junior high school. H and Y also exhibit other features associated with the western notion of being very poor: they smoke a lot, they eat a lot (Y is now obese, which doesn't help her diabetes), and they like to drink, albeit their own home brew (but they are also food-and-drinkers - drinking is never just about the alcohol). They tend to have company on most nights at their home, or to be entertained in a similar way at someone else's home. They send their children to school, but admit they have problems keeping up with their schoolwork. They don't send them to extra-curricular activities, apart from afternoon English lessons (in Greece, private afternoon language lessons are generally regarded as just as compulsory as state school lessons - but special times call for special prices, and even these have fallen). They use the free public health services at all times, but don't necessarily maintain medical check-ups; dental work is delayed, postponed or simply cancelled, judging from Y's periodontitis, which the doctor blamed on her smoking (there are some habits you cannot stop, Y says). They don't own computers, and they don't have internet - this can be partly explained by the fact that they don't have a landline (to cut costs, they only have a cellphone, which is cheaper to maintain). They use one (old) car between them.

The wood-fired heater - knowing Y, she probably painted it to clean it up before she started using it.

Paying the rent is sometimes a struggle, Y told me, as H earns very little from his combined income from the (now) part-time job, together with some agriculture-related income (avocado and honey sales). They recently moved into a new rental home, because the previous landlord didn't want to lower their rent, nor would he let them drill holes into the walls to allow for the installation of a wood-fired heater. During the long harsh very cold winter of 2011-2012, they did not use heating oil (due to the high cost), and they had great trouble keeping themselves warm (the one electric radiator they had broke down). Their present ground-floor semi-detached home suffers in similar ways to other village houses: it is generally not well maintained, with cheap materials used in its construction. But the rent is cheaper, it is bigger and it contains a wood-fired heater (it came with the property), which uses the wood from their olive grove. Y uses it for all her cooking needs in the winter (it has both a top element and an oven). Holidays away from the island are non-existent of course, but they regularly go to the beach, treating themselves to a styrofoam coffee, and they visit friends and relatives on other parts of the island when the opportunity arises.

If anything goes really wrong, Y said, they can always move in with her mother in law, whose house is far from modern - it's more a cluster of rooms that don't connect with each other by a door, only by a wall. But it's a house with a roof, Y says, and it'll keep us dry and comfortable. Things can go wrong so easily, as the Greek saying forewarns: Υγεία πρώτ' απ'όλα. (Health before everything else.)

My recent visit to H and Y was on a happy occasion because Y had been asked by a neighbour to look after her toddler, now that childcare services have closed down for the remaining summer. It means a little extra money coming into the household to lighten the burden. I'll buy myself a new pair of flip-flops, Y said, laughing, as she showed me a hole in the pair she was wearing. We talked all night, over home-made 'fridge cake' (made with chocolate cream over custard cream, topped with jelly), crisp garden-fresh lightly salted cucumber and raki. We asked them to come over to our place one day too so that we can reciprocate their kindness. But my visit also left me with a sinking feeling of helplessness. H and Y can'o improve their lot; neither can the state help them at this period of time. There are hardly any state benefits available for the SRUP in Greece, apart from some tax relief (eg they don't pay property tax because they don't own a home, or any solidarity tax), a small family benefit and some kind of rent rebates.

Part of H's and Y's view - the neighbour's house isn't in a much better state than their own. The brown door is the main bathroom, an outside toilet next to the outdoor seating area, below the washing line.. The stark concrete walls are supporting columns that were built over the existing property to construct another level over the old house.

On the face of it, H and Y sound like other poor people around the world struggling to pay their bills. Cretan poverty could be said to be charactersed by an attempt to maintain a dignified lifestyle, in the same way that the very poor of the rural sector were raised in: the previous rural generation represents the transition in Greece from rural to semi-rural, when many villages were urbanised, or completely deserted as people moved from the countryside to the city. The Cretan poor still maintain and apply that set of skills, knowledge, practices and traditions involved in the Mediterranean lifestyle, which comprises diet to a large extent; many of these skills and traditions are centred around the way of growing, collecting and processing food, preparing and eating it communally. Bringing food from the landscape to the table, which encompasses the experience and transmission of this set of knowledge, involves a psychology that is inherent in the formation of the Mediterranean identity, ensuring the future of shared cultural heritage. Home cooking, whether using cheaply bought not-so-highly-processed ingredients or homegrown produce, is still a common practice.

The lack of any system in Greece prevented the proper development of even the class system. The abruptly urbanized peasant is the saddest creature in Greece. His life has completely degenerated. He has lost all his traditional patriarchal background – without having acquired anything in its place. Nor did the Greek bourgeois class have any tradition of note to offer him – and even if it had, a few thousand bourgeois couldn’t possibly absorb a few million peasants in the space of one generation. And so the urbanized peasant lives in a void... 

In the meantime, I can only offer a bit of help to H's and Y's kids in their English lessons, some short-term relief for a long-term problem. Some situations are irreversible.

All quotes taken from "On the Unhappiness of Being Greek", Nikos Dimou, 1975, reprinted in 2102, first in German, then English and French when writing about Greece and the Greeks came in vogue.

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New York a la Cart by Alexandra Penfold and Shiobhan Wallace

... so, to cut a long story short, my friends told me that anything they eat back home is GMO, and it's actually really hard to find non-GMO food where they live, and even when they do find it, it costs a lot of money. (They recall eating a nice peach once, I was told, for US$2. A piece. They shared it.) So it's a misnomer to talk about the 'best' food back there, because most food is kind of not-so-good, in the sense that we talk about good food here in Crete (they said to me), where you eat a tomato that you can actually taste, or squeeze a lemon that you can smell, or cut open a watermelon that is as red as wine and not as pink as chewing gum, and the herbs used to flavour your meat come from the same locality where the meat was raised. (They haven't taken a bath since they've been here, so as not to lose the aromas of wild thyme, oregano and sea salt from their body.)

New York street food in my kitchen.

Good food over there is not the same as good food over here, they insisted, while their children were asking why there weren't any Doritos on the table, or why there was no cilantro available in the stores, and why they couldn't get a super duper triple-size glass of soda instead of all those little bottles that the waitress was bringing them every fifteen minutes. (Size matters over there.)

Confined work spaces are the norm in a street food cart - my kitchen does not feel much different at times.

But there is good food there too, they insisted, and the people who sell it on the street from their carts compete to make it the best. These same people who live quite far removed from the tomatoes that taste like tomatoes and the lemons that smell like lemons share the same passion for preparing good food as those who live near the tasty tomatoes and aromatic lemons, and that's why street food is revered there, not just for its superlative taste, but for the passionate souls who prepare it for the other hungry souls in the city.

And just like any good food makers, those people on the streets of New York all have a story to tell. My friends know how much I love a good food story, so they bought me one that combines travel with food in their own home town: New York a la Cart by Alexandra Penfold and Shiobhan Wallace. Food stories in new York are not difficult to find since most food cart vendors there have immigrant origins, as they "have found the promise of a better life in street vending, bringing a bit fo the old country to the New World... A city of old and new immigrants, New York offers unparalleled dining diversity... behind every cart and every truck were the hoped and dreams of a fellow New Yorker by birth of by choice."

The stories of the cart vendors reminded me of my own parents' dreams of a better life as immigrants to New Zealand - they too were involved in the food industry: they were part of a tradition that many immigrants anywhere still follow to this day: "using food vending as a means to make a living and a stepping stone to success." Greek immigrants of the past were some of the champs in this trade, and even New York knows this well: "New York and its palate saw another rapid change when the 1965 - the same period my parents emigrated - Immigration Act opened borders.. Greeks opened carts selling guros and souvlaki, grilled chicken and lamb pita sandwiches; with time, they came to own the majority of the working food carts. Their success allowed them to employ other immigrants to actually man the carts." This illustrates a very significant element of the Greek psyche - Greeks generally want to be their own boss. This partly explains why Greece has always had a disproportionately high rate of self-employment, and this will probably continue, despite the economic problems of the country.

If Crete doesn't stock it, then I have to make it - wonton wrappers.

I would love to be a street food vendor because it would bring my food directly in close contact to the people who would be eating it. But street vending is associated with a great many problems which are similar all over the world: competition for the best spot, over-regulation by the state, vendor crackdowns, parking problems, legal trappings, and the biggest problem of all: harassment of all kinds, especially old timers and thugs. Being a female street food vendor can't be easy either, as noted by one of the NY ice-cream vendors. If I could open a food cart in Hania, I would also face another problem: selling unusual food to not-so-enticed eaters. I wouldn't be selling Greek food: I'd be selling things I want to see being sold, like Asian spring rolls. Street food here is not an art form: apart from koulouri, chestnut and corn stands, we don't have much more. Recently I noticed a drinks seller - that's a direct effect of the economic crisis.

Rolling up the Taiwanese dumplings - they looked more like spring rolls to me: this is explained by the fact that the person making them in the NT cart also makes Japanese dumplings which are similar - and that is all explained by the influence of Japanese culture in Taiwan.

New York a la Cart is a must-read for those who love to hear the stories behind the food. It also contains so many enticing photos, and the recipes given are quick, easy and cheap to make, otherwise such wouldn't be a sell out on the street, no matter which place they were being sold. We had some pieces of leftover boiled lamb meat from a village feast; using some bits and pieces of our own vegetable harvests, I was able to make a really good version of Taiwanese dumplings. I used boiled lamb instead of pork mince, and grated zucchini instead of cabbage (cabbage in Hania in the summer is imported from the mainland - it's still too hot to grow it in Crete which explains why it has disappeared from the street market at the moment).

Food cart workers work in very confined spaces - my kitchen does not feel much bigger most of the time. But I still managed to find some space to roll out some wonton wrappers, as the recipe states. We don't have wonton wrappers ready to buy in Crete - we do have filo pastry squares, but since I never buy them (and I do often think of the expense in doing so), I always roll out my own pastry. The instructions in the recipe provided me with a good tip for future dumpling/spring roll making: don't seal the roll/dumpling too tightly. The given recipe also stated to place some water in the pan after frying the dumplings (well, they looked more like spring rolls to me) to let them steam in it for 5 minutes. But this is very not-Greek (boiling pastry after it has fried), so I just served them pan-fried. They were a complete hit; we have also become big fans of hot sauce with our international cuisine, after so many travel experiences.

It's a great feeling to know that I can copy any recipe from around the world in my own home. 

Thank you very much, Deby. 

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Omelette for one (Ομελέτα ατομική)

My kids want the instructions for how we made omelettes recently.

You need:
2-3 eggs
a little bit of sausage (or ham), green pepper, onion, zucchini, aubergine, etc
grated cheese
olive oil
some bowls
2 medium-sized frying pans

1. Prepare your omelette fillings first: Peel and cut a potato into chips. Fry them in olive oil in a medium-sized frying pan on high heat till they are completely cooked (there is nothing worse than an underdone potato). They will need at least 15 minutes. When they are done, take them out of the frying pan with a slotted spoon and place them in a bowl.

2. Next, chop some mushrooms, green peppers, sausage, onion, zucchini, aubergines, etc (whatever you like) into small cubes - you will need only a little bit of each item. Fry them in a little olive oil on medium-to-high heat in another medium-sized frying pan till they are just cooked through. You can do this at the same time while the potatoes are cooking. This will need about 3-8 minutes. When they are ready, take them out of the frying pan and place them in another bowl.

3. Have some grated cheese ready in another bowl. You will need 2-3 tablespoons per omelette.

4. Break 2 eggs (or 3, if you are very hungry) in another bowl and add 3-4 tablespoons of water. Beat well. (If you have 3 eggs in an omelette, you shouldn't eat any more eggs - fried or boiled - in that week because it may be bad for your health - there are other foods to eat in the world apart from eggs.)

5. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan (the same one you used to cook the vegetables/meat). When it is hot, pour the egg mixture into it. Shake the pan a little to make sure the egg runs everywhere so that it will cook everywhere. Use a knife to lift up the omelette to let the runny egg go to the bottom of the pan. But DO NOT break the omelette - let it cook like a pancake.

6. When all the egg is cooked and not runny, place some of your fillings on top of the omelette on ONE SIDE ONLY. Then place the greated cheese over the fillings. Then fold the other side of the omelette over the fillings. Then slide the omelette onto a plate.

7. Place the remaining fillings and the fried potatoes around the omelette.

Enjoy your omelette hot.

©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.