Leaving Kea and our garden, Costas and I spent a few days last week pretending to be tourists in the festive city. We had lovely drinks at the much talked-about, charming Heteroklito bar,  and were amazed to see streets at the busy Psiri area so  heavily decorated… At the always vibrant Central Market I visited Periklis Petridis’ incredible olive store ( 17 Aristogitonos str. –no website) where I tasted and bought incredible freshly cured, delicious olives from all over Greece. His slightly spicy olives from Volos were a revelation!

I arrived in the city a few days before Costas to see my best friend Maxine from New York. She visited her doughter, the talented Zoe Mylonas, and my old friend Alexandros, her ex-husband, whom we admired at The Long Day’s Journey Into Night . With Maxine we had a lovely Japanese dinner at Gaku, Syntagma and I especially loved their crunchy Seaweed Salad.  All around downtown Athens the most talked-about restaurants are Asian, or Asian-inspired, and certainly the most interesting and famous is Nolan, where we had a fabulous lunch the minute Costas set foot in Athens.  The adjascent Sweet Nolan was a temptation I could hardly resist, although I am not a particularely avid dessert eater… 

But once more, as always,  we enjoyed both the food and the atmosphere at ERGON Market, the Thessaloniki implant that a few years back took Athens by storm. There is no chance one can get a table without a reservation either for lunch or dinner these days, but I managed to sneak in and have lunch at the bar a few times. Costas and I loved our long leisurely lunch at Ergon with our friend Seth Rosenbaum who just flew in from Nicosia, Cyprus, for a few hours just to meet as!

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We started our cultural stroll of the city by visiting the incredible ΑΦΗ exhibit at the Benaki Pireos, and were amazed by the work of the talented old friends, whose work I always admired, photographed, and first wrote about in Tachidromos magazine in the early 80ies. 

I was particularely moved to see in the catalogue’s opening the old photo I had taken then. 

The very talented Marios Voutsinas, another very old friend, amazed me once more with his new studio and exhibition space at Psiri. His new collection of jewellery is mostly created using various antique pieces his late father, the famous theater director Andreas Voutsinas, had collected over the years. These tiny spoons are one fabulous example. 

We loved the work of Photis Kontoglou at the Goulandris museum, which included various other well-known artists he has influenced.  

At the main Benaki building, in Kolonaki, Yannis Moralis in Private is a small, fascinating exhibit. It includes among some beautiful paintings of his family, his whole studio, as well as childhood sketches, and the designs he had done for various buildings, the theater, and fabrics. 

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But not everybody enjoys these glorious days, especially the Greeks that celebrated May 1st on the island and expected to go to the beach (!) But the plants and flowers thrive now, before the sizzling sun dries everything…

Our pink Cistus parviflorus is in full bloom, and the Lomelosia cretica (above) is following along.

As our neighbor’s goats observe, Costas whacks the dried greens very carefully, among the fragrant thyme and savory bushes, and the vivid yellow blossoming phlomis.

Flowering plants are not many in our property, we only spotted four wild orchids under the olive trees this year. They seem as if they are speeding up their pace to catch up, blooming as fast as they can among the already yellowing greens.  

We harvested the last tender edible winter greens and some fava beans, of which we still have plenty to last for a couple more weeks.

The many green almonds promise an abundant crop, and the quince tree is spectacular in its large pink-white flowers.  

Our unusually plush rose bushes will flourish soon, and we are also looking and waiting for the budding wisteria to bloom. We had the first flowers around Greek Easter, Sunday April 24. 

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But even in this wintry weather certain plants thrive, triumphantly marking the beginning of spring.  

Most of the flowers this time of year are yellow, and only our favas break the rule with their delicate whitish blossoms.

Next to them, native to Greece but easily cultivated all over the world, grows Cheiranthus cheiri, a kind of wallflower that thrives in rocky areas. We have the yellow brown version with its discreet sweet scent that some find reminiscent of anise or vanilla.  

Our very aromatic irises are yellow too, as are the blooms of the huge Euphorbia dendroides that fills the southern slopes of Kea, along with the imposing Ferula communis that reaches the blue of the clear windy skies up above.  

The rhizome Asplenium ceterach sprouts out from slots in the calcareous rocks and stonewalls of our property.  Not impressive but with a strong character, you can admire their unassuming presence only if you know where to look for them.  

Next to it, the tiny fern Allosurus acrosticus gently unfolds its new stalks.  They will dry up in the hot summer months, and with the first rains and the return of humidity they will become green again, impressing us with their inconspicuous grace.

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They come in various shades of pink, and some are pure white. I guess the people who planted the trees, many years ago, chose different kinds; some produce small round fruit, others larger, elongated and very hard, difficult to crack. In the old days almonds from the islands were considered particularly delicious and fetched high prices. Now, with plenty of cheaper imports, people don’t even bother to harvest and crack them…

In a few weeks, when the green almonds reach the size of a small bean, or the nail of my small finger, as my neighbor says, I will collect a few to pickle. It is important to select green almonds that are crunchy but tender –before their shell hardens, and while the nut inside looks like a translucent jelly.

To select green almonds for pickling I have to observe carefully their growth, and pick them when they are half an inch long. In just a couple of days they may grow too large and tough, unsuitable for pickling.

Throughout the Middle East, the green almonds of early spring are nibbled raw, are added to salads or they are cooked together with lamb in a lemony sauce. In Greece they are preserved in heavy syrup, as yet another spoon-sweet, like karydaki (green unripe walnut), or melitzanaki, tiny eggplants, the most exotic of our spoon-sweets. Green almonds are also pickled. Unusually delicious and crunchy pickled green almonds are served as an appetizer, together with the various kinds of olives, and mixed vegetable pickles of cauliflower, peppers and carrots. Their sour taste complements perfectly the sweet and strong anise-flavored ouzo or raki.

My marinade, is sour-sweet (agro- dolce) inspired from the Ligurian tiny pickled peaches. Peach growers have to alleviate the trees of the abundance of fruits in early spring, so that the right amount of peaches ripen to perfection. The tiny crunchy pickled peaches look and taste very much like tsagala, our green almonds. Both trees belong to the same family anyway…

RECIPE: Pickled Tsagala (Green Almonds)  

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We also experience THE most spectacular moon this January, not just in the evening, but also early in the morning… 

We may even get some snow on Kea this coming weekend!  

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We were very grateful not only for the much-needed water, but for the comforting, cool  temperatures after a very hot summer.  We still have some vegetables, and hope for a few nice oranges, soon.

We started to get ripe, yet small fruit from the arbutus bush, and soon we will be harvesting the first oranges. 

The few, aromatic quinces we got are ripening in a basket, and are soon going to be used in meat and vegetarian dishes, also, of course in our cakes as well as in jams, and spoon sweets (fruit preserves).  

A low layer of green grass now covers the property, and our rose bushes are filled with tiny oblong red berries, and the big carob tree is filled with foul-smelling flowers buzzing with bees –an unexpected end-of-season treat for them. In Crete, where carob trees are ubiquitous in the rocky mountains, I heard that the densely-flavored carob honey is considered the best for melomakarona, the Christmas cookies.    

The disappointment and frustration with our pomegranate trees continues for one more year. The fruit rot and fall before they even ripen properly. Fortunately our two, potted dwarf, ornamental pomegranates are thriving!

Costas will prune the mulberry tree that provided its deep shade on our summer veranda, where we cook with our guests. He will then start pruning the olive trees, a major project we have to repeat every two years –not a single olive this fall..  

We planted a few micro greens in large shallow pots, and soon, we will probably harvest the very last eggplants, along with the a couple of tiny tomatoes we left on the plant just in case they ripen.

But we will still have plenty of peppers, both green and red, to make grill for meze and fry to make spreads. They often keep growing all through December…

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Last winter we did not get much rain in Kea, and this, the 2021, summer was particularly hot for more than a couple of days: for about two exhausting weeks the temperature remaining very high, even at night, something quite rare.  

Back in the spring, we had already noticed that the vegetation was far from lush this year, and  then by June we realized our trees were not doing well at all.  The big fig tree, whose particularly large leaves Costas uses to wrap the sea bass for grilling, had fewer and much smaller leaves, and the figs were tiny and far from abundant.  

And our lemon trees that produce wonderfully aromatic thick-skin lemons look particularly tortured.  

The only thing that is thriving this strange summer is our small, much-pampered vegetable garden, where we added extra compost and organic fertilizer –basically dried sea weeds.

Every cloud has a silver lining

On the other hand, less rain and humidity brought less bugs, and with the appropriate drip irrigation we managed to produce more vegetables. Our heirloom rose bushes, planted next to the vegetable patches along with other flowering plants, and most importantly, various aromatics like basil, oregano, European thyme, mint, and rose geraniums, were thriving as well in our small vegetable garden! And no beetles around to devour the roses, for a change..

As we are collecting our tomatoes, squash, peppers, and Sicilian eggplants, we remember that every cloud has a silver lining; yet still, we do hope for more rain and less heat next year!

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During the first lockdown, a year ago, we started going on long walks either in the morning or in the afternoon.  We take the paved road near our house, at Otzias, but also explore the paths and dirt roads around it.  Each time we discover wonderful new angles of the island; we knew the place, but now we can appreciate it more, as we witness the constant changes in nature with the change of season.

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I was quite ambivalent when, early Mars, the organizers decided to make the Oxford Symposium virtual. Let us wait, I said, hopefully things will be better by July… As we all know, of course, I was foolishly optimistic and fortunately the wise Symposium team decided in time to undertake the huge task to make everything happen online. They worked tirelessly, until the day of the opening events, and the result was –and still is, as it officially ends August 2– fascinating!

I was so sorry to have to cancel my much-anticipated annual trip to Oxford to meet friends from all over the world, listen to stimulating papers, and share fabulous meals at St Katz College’s stylish dining room. I even had bought my BA ticket to London last January –now it is ‘floating’ and with any luck I will be able to use it next year(!).

It all begun with an emotional greeting by Claudia Roden, the Symposium’s president, who emerged radiant speaking from her garden in London.

Throughout the July 10-12 weekend the plethora of video paper presentations and the Zoom meetings followed the relentless full-day schedule of several parallel sessions, much like the actual concurrent presentations at St Katz’s.

The keynote was given by professor Charles Spence who spoke about Gastrophysics and his experiments on the combination of sound and taste, among other things. Then each one chose to listen to some of the many excellent papers, but we also had the chance to chat, if briefly, with other participants during the virtual ‘coffee breaks.’

The weeks that followed the initial Symposium weekend we attended the speakers’ stimulating Q and A sessions, after having the chance to watch and listen, at our own pace, to every single one of the presentations and prepare for the hourly Zoom sessions of every group of papers, as they were inventively divided in sub-themes by Cathy Kaufman.

Among them:

• Pharmacopoeia, included a fascinating paper by Joshua Lovinger on the uplifting properties of saffron and its uses during the Šavu‘ot according to 14^th c. Hebrew florilegia from Provence.
• Colonialism finally answered my annatto question, the elusive spice/coloring that I bought, but have never used. Janet Beizer spoke about ‘Traveling with a Hairy Heart, or Where Cooking with Annatto Can Take You”
• Pot-pourri which described cooking and baking with cannabis.
• Medieval texts, where William Weaver spoke, and showed wonderful recreations of dishes with “Herbs and Spices in the Court Cuisine of Medieval Cyprus: Food in the Cyprio-Gallic Style.”
• Chilis on the world table where  Kelly Sharp in her brilliant, timely paper  “‘I got hot sauce in my bag, swag,’ The Diasporic Roots of Hot Sauce in Black American Culinary Culture.” Sharp explained that the hot chilies begun basically as a necessary spice to mask the rotten meat scraps fed to slaves. From Tokyo, Voltaire Cang talked about the unusual spice blend “Shichimi: The Spice, its Trade, and Centuries of Food Business Survival in Japan,” which I am dying to taste.
• Changing British Cuisine concluded with an intriguing paper by Yale Professor Paul Freedman about “The Savory Course at Oxford and Cambridge Colleges,” referring to ‘a small piquant dish coming after the sweet but before the dessert, a uniquely British idea.’
• Contemporary Issues included ‘The Geopolitics of Saffron and the Puzzles of Saffron Arithmetic,” by Symposium trustee Richard Shepro, who tried to explain the enormous quantities of the precious spice Spain exports, while the indisputable bulk production of saffron comes from Iran (!)
• In The Cuisines of India Sharmila Vaidyanathan finally answered my question about the use of a somewhat foul smelling/tasting spice; in “The Curious Case of Asafoetida.” She explained that ‘in strict vegetarian South Indian Brahmin communities […] asafoetida served as an alternative for aphrodisiacs like onion and garlic.’
• Flavours of Antiquity and beyond included “Food for the Soul: The Rabbis’ Cinnamon” by Susan Weingarten; also “Pound pepper and lovage: The Use of Spices in the Apician Recipe Text,” by Sally Grainger, as well as  “Pepper and Paradox in the Roman Imagination, by “Jeremy A. Simmons
• In Perceptions of Heat Gerald Zhang-Schmidt, speaking from his greenhouse, gave a fascinating talk about the varieties of Chinese chilies. Even I, although not really interested in the subject, enjoyed it enormously, especially as it was enriched with Fuchsia Dunlop‘s vast knowledge during the later Q & A session.

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At last I found the time to follow the most educating Wikipedia training session with Roberta Wedge, which is offered every year before the Symposium, at the British Library. But I never happened to be in London then. Now I gained the confidence needed, and having already registered as instructed, I plan to check, edit, and maybe add some entries and/or photos to this marvelous, ever evolving online encyclopedia.

Another fascinating database, Barbara Wheaton’s The Shifter, is almost ready for the serious researchers to delve into. The demo we followed was extremely impressive!

Elisabeth Luard, a longtime Symposium chair –with a flower in her hair or wearing a fabulous hat– contributed the most interesting comments and questions to the presenters. She also created the beautiful watercolors that Jake Tilson used in the booklet/menu card for David Tanis’ lunch (see below).

From Berlin, Ursula Heinzelmann,  the Symposium director,  picked and chose with an iron hand the questions from an often long list in the chat, then  funneled them to the various distinguished scholars who chaired the Q & A sessions.

The closing keynote talk by Harold McGee “A nose dive into plant aromas’ was a revelation! Harold, one of the Symposium’s trustees, showed us the huge Vanilla plant he grows in his living room in southern California.

Talking about the many curious habits and properties of the aromatic plants, he mentioned that wild thyme often performs some sort of birth control trying not to proliferate in precarious, rocky and confined spaces. The extra difficult growing conditions make the most aromatic plants, he said. We cannot wait to read his upcoming book on the subject which will be published next year.

The Meals

Unfortunately we couldn’t taste the inspiring meals and the wines listed for this year’s Herbs and Spices theme, but we had the chance to partake in sumptuous and thought-provoking virtual lunches and dinners: Among them, the brilliant David Tanis chose to highlight “One Good Spice: the Pleasures of a Single Fragrance,” working together with Jill Norman. ‘Though there are myriad age-old spice blends used in countless traditional cuisines, sometimes it is pleasant and illuminating to concentrate on one individual spice. Each of the dishes in this menu illustrates the gist of this idea by bringing out their unique flavors,’ they wrote. The menu Tanis proposed included: Chilled Melon and Coriander Soup, Courgette (zucchini) pancakes, Roasted lamb with Crushed Black Pepper (lots of it), Onion Flatbreads with Toasted Cumin Butter, Cardamom Custard with berries, Ginger Biscuits, and Saffron Tea!

The first night’s dinner ‘Pragmatism in an Impractical Place: the Stubborn Cuisine of the Fogo Island,’ was a follow up of last year’s closing talk by Zita Cobb that had left us all wanting more; so this time she brought chefs Timothy Charles and Jonathan Gushue to plan an unusual dinner.

For Saturday Asma Khan proposed “A Spice Odyssey: Home in the Royal Courts of India.’ I don’t know much about Indian cooking but following her accompanying video, I was fascinated by her way of rolling paratha so that she created a multi-layered, crunchy flatbread. I plan to duplicated her technique with our phyllo pastry –substituting olive oil for her ghee.

One of the highlights of the Symposium was undoubtedly Sri Owen, a beloved long time participant since the first years when we used to meet at  St Antony’s college with founders Alan Davidson  and Theodore Zeldin. The short film ‘My Life in a Recipe,’ by Janice Gabriel, follows Sri as she prepares Beef Rendang, her signature dish, in her home kitchen. Rendang is an extremely interesting way of cooking meat –beef, chicken, or any other kind, as Sri explained. The meat starts cooking in a soupy coconut milk broth until the milky liquid evaporates, and the meat ends up ‘frying’ in coconut fat!

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I am sure I speak for all of us who participated in the  v-symposium in expressing our gratitude to trustee David Matchett and all the others who worked seamlessly behind the scenes and made sure the complicated Zoom session run smoothly.

The multi-talented Jake Tilson once more designed  the most exquisite menus –collectors’ items.

But of course we could not get the beautiful hard copies of his cards  as we usually do. Instead he sent us high resolution pdfs of the various designs.

Maybe others are handier with their printers but, unfortunately, I could not manage to make a decent printout although I tried several times…

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