Subtitled: Eating is Crete-ing
Hello everyone – Remember me? I’m that blatantly over-ambitious person who boldly claimed that they were going to eat one new food a week for a whole year. Well, it’s now week thirty-one of 2013 and this is entry nineteen. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that I have been a bit slack and am failing pretty dismally. If OFSTED was inspecting this venture, I think I would have been cast into the ‘special measures’ pile and given a good old slap on the taste-buds.
I’m sorry and I will try harder.
Perhaps I should make a vow to eat more and write less – That might help to get me back on track… And spare you all from my excessively long-winded attempts to be witty.
OR, I could go on holiday, try to cram as many new things into my mouth as I could, spend hours thinking up as many Greek puns as possible and make a pitiful attempt to remove my t-shirt suntan…
Week Nineteen is brought to you in association with ‘Wind’ – Greece’s eleventh most popular lager beer.
“If you can feel a breeze between your knees, you must have been drinking Wind”
A trip to Crete would expose me to an array of foods I hadn’t eaten before – And in return, I would be forced to drink too much raki and (perhaps) expose myself to Crete. Sounds like a fair cultural exchange to me.
Cuttlefish
During my wilderness years (well, wilderness seven months – but that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?) travelling the World, I had previously eaten cuttlefish crisps. This is how I described the experience in my never-to-be-published memoirs (Michael Jones and the Farce Crusade)
If you love eating Scampi Fries after you’ve dropped them down the toilet, you’ll love these…
“November 4th 2010. I have just eaten some cuttlefish crisps – It’s amazing what people will be driven to do when waiting for a boat service to resume after a monsoon. Said crisps were possibly the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth. Think Scampi Fries eaten by a mackerel, vomited-up, grilled at an intermediate heat for fifteen minutes or until crispy, allowed to cool, put in a packet with a picture of a crustacean wearing headphones and then served at room temperature whilst being pestered by mynah birds on a beach on a Thai island. I can assure you, I will never eat them again.
I guess you can’t fault my sense of adventure: It’s pretty much up there with Christopher Columbus and Tin Tin (and we all know that everything he did was an adventure).”
True to my word, I have never eaten them again. I hadn’t held a grudge with cuttlefish over this incident, because the crisps had probably never been anywhere near a cuttlefish during the production process. I’m reasonable like that.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I ordered cuttlefish from the menu of a traditional Greek restaurant over-looking the picturesque harbour of Chania. I had just watched the sun set over the stunning Venetian lighthouse and was enjoying life too much to fill my head with irrational concerns about imminently having to scrape a cephalopod from its popular-with-budgies cuttlebone. I wasn’t even worried that it might be served whole, complete with eyes. This is unusual for me.
The plate arrived and, thankfully, the bone had been removed and there was no sign of eyes. I was grateful I hadn’t wasted any effort worrying. The cuttlefish had been cut into sections and was served with a chunk of lemon and a token gesture side-salad. The tentacles were placed in the centre of the plate and the rest of the body parts positioned around them like petals on a flower. It didn’t taste of much at all – A little bit fishy, I suppose. It had an underlying rubbery texture. Not especially different in appearance and taste to the squid that was lying on a plate about a foot to my right.
Is that a tentacle on your plate or are you pleased to see me?
By sheer coincidence (Or perhaps due to God’s Grand Culinary Horizon-Expansion Plan TM), the pool bar at the place I was staying had a specials board and this gave me an early opportunity to chalk off a couple of new foods…
Looks like two dinners for me tonight. Challenge accepted!
Soujoukakia
Spiced meatballs, served in a tomato-based sauce.
I’ve never had soujoukakia before, but have had meatballs in tomato sauce, so am not entirely sure if this counts as a new food. Over to the judging panel for verification…
Soujoukakia: Meatballs and chips with a different name?
Boureki
Note: If you pronounce it slightly wrong when ordering supper, people will wonder why you are asking for cornflakes for your evening meal…
Brekkie?
Sorry. I’ll get my coat.
Boureki: Cornflakes this was not…
Traditionally, the people of Crete (I don’t feel comfortable calling them Cretans) don’t eat a lot of meat. The island has a great climate for growing a vast variety of fruits and vegetables, so most families just nip into the garden at dinner time, grab whatever is ripe and make a meal. Boureki is one such dish. It contains potatoes, courgette, mythithra cheese (similar to ricotta), a bit of mint and, as seems to be the norm in Crete, almost an entire barrel’s-worth of olive oil. It all gets baked in a dish and served.
It looked a bit like vomit, but tasted like cheese. The high oil content was surely going to be of benefit to my aching joints after completing three widths of the pool during the day.
Stifado
A lamb stew containing lamb (obviously) and all the usual suspects – onions, tomatoes, garlic, cinnamon, Keyser Söze, bay leaves, cumin, cloves, red wine and olive oil.
“Stiff? Hard? No? Talk to your doctor, I would”.
Unfortunately, the word stifado just reminds me of an erectile dysfunction advert that Pelé did a number of years ago…
In spite of a small pre-occupation with the functionality of the contents of the pants of possibly the greatest footballer of all time, I really enjoyed my stifado experience. The meat was soft and tender. The small onions were packed with juice and burst when I popped them into my mouth. Nice!
Moussaka
We’ve all had moussaka before, haven’t we? Well, I hadn’t. While not, strictly speaking, a Greek dish, (it has its origins in Turkey) it is definitely one that has been embraced by visitors to Crete. Aubergine, tomato and minced meat baked in an oven and topped with a béchamel sauce – A bit like lasagne without the pasta, I guess.
Cheese Pie (with Honey)
Apparently, a popular dessert in Crete is cheese pie – served warm – with honey. I’m not a big fan of cheese, but when in Rome… Um… I mean Greece… Er, you know what I mean!
Traditional Myzithra cheese is wrapped in pastry and drizzled with locally-produced honey.
It shouldn’t work… But it does. Delicately crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside, the taste of the pie is dominated by the sweet, clear honey. I’ll stop short of saying anything along the lines of ‘big flavours.’
I refuse to use MasterChef language to describe these sumptuous parcels of Cretan wonder that offer BIG flavours and deliver on every single level… Whoops!
Malotira: Not popular with British builders
Malotira
Cretan mountain tea, malotira, is served just the way I don’t like tea – Without milk. It is a herbal tea with a distinctly citrus edge and, apparently, it contains valuable flavonoid substances which have a number of pharmacodynamic effects, such as alleviation of the symptoms of a cold, aids digestion and is highly antioxidant. Yes, that’s just what I thought when I took my first sip – After “I wonder what this would taste like with milk” of course.
For further blindings with science, check out http://www.bioaroma.gr, where I found out about flavonoids and pharmacodynamics. It was written in English, but it was all Greek to me!
And so ends Week Nineteen – affectionately known as Greek Week…
I tried six new foods and beverages – seven if you include having the ‘Wind’ (I was glad for the digestive assistance of the mountain tea after that one).
I’m still behind schedule, I still haven’t sorted out my suntan and I didn’t manage to come up with many Greek puns – I must Troy harder next time!
See you next week – I’ll be on location with my film crew, eating jellied eels on a beach… Honest!
Fifty-Two Weeks of Filling My Cheeks 