The Greek Island of Kythera

I am just back from a very special week on the Greek island of Kythera. Whilst normally I like to write a blog post of my travels to serve as a guide should you visit the same place, in this case I am loathe to recommend you visit Kythera, and I am incapable of guiding you through it. This is not only because I want to keep it secret, but because I was lucky enough to have one of those experiences which comes only when you are privileged enough to have a connection with a place - the same would not be true for everyone! Y's mother, Photene, is from Kythera. Her parents had each migrated separately to Australia when young and met in Queensland, where Photene was born. Photene's parents left fields of olives, which are now owned and farmed by relatives, such as Photene's cousin Panayioti, and Photene's father contributed to the building of the church and monastery, Agia Elesa.

We stayed on the beach at Agia Pelagia. The owners of the apartments where we stayed, Pantonia, are Cosmas & Despina - they were delighted to see Photene again and insisted on bringing us fresh white figs (the season for black figs had finished) and pears from their farm. Later in the week Cosmas & Despina took Photene, Y & her sister for a visit to his farm. Panayioti and his wife Mathi brought us eggs from their farm on our first night and the next night arrived with a tray of galaktoboureko made by Mathi, which is a lemony custard wrapped in layers of syrupy pastry - she wasn't 100% happy with this batch but it was divine. We shared many meals with Panayioti (he had a sixth sense for seeking us out and appearing at whichever restaurant we were at!), and on the final day he brought us a bottle of the extra virgin olive oil from his olive trees. He doesn't sell it, he only makes it for his family's consumption.

One day we went to Agia Elesa. Mahi and Costa (aged about 85 and 97 respectively) have been the caretakers of the monastery for 60 years and Mahi is a relation of Photene from her father's side.

They welcomed us into their home and Mahi immediately began force feeding us soft, cheesy macaronia (made with Greek spaghetti, which is hollow) and chicken which had been slow cooked in tomato and olive oil - lovely! Although I couldn't understand most of the conversation (the conversation was largely in Greek, with Y as my translator), I enjoyed the lunch immensely. Mahi is quite cheeky, and there's an art (which I am yet to master) to showing full appreciation for such delicious food by eating everything, whilst avoiding having to stuff oneself with third & fourth helpings (seconds are a given). We had taken along some galaktoboureko from a patisserie for dessert (above - it was delicious but not as good as the one Mathi later made for us). Mahi had a big bowl of plums, most of which she up-ended into a plastic bag for us, along with a huge jar of her home made plum jam (she peels and then stones every plum before cooking them in sugar - no water. She assured us it would help keep us regular, or words to that effect). I grew extremely good at spotting ripe figs on trees as we raced past in the car. Stop! and we'd pull over and jump out to pull a few figs from the trees. I even spotted some pomegranates. By the end of the week our fig and pear supply was over flowing, so I dried some in the oven to take home (in a very low oven 75-100 degrees C for many hours). Most nights we ate at one of the restaurants in Agia Pelagia, preferring usually to share a selection of mezzes - deep fried anchovies, skordalia, spanakopita (spinach pie), kolokithopita (pumpkin pie), calamari, vlitas (a type of spinach, which we were only able to get at the beginning of the week as by Wednesday onwards it was mysteriously out of season/"finished"), fasoulia (green beans with olive oil & lemon), keftethes (meat balls), saganaki (fried cheese), loukanika (local pork sausages), melitzanosalata (aubergine/eggplant dip), yemistas (stuffed tomatoes or peppers), and youvetsi (slow cooked lamb in rissoni). When not indulging in mezzes we had pork or chicken souvlaki.
One day we visited the bakery at Karavas. The owner of course knew Photene and olive oil bread fresh from the oven was soon thrust into our hands. The bakery makes (and is well known for) paximathia which is a kind of biscotti but not as sweet. The first stage involves steaming the bread before it is baked to become crisp rusks - olive oil, orange, raisin - all delicious. The fresh bread we were given was actually the doughy rusks which had been steamed but not yet baked - heaven. From this bakery we bought spanakopita & tiropita (cheese pie - both below) which we devoured at a nearby cafe whilst sipping our obligatory coffee frappes. Summer in Greece is all about the frappe it seems. We usually ordered one at a cafe in the late afternoon (you choose your level of sweetness), although you can DIY at home with these Nescafe numbers. Each Sunday the island's inhabitants seem to congregate at the Potamos markets to purchase local produce and just sit and people watch. We ate beautiful spanakopita (below) from the smiling lady below (she looks so happy because we bought her entire tray of spanakopita and also a bag of her dried figs). There were jars of capers, jams, lemons and olives for sale, as well as bottles of olive oil and big bags of salt (we'd bought a bag a few days earlier from salt harvested at my favourite swimming hole, Avlemona - the last photo in the post). I feel so lucky to have had such a special experience on Kythera. If you went, I'm sure it would be as beautiful, the food as delicious, the beaches as lovely and the people as welcoming. But I can't guarantee that you (or a member of your parea) will somehow be related to the lady who runs the gift shop, the woman pumping petrol, or the man with his cigarettes & komboloi beads (worry beads) who mysteriously knows when you're eating and joins you for most meals, always with a smile. You may not have a connection to the land the olive trees are grown on, the monastery on the hill or what's left of a house in Aroniadika. It's unlikely you'll be showered with fresh figs, plums, eggs, pears, home made pastries and olive oil. For me, this trip captured the difference between simply going on holiday, and being lucky enough to be thoroughly immersed into a different culture and place.
(With many thanks to Y for her photography and assistance with spelling Greek words, and to Photene for inviting me to share such a special experience)

Smoked haddock, followed by cake

Tonight we enjoyed a simple, but lovely dinner.
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I was super spoiled by the lovely Nicola of The Shed recently when she managed to procure a fillet of Forman & Field smoked haddock as a gift. Nicola recommended using a recipe from Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating, smoked haddock, mustard & saffron. (Incidentally, I had lovely saffron which Nicola had brought me back from a recent trip to Italy - you may be getting the impression [which is entirely accurate] that this friendship is just take take take. Neither of us has yet worked out what's in it for Nicola).
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Anyhoo, it was gorgeous (although I apologise to the haddock for making it look radioactive in the photographs). Whilst the success of the dish was partly due to the beautiful sauce, the amazing quality of the fish was integral. I made a herb salad with roast hazelnuts, inspired by a similar salad with almonds in the first Ottolenghi book. I was going to make bread, but being a week night I instead bought fresh Turkish bread, split it and covered it with thinly sliced fresh figs, olive oil, a sprinkling of dukkah & sea salt, then 20 minutes in the oven.
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I have been wanting to test out the walnut, lemon & cardamom cake in the Moro cookbook, so tonight was a good opportunity. For me this cake is sublime - the cardamom, lemon & walnut are each distinct and perfectly balanced. I raved about it whilst Y said "I've had better cakes", "really, like what?", "other cakes". Huh, guess you can't please everyone all the time.

Recipes are below. Enjoy - and let me know what you think of the cake!
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Smoked haddock, mustard & saffron from Nose to Tail Eating, Fergus Henderson
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This recipe is to serve 4, I halved it for 2.
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200ml white wine
100ml water
a splash of white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp English mustard powder (I had none, but consulted Twitter and @Domestic_Jules suggested substituting regular mustard - Dijon worked fine)
a "healthy pinch" of saffron
black pepper
2 medium fillets of natural smoked haddock, cut in half "fairly"
a largish knob of unsalted butter
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Pre-heat your oven to about 200 degrees C. Mix everything except the haddock & butter. Place the haddock in an oven proof frying pan, pour the sauce over and cover loosely with foil. Put the pan in the oven for 15 minutes until the fish is hot. Next, remove the fish and keep warm, meanwhile bring the sauce in the pan to the boil on the stove. Add the butter and stir briskly to make the sauce. Pour the sauce over the fish.
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Mr Henderson recommends serving with mashed potato. Instead, we had a salad made entirely of herbs (parsley, coriander & mint) plus roasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped. Melt a tablespoon of unsalted butter, mix with a squirt of lemon juice and olive oil. Toss the nuts in the dressing then pour the lot over the herbs. Season.
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Walnut, lemon & cardamom cake from Moro The Cookbook
. 230g butter
230g caster sugar
175g walnuts, chopped, some very fine, some rough
175g whole blanched almonds, some very fine, some rough (I used a mixture of ground almonds and chopped flaked almonds)
3 eggs
160g polenta
1 level teaspoon baking powder
grated zest of 1.5 lemons
juice of 2 large lemons
3-4 level teaspoons of ground cardamom seeds (I found my seeds [which I had to first extract from their pods] impossible to grind or break down at all, so added them whole. I recommend adding about 2 teaspoons and then tasting the batter to see if you need more)
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Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C/Gas Mark 3. Grease a 25cm spring form tin and line with greaseproof paper.
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Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Add the walnuts, almonds, then the eggs one at a time. Then add the remaining ingredients. As I said above, taste the batter as you add the cardamom as you want a balance between the lemon and spice.
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Turn the batter into the tin and bake. The Moro cookbook says for 1.5 hours, however my cake had a golden crust and was just firm in the middle after 1 hour, so I'd recommend checking from 1 hour.
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The cake is lovely and crumbly. We had ours with Greek yoghurt.

Ginger Pig Butchery Class

Amongst other glorious pressies that were bestowed on me for my recent 30th birthday I received a class at London's very well known and respected Ginger Pig butcher. I could choose from lamb, beef or pork butchery or sausage making. Feeling most comfortable with lamb and pork, I chose beef in order to learn more about the animal and hopefully to cook cow more often.

Last night, at 6.30pm a group of 12 (all male except for me and 2 other gals) assembled at the butcher in Marylebone. We donned our white butchers coats and were invited to have a walk around the cool room, where huge carcasses of meat were hanging, before the class started.

The classes started a couple of years ago, at the suggestion of one of our teachers, Borut. Borut was trained as a butcher in Slovenia where the apprenticeship sounds more intensive than in the UK and involves a 3 year training with time spent in an abattoir, charcuterie as well as traditional butchery. The classes have been a huge success and now Borut and Perry (who's been a butcher for at least 20 years, which, by the look of him, means he started out at about age 8) run the classes 5 nights a week (which gets them out of the 6am unloading of meat carcasses).

The class began with a short talk from Borut about how the cattle on the Ginger Pig's 4 farms in Yorkshire are raised and how the meat is dry aged. The ageing process was explained in detail and I now know why aged beef is a little more expensive (justifiably so). I also know that when supermarkets say their meat is "aged" it has been aged in a vac pack and not in the air, so the flavour hasn't really developed as it has for air aged beef (basically, support independent butchers and not supermarkets!).

Then it was macho showing off time, as each of the burly lads in the class (their classy suits well hidden underneath the white coats) attempted to lift and hold up the 100kg+ side of beef. Some managed it for 20 seconds, whilst I struggled to even lift one end by myself.

We studied a diagram of the cow and discussed how the meat toward the front of the cow, around its chest and shoulders, is fattier and more muscular and therefore needs slower cooking. We then proceeded to focus on the top, back of the cow, the meat that is leaner and not so muscular, and which is therefore better suited to quicker cooking, on a grill, pan, BBQ etc, as opposed to slow roasting.

Our class focused on the rib eye/fore rib, sirloin, porterhouse steaks, T-bone steaks, wing rib, fillet, down to the hip. We all had to saw through the bone between the ribs to divide the roast, and then through the meat with our super sharp knives.

The butchers had been roasting a tremendous looking rib eye for 3 hours, and it came out to rest just as we had to turn our 2.5kg slab of rib (above) into cote de boeuf (below!). I was rather satisfied with my efforts and most excited that we got to take home our beef (which showed on the Ginger Pig scales as being worth about £50). I also grabbed other people's beef bones for stock.

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We gathered around to salivate and watch Borut carve the huge fore rib, which was gorgeously pink inside with crusty yummy ends. I passed on the dauphinoise potatoes and had a token leaf of salad, not wanting to waste any stomach space! We stood around the butchers blocks with glasses of red wine, devouring our meat (if you're going to eat that much beef I can highly recommend doing it standing up), in heaven.

I rarely order beef when out, preferring lamb, pork or seafood, but this beef totally converted me. It was so so delicious.

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I am really looking forward to cooking my cote de boeuf and after that, perhaps a fore rib - but I shall only be using the best beef I can afford.

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I can't recommend the class highly enough and am very much hoping to go back for the lamb and pork classes. For £135 a person it's excellent value. Even if you don't ever want to do your own butchery at home, the class is a great education to assist you with buying and cooking beef.

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Many thanks to Georgia, Adrian, Erenie & Matina for such a wonderful birthday present!