Monday 19 January 2009

Αλεξία Σκηνίτη

Προχθές Σάββατο δημοσιεύθηκε στο Περιοδικό της έγκριτης Λονδρέζικης εφημερίδας “Times”, όπως επίσης και στον ιστοχώρο της ίδιας εφημερίδας ένα εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον άρθρο της νεαρής Ομογενούς δημοσιογράφου Αλεξίας Σκηνίτη, κόρης σπουδαίας Ελληνικής (πολύ φιλικής μου) οικογενείας της κραταιάς Ελληνικής Παροικίας του Λονδίνου. Ο πατέρας της, Νίκος Σκηνίτης, μέλος της μεγάλης και ιστορικής Ελληνικής Εφοπλιστικής οικογένειας του City. Η μητέρα της, Πηγή Σκηνίτη, Πρόεδρος του Λυκείου Ελληνίδων Λονδίνου.

Με το καταπληκτικό αυτό υπόβαθρο, η Αλεξία έκανε θαυμάσιες Πανεπιστημιακές σπουδές στο Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο και τώρα ακολουθεί την δρόμο της καρδιάς της, που είναι η δημοσιογραφία. Το άρθρο αυτό, στο οποίο παρουσιάζει την ιδιαίτερη πατρίδα της μητέρας της, τη Ρόδο, αλλά και την Πάτμο, αναφέρεται κυρίως σε παραδοσιακές συνταγές ελληνικών φαγητών.

Μεγάλη χαρά λάβαμε με την πρόοδο της Αλεξίας, την παρουσίασή της από μια τεραστίων διαστάσεων και παγκοσμίου φήμης και διανομής εφημερίδα, αλλά και την προβολή της Πατρίδας μας. Αξίζει να αναδημοσιεύσουμε εδώ ολόκληρο το άρθρο της, το οποίο στο έντυπο Περιοδικό είχε τον τίτλο «Mamma mia» (θυμίζοντας την πρόσφατη ομώνυμη κινηματογραφική επιτυχία), ενώ στην ιστοσελίδα είχε τον τίτλο «Unveiling Greece's closely-guarded recipe secrets»:
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Alexia Skinitis spent every summer as a child playing on the beach in Rhodes. Now she returns to Greece with her mother to learn some of the country’s most closely guarded secrets – the recipes that are handed down through the generations.

As I walk out of the village bakery and along the beach front to a café with the recipe for Mr Christodoulos’s famous cheese pies in my notebook and crumbs on my chin, I am accosted by a gaggle of local women. “So did he give you his recipe?” “How does he make them rise so much?” “Are you sure he didn’t leave out his secret ingredient?”

I have been on the beautiful island of Patmos, in the Dodecanese, for two days; these women have lived here their whole lives and Mr Christodoulos has been making his celebrated pies for more than 20 years, and yet despite being agog to discover his recipe, they would never dream of asking him. I have come to realise that cooking in Greece has a mystical quality. Recipes are passed down from generation to generation in every family, with each believing their recipe is superior to anyone else’s.

This, and the complete reliance upon seasonal and local produce, means that the recipes have barely changed over the years. Every family, village and island in Greece has maintained its own unique approach to ingredients and dishes. And although certain dishes are echoed throughout the country and beyond, there is nothing quite like going into a traditional Greek kitchen, where the fish has been freshly caught, the vegetables and cheese bought locally, and the bread freshly baked.

As a Greek who was born and raised in Britain, this seems exotic to me, too. My mum cooked Greek food at home, we went to Greek restaurants in London, but nothing was ever quite like going back to Greece in the summer and eating in a little taverna on the beach or in a mountain village. I would spend all winter dreaming of what my brothers and I call “Greek feasts”: fresh fish; fried calamari; hand-cut chips; garlicky, home-made tzatziki; as well as real souvlakia, with thick pitta and succulent cubes of lamb, tomato and onions.

The highlight of the long summers we used to spend there was always the food. We would run around on the beach all day with our cousins, building up an appetite, before all sitting down for a meal as the sun set into the Aegean. And although I love cooking and my mum has passed on all she knows, I have always wanted to go back to my parents’ homeland and be taught how to cook the traditional recipes we enjoyed so much during those wonderful summers. My mother moved to London when she was 18, and before that had been raised by her father, so although she had learnt the basics, she was never really taught how to cook either. This trip was going to mean a lot to both of us.

So here we are in Patmos surrounded by the local women, who have taken us under their wing and agreed to reveal their culinary secrets. In their Sunday best, after church, they escort us up to a traditional house in the village of Hora, where we spend the day cooking a delicious lunch for all the men, as is traditional. I am taught how to make the rice, tomato and herb stuffing for the calamari, and how to sew it in (although most women now cheat and use toothpicks to seal the top). I learn the perfect consistency for a tomato and feta fritter, and I watch as all the women fuss about, sneaking more salt into the fritters and herbs into the stuffing behind each other’s backs.

Cooking is something these women take extremely seriously; they fiercely maintain the integrity of the recipes they have been taught and take immense pride in passing these on and continuing their family’s culinary legacy. That afternoon, when I am being shown how to make honey puffs at the local café by Efthimia Grilli, 30, whose mother owns the café, she confirms all I have observed. “My mum has taught me everything, and although I studied abroad and am not married – to the whole village’s horror – learning how to cook the traditional recipes is something I would never forgo,” she says. “Although they have slightly changed, because we have gas ovens and stainless-steel pans now instead of wood ovens and clay pots, and there are some ingredients we now import, the integrity remains intact and the desire of daughters to learn from their mothers is as strong now as it has ever been.”

This is something I have also found to be true across the Aegean on the island of Rhodes, where my mother was born and which I have visited every single summer for the past 25 years. Because it is a much larger island than Patmos, there are more products and more variations in the type of food people eat. While up in the mountains recipes focus on meat and dairy, on the coast the main ingredients are fish and seafood. And while in the summer they cook mostly fried food and salads, which are dry, crisp and refreshing, in the winter they cook stews and soups – hearty and warming food with thick, rich sauces.

In the picturesque cove of Ladiko, on the east coast of the island, there is a small family-run restaurant of the same name. What started off as a goat shed on the side of a cliff 45 years ago, the owner Michael Vagianos tells me, has now turned into a lively little restaurant on one of the most popular beaches on the island. His wife runs the kitchen with his two daughters and her sister, while he manages the customers with his sons-in-law. All the food they prepare is based on traditional recipes from their village, Kalithies, a little further along the coast, and were taught to Mrs Vagianos by the village women. It is these tips she passes on to me: the secret to perfectly crisp, golden fried calamari; how to create the perfect Greek salad; juicy, tender octopus. Most importantly, she shows me how to make the village speciality, courgette fritters, which my mum and I have tried and failed to recreate so many times.

Up in the mountains, in the village of Koskinou, after visiting his field and picking cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes, we make our way to Yiannis Eliamos’s restaurant, where he starts to prepare for dinner service. On an August evening all the winding roads around the restaurant are taken over by table after table of Greeks, with a sprinkling of intrepid tourists, all eager to try his specialities: the courgette flowers stuffed with feta and local cheeses; the fragrant meat stew; the meatballs, which are crispy on the outside but melt in the middle; and home-made tzatziki. After years of queuing for a table, here I am, in the kitchen with him, grating the cucumber, stuffing the flowers, chopping the herbs and mixing the ingredients for the tzatziki.

It is still quite rare to find a man in the kitchen in Greece, but Eliamos hasn’t got there via a very traditional route. A trained barber, he spent ten years cutting hair before deciding on a change of career. So he approached his mother and asked her to teach him how to cook. His little coffee shop turned into a restaurant and now he owns a whole corner of the little village, with both of his sons following in his footsteps, one helping in the kitchen and the other a pastry chef at one of the island’s big hotels.

Family recipes, a fervent belief in carrying on tradition and the use of local, seasonal ingredients are the keys to Greek food, and for the first time I really feel a part of that. Even though I have always thought of myself as Greek, spoken the language at home and was brought up on Greek food, I have never truly belonged there. The summers we spent there were fun, but they always seemed like a holiday, not a homecoming. Spending time in the kitchen with my mum and my surrogate grandparents, learning traditions that are hundreds of years old, made me believe that I was finally being accepted into a secret world. I felt part of a heritage, a heritage that I will now be able to pass on to my children.

Alexia Skinitis flew to Rhodes via Athens with Olympic Airways and travelled to and from Patmos by ferry. In Patmos she stayed at the Skala Hotel (http://www.skalahotel.gr/) and in Rhodes at the Angela Apartments in Rhodes town. Thanks to the Greek National Tourism Organisation, the Dodecanese Organisation for Tourism and the Patmian Women’s Spitha Organisation .

Μπράβο Αλεξία! Και εις ανώτερα!

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