Introduction.
Shopping at the snobbish, Whole Foods like, NGO, organic foods, "Sprouts" here in Phoenix, Arizona, I came across the magazine Lucky Peach. Took me a minute, and then I recalled Zachary mentioning it to me one night at the Blue Talon Bistro. It's a foodie magazine with the likes of David Chang (Momofuko) on "staff". It's not your normal food magazine - few recipes, but ... interviews ... articles ... research ... comics. Who knew?Main article.
Time passes. Kids in bed. Best girl by my side. I read - well more appropriately, I peruse.
Food is an obsession. Imagine how it started. Cave man wanders by a Rosemary Officialis bush, leg brushing the rosemary bush. Smells the provocative aroma. Wonders ... "what if I added that to my cocktail tonight?". OK, I get ahead of myself. In reality, he wonders what it would be like added to the barbecued meat he has smoldering over his open hearth fire. That is in reality how it no doubt started.
Stop!
Think about that for a minute! How did early man start to initiate the use of so many herbs, cooking styles, plants? How many died trying out the hemlock fruit before someone wrote on a tablet or papyrus ..." Don't use the hemlock in your meal preparation".
Contemporarily, maybe it's like cocktails (fn 1). There is a resurgence in cocktails! Well, in some places. There is a resurgence in good foods, organics, home grown, whole wheat, fresh baked goods, "fish line caught" and not from another continent's waters. And the drinking of rye whiskey again. So its not surprising that good guys are now contributing to a magazine. Back to my story. So I am reading and find the article "That Oven Feeling". Big as life I can see my Θεια (Greek word for aunt) Aspasia's outdoor brick oven. Twelve feet tall. Wood burning.
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On my second visit to my father's small village of Apidia in the Peloponnese of Greece, my senses were overwhelmed with food, drink and dessert.
With favorite Cousin Deppy translating to all for me and for my girl, we eventually got around to dinner. Stefado, or meat stewed in tomatoes and green beans, is the one thing that comes to mind. But I am certain it was proceeded by a tomato salad with goat cheese feta and "Kalamata" olives [This is Kalamata Land, the little town of Kalamata lies 113 km away, οr scenically 134 km] And for sure, there is a hearty bread on the table beside other cheeses. What was so different to note was that my aunt came in from the outdoors with the Stefado dish, but the white porcelain stove was staring at me from across the table. I gathered my wits and asked about this conundrum. Thru cousin Despoina, my aunt began to apologize for her very humble brick oven. CAN YOU IMAGINE! She was apologizing for cooking in a wood burning, brick oven. Let me say that again..."θεια was apologizing for cooking in a wood burning oven"!
I could not contain myself. As quick as can be, Thea took me out to the terrace, outside the house and there it was. It was huge. A dying red fire looking out from the one eye of the oven face. I recall, as plain as yesterday, telling her that in America it is everyone's dream to build and have a wood burning oven on their backyard patio - which she'd been apologizing for - that every person coveted.
The meal went on forever. Greek dinner is part drinking, socializing, eating, socializing, more eating, arguing, followed by laughter and more socializing. Did I mention drinking?
But my last recollection of that evening, before climbing up the stairs to the bedroom in my Aunt Aspasia and Uncle George's home, was the dessert. The dessert was emerald green, tiny vegetables stuffed with almond and dished into a bowl with a honey lemon sauce surrounding it. It was heavenly and unlike anything I had ever had. Of course, I asked what was this delicious vegetable dessert. I heard the word "melitzanaki", or melizane. Again, I chastised myself for not studying more in Greek school. The word I heard I knew to be eggplant. Surely that cannot be!
Aunt went on to describe, secondhand via Deppy - whom I trust translated correctly, but who knows - that she takes baby eggplants, boiled and then soaked for eons in honey and lemon - thus absorbing the sauce into the plant. If you get lucky, get some.
It's not the obsession for food that drives us for the sake of the food. It's the remembrance of the food experience. Remembrance of the chef coming out to the table, or the conversation over the meal, or sometimes even the server - nevertheless all combined with the meal itself. And so it is that drives us foodies to seek what we had once before experienced. In this particular case, it was dinner my aunt served that evening and seeing my father's brother, Uncle George.
So Lucky me.
> To have found the magazine, "Lucky Peach".
> And, to have my memory of Thea's dinner in my family's village in our homeland made by Thea Aspasia in her wood burning oven.
So take the time to sit back and enjoy a Pernod or Ricard, perhaps some Ouzo if you are fortunate to have a bottle. Some red vin du pays along with a dish of beef stew. Some fresh baked bread to be followed at the end with a simple but elegant dessert. I'd listen to a little Xaris Alexiou, Edith Piaf, or perhaps Amy Winehouse if not something more vintage.
Thea Aspasia is likely in her 90's and still lives in the village of Apidia.
But unlikely baking still in that wood burning oven. But who knows?
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The Village of Apidia Lemon and Olive Trees photo courtesy of George Bouloucheris |
Foot note
1. Unless you are in Glasgow's Bon Accord Pub, Charing Cross, ordering a cocktail and the bartender looks you in eye and says "It's a whiskey bar". He need not say more.
