Mostly Greek to me, exploring a Year in Alice's Kitchen
March 10 is my husband's mother's birthday. Hazel Iona would be 107 if she were alive. I made an especially nice Mediterranean dinner tonight. Maybe it was in her honor? We toasted to her at any rate with a glass of red merlot. She was not Greek but liked to eat "Greek" when I made special dishes for her.
Tonight I made My grandmother's Gigantes plaki or Butterbean dish and a haddock fish plaki, interesting because neither had tomatoes. Plaki's usually do.
My grandmother Yiayia (γιαγιά) was born and raised in Patras, Greece where her father and grandfather supposedly took care of the lighthouse, making certain it was appropriately lighted. She was named Anastasia and came to America at 19 to be married to a Greek fellow whom her father chose for her to marry. She had never laid eyes on my grandfather until the Greek Orthodox service in the tiny wooden chapel on West Street in Indianapolis.
They eventually learned to passionately love one another or so it seemed to this grand daughter. They lived in Indiana. Neither would ever return to Greece in their remaining lifetimes. But they would continue through language, traditions and food to be very Greek. My grandmother spoke Greek and only knew a few words in English until the end of her life at nearly ninety.
Although I sometimes invent my own recipes that seem Greek and sometimes find recipes in Greek cookbooks or even from the Internet, usually my Greek cuisine comes straight from my grandmother! These recipes were transcribed by my various aunts who watched carefully as Yiayia prepared each dish and took good notes at some point when she was getting pretty old, as the lady from Greece had never written her recipes down! They were all in her head and measurement were simply instinctual.
My Aunt Mildred was the most industrious at getting the recipes written down, but Aunt Mary worked hard at this, too. Some recipes are also from Aunt Lula and Aunt Louise, too. And the recipes from my different aunts often vary a bit for the same dish. They would improve on their mother's techniques or ingredient quantities I guess.
A few of my Greek recipes came from my mother, Katherine, and are in her handwriting. Everyone is gone now who shared their recipes with me, so there is extra pleasure in a hand written recipe appearing now and again. But essentially, they all came from the village of Patras, Greece, one way or another, and through years were prepared in Indianapolis and came down the line to me by mail as I was grown-up by the time any were transcribed and living in Virginia, then brought to New York and now Maine. The recipes have traveled far and well.
Dinner started yesterday, March 9. In the evening, I opened a bag of gigantic dried beans and soaked them overnight. To make the fish plaki a trip to Trade Winds Grocery in Blue Hill Maine was necessary because I needed two nice haddock filets.
Then around four today it was show time!
I put the carefully rinsed beans in a big pot and poured in enough water to cover them and brought them to a boil and then simmered them for an hour plus until al dente. before cooking I added t. salt, 1/8 t. pepper, 1/4 c. olive oil and t. oregano to the water. When the beans were done I drained them and put in covered serving dish, drizzling them with olive oil and 1/2 lemon and salt, pepper and oregano to taste.
The Fish Plaki started with my taking a big leek and slicing it in thin slices (don't use tough upper green leaves) and rinse many times to clean separated slices to get leek grit out. I sliced a small yellow onion, too. To these vegies I added about a T. of capers, six calamato black olives sliced after they wer pitted, a small handful of flat parsley chopped fine, some feta and 1/2 cup olive oil. I mixed all this and placed in 9 x 13 pyrex dish and the got my two big filets of haddock and rinsed them and placed over the veggie mixture and salted and peppered the fish and sprinkled some salt and pepper and lemon juice and olive oil on the fish and brought some of the veggie mixture and lightly covered the fish so that most of the veggies are still under the filets. I crumbled some more feta on top of the creation and covered it with foil and placed in an oven set at 375 degrees F. for one hour.
Another side was a small salad of some finely sliced cabbage for a slaw with salt and pepper and oil and lemon.
The Haddock
The giant dried beans
papooie, yiayia and I in 1945
the light house at Patras about the time Yiayia left in 1914