Monday, October 27, 2003
Midnight, Fore-Kitchen (for I have no other!)
Call me Sean. Let me come to the post with it here; I hope you read and wonder! Wonder at what you ask, not unkindly, and I won’t begin here to admonish you, my hope, my, dare I say, dream, of the proper eaters—dreamers yourselves! and cookers, or cooks some of the more forward of you are saying to yourselves. Cooks of all the world! Hark! Friends also, who know not a spoon from a spatula, a crock from a cup, you too gather round for here’s a tale to fill you up.
Concerning the tone, let me first admit, yes, I’m reading Moby Dick; I’m under the spell of semi-colons and tangents, tirades and Southern seas. And I’m cooking—and for myself alone yet again, dear readers of this page—this page, might I add, with no end. Electrical post! Maid of the mizzen-net! As I was saying, Kirsten is away to the north, leaving me here, weighted down after last Saturday’s foray into the dark (well bright actually) corridors of the market with full eleven euros to spend; It’s a figure for the accountants, pale and quivering, to consider in their safe rooms filled with the smells of another Tony’s cooking at 275. Eleven! It’s a fortune at the market dear friends! I came home laden. Laden; leaden, with foodstuffs. Think of tattered wall-hangings of servants burdened with spilling shrouds pouring forth with food things, or spices from the orient (or what have you, but, you know a bunch).
The Recipe: All Astir
So, to the point which has leaned you low this past sentences. I’m cooking a dish of my own devising, fellows. A casserole! Huzzah! Huzzah! Like men and women in storybooks, this dish is made from simple things: pasta, spinach, onions, garlic, tomatoes (Lord, we make praises thusways), eggplants; oft called the beautiful aubergis in these parts, and peppers red and sweet.
Mix up over the combining heat, the melting and combining gentle flame—that same flame which has long comforted the forlorn, the lost and the lonely. Adhere! Sauté the onions (red—the color alone to which another chapter entire shall I relate), garlic and add hot red peppers (flakes? is that the word?), salt. I won’t say in olive oil here for there is no other oil. Cook that till clear (as all the books have said before), and add your seven tomatoes, two small eggplants, four small red-peppers and cook down till thick, sweet readers, eaters and cooks of all nations! Cook!
In your side-pot, have your first-mate (or do it yourself, you, you lone man or woman alone!) cook some pasta two handfuls or so. Your guide is using spiral. Harken here, ye lovers of the egg! In a bowl to the starboard (in my case) of your stove, mix some fresh parmesan (a handful) with half a cup thick yogurt and two eggs. Mix with the love of the egg! Mix with the love of man!
Listen close ye to this bit, for I imagine it interests some of you quite dearly. Let the red (!) sauce cool a bit in the pan. Get a bag of spinach (or clean some which you’ve bought at the market under cool water (from which a rock fell forth in my case)). In a large bowl lay the spinach down and pour the sauce over it till in wilts (Ha! the spinach friends, not the sauce). Then maybe let this cool a bit more and add the egg mixture. Ah, the mixing of the elements. The combination of unlike things into a like mass, what a symbol for something, a certain what? What in blazes . . . ?
The Close, a Final Whisper of Notes
Then pour this in a dish. Cover for awhile, then uncover. I’m cooking at 150, but I don’t know what that is for easterly mates, but isn’t everything cooked at 325? I don’t know how long it’s been cooking either (an hour! perhaps! ah Lord, time rises like steam to disperse through and beyond my grasp!!) I don’t even know, friends, what this is going to taste like, but let me say this, if the love and joy I felt in the cooking and relating be but a sixteenth of the taste, it will taste like the symphonies of Brahms!
Call me Sean. Let me come to the post with it here; I hope you read and wonder! Wonder at what you ask, not unkindly, and I won’t begin here to admonish you, my hope, my, dare I say, dream, of the proper eaters—dreamers yourselves! and cookers, or cooks some of the more forward of you are saying to yourselves. Cooks of all the world! Hark! Friends also, who know not a spoon from a spatula, a crock from a cup, you too gather round for here’s a tale to fill you up.
Concerning the tone, let me first admit, yes, I’m reading Moby Dick; I’m under the spell of semi-colons and tangents, tirades and Southern seas. And I’m cooking—and for myself alone yet again, dear readers of this page—this page, might I add, with no end. Electrical post! Maid of the mizzen-net! As I was saying, Kirsten is away to the north, leaving me here, weighted down after last Saturday’s foray into the dark (well bright actually) corridors of the market with full eleven euros to spend; It’s a figure for the accountants, pale and quivering, to consider in their safe rooms filled with the smells of another Tony’s cooking at 275. Eleven! It’s a fortune at the market dear friends! I came home laden. Laden; leaden, with foodstuffs. Think of tattered wall-hangings of servants burdened with spilling shrouds pouring forth with food things, or spices from the orient (or what have you, but, you know a bunch).
The Recipe: All Astir
So, to the point which has leaned you low this past sentences. I’m cooking a dish of my own devising, fellows. A casserole! Huzzah! Huzzah! Like men and women in storybooks, this dish is made from simple things: pasta, spinach, onions, garlic, tomatoes (Lord, we make praises thusways), eggplants; oft called the beautiful aubergis in these parts, and peppers red and sweet.
Mix up over the combining heat, the melting and combining gentle flame—that same flame which has long comforted the forlorn, the lost and the lonely. Adhere! Sauté the onions (red—the color alone to which another chapter entire shall I relate), garlic and add hot red peppers (flakes? is that the word?), salt. I won’t say in olive oil here for there is no other oil. Cook that till clear (as all the books have said before), and add your seven tomatoes, two small eggplants, four small red-peppers and cook down till thick, sweet readers, eaters and cooks of all nations! Cook!
In your side-pot, have your first-mate (or do it yourself, you, you lone man or woman alone!) cook some pasta two handfuls or so. Your guide is using spiral. Harken here, ye lovers of the egg! In a bowl to the starboard (in my case) of your stove, mix some fresh parmesan (a handful) with half a cup thick yogurt and two eggs. Mix with the love of the egg! Mix with the love of man!
Listen close ye to this bit, for I imagine it interests some of you quite dearly. Let the red (!) sauce cool a bit in the pan. Get a bag of spinach (or clean some which you’ve bought at the market under cool water (from which a rock fell forth in my case)). In a large bowl lay the spinach down and pour the sauce over it till in wilts (Ha! the spinach friends, not the sauce). Then maybe let this cool a bit more and add the egg mixture. Ah, the mixing of the elements. The combination of unlike things into a like mass, what a symbol for something, a certain what? What in blazes . . . ?
The Close, a Final Whisper of Notes
Then pour this in a dish. Cover for awhile, then uncover. I’m cooking at 150, but I don’t know what that is for easterly mates, but isn’t everything cooked at 325? I don’t know how long it’s been cooking either (an hour! perhaps! ah Lord, time rises like steam to disperse through and beyond my grasp!!) I don’t even know, friends, what this is going to taste like, but let me say this, if the love and joy I felt in the cooking and relating be but a sixteenth of the taste, it will taste like the symphonies of Brahms!
Friday, October 24, 2003
Hello. Well, I got a job. That's the good news, and there is no bad. Except Kirsten is gone again on a trip to Central Greece for ten days or so. I'm teaching at a school in West Athens. I teach about five or so hours a week, and I'm enjoying it. I'll write more later. I made a dish tonight at home, and I wrote a long Herman Melville entry about it, but I'll have to put it up later. I think the cell phone erased my file. I'm not sure. So, I have a cell phone which is interesting. Peggy, my connection here, gave it to me to borrow till we leave. The number should be on the masthead if you really have to talk to me. I saw the acropolis today, and it was amazing. The view of the city was really great from up there, and the view of the Agean too. I'll write more later. I'm irritated that my disk is gone. It was a good post, but it should be safe at home, so fear not, Melville the cook will be back. Hope you're all well. Who, I ask was happy with that post season? Who?
Monday, October 13, 2003
We are in Crete now. We left our house on Friday morning at about 2:00 AM and headed for the American School, caught a bus to the airport, then took a plane to Crete. Since then it’s been a whirlwind of dust and sites and beer and Raki (which is a local drink). There are the usual flowers that I’ve seen in Athens: bougainvillea, jasmine, wandering jew and airplane plants, but the flower that I’ve seen here more than anywhere are these beautiful morning glories which are blue/purple. There a picture of a bunch of them in the photo section. We’ve been to many sites and I don’t want to chronicle them all, but it’s been great hanging on with the American School because I get access to sites that I never would have gotten. Near the temple of Knossos there is a area which the famous main archeologist who worked the site, Evans, had built for him. It’s now what the British call The Taverna where they work on excavating what’s known as the little palace. We went there but also were able to visit a large building where they were working on cataloging pottery sherds from a cave temple—there were thousands of great pieces of pottery around us in a giant circle of tables. There’s so much pottery around that at almost any site, I can look around on the ground and see pieces, many of which with designs, just lying in the dirt. I also found a piece of Roman glass one morning glistening at my feet. Of course I had to leave it where I found it, but the temptation was there. It’s interesting going to all these ancient sites where it’s possible to try to imagine the building back into existence. We just went to one site where there was evidence of the second floor in the red schist which was used to color the floor above.
The food has been great too. The first night we ate at an Italian place outside of Chania right off the beach and had a great dinner of pasta and a bottle of wine. Other highlights have been an old fortification harbor called Phalasarna which eventually became used as a pirate’s cove. There was a fish tank there off the sea used for storing, well, fish. I think we will have a picture of that up later.
We’re back home now. We went all over Crete, moving from the west to the east and then back to the center, ending with a tour of the great palace of Knossos. You should look for links with Google to get an idea of what we saw. Really amazing. Another great night started with a tour of the INSTAP East Crete study center and we got to go down in the basement to look at rebuilt amphora and enormous containers. There we also met the foremost expert on goddess worship among the Minoans, and she brought out some really early goddesses for us to look at up close—you could see how the potter had joined the head and arms and body together, could see the fingerprints from 3400 years ago. After that we were invited to a Raki making party. There are only four licensed Raki makers in Crete, and this guy had gotten special permission from the Governor to start making a week early, so we could be there (along with the staff from INSTAP). Raki is made from collecting the vines, leaves and grapes in giant jugs, letting them sit for 45 days, then boiling them in a huge still. Kirsten took some great pictures of this too. All along the rim where the pot met the fire, they put chestnuts to roast. We left and had dinner then came back to listen to one of the great lyre players in the area play traditional songs. The lyre is tuned in fifths and is played sort of like a cello, so I was dying for a lesson, but I couldn’t break up the playing. You can see in the pictures that he has put little bells along the wood of the bow for rhythmic accompaniment. Kirsten took a little movie of one of the tunes and was invited to dance a bit. It was an incredible night.
Our last two days we spent in Santorini which Hank should be jealous about. You can find it on a map about due north from Crete. It’s an old volcano which had a very important eruption around 1650 B.C.—this date is being argued about a lot in archeology circles, and I’m sure you can find something of the debate on the web, though I haven’t looked. Some want the eruption to have occurred later, and from what I heard, that’s doubtful. Santorini (or Thira) is thought by tourists and booking agents to be near the lost island of Atlantis (which most Classicists do not believe exists, of course), and there was a lot of talk about that as well.
We heard a report from Kirsten about women in Minoan painting (the mythological Minos ruled Crete and the culture in the area was named Minoan by archaeologists). There are many great examples of women on murals from the town of Akrotiri which was covered in pumice from the eruption and preserved, and we got to go there as well led by an archeologist who has worked the site for years. She gave us access to murals being put together today in the basement of a research center and took us into a room with some really famous murals which most folks never get to see except in pictures. There were also no ropes around them, so we could get within three inches from the faces of the women. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve been able to do. One of the murals Kirsten had described at length not knowing that we’d get to see it two hours later. We’d also had an argument about whether there was sacrificial blood on a depiction of an altar (we only had a dark photocopy), then we walked into this room, and there it was in living color (I’m in the blood camp now).
If you look at a map of the island, you can see that it’s a giant volcano, and our ferry took us right into the caldera and dropped us off. We also had a really good geologist along on the trip, and he described in vivid detail the horrible volcano that must have destroyed this island.
I think there’s a picture of the island from a winery which we got a tour of. The fermentation tanks were built into the mountain, and the whole winery was in a cave. I could go on and on about the things we saw—we went to about 35 sites in nine days. We saw sherds of beautiful pottery on the ground, we saw the sun set over Santorini and got up for the sunrise the next day, we would have arguments about a certain archeologist’s findings one day and meet him the next, we drank Ouzo on the ferry to Santorini, we drank beer on Nikos Kazantzakis’ grave, we were able to see pots and bowls and murals that few get to see, and we are so very tired. We went to sleep when we got back last night at 10:30 and got up at 9:00, and I’m about ready for a nap now. We try to get some photos up soon. I also took some panoramas of hillsides to try to give an idea of what it looks like. We wish you were there. Take care, and happy Birthday to my brother Ben on October 14th!
The food has been great too. The first night we ate at an Italian place outside of Chania right off the beach and had a great dinner of pasta and a bottle of wine. Other highlights have been an old fortification harbor called Phalasarna which eventually became used as a pirate’s cove. There was a fish tank there off the sea used for storing, well, fish. I think we will have a picture of that up later.
We’re back home now. We went all over Crete, moving from the west to the east and then back to the center, ending with a tour of the great palace of Knossos. You should look for links with Google to get an idea of what we saw. Really amazing. Another great night started with a tour of the INSTAP East Crete study center and we got to go down in the basement to look at rebuilt amphora and enormous containers. There we also met the foremost expert on goddess worship among the Minoans, and she brought out some really early goddesses for us to look at up close—you could see how the potter had joined the head and arms and body together, could see the fingerprints from 3400 years ago. After that we were invited to a Raki making party. There are only four licensed Raki makers in Crete, and this guy had gotten special permission from the Governor to start making a week early, so we could be there (along with the staff from INSTAP). Raki is made from collecting the vines, leaves and grapes in giant jugs, letting them sit for 45 days, then boiling them in a huge still. Kirsten took some great pictures of this too. All along the rim where the pot met the fire, they put chestnuts to roast. We left and had dinner then came back to listen to one of the great lyre players in the area play traditional songs. The lyre is tuned in fifths and is played sort of like a cello, so I was dying for a lesson, but I couldn’t break up the playing. You can see in the pictures that he has put little bells along the wood of the bow for rhythmic accompaniment. Kirsten took a little movie of one of the tunes and was invited to dance a bit. It was an incredible night.
Our last two days we spent in Santorini which Hank should be jealous about. You can find it on a map about due north from Crete. It’s an old volcano which had a very important eruption around 1650 B.C.—this date is being argued about a lot in archeology circles, and I’m sure you can find something of the debate on the web, though I haven’t looked. Some want the eruption to have occurred later, and from what I heard, that’s doubtful. Santorini (or Thira) is thought by tourists and booking agents to be near the lost island of Atlantis (which most Classicists do not believe exists, of course), and there was a lot of talk about that as well.
We heard a report from Kirsten about women in Minoan painting (the mythological Minos ruled Crete and the culture in the area was named Minoan by archaeologists). There are many great examples of women on murals from the town of Akrotiri which was covered in pumice from the eruption and preserved, and we got to go there as well led by an archeologist who has worked the site for years. She gave us access to murals being put together today in the basement of a research center and took us into a room with some really famous murals which most folks never get to see except in pictures. There were also no ropes around them, so we could get within three inches from the faces of the women. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve been able to do. One of the murals Kirsten had described at length not knowing that we’d get to see it two hours later. We’d also had an argument about whether there was sacrificial blood on a depiction of an altar (we only had a dark photocopy), then we walked into this room, and there it was in living color (I’m in the blood camp now).
If you look at a map of the island, you can see that it’s a giant volcano, and our ferry took us right into the caldera and dropped us off. We also had a really good geologist along on the trip, and he described in vivid detail the horrible volcano that must have destroyed this island.
I think there’s a picture of the island from a winery which we got a tour of. The fermentation tanks were built into the mountain, and the whole winery was in a cave. I could go on and on about the things we saw—we went to about 35 sites in nine days. We saw sherds of beautiful pottery on the ground, we saw the sun set over Santorini and got up for the sunrise the next day, we would have arguments about a certain archeologist’s findings one day and meet him the next, we drank Ouzo on the ferry to Santorini, we drank beer on Nikos Kazantzakis’ grave, we were able to see pots and bowls and murals that few get to see, and we are so very tired. We went to sleep when we got back last night at 10:30 and got up at 9:00, and I’m about ready for a nap now. We try to get some photos up soon. I also took some panoramas of hillsides to try to give an idea of what it looks like. We wish you were there. Take care, and happy Birthday to my brother Ben on October 14th!
Monday, October 06, 2003
Just a quick note to say, way to go Cubs. And that we're in Crete on a nine day trip to see a bunch of amazing sites from behind the scenes, and that Kirsten has taken a lot of pics, and we'll put them up asap. We are about to see the grave of Kosanzakis tonight, and I'm really excited about that.
