By John Freedman
Posted Decmber 27, 2021
Pardon the use of a food-based pun, but I'm fudging a bit here and there with today's post. The photos I provide were taken mostly at the Agora, or market, in Chania, although I've added a few from other places in the city as well. Furthermore, the fresh juices photo at the bottom is not only not at the Agora, but it has little or nothing to do with my main topic today - Maria Thermou's wonderful book, Dining with the Ancient Greeks, translated into wonderful English by Alexandre Doumas. Finally, Dining with the Ancient Greeks is almost entirely about the people and food culture of Athens, while I offer up photos and bits of information from Crete. However, I trust no one will hold my feet to the fire for little transgressions. Thermou's book is a small wonder, small in the sense that it actually is small, just 170-some pages, but it is a big joy to read. She packs it full of quotes from an enormous list of sources, beginning with Homer and running on through Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander, Sophocles, Theophrastus, and the most quoted of them all, Athenaseus, whose book The Deipnosophists (or, Sophists at Dinner) makes multiple appearances on virtually every page. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Thermou pulled virtually every quote about food and eating from every extant ancient Greek text with the exception of The Deipnosophists, which, as I have hinted, is as richly present as a tub of olive oil in any Greek kitchen, large or small. The book is laid out neatly in 15 chapters, covering such topics as bread, fruits and vegetables, fish, meat, wine, the olive, herbs, the tradition of the symposia, taverns, utensils and cookbooks. Each chapter is chock full of tasty informative tidbits that, taken together, could make you the star of the next family dinner you attend, assuming that COVID has not destroyed that tradition forever. I was especially moved by the fact that Athens had at least 72 different kinds of bread. This was the main meal for many, especially slaves and the poor. And when one considers the stunning quality and variety of the bread types one can purchase in Chania, Crete, these days, one is truly transported by the notion that one city enjoyed 72 kinds of bread. I live across the street in Chania from a famous bakery that people frequent from all over the city for its quality breads. It still uses an old fashioned stone oven heated by firewood that is delivered once a week and left on the sidewalk in front of the bakery. But 72 types of bread?! We might have 15. On a good day (meaning a holiday, when several traditional types of bread make brief appearances), there may be 25. But 72?! Among the fruits, pomegranates and figs were popular and plentiful from the earliest of times. Pomegranates are known to have been available on Crete in Minoan times. That is also true of olives, of course. "In the diet of the ancient Greeks olive oil was the essential ingredient of everyday food, just as for today's Greeks," Thermou writes. Homer, we are told, wrote of 16 different kinds of olive varieties. "Renowned was the olive oil of Samos, Ikaria, Crete, as well as of the Athenian colony of Thourioi in South Italy," Thermou tells us. Fully edible olives were discovered at the bottom of a well at the Minoan palace at Kato Zakros. For those who cannot get enough of all things olive, please read on:
"The orchas or orchemon was a variety of olive tree whose fruit was shaped like a testicle (Gr. orchis). The olives from the ischas were kidney-shaped. Those of the raphanis were radish-shaped. The gongylis bore large round olives. Other varieties mentioned, though of no special interest, ar the gergerimos or ischas, trampelos, leukokarpos, phaulia, echinos, while olive trees that had been infested by the olive fly (Bactrocera oleae) seem to have been called pityrides."
Hippocrates listed at least 60 medicinal uses of the olive. It was said to heal the heart, the stomach, the skin and was prescribed for gynaecological ailments. Herbs and spices have been a part of the Greek, and Cretan, diet - as well as of the doctor's array of healing elements - from time immemorial. Invariably, when you go to a pharmacist on Crete and ask for some kind of medicine, they will give you a local natural herb and assure you that nothing can come close to working as well. They're usually right. Anyone who has spent more than a week on Crete surely knows the famous and popular malotira herb, which is most often served as a tea, but which also has numerous medicinal uses as well. For the most part it grows and is harvested wild in the mountains of West Crete, and is sold in bunches, often enclosed in plastic to maintain its freshness.
Also important in Crete, though not mentioned by Thermou, are the horta, or so-called mountain, greens. They, too, are harvested wild and appear in homes and restaurants from late winter to early spring. For the most part they are prepared extremely simply - boiled and slightly buttered. The quince - aka, Cydonia oblonga - makes a one-time appearance in Dining with the Ancient Greeks. This, of course, is noteworthy because the scientific name is derived from Kydonia, i.e., the Cretan city called Canea by the Venetians, and Chania by the Turks and everyone thereafter. Greek honey, especially honey from Crete, was and remains famous throughout all of Europe. The bees, of course, feasted on horta, malotira, Cydonia oblonga and other local flora, creating a honey unlike that available anywhere else. Interestingly, beef was not a particularly popular item on Athenian tabes, as it still is not on Crete. Both the island and the mainland have preferred goat, sheep, pig and rabbit over the centuries. One can read in many places about the seafood of Greece, but for someone who, like myself, grew up in the United States, I find Greek seafood somewhat limited. Octopus and squid have been staples here for millennia, as has bream, apparently. I never cease to be amazed by the information I came upon at an ancient Minoan necropolis just south of Rethymnon on Crete - although the hundreds of bodies buried here lived their entire lives approximately eight kilometers from the sea, their remains showed no sign whatsover of ever having eaten seafood. I've written about this necropolis at Amenoi elsewhere on this blog site. But now I've gone far afield from Maria Thermou's fabulous book. And I have no intentions of quoting everything of interest from it. What I can do is heartily encourage you to track down a copy of the book and read it. You won't regret it.
All photos and text © copyright 2021 by John Freedman. If you wish to use either text or photos, I will almost surely grant permission as long as you do the courtesy of asking.
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