Greek Food Images

[Adam Balic]

For the past week I have been lucky enough to have attended a conferance on the Greek Island of Hydra. Although I am familar enough with Greek food (Melbourne is often quoted as being the second largest Greek city in the world), I have not been to Greece before, so I though I would share some impressions formed (obviously from very limited contact).

Hydra is ~1.5 hours from Athens, so I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was. Touristy, sure but not completely overrun.

One advantage of the island is that there are no cars or scooters at all. Everything is transported from handcarts or donkey (actually mules). The island is quite dry so little is grown here, everything gets boated in. Fruit and veg come form the fertile mainland.

The beer mule

While I'm sure you can self cater, we ate out. The restaurants are basic tavernas, some better then others, however the range of food was similar. From looking about the stores, it was clear that the locals ate a different seletion of food to what was being offered at the tavernas, but this is what I ate:

Cheese pie from a local bakery that was hidden on a back street

Barley shaped pasta (manestra) baked with lamb shoulder, this was spices with cinnamon (actually cassia to my surprise) and allspice.

[Adam Balic]

Another cheese pie, this time flavoured with dill

Baked peppers stuffed with rice

Terrible photo of baked lamb shoulder and potatoes. The lamb was very tender and flavoured with cassia. Interestingly it was still quite pink, suggesting long low temperature cooking. The potatoes were excellent, some sort of fondant cooking technique was used, flavoured with wine, lemon and butter.

Obviously calamari. The wine in the background was a red retsenia. I liked it quite a bit, it was excellent with the food at the time.

More calamari from a different taverna. This was thinner and was quite tough, the first image shows the calamari cut into thick battons and this was sweet and tender.

[Adam Balic]

And obviously octopus. This was sweet, smokey, tender and lobster like in flavour.People that claimed that they hated octopus liked this

These are obviously small fish. There were numerous types and grades of these (the headless slightly larger fish in the bottom right are fresh anchovies). I think that these are small Bogue Boops boops. No the greates of fish, but fun enough.

[Adam Balic]

A much better choice were these garfish Belone bellone you might notice some azure spots on this fish, this is actually the bones of the fish which are bright green when raw and a duller green when cooked. The flesh is white, non-oily and very tasty. I like them very much.

[Shiewie]

Wonderful pictures! I can almost taste the crunchy little garfish, with a squeeze of lemon. Starving now. Note to self - don't look at food pictures when one is hungry ...

[Pam R]

Oh Adam.. I love love love greek food - your pictures are wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

[Adam Balic]

One thing that I thought was very interesting was the expence of the fish. Now I know that much of the fish was imported from elsewhere, either other parts of Greece or further afield (for instance I saw Australian Snapper), but much of it was local and relatively abundant. As I went snorkerling, I know there were scorpian fish, weever, wrasse, bream and mullet about as I actually saw them.

In this image there are some crayfish "Astakos" (90 Euro per kg) and Red Mullet "Barbouni" (50 Euro per kg), the latter is most likely local, the other I don't know so I ate a pair of these. Really excellent, and I eat a lot of these.

[Adam Balic]

Now unlike Scotland which has very rich fisheries, it was possible to buy fish off the day boats relatively easily in Hydra.

Just follow the cats

The local could fish were of a wide species range, but most what I would class as "soup fish", some good, some not so good.

These are the higher status fish, Star-Gazer Uranoscopus scaber (far back, pale brown) and Scorpian fish Scorpaena porcus (occasionally I saw some Scorpaena scrofa). These fish (especially the scorpian fish) are found in fish stews/soups all over the med. In France these are known as Rascasse and are the vital ingredient in bouillabaisse.

These are slightly lesser fish, the colourful ones are male Rainbow wrasse Coris julis, but there are a few other odds and sods, including red mullet.

The final group seemed to be a complete mixed bag. This included small bream, wrasse, red mullet and grey mullet, salema and picarel.

The other sure sign of the fish boat is the clusters of haggling housewives, very fun to observe, if a little dangerous...

Edited September 12, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[Adam Balic]

Aside from the fish which seemed to be eaten locally, if not sold in the restuarants, another oddity was the range of fruit and veg that was on sale, that did not appear on menus. I could not identifly most of these greens, some looked like dandelion greens and chicory, but these are just guesses.

(Even I can spot the spinach in this one)

[Adam Balic]

Other plants that I saw, were these capers. These were different to the ones I have seen all over tuscany, smaller leaves with pronounced thorns, but the flowers looked the same.

[Adam Balic]

Oddly enough, given the amount of bakeries about there were very few pastry desserts offered at the local tavernas. Desserts were either fruit or basic tourist stuff like creme caramel.

This is a local cressant from a local bakery. Delicious, from the flavour and texture it contained butter, rice flour and was flavoured with mastic. Excellent with Ouzo whioe reading about Greek Myths and Legends...

[Corinna Dunne]

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Adam, these are gorgeous shots. Did you have any dishes with stuffed courgette/zuchini flowers?

[johnnyd]

Stunning report, Adam!

The baked lamb and potatos reminds me of my time in Portugal where I was served some really unattractive meals that ended up tasting incredible, most notably cuttlefish "em su tinto", a black stew of heinous appearance but one of my favorite dishes in the whole world.

The island looks idyllic. I assume the waters were quite clear for snorkling?

Edited September 12, 2005 by johnnyd (log)

[Adam Balic]

Adam, these are gorgeous shots.  Did you have any dishes with stuffed courgette/zuchini flowers?

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Corinna - not actually I didn't so I am not sure that the Greeks use the zucchini in this manner. These were large zucchini, so difficult to get the fruit and the flower cooked at the same time.

[Adam Balic]

Stunning report, Adam!

The baked lamb and potatos reminds me of my time in Portugal where I was served some really unattractive meals that ended up tasting incredible, most notably cuttlefish "em su tinto", a black stew of heinous appearance but one of my favorite dishes in the whole world.

The island looks idyllic.    I assume the waters were quite clear for snorkling?

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Speaking of Portugal I have one of those copper cooking vessels of yours on order, tah!

Cuttlefish is my favorite fish.

The water was like crystal, never seen such good visability. There were few fish about, but by the time I had finished cracking open sea urchins and turning over boulders, I had a cloud of adoring fish following me about, including some large (40 cm) bream that came up out of the deeper water.

[Priscilla]

Wow beautiful photos Adam! I think it speaks exceedingly well of Hydra that its port cats are so fat and sleek. Not always the case!

I like those garfish. Don't they also get huge?

[cherimoya]

Very interesting report - Thanks!

[mrbigjas]

Aside from the fish which seemed to be eaten locally, if not sold in the restuarants, another oddity was the range of fruit and veg that was on sale, that did not appear on menus.

i noticed the same thing in barcelona--the boqueria and other markets were piled high with produce of every kind that i never saw in a single restaurant.

[docsconz]

Great report, Adam! This reminds me very much of Sicily. There is not much better than simply prepared grilled fresh fish other than perhaps simply prepared grilled shellfish.

[Busboy]

Man -- now I'm jonesing for octopus. Did you drink any raki/tsipouro?

[Adam Balic]

Wow beautiful photos Adam!  I think it speaks exceedingly well of Hydra that its port cats are so fat and sleek.  Not always the case!

I like those garfish.  Don't they also get huge?

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Actually most of the cats were pretty scrawny, but here is more well fed one that has managed to steal about €40 worth of scorpianfish.

[docsconz]

Great shot! It looks like the cat knows it too.

[Adam Balic]

Man -- now I'm jonesing for octopus.  Did you drink any raki/tsipouro?

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I bought back some raki/tsipouro that was produced in Crete. Triple distilled, so quite smooth compared to the Raki I am use to from Croatia.

On the island I drank Ouzo until it came out my pores.

[Daniel]

I think my roomate sold this in college.. The Greek treat these guys right..

I came home and my cats have hung this picture on the inside of there litter box.. What a great shot..

Edited September 15, 2005 by Daniel (log)

[Adam Balic]

One last image from Hydra. These large grouper were the 'surprise' mains from the conference dinner. Normally, I wouldn't eat large slow growing, increasingly rare fish, but they were dead so I did.

My portion had the texture and flavor of milk fed veal, others were not so lucky and got a large portion of fish fat....