I've just came back from holiday with Marcus in Greece. I had fantastic time. and had lovely food! we bought locally produced fruits and vegetables for our dinner and breakfasts which were priced up very reasonably. One day when we were at the shop, a farmer turned up with 3 boxes of black cherries to sell to the shop. They looked very fresh. Our shopping lists were; tomatoes, red onions, green and red peppers, peaches, cherries, nectarines, watermelon, cucumber, sheep's Greek yogurt, feta, olives and bananas. All locally produced. They tasted soooooooooooo yummy. They all had full of flavours. Everywhere we walked, we found fig trees, walnuts trees, lemon trees, orange trees, and saw some chestnut trees. It was amazing. Then I understood why Greek food was so simple. They don't need anything to make food taste nice. Because they already have fantastic flavours on their own. I remember when i worked in one of restaurants in London, we did Greek Salad for a starter. I didn't quite get what it meant. I'd never been to Greece that time, I thought Greek Salad was nothing special. But now I can see it's something. All combinations of the vegetables, sweetness from red onion, salty home cured olives, juicy tomatoes, crunchy cucumber.....and salty feta with dried Greek oregano on top, and the most importantly ; extra virgin olive oil . Taste even better when we had Greek salad in a taverna in little village square outside church. It was hot day, sitting by the Jasmin plants smelling the flowers. I'd never experienced such a feeling, it was calm and peaceful. During our stay, we had Greek salad 3times. Once we had it at the cafe by the beach in Damouchari. Their Greek salad looked like this;
It had plenty good olive oil and very salty home cured olives. I thought it was amazing! We didn't eat out often, we made our own salad /pasta every evenings. Only last day we went out and had lunch... Greek salad and chips! Even chips tasted different there. I don't eat chips in England anymore, I get heartburn and tummy ache afterwards. But Greek chips didn't give me heartburn etc at all. I'm not sure what exactly different from English chips, I reckon they use better fat to cook chips.
What I love about these Greek Salad the most is that chunky feta cheese! Very generous amount! Marcus told me these herbs on top was Greek oregano. Same as Greek mint, they weren't particularly strong, very sutle with flavour. Is it the sun make lively and vibrant foods????? Two nights before we left, our landlord took us to dinner in a taverna in Kissos. Again, it was a small mountain village. we told him we were veggies and didn't drink. Of course, he got us some alcohol drinks.... and we didn't drink them He thought we were strange. But anyway, we ordered some veggie foods including.... Greek salad! Their Greek Salad looked like this;
Their salad had croutons and dressed with balsamic vinegar. Croutons tasted olive oil. Same as breads, they were yellow, and craft were crunchy with olive oil. They glazed with it. I don't usually eat bread, but I had 2 slices.( Reminded me of foccacia I used to make. ) Loved them! Loved all foods we had!!!!
Let's go back to cherries. Since I came back, I've been missing Greek cherries. I bought a punnet from local supermarket, they were crap, tasted nothing, really really bland. I didn't understand why. Then I bought ½lb from Bury market on wed. Again, tasted more cherries than previous ones, they were nowhere near as tasty as Greek ones. Hopefully, I can have Polstead cherries this week off Marcus. Polstead(small village, border of Suffolk and Essex) is famous for cherries. In Greece, people were selling their products by side of road. Once we bought ½kg of cherries for €1.20!!!!! Cheap. We thought 1kg were too much so got ½kg, actually, it wouldn't be too much. We ate all in 5 mins! Oh, we found beautiful waterfalls near where we bought cherries. There, we found fig tree with already big figs on them. Everywhere else still had baby ones. It was the magic water which made those figs grow big and happy!
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