Around a Greek table : recipes & stories arranged according to the liturgical seasons of the Eastern Church

297 Pages·2012·9.61 MB·English

by  Whitley

AROUND A GREEK TABLE
AROUND A GREEK TABLE

Recipes & Stories
A A L S
RRANGED CCORDING TO THE ITURGICAL EASONS
E C
OF THE ASTERN HURCH
KATERINA KATSARKA WHITLEY
Photographs by Jasmin Hejazi
LYONS PRESS
Guilford, Connecticut
An inprint of Globe Pequot Press
Dedicated to the Katsarka clan and
all those who joined their lives with
ours

To buy books in quantity for corporate use or incentives, call [phone] or e-mail [email protected].
Copyright © 2012 by Katerina Katsarka Whitley ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may
be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be
addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480,
Guilford, CT 06437.
Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.
Photo on p. viii by Niki Craig.
Text design: Maggie Peterson
Layout artist: Maggie Peterson
Project editors: Gregory Hyman & Meredith Dias
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Whitley, Katerina Katsarka.
Around a Greek table: Recipes and stories arranged according to the liturgical seasons of the
Eastern Church / Katerina Katsarka Whitley ; photographs by Jasmin Hejazi.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7627-7836-2
1. Cooking, Greek. 2. Food habits—Greece. 3. Orthodox Eastern Church—Liturgy. 4.
Cookbooks. I. Title.
TX723.5.G8W45 2012
641.59495—dc23
2011035836
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface
Around a Greek Table:
Recipes Served with Flavors, Aromas, and Stories
Chapter 1. Easter Day
Chapter 2. The Easter Season
Chapter 3. The Pentecost Season Opens: Spring
Chapter 4. The Pentecost Season Continues: Summer
Chapter 5. The Pentecost Season Ripens: Late Summer
Chapter 6. The Pentecost Season Closes: Fall
Chapter 7. Advent
Chapter 8. The Season of Lights
Metric Conversion Tables
About the Author
Acknowledgments
How far back may one go to give credit for nurturing and for showing that
cooking is more than a daily chore? I will start with my grandmother, who
kept us all together in her self-effacing manner, and my own mother, who
left us too soon but whose memory is connected with some cherished
images of her in the kitchen; and my stepmother, who also was a fine
cook despite limited facilities. These three women showed me that caring
for one’s family is a great calling and that cooking for others is a ministry:
Do all things as unto the Lord, St. Paul taught us. I want to thank my
sister Doritsa who took over when our mother died and became a superb
cook and mother in her own right, and my sister Niki who surprised us all
with her flair for the finest in cuisine and entertaining. And my brother’s
wife, Soula, who entered a family of cooks to contribute her own excellent
traditions in creative and tasty meals. These three beloved sisters gave
me enthusiastic support for this book. To my nieces—Natassa, Lydia,
and Phoebe—who entered into the venture of offering and suggesting
recipes with gusto, my thanks with my love. And to all my Greek clan with
whom I have broken bread through the years—many thanks for the
meals and, above all, for the singing.
I especially remember the first editors who liked my food essays and
published them: at the News and Observer, Garnet Bass, and my
wonderful editors at the Christian Science Monitor in the 1980s. Thanks
go to my agent, Kathleen Davis Niendorff, for believing in the project and
my editor, Katie Benoit, for her enthusiasm and care with details. And
special thanks to Eleni Melirrytou and the women of St. Barbara Greek
Orthodox Church in Durham, North Carolina.
Above all to my own family, especially my husband, Rudy, who never
complained as I learned and experimented, even in my days of ignorance
in the kitchen, and my lovely daughters, Niki and Maria, who brought
friends home to taste my cooking, and later their husbands and children.
It is for the sake of these beloved and delightful children and
grandchildren that I have written this book of Greek memories and
recipes. “Everything Mika cooks is filled with goodness,” my second
grandson, Jeremy, said. What can be a higher accolade?
Preface
I learned Greek history around our kitchen table. Together with the taste
and smell of lemony sauces and the evocative flavor of onions and
tomatoes sautéed in olive oil, I absorbed my father’s stories of the Balkan
wars, of World War I, of man’s greed and treachery, of deprivations and
courage. I also ingested a strong national pride together with oregano
and cumin. I learned of my father’s original hometown in a land now
Turkish and, though I’ve never visited it, I can still see it as he painted it
with words, sharing with me the flavors of the place he loved. His mother
hailed from fabled Constantinople—the Polis, as the Greeks proudly
called it, still yearning for it in the middle of the twentieth century—and
from that place she brought to us the memories and tastes of rich
Anatolian cooking.
At our table met the east and west of Greece. The Katsárka clan from
Adrianople and Constantinople were from the east, but my mother, with
the ancient and fateful name of Persephónê, came from the west, from
mountainous Epirus, bringing with her a hint of all the tragedies
associated with the murderous Ali Pasha. She, an orphan, was taken
from her hometown at four years of age, and the only memory she
shared with us from that place was a sound she heard as a child—the
creaking of the watermelons as they grew and expanded in the fields.
The east and west met in Thessaloniki, and there the children of the
union were nourished with stories as much as with food.
So together with recipes from my family and my own strong inclination
to incorporate Greek flavors in new ways, I offer here stories and recipes
of survival and simplicity in the midst of hard times; of earthy vegetable
flavors that honor the soil that produced them; of meat and fish cooked
with imagination; of legumes that contribute to good health; and of
abundance and festivity that surround holidays.