The locals in Santorini like to say that almost every aspect, feature and facet about this astonishing island can be traced back to the volcano. The eruption that blew away the Minoans, spread ash as far as Greenland and caused a great famine in China over 3,500 years ago had an exaggerated effect on world order, as well as the unique tastes and flavors of Santorini’s cuisine. Deposited in the rich blend of red, black and white pumice, a banquet of minerals enriches the soil and creates vegetables and herbs that have surprising intensity. The tomatoes have a robust sweetness, grown using virtually no water except the morning dew that glistens to greet the rising sun each dawn. The white eggplants are indigenous, having an earthy taste that compliments so many local dishes. And of course, the caper plant scattered wildly amongst rock walls and steep hillsides provides both leaf and bud to crown any Santorini dish.
Scene of the cooking class
In our global quest for a few culinary skills learned from each country, we found ourselves in the home, kitchen and restaurant of Eleni, a local artist and chef who we met through our host and friend, Manos. Rather than attending a traditional cooking class, Manos understood our desire to connect on a more personal level, and asked his neighbor in Finikia, whose husband owns four restaurants in Santorini and Athens, if she’d like to meet us. We found Eleni at her yposkafa (house carved of volcanic rock or traditional cave house), tucked snuggly in the middle of the village of Finikia, next to the neighborhood winery where generations of townspeople and their families have crushed grapes and fermented wine since the early 1800s. She is one of those warm individuals who immediately makes you feel at ease. An eclectic aura permeates Eleni and her home, most likely tracing back to her Ethiopian and Greek roots, nurtured by a strong sense of family and friends. Lisa and Eleni struck an immediate connection, thus setting the stage for a 4 hour culinary adventure we would have a few days later.
Neighborhood wine cave in Finikia next to Eleni’s cave house…. Manos has a vintage he made in the last barrel on the left in honor of his son’s birth. The opening in the back is where they crush white grapes with their feet!
We decided to meet at Feredini, the family restaurant that clings to the side of the caldera in the center of Oia. Closed for lunch, the kitchen offered an ideal space for our cast of rambunctious, intrepid characters to ply our culinary skills. With the help of the head chef of the restaurant, Eleni laid out the ingredients for our self-made feast: Herbed Risotto Dolmades and Veal & White Eggplant Moussaka.
View from our kitchen at Feredini!
Herbed Risotto stuffed grape leaves with Greek yogurt
Veal with White Eggplant Moussaka
All of the kids, Lisa and I participated in the chopping, rolling, folding, simmering, sautéing, spicing and plating, creating what would easily be considered the best meal thus far on Project Equator. The Moussaka was merely a “cousin” of moussaka as Eleni told us, borrowing from decades of experimenting with Ethiopian spices, traditional Greek cuisine, and her own artistic intuition. To see and smell the enormous pan of spices and herbs, including anise, bay leaf, fresh garlic, whole peppercorns, cardamon, and a 9-spice concoction of spices blended personally in Ethiopia by Eleni herself, was like spying into the future lands we will travel to on this trip.
Wescott smelling Eleni’s secret 9-spice blend that she makes in Ethiopia
Just a touch of Anise provides a powerful spice to this amazing dish
The base of our Moussaka cousin is starting to simmer
Watching Tuck master the art of stuffing and wrapping grape leaves with intense concentration was priceless. Wescott mixing in the broth from simmering the veal, enveloping the meat in a potpourri of exotic flavors, left us hungrily anticipating the banquet to come. Spying Yve teaching Otto the finer points of keeping the grape leaf wrapping tight for steaming reminded me why we set out on this adventure. All in all, it was an experience I’ll remember as a highlight of the trip.
Otto draining and drying grape leaves. When they are in season, Eleni uses fresh leaves right from the vines
Tuck mastering the art of folding stuffed grape leaves
Yve tasting the broth
Dolmades production line!
Tuck working on the mixture that we’ll stuff the grape leaves with
Jones readying the dolmades for the pot to steam and cook them
The roots of the word epicurean is focused more on the people you sit down with to share a meal, and the friendship derived from the shared experience, rather than the actual food. While the sumptuous dishes spread before us, carefully constructed by each diner and arranged artfully on the crisp, white linen table were undoubtedly spectacular, it was the moments of conversation around the cutting board and the new friend we met in Eleni that ultimately made the entire experience quixotic.
Lisa and Eleni became buddies… come visit us in Seattle Eleni!
The cooking gang with Eleni
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