The Last Meal

Greek food. There's the old-fashioned fast food. Like gyros and chicken roasted on the spit, fries, greek salad, tsatsiki, all washed down with their fantastic coke or fanta orangeade (so much different and better than our Malaysian variety, don't ask me why). There's the other good stuff that tastes good from the shop or home-cooked, like lamb chops done well well well with wild spinach boiled and soaked in lemon, spinach and feta pie, giant beans in tomato, lachano-dolmades, made with cabbage leaves and not vine leaves and smothered in egglemon sauce...

That's the winter diet for mountain-folk.



But, after a day spent driving out of Athens and south to Sounio where Poseidon's temple stands bare-boned, whipped by the chill sea wind, what better than seafood? And most of what you see below my grandmother used to cook in her kitchen.

A man would ride through town on his motorbike with a tray full of ice, laden with his day's catch, shouting out the names of the fishes he had. One, marithia, small fish I have yet to identify, were my favourite. a light dusting of flour were all they needed, then we would eat them whole, pretending we were penguins.

So we had seafood at a lovely restaurant in Porto Rafti, a little village on the coast to the east of athens, about a half hour out, which is fast becoming a high-end summer hangout.

We had Barbouni, lovely little red fish. Expensive.



We had Marithia, my absolute favourite. I now know they are Picarel fish, but smelt can be used as a substitute.



We had tsatsiki and chips of course.



Kalamari. Salad. Bread toasted over the grill and smothered in olive oil, oregano and salt. Heaven.




That was our meal the day before we left for KL. And now my jet-lagged little stomach is hungry. Hubby boo promised me he stocked the kitchen with a few hundred ringgit worth of groceries. But it's all frozen chicken!! The snack stuff, like bread and milk, alas, has been consumed...

Shopping tomorrow!! Glad to be doing it in ringgit, haha!
Lovey, C