A food writer's journey around Greece to learn the culinary secrets of the yiayias
Like most Greek grandmothers, my yiayia, after whom I was named, is a force to be reckoned with. Following her as she walked round the kitchen of her white-washed Corfu home - a set of weighing scales in hand - was the start of my obsession with documenting women of her generation and their relationship with their land through cooking. My yiayia hails from a Greece that did not yet know tourism. She was one of 10 children and her parents chose not to send her to school but instead sent her out to work the land from the age of nine.
Yiayia's education was learning about planting by the moon's cycle and wild-herb foraging; about baking sourdough bread and cooking rich Corfiot dishes like cinnamon stifado stew in a pot over a fire that she would build herself. Stoic, cutting and at times just plain terrifying, Yiayia is not the kind of granny you go to for cuddles. She has a look of disapproval that could kill. She once famously tied my father - then just seven years old - to a tree with an ants' nest at his feet as a punishment. In the kitchen, though, she is all heart. Our meals together as a family are characterised by shouty disputes and cackles of laughter (often from her). The food is simple, made up of Yiayia's own produce and never anything less than delicious.
As much as I wax lyrical about my own yiayiaka (a diminutive of yiayia), she is not in the minority in Greece. She is one of a generation of Greek matriarchs who came of age during the post-Second World War years, during which most of Greece was still in poverty and experiencing civil unrest. They took care of the finances and raised families while husbands were off fighting wars or working on cargo ships to send money home - or just off with other women. In an unashamedly patriarchal society, it is our yiayiades that have come through the strongest and have, more often than not, lived the longest. Despite the sometimes awful hypocrisy they have had to face in life, these women are still here and they are carrying the Greek spirit.
Setting out on my odyssey to collect recipes from grandmothers dotted across my homeland was transformative in more ways than one. Being Corfiot, I was accustomed to a diet informed by the Venetians, who colonised the island 800 years ago. In the Old Town of Corfu, Marina's Taverna and Pergola might serve spicy tsigarelli (wild greens) and cinnamon-spiked pastitsada (slow-cooked beef stew with pasta) as staples, but that is not standard fare once you leave the island.
Travelling across Greece - from the verdant Ionians to the sun-scorched Cycladic islands, the Balkan-influenced northern mainland and down to Crete and far-flung Kastellorizo, which is closer to Turkey than mainland Greece - I realised the cuisine is incredibly regional. There is much more to it than Greek salad and tzatziki. One way to get to know this diverse country beyond the surface is the cooking, and the key to finding special restaurants that serve authentic cuisine is to ask the locals.
In the mountains of Karpathos island, up a winding road of seemingly never-ending hairpin bends, I met Yiayia Anna in a village that felt very much disconnected from the rest of the world. Wearing the local folk costume of Olympos - a head scarf and many skirts that trailed behind her - Anna hurried round the kitchen of her restaurant, Taverna Olympos, showing me how to roll makarounes, a traditional pasta topped with sweet, caramelised onions and a generous grating of local cheese. I had no idea that homemade pasta was a tradition in Greek kitchens.
Yiayia Vasiliki, who hosts cooking classes at Ambelonas vineyard on Corfu, gave me an education in the importance of spices such as sweet paprika, chilli and cinnamon in our cuisine and dishes like zorka (vegetable pie) that risk being lost forever once the few women in the villages who make it have died.
Despite its popularity, what people know of Greek cuisine is still fairly limited when considering the breadth and diversity of dishes you can find in the homes across our 6,000 islands and far too often overlooked mainland. Stuffed courgettes from Lesvos; Cycladic fourtalia or omelette (try the one at Rita's periptero kiosk in Andros); bourdeto on Corfu (my favourite can be found at Fisheye in Marathias, cooked by Yiayia Areti); Cretan dakos (salad) - the one in my book is from Yiayia Eleutheria, who runs the kitchen at Lambros Taverna in Tertsa: and sweet pumpkin pie from Chalkidiki in northern Greece. These are all dishes rooted in a specific region.
Beyond the cuisine, I discovered more about Greek history from the women who have lived it than I ever learned about it at school. One sweltering July morning, I spotted Yiayia Maria sweeping outside her son's restaurant Lazarakis, on Kastellorizo's pastel-toned harbour. She was tiny and frail but would not accept any help. Instead, she brewed a silty Greek coffee and told me about the past 100 years on her island, laughing off the suggestion that there might be a difference between Greek and Turkish coffee as we sipped ours along with a slice of baklava in the shade.
'Before there was "Greece" and "Turkey", we all used to live alongside each other,' she told me. 'We have the mosque here [now a museum] and, when my mother was a girl, a whole section of our population was Muslim. Then, after the First World War, things began to change. Before I was born, most Muslims left for the Turkish mainland.' She explained that many Kastellorizians still have Turkish friends 'across the water', dispelling the widely held belief that the Greeks and Turks do not get along.
In discovering the time-perfected recipes of grandmothers, I have picked up much more than culinary knowledge. Truly engaging with locals and the people who know a place best will make for far better travel tips than looking on a website. Recipes can be the ultimate souvenirs and it is worth planning a trip in Greece based on what you like to eat, considering the diversity within the mainland and among the islands. Some of Greece's best yiayiades and their tavernas are elusive; the internet will never catch up to them. You will just have to ask around.
'Yiayia: Time-perfected Recipes from Greece's Grandmothers' by Anastasia Miari (Hardie Grant Books, £27)
MARCO ARGÜELLO1/11Yiayia Anastasia gathering cherry plums from the tree in her garden at home on Corfu.
MARCO ARGÜELLO2/11The charming island of Milos.
MARCO ARGÜELLO3/11Yiayia Margarita. Born in 1953, Santorini
MARCO ARGÜELLO4/11Yiayia Margarita's skordomakarona (garlic and tomato bucatini pasta) from Santorini, which her own grandmother taught her to make. 'I think it was a regular in her repertoire because it was cheap, filling and fast to pull together,' she says.
MARCO ARGÜELLO5/11Agios Nikolaos on Santorini.
MARCO ARGÜELLO6/11Yiayia Niki. Born in 1939, Kalamata.
MARCO ARGÜELLO7/11Yiayia Niki makes bakaliaros plaki (cod bake), from Kalamata, but prefers to eat most of her food raw. She says she has never been to a doctor in her life and swears by the power of uncooked vegetables and fruit.
MARCO ARGÜELLO8/11Orange trees outside her house on the rugged Mani Peninsula.
MARCO ARGÜELLO9/11Theia Stamatella. Born in 1910, Corfu.
MARCO ARGÜELLO10/11Yiayia Anastasia's younger sister, Theia (Aunt) Stamatella, is known for her strong, warming dish of tsigarelli (spicy wild greens), from Corfu.
MARCO ARGÜELLO11/11Freshly caught octopuses are hung out in the sun to dry in the Cyclades, ready to be used in a variety of local dishes.
