The chef, Mrs Tonya Karandinou, runs an internationally acclaimed restaurant called The Balcony, near the harbour in Sitia, eastern Crete. She has travelled to London specially, to prepare our lunch, bringing with her high quality, organic, local produce from Crete. On the menu are dishes based on fresh fruit and vegetables, grains, legumes, cheese and extra virgin olive oil: all ingredients of the Cretan Mediterranean diet, which is acknowledged to give a long and healthy life.

Tonya leaves the kitchen several times to talk to us at our tables and find out what we think of our lunch. Her passion for food and cooking is obvious, so what’s her secret? “ Love”, is her reply. Everyone around the table is impressed with the food.

I visited Crete last year. As different dishes are served, memories of enjoyable meals in places like Chania, Rethymnon and Heraklion come flooding back. My travels did not take me as far east as Sitia, where some of the best Cretan extra virgin olive oil is produced. The nearest I got was Agios Nikolaos.

Grassy green-gold, fruity olive oil is waiting for us to dip our rusks in as we sit down to our meal, with a choice of wines from the Sitia Union Winery. The red is a ripe, soft and fruity Sitia 2008 and the concentrated, dry white wine, Sitia of Crete 2008, is made from the native vilana and thrapsathiri grape varieties.

Mezedes or starters include fava, or split-pea purée, and Cretan dakos, tomatoes and cheese on barley rusks. There is also dolmades, vine leaves stuffed with rice and minced meat, served with tzatziki, a yoghurt, cucumber and garlic dip.

Next come four different main course dishes. Oven-cooked lamb is served on a bed of potatoes with artichoke hearts and Cretan wild herbs. The cuttlefish dish, dressed in a wine sauce with spinach and herbs, is unbelievably tender. How does Tonya achieve this soft, melting consistency? “I cook it for just ten minutes.” she says.

Xerotigana and kalitsounia pastries are served for dessert, with delicious Cretan yoghurt and honey, sprinkled with chopped pistachios.

When I visited the island, I asked why meals are made up of so many different courses, and why eating takes up so much time. “Well, meals are not just for eating. They are for enjoying with family and friends, and for discussions.” I was told. “Besides, you might feel hungry again and need to eat some more”.

Mrs Tonya Karandinou and lady wearing traditional Cretan dress

We take our time to savour today’s traditional Cretan lunch, enlivened by a performance of traditional dances, shared in stimulating company and spiced with lively discussion.

The Sitia wines can be ordered through Mr. Sotiris Meredidis, Director of Sitia Limited
Fax: +44 (0)208 907 2902 Mob: +44 (0)793 048 4424

Extra virgin olive oil and other Greek foods can be ordered from – www.odysea.com

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Things are quiet in the old Venetian harbour in Chania. It’s a sunny Sunday morning after the Saturday night before and the lively restaurants and tavernas lining the harbour have not quite woken up. The sea is clean and clear, with a surprising number of fish swimming around moored boats. Large shoals of tiny sprats flow as if carried on currents; a few flip sideways suddenly, flashing silver sides. Long narrow fish with sharp pointed noses ripple by like ribbons. Fish jump out of, and splash back into, the sea.

I walk towards the Blue Adventures Diving boat  to enjoy a morning of swimming, snorkelling, scuba-diving and sun-bathing, out in the Aegean Sea. As the boat gets ready to leave, two barbouniaki or red mullet, cruise into view, side fin to side fin, looking like a pair of flirtatious twins dressed in their pink Sunday best.

On board, our PADI instructors tell us to watch out for fireworms, while in the water. They carry stings in their filaments and pain from the burns can last for 24 hours. Luckily, we have no problems with these while swimming and diving, and see sea urchins, an octopus and many more fish.

A cormorant swoops down, close to where the boat is anchored near Macherida Beach. Paddling in a straight line, like a battery-operated toy, it mechanically plunges its beak into the water at regular intervals. Finally, up it comes with a fish, throws its head back, and swallows its catch in one neat gulp.

CretAquarium, part of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, is the place to get up close to the sea creatures in these waters. All the marine world of the Mediterranean is on show here, at the old American base in Gournes, near Heraklion.

Number one on my ‘to see’ list is the Caretta caretta or Loggerhead sea turtle. “It was swimming around with the divers who maintain the tanks earlier,” says marine biologist, Dr Aspasia Sterioti. Now the turtle is very well camouflaged and in hiding. Everything else is moving and swimming around in full view, including sharks, moray eels, groupers and sea anemones. Like a prima ballerina, an octopus puts on a show of extremely graceful pirouettes. Jellyfish propelling themselves in slow – motion, in a nearby tank, could be a corps de ballet dressed in white tutus.

I stare hard at a school of large sea bream. They look exactly the same as the fish that delivered the kiss of death: in my first encounter with Cretan sea life.

Words and pictures by by Myrisa Luke

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“The most luxurious thing we have here is nature”, says Tassos Gourgouras, welcoming our group to Milia (www.milia.gr/english.html).  This restored mountain settlement is an international eco-tourism award-winner.  Once derelict, these traditional stone farmhouses near the village of Vlatos in western Crete, are now comfortable, rustic eco-apartments, decorated with local furniture and powered by solar energy.

All year round, people come here for alternative holidays, close to nature and away from the crowds.  On the balcony outside the warm and welcoming taverna, we inhale fresh, clean mountain air, sipping infusions of mountain tea sweetened with local honey.  As we admire the scenery, visitors can be seen trekking along the mountainside across the valley.

Organic produce, including wine from the settlement’s farm, is served in the taverna.  Guests can get involved in the agricultural and farming activities. Appetising aromas emerge from the kitchen, where lunch is being prepared, including boureki (courgette, potato and mizithra cheese pie), vlita (wild greens) and salads.

Loaves of bread made from three different types of flour are ready for baking.   We discover why helping in the kitchen is so popular and have great fun manouvering loaves of bread into the wood-fired oven, with a long-handled wooden board.

Afterwards, we walk down to the farm, via the amphitheatre, across a small bridge over a stream, up to terraces planted with olive and carob trees, brushing against pungent wild oregano on the way.

Milia is the Greek word for apple tree; we pick apples to feed to the cows.  Free-range chickens squawk nearby, next to the calves being weaned from their mothers.  A griffin vulture glides overhead, before swiftly vanishing into the blue sky.

Back in the kitchen, the bread is ready to remove from the oven.  Before sitting down in the taverna for our Cretan meal, we chat with some Canadians who are spending a week here, and a Danish couple, here for lunch because they heard how tasty the food is.  Our freshly baked bread disappears as soon as it is put on the table.

As we leave, we turn and look back.  The eco-friendly buildings of local stone and wild chestnut from the surrounding woods blend naturally, almost imperceptibly, into the landscape.

It is a 45-minute drive, past Topolia gorge, to Elafonissi on the southwest coast, one of the most beautiful beaches on the island.  Small particles of crushed pink shells are washed up onto the long, wide beach, turning the sand pink. By the time we arrive in the late afternoon, many day-trippers have already left.

The beach feels very safe because the clear, turquoise sea is so shallow near the shore.  We swim before walking across to an islet, through thigh-high water.  After enjoying the natural beauty of the sea and the surrounding landscape, we leave just after 6.00 pm, when other people are packing up and leaving too.

We return to the calm and peaceful Cavo Spada Luxury Resort and Spa (www.cavospada.gr) on a tranquil beach 18 km west of Chania, where we are staying.  Our day ends here, on a moonlit terrace overlooking the pool and the sea, after a very enjoyable evening meal.

Milia is in the governing district of Chania, about 60 km from Chania town centre.
Our group was driven round the island in comfort by Solmar Tours (www.solmar.gr)

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© Myrisa Luke

Pistachios have a soft, yellow protective skin with a deep pink blush when freshly picked.  Inside, the nuts are soft and tender.  Walking in the September sunshine with a group of friends towards the Lions Square, in Heraklion (www.heraklion.gr/en), we stop at a fruit stall.  Also on display, here on market street, are fresh green walnuts, ripe peaches, prickly pears and different varieties of grapes.

© Myrisa Luke

Fresh, good quality local produce is the secret of delicious Cretan food.  Translucent amber honey drizzled over the thickest, creamiest yoghurt.  Pillar box red tomatoes, popping with colour and full of flavour.  With extensive fruit and vegetable cultivation and over 30 million olive trees, Crete is justly called the garden of Greece.  Olive oil, from towns like Kolymbari and Sitia, is famous.

For 40 centuries, olives, cereals, pulses, fruit and wild vegetables or horta have been the main foods eaten on the island, with small portions of lamb, milk, game and fish.  In Chania (www.chania.gr/en), Dr Kostas Oikonomakis, formerly at the National Agricultural Research Foundation, talks in depth about Cretan food, the ingenuity of its cooks and tells us, “We eat everything presented by the gods.”

In restaurants and tavernas, dishes of mezedes (appetisers) appear, toasted with raki and accompanied by Cretan wine.  Plates of dolmades, graviera cheese, and kalitsounia pasties filled with cheese or greens are followed by boureki, (courgette, cheese and potato pie), grilled lamb, pork and chicken, fish and shellfish, served with Cretan salads and greens like stamnagathi anointed with olive oil.

© Myrisa Luke

If elsewhere the words octopus and tender don’t often go together, they do at a seafood restaurant in lively Chania harbour, where we also have delicacies of stuffed courgette flowers and sea urchin eggs.  On the seafront, pork and chicken gyros kebabs are sampled appreciatively, with thick, soft-centred, crisp-skinned Cretan potato chips.

From the main building at the Aquila Rithymna Beach Hotel, near Rethymnon

( www.aquilahotels.com ), we look down at the beach where a Loggerhead Turtle’s nesting site is carefully protected.  As dhakos (cheese and tomatoes on crusty bread) is served during lunch in the restaurant, Giorgos Barelier explains that this is one of Crete’s contributions to Greek cuisine.

© Myrisa Luke

Preceded by the largest king prawn I have ever eaten, the main fish course is a whopper of a sea bream.  It’s grilled whole and brought to the table to be admired before being returned to the kitchen to be taken off the bone.
Crete evokes memories of many enjoyable meals.  According to legend, the god Zeus was born in the island’s Dikteon Cave; clearly, gods deserve the best of everything.

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Something that particularly caught my eye there, was a fragment from a fresco, showing a Minoan woman with a beautifully made-up face, red-painted lips and long, wavy hair.  She is a priestess from a fresco at the Palace of Knossos, dated 15th century B.C; to me she looks like a princess.  The fresco was found when the Minoan capital of Knossos (which is a fascinating place to visit) was excavated in the early 20^th century.  She was nicknamed “La Parisienne” because of her sophisticated, chic good looks.

La Parisienne

The restaurant’s setting is very romantic, surrounded by palm-fringed gardens, with the sea in the distance.  It is beside a pool, shaped like a small lake, with part of the restaurant as an ‘island’ in the lake.  A silken-voiced musician provided live music.  It was obvious how much he enjoyed performing.

Our taste buds discovered the secrets of fine Cretan cuisine.  The food was excellent, so was the wine.  The conversation flowed, in between five different courses.  All during the meal, I couldn’t help thinking of the fresco and marvelling at the striking resemblance, sitting across the table from me.

Finally, at the end of the meal, I leaned forward and plucked up the courage to tell her, Valia, how much she looks like a Minoan princess.  “I know what you mean,” she said, “It’s my hair,” pointing to her long hair falling in large, loose waves, “and my nose”, turning to show her profile.

It was more than that.  It was also the eyes, the eyebrows, and perhaps even her earrings.  There seemed to be no distance in time between that portrait painted 3,500 years ago, and the present.  Valia exuded the aura of a Minoan princess and could so easily be “La Parisienne’s” daughter.

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Myrisa Luke

…It was a case of love at the very first taste, one warm spring evening in Athens, a few years ago. The Greeks make this dish, Gigantes Plaki, with huge white beans called fassolia gigantes. If they are impossible to get hold of, buy the largest butter beans you can find. It is not difficult to prepare. Beans are nutritious, protein–packed and very satisfying too, with useful amounts of folic acid and other vitamins and minerals.

Dill is a delicious herb to use as the flavour makes for a really yummy marriage with the beans, but oregano (use Greek rigani if you can) with thyme and parsley also work well.

Ingredients

250g / 8oz dried butter beans
500g / 1 lb just ripe tomatoes or 400g can chopped tomatoes or passata
1 medium onion
1 large clove garlic
1 stick celery (optional)
1 small carrot (optional)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
½ tablespoon of tomato puree
salt and black pepper
1 handful of chopped dill, or ½ tsp dried thyme and 1tsp dried oregano plus
2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley

Preparation

(1) Soak the beans preferably overnight, or for at least 8 hours. Drain them and put them in a large saucepan. Add cold water and boil the beans for 30 to 45 minutes until they are soft, but not so soft that they break up, then drain them.

(2) Remove the skins if using fresh tomatoes. Cover with boiling water for 1 minute, immediately cool them under cold, running water, then peel off the skin and roughly chop the flesh.

(3) Chop the onions and garlic finely, place in a large casserole and sauté them until golden, while stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the optional finely chopped carrots, keep stirring, then add the chopped dill or dried herbs and mix well before adding the tomatoes. Stir in the tomato purée. Season with salt and black pepper and cook on a low heat for about 30 minutes until the sauce thickens.

(4) Pour the drained beans into the sauce and mix well. If using parsley, add it now. Place the uncovered casserole in a preheated oven at 180 C (350 F) for 45 minutes. The top should be crisp but not too dry. Alternatively, cover it and leave to cook on the hob for a further 15 minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally.

Myrisa Luke

This quantity serves 4 people and this dish can be enjoyed in many different ways; on its own, served as one of several dishes or meze, as a side dish with meat dishes, tucked into a pocket of toasted pitta bread or even as Giants on Toast instead of the usual Beans on Toast. You will keep coming back for more…

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