Moore-Pastides Patricia - Greek revival : cooking for life

COOKING FOR LIFE

Patricia Moore-Pastides

Foreword by Dimitrios Trichopoulos

With Photographs by Keith McGraw

The University of South Carolina Press

2010 University of South Carolina

Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2010
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2013

www.sc.edu/uscpress

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:

Moore-Pastides, Patricia.

Greek revival: cooking for life / Patricia Moore-Pastides ; foreword by Dimitrios Trichopoulos ; with photographs by Keith McGraw.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57003-939-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Cookery, Greek. 2. NutritionGreece. 3. DietGreece. I. Title.

TX723.5.G8M67 2010

641.59495dc22 2010008270

ISBN 978-1-61117-208-9 (ebook)

In gratitude to my husband, Harris, and to our parents:

Jean Coleman Moore, John Francis Moore, Anastasia Theodoulou Pastides, and Andreas Pastides. Their loving hands prepared a lifetime of meals, and their hearts created homes that were filled with dreams for us.

Yogurt Parfaits with Blueberries and Lemon Curd,

Dimitrios Trichopoulos

When Patricia Moore-Pastides asked me whether I would be willing to write a foreword for her Greek Revival: Cooking for Life, I did not hesitateeven though I had not, at the time, read the book. After all, I knew from her previous work and our long acquaintance that she is a talented writer, a person of sharp intellect and, more important, sensitivity and compulsion to perfection. I also felt reasonably qualified in spite of my very limited expertise in cooking. I have lived for more than forty-five years in Greece, a cradle of the traditional Mediterranean diet (and another twenty-five in the multiethnic United States, allowing for a sound control group in culinary experiences). I am also an epidemiologist, serving the discipline that documented the beneficial health effects of the traditional Mediterranean diet. Finally I have been married for more than forty years to Antonia Trichopoulou, who has contributed more than any other scientist, save the legendary Ancel Keys, to the revival of the Mediterranean diet and the demonstration of its amazing health advantages. We Greeks are deeply convinced that the traditional Greek diet is the real prototype of the Mediterranean diet, although our neighbors in the olive-tree-growing areas of the Mediterranean, including Italians and Spaniards, think otherwiseperhaps with equal justification.

A door in Crete. Photograph by Harris Pastides

When I actually read the manuscript and found that it was even better than I thought it would be, I was faced with a problem. How can I assure the readers that I did not have a conflict of interest in my assessment of the book? These days, you cannot submit a paper for publication without assuring the editor of the journal that you do not have such a conflict. Read these few sentences from Patricias book to realize why the Greek diet is inherently superior to artificial diets developed on the basis of findings from scientific research, which impose restrictions on various foods, or categories of foods, or nutrients. And keep in mind that until the late 1960s, when adult Greeks kept to their traditional diet, they also had the longest life expectancy in the world, notwithstanding their miserable smoking habits and a health-care system that leaves much to be desired: Greeks do not traditionally eliminate foods from their diet. Because of the emphasis on plant-based foods, food is not weighed or measured. Because mainly healthful fats are eaten, grams of fat are not calculated. Because whole grains are consumed, carbohydrates are not shunned. How freeing it is that by following traditional food choices and patterns, eating does not have to be analyzed, but can simply be enjoyed. In my forty-year professional life in epidemiology, including nutritional epidemiology, I have never heard or read such a concise statement highlighting the advantages of the Greek diet, as it used to be when I was a child or a young man.

Science has documented that the traditional Greek diet is as health promoting as it is delicious. And Patricias book provides wonderful avenues to this diet through a collection of masterful recipes.

Patricia draws a parallel between the revival of classical Greek architecture in the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the current revival of the traditional Greek diet. Culture has many dimensions, and different people rank them in different ways. Patricias book honors a particular aspect of Greek culture and, just as important, provides a blueprint for cooking for lifea longer, healthier, and more enjoyable life.

Dimitrios Trichopoulos

There was an additional factor which particularly distinguished the Greeks from their neighbours, namely the extent to which they represented these forms of eating in poetry and literature from Homer through to late antiquity. In two different cities, Syracuse and Athens, they developed the dramatic form of comedy in whose discourse food was a major element.

JOHN WILKINS , The Boastful Chef:
The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy

Greeks eat like theres no tomorrow and build houses like theyll live forever.

COUSIN DINO , Larnanca, Cyprus, July 2006

Food has always been important in Greek culture. My interest in Greek food, and subsequently in writing this book, began when I married into a Greek family. My husband was the first to be born in America. Even his sister was born in Cyprus. When we were first married, his parents initial question on the phone never varied: What are you cooking for dinner? All the family events celebrated with his family were unique to me, and the new foods quickly became palatable.

Coriander, garlic, and lemon turned green olives, something Id never liked, into something I craved. Rock-hard green olives soaked in a giant Ball jar for weeks on my in-laws kitchen counter. The family was impatient for their debut on the table. Of course in Queens, my mother-in-law didnt pick them herself but purchased unripened olives in her Astoria neighborhood market.

And she hammered potatoes. Yes, with a carpenters hammer! How else could she create multiple surfaces to fry up golden brown and so crispy? Her homemade sausages were draped across an old stickball bat between two kitchen chairs to dry. The Easter rolls were filled with a salty cheese and sweet golden raisins, a curious combination. Food was certainly central in the Greek American family, and there was a lot in the cuisine to pique my interest.