Metsovas - Wild Mediterranean

I grew up wild.

When I was just three years old, my beloved grandfather, Constantine, decided it was time for me to learn how to fish. My family and I were visiting my paternal grandparents at their cottage in the ancient village of Methana, on the southern Peloponnese Greek peninsula made up of steep, rocky slopes. He whisked me off in his kaiki, one of the brightly colored traditional fishing boats found in the Mediterranean waters surrounding the Greek Islands. We finally stopped at one of his lucky fishing spots, where he showed me his favorite maneuvers, using just a simple pole. I was so thrilled when the first little fish landed on my line. My grandfather helped me pull the flipping, shiny guy into the boat.

Back at my grandparents house, my grandfather introduced me to the sometimes messy reality of wild food. Looking rather pleased with myself, I held the gutted, raw fish as he snapped a photo. It was a proud moment for him, too. He was teaching me how to harvest and prepare food that came directly from the sea surrounding us, the same way hed been taught by his mother and father, and they had been by theirs. Id solidified my bond with nature, and I embraced a pastime that had been practiced in this part of the world for centuries. Somehow I think I sensed the importance of this eventthat Id completed one of the critical first rites of growing up the Wild Mediterranean way, or a way of living thats rooted deeply in age-old tradition, our natural surroundings, and the close-knit bond of a community.

Looking back, it occurs to me that many of my early memories involve food in some way. In my grandparents sun-bathed hamlet, the villagers threw huge parties known as panagiria in the center of their small towns each spring and summeropen-air events filled with great food, local wine, and music to entice people of every age to take part in the customary Greek dances. The men would roast lambs and chickens on huge fire spits, and the women would make their specialty dishes from the bountiful produce of the season, such as spinach and feta pies, yemista (stuffed vegetables), and horiatiki (village salad) served with psomi (stone-baked bread). I recall tables laden with desserts, from honey-laced baklava to custard-filled galaktoboureko to mounds of curiously fluffy-yet-crunchy koulourakia, Greek Easter cookies.

Beyond the food, there was real connection among the people. These villagers shared everything from the joy of birth to the grief of death. They delighted in the wildness of the landscape that surrounded them and spent time walking and hiking the volcanic hills, fishing and swimming in the blue waters. Nearly everyone kept a garden and tended olive and citrus trees, pressing their own oil and juices. These happy pursuits never stopped, even in old age.

My parents carried this way of life with them when they settled in southern California. As a result, I was always a little different from other kids. If youve seen the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, then youve got some idea. Few California girls were named Stellaat least not in the mid-1990sand my parents had strong ideas of how a young woman should be raised: knee-length (or longer) dresses and no makeup (although my mom did slip me some lip gloss behind my fathers back). My brother and I were not allowed to stay indoors and watch TV when it was sunny outside, which in southern California was pretty much all the time. Invariably, our parents shooed us outside to play, and encouraged us to run, swim, climb trees, and explore on our own. After all, thats how they were raised.

They carried on other traditions in California, too. When my fathers friends and family moved from Athens to the US, he emulated the big village parties by inviting everyone to our house for huge feasts. These boisterous affairs often went on late into the night as dozens of cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors would descend with Mediterranean specialties. Only the music changed. In addition to Greek standards, my parents played everything from Michael Jackson to classic rock n roll. The rest of the revelry remained the same: They would drink wine, sing loudly, dance with abandon, and talk for hours. But above all, they would eatlamb roasted with oregano and potatoes, a medley of bright peppers sprinkled with feta, stuffed grape leaves. One of my favorite dishes was briam, perfectly ripe seasonal vegetables baked in olive oil. Its a simple-sounding dish, but it takes skill to get just right.

Our everyday cooking also illustrated my familys Mediterranean ways. My mother balked at packaged fare, and fast food was out of the question. We ate dishes such as braised pastured meats slowly cooked in earthenware, beans baked with tomatoes and herbs, and stews made according to season. She packed moussaka for school lunch. Longing for a taste of home, my mother continued to make some of the hearty specialty dishes for my father, even if it required ingenuity on her part to find the right ingredients. Lets just say my parents were among the few people in southern California who knew how to source a whole lamb when needed!