It was an autumn day and the Samaria Gorge was closed due to the rain in the previous days. We walked up from the turkish castle above Agia Roumeli. Five condors were cirkeling around in the sky. Then they started flying horizontically left and right breathtakingly close to us. I had never been so close to them before. It was an amazing experience.
More pictures here.
The first step in the process is to choose which honeycombs are at the right state and remove them from the apiary. We then use an electrical knife on the top of the honeycombs to melt away the protective wax layer and expose the honey. As the honey has been exposed, the honey can drip out of the combs if placed in the right angle. This however would be a very slow process , so instead the honey is extracted by centrifugal force and collected at the bottom of the machine.
For boureki (μπουρέκι) you need pumpkin, zucchini, potatoes and misithra. If you don’t have misithra you can choose a goat cheese from your area that could resemble it in taste.
Slice up your ingredients and mix them all together with salt, pepper, oregano, basil and a lot of fresh mint. Do not foget to use plenty of olive oil!
Place in a pan and pour some more misithra mixed with greek yogurt and bread crumbs over it.
Let it cook in a preheated oven at 200 Celcius for about an hour until the potatoes are soft and creamy.
Καλή όρεξη!
More pictures here.
*Misithra: creamy white goat cheese from the mountains of Chania.
Roussos Viglis was the guide, as always ready to answer any questions and prepared with many stories. When we reached Samaria village we had a pick nick with tomatoes, olives, graviera cheese, sea salt and rusk. The houses in the village look very old and abandoned but in fact they were inhabited untill 1962, when the national Park was created and all the locals had to leave the area. The renovated house that you see, is the Viglis family house and the sign on it explains a bit of its history. Here is a rough translation:
“This was Theodoros Viglis house and after his death (killed January 1897 in the batlle against the Tourkish occupation at Xilokamaria Nerokourou) it was passed along to his first cousin Roussos Viglis (our Roussos grandfather) that died in 1941.
In may 1941 the government of Greece along with the prime minister Emmanouel Tsouderos and the king George the second with his escorts were fleeing to Kairo through the gorge and stayed in this house. Fom here they composed their last message to the greek people urging them to continue the fight against the German occupation.”
Roussos explained that his father, Stavros Viglis didn’t like having the king in their house and was held back by his brothers as to not create a fight.
For more pictures here.
Fruit gathering from the garden and cooking lesson with Julianne and Dena.
We started early in the morning and went to grandfather’s house to collect figs and peaches. We also made a short inspection of the garden and the rest of the trees.The mango tree was doing well. Back in the kitchen we seared pork chops and let them cook in claypots with honey, wine and tomato sause as well as the fresh fruit we had gathered. As you can see in the pictures, the katsouna (traditional cretan walking stick) is a multitasker.
The trouth is that the second castle was much further up than my brother remembered. He had said that it has about the same distance as the first one but I can tell you right now he was mistaken. I panted up trying to keep up with him and as we couldn’t find it were we though it woud be, eventually I sat down and sent him on to check if he would find it soon. He called out to me five minutes later, so I got up and also reached it.
The view was definately rewarding! We were at an altitude of 540 m.
As we were walking downwards we had to be caredul not to twist an ancle or fall because it was quite steep and some rocks were unstable. We also had to hurry a bit because he sunset had reached us and we didnt want to be caught by the night up there!
More pictures here.
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