Strouthkiopitta

I have had a bed of bladder campion (known here as 'strouthkia', in Crete as 'agriopoupoula' and widely used in Italian cooking as 'stridoli') in the garden for about three years. After the first season– being a 'good' organic gardener and attempting to follow a system of crop rotation – I tried to get rid of it . I cut it and dug it and mulched over it, and it just kept coming back... So I shrugged and encouraged it and now actively enjoy it pretty much year-round.

For Easter Sunday and Monday, we generally go to Bill and Sil's house for lunch with Sil's family and various other assorted friends and relatives. Yesterday my offering was Panna Cotta which somehow failed to set (“Ok, so it's just Panna,” I told the company. “Use it as sauce on the chocolate cake!”) Nobody seemed to mind and it tasted good, particularly with the accompaniment of Irish Coffee Sauce from Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course.

Today, bearing in mind that I had harvested a basket of campion yesterday, I decided to make a 'Strouthkiopitta', or pie with strouthkia. This is not a traditional Cypriot dish – Cypriots usually take their strouthkia fried with eggs – but it has become a favourite with Best Beloved and me, and is simple and extremely nutritious. The only tedious part is the stripping of the leaves from the fibrous stems, and I had done that yesterday.

Today all I had to do was wash the greens, blanch them quickly, and refresh them with cold water before preparing the pie. The amount of anari (soft mild cheese that roughly corresponds to Italian ricotta) is variable depending on your preference of the greens to cream ratio – I crumbled in half a kilo of commercial Keses brand, a sheep and goat mix. If I had my druthers, I'd use Auntie Maroulla's homemade, but it doesn't come my way very often, and BB generally eats it as soon as he spots it, so no luck there. To the greens and cheese, I added the grated zest of a lemon, about a quarter of a grated nutmeg, and salt and pepper, and squinched them all together with my hands until they were well mixed.

Usually I use phyllo (though I haven't got around to making my own with the recipe from blogging friend Ivy Liacopoulou's excellent Cypriot food-blog Mint, Cinnamon, and Blossom Water), but the phyllo in my fridge had been there for so long that it was brittle and out of the question. Mili came to the rescue with two sheets of defrosted puff pastry. Butter the dish, line it with pastry, add the filling, put the pastry cover on top, brush with egg, sprinkle with sesame and bake for forty minutes at 180C (350F). Hey Presto, Asproulla's Strouthkiopitta!

I took it up to Bill and Sil's, still hot, arriving just as everyone was passing along the buffet and filling their plates. Interestingly, Mili also brought something with strouthkia, but hers was more on the lines of a Spanish tortilla and included eggs, onions, and potatoes. I found it a little heavy, and because she hadn't blanched the greens, a little bitter. Cypriots like their greens bitter, though, so it had a more 'traditional' taste and probably appealed more to the local palate.

About half of mine came back, so there's plenty for dinner tonight or lunch tomorrow.

Interestingly enough, while searching for internet information on campion, I found that in Canada, it's considered an invasive species!

Summer Lunches

My sister Ruth is here. She usually arrives this time of the year for a week or two, and it's always good to see her. She has lived in Baltimore, on the east coast of the US, for the last thirty-one years, but has a small flat in Chinchon just outside Madrid where she spends the early summer before visiting us in June then spending some time with our older brother on the west coast of Ireland.

She comes bearing family news – of all of us far-flung siblings, Ruth is the only one who keeps in touch with everyone, ideas to keep the Little Ones entertained during the increasingly hot days, and a light vegetarian habit that gets me eating the way that I prefer to.

“You must give me the recipe for this talatouri (as the Cypriots call tzatziki),” she said as we sat down a little after noon today surrounded by bowls and dishes containing the hummous and talatouri that I had just made, the beetroot that I had pickled according to my Greek and Cypriot food blog friend Ivy's recipe (beetroots roasted until soft then peeled and preserved in half-and-half balsamic and red-wine vinegar and a little salt), and the sliced tomato and cucumber that sat dewily on a small plate.

So I did. It's not difficult, and it's certainly tasty – given extra zing by the garlic that I had pulled out of the earth only last night and the cucumbers just plucked from the vine: take half a kilo of strained yoghurt and empty it into a bowl (glass looks nice, or a pretty dark, glossy blue). Grate two cucumbers and squeeze out the excess water. Add them, and a tablespoon of dried mint, to the yoghurt. Finely mince some garlic (I used about a quarter of a clove), add a small glug of olive oil, and a few twists of the salt grinder. Mix well and taste. If you like it, it's good. If not, add what's missing – a little more garlic or salt, probably.

I heated some Paphos pitta-breads – much fluffier than those found in other parts of Cyprus – and that was lunch. Yesterday we had some garden zucchinis fried with scrambled eggs (take two medium zucchinis and slice them finely with a sharp knife or mandoline, fry them in butter until they colour. Meanwhile, break four eggs in a bowl and beat them with a little milk. When the zucchinis are slightly brown, add the eggs and let them all scramble softly together with a few twists of the salt and pepper grinder. Serve hot.) which went beautifully with a village salad of tomato, cucumber, and pepper chunks sprinkled with crumbled feta and a scattering of oregano leaves.

In a little while I will go out the the garden and pick parsley for Best Beloved to take to Nicosia. Somewhat anaemic because of his Thalassaemia gene, he craves parsley, and will devour taboulleh, the Lebanese salad made with mint, parsley, bulghur wheat, and tomato, by the bucket. I usually make him some on Monday morning, and tomorrow will make enough for us to enjoy as well.

I can't wait for the aubergines to be ready with their endless possibilities for dips, salads, and fritters.

February Weather

For the last four days, we have seen little sunshine. Saturday was hazy. Sunday, dark and brooding. “Please put the tractoui – the rotivater – through the vegetable patch,” I urged Best Beloved. “I really hope that it will rain, but if it does, I can do no work for at least a week and if the earth isn't turned we'll lose a lot of time on the spring crops.”

On Sunday morning he did the vegetable patch, and we finished pruning the vines and the trees in the field. Then he put the tractor through the field, as well, turning under the newly sprouted weeds that had given the lanes between the trees a soft dusting of green. He did the olive grove, too, and we started pruning the long suckers that have grown from the trunks and branches that we cut back so radically last year.

Usually we start pruning at this time. This year, because of the unseasonably warm winter, we are struggling to finish before the trees blossom, and as I cut the apple branches, sap bled from them. Some of them had started blossoming already – although they are usually a week or two behind the peaches and nectarines which have yet to break into bud. “The weather's going bananas this year, Manamou!” Best Beloved called from his seat on the tractor.

I cut some apple branches to take into the house so that we can have blossom on the table. The almonds are already out, a pink and white veil floating over the hillsides.

On Sunday night, the wind woke me as it screamed around the house. In the morning, it was still blowing – from the east – heavy with dust, and warm. A grey haze covered everything.

The wind blew throughout Monday. In the Middle East, this wind is called the khamsin, and is said to drive people crazy. When I lived in Israel I heard that a man can be forgiven the murder of his wife after seven days of khamsin (but could a woman be forgiven the murder of her husband? I wondered.)

Last night the wind backed and became chilly. I had just snuggled into my down duvet, slightly muzzy from a glass of wine, when it hurled handfuls of huge water drops against the side of the house, and one of the french doors upstairs slammed. A white flash lit the sky, followed at once by an infernal crack of thunder

I pulled on my dressing gown. The hall light snapped on as Alex threw open his door to see what was happening and if I needed help. We raced up to the sitting room and wrestled the blowing door shut, then I opened the front door to check the car windows. Within seconds, my hair was plastered to my head.

Throughout the night the storm woke me intermittently, but I snuggled deeper into the down quilt. I knew that today there would be no work in the field. There will be no work in the field for at least a week: I am free to plan, to order seeds. To buy another fifty metres of twenty-millimetre hose and six sprinklers for the new lines that I will put in when the earth becomes workable again.

In a lull between showers this morning I went out to the back verandah and looked toward the mountains. The air had an edge, the brittle bite of snow. Chains will be needed above Platres for the next week.

The rain is still falling. On our fields and above them. In the hills, into the dam. We need more, much more to see us through the summer without water rationing. But for now this is what we have, and we are grateful.