Episode 5 Rick Stein: From Venice to Istanbul

I'm on a gastronomic journey

that started with the pleasingly simple food of Venice.

Can we have another? They are lovely.

And we'll end with the vibrant Byzantine dishes of Istanbul.

If you like, no problem.

Mm! I like!

Mm!

In between, the culinary melting pot of East meets West - Croatia.

This is my lunch.

Back to basics - Albania.

Ham, salt, beans, water.

Life!

And a place I know and love - Greece.

What would I do with them?

Well, I'd put them on a barbecue. What would you do with them?

Fabulous dishes from the mountains to the sea.

Who could ask for anything more?

Every day on this journey, I think how blooming lucky I am

driving through fabulous countryside in search of good things to eat.

And in Greece, I'm starting to feel really at home.

It's just getting better and better, really.

Well, in northern Greece, Yanina, the mountains, the freshwater fish,

some of it was nice.

I didn't really like the frogs.

But I do remember going up into a mountain village

and having a horta pie.

A filo pastry pie. I particularly loved that.

And a chicken pie.

But then it's to southern Greece.

And, of course, coming out of those northern mountains,

yes, it's Greece, but this is the Greece that I love and remember.

And it's all about vegetables.

I sort of suddenly realised

the Greeks are really, really vegetable cooks.

But the meat is sort of only reserved for high days and holidays.

It's about those tomatoes, those aubergines, those peppers,

loads of olive oil, loads of onions, loads of garlic.

And finally, what I haven't had yet

but I'm really, really desperate for

is some red mullet.

So, the more I travel south,

the closer I get to the Greece of Homer,

the stuff I remembered from school.

The Spartans, brigands, pirates

and dreadful vendettas, too.

The Southern Peloponnese is made of two regions,

Messinia on the west

and the famous Laconia,

where the word laconic comes from.

What I'm looking for on the sat nav is Neapoli in Laconia.

Thinking of Laconia, so often in Greece you pass a place name

and you think, "I know that in some way."

Laconia - laconic.

The capital of Laconia is Sparti - Sparta.

And in ancient times,

Philip of Macedonia sent a message to the king of the Spartans,

"If I capture Sparti,

"I will crush every stone."

The reply was, "If."

Laconic.

So, for laconic, think Clint Eastwood.

This is the town of Pilos on the Bay of Navarino.

Never been here before,

but I know and I can tell instantly

that I'm going to like it.

Simply because it just happens to be, well, like everyday Greece.

Food, of course, is the reason for my journey.

But I'm beginning to realise that it's rather a good thing

to find places along the way

that I might like to come back to one day.

And I think this could be one.

I know I've said this before,

but I love our supermarkets back home.

But there's nothing to beat this.

As a cook, it's like a sort of frame.

I like the way the shop is with this arch,

a frame of what do you want to cook today?

And all those leaves at the back,

they boil those and serve them with salt and olive oil.

There's one there called vlita, which I've only just discovered.

And that, boiling in water, olive oil, lemon juice,

that's Greece to me.

I just love a little vista like this.

It gets me very, very excited.

I'll stick my neck out

and say that hardly any British holiday-makers

will order this in a restaurant.

But why not?

Fresh wild greens from the fields and hedgerows.

In the early morning and the evenings,

you usually see old people out with their carrier bags

because they know how jolly good this is for you.

Basically, you boil them

and then you stick them in very cold water

to stop them cooking any longer.

These greens are always eaten cold.

Add oil, Kalamata, one of the best in the world, nutty and sweet,

and then lemon, lemon juice.

No wonder these old people live for over 100.

Finally, salt and pepper and there's a dish.

It's like a pleasing health cure on a plate.

This vlita is absolutely delicious.

It's sort of sad, really, because we don't do the same thing back home.

But you could.

I was sort of thinking you could use rocket or spinach or Swiss chard.

And for a bit of bitterness, you could use dandelion leaves.

Even nettles.

-Nettles?!

-Yeah, nettles.

Because, once you've boiled nettles,

they don't have the poison in them, the sting in them,

and they're actually, tasting this vlita,

I'm sort of thinking nettles.

It's the same sort of, erm, lovely...

How would you describe this?

Leafy.

Leafy-with-a-bit-of-attitude flavour.

One of the things I love doing,

I think any chef loves doing,

is looking at boats to see what they've caught.

I think, really, this is where cooking starts.

And in the restaurant where I was tasting those wild greens,

the chef sort of insisted that he'd make me the local fish stew,

made with whatever the fishermen had caught.

Well, I liked that, because that's the very essence of fish cookery -

use what's here and now.

And as you'd expect, lots of vegetables.

Carrots, onions, parsley, tomatoes, potatoes in olive oil.

Lots of olive oil.

That's the base.

And just water.

Actually, when I made it, I added a bit of ouzo.

But here, just water and then saffron.

He's not going to use all of this.

He uses mayatiko -

I had to look that one up, because we don't get it at home -

red mullet

and chunks of whitefish,

bream, silver bream,

prawns and that'll do.

It's not an expensive dish

and this will certainly feed about four people.

I'm not sure whether this is actually going to end up

as a fish stew or a fish soup.

But either way,

I tend to judge fish restaurants

on the quality of either stew or soup

and I found myself asking him,

"Is there any wine in it?

"Any ouzo in it? Perhaps some brandy in it?"

And that's because I've become so used to fish stews

being something more than they were ever intended to be.

I mean, they were just stews that the fishermen made

from the fish that they took home, because they couldn't sell it.

I mean, bouillabaisse started like that.

And that's been elevated now into the most fantastical flavours

and if you try making something

that approximated to what it used to be like,

people say, "That's not bouillabaisse."

So, to taste...

Oh, it's delish!

-Really?

-Really nice.

Mm!

-You can tell you've used really good fish.

-Mm-hm.

It's a lovely, simple fish stew.

Just what I expected.

Cheers! Yamas!

Lovely.

I was just thinking,

Greece is a really good country for thinking.

It's warm and there's lovely walks like this along beaches like this.

And I was also thinking, if this was Italy,

would this beach look like this?

Would it have this informality,

with just a few Greeks sitting in deckchairs?

No!

For a start, the beach would have been swept.

It would be filled with deckchair concessions.

There'd be pizza and pasta shacks at the back

and it would cost you lots of euros to get anywhere near the water.

This is the famous Bay of Navarino.

The very last sea battle under sail

happened here nearly 200 years ago.

Through these straits sailed 22 ships -

British, French and Russian.

And inside the bay

were nearly 70 ships and boats from the Ottoman Empire.

The subject on hand was peace.

The Ottomans were slaughtering the Greeks

and all of Europe wanted it to stop.

And so the British were here to look for a peaceful solution.

However, it's said the Ottomans took a pot shot at a British ship...

..and then all hell broke loose.

It finished with the sinking of the entire Ottoman fleet

and the loss of their sailors.

Admiral Codrington, the leader of the peaceful mission,

got a huge telling-off

by the politicians and the hierarchy back at home.

After all, he was supposed to be a peace envoy.

But without doubt, his actions, not that they would be copied today,

shortened the war with the Ottomans and made Greek independence viable.

The Greeks really loved Admiral Codrington.

Notice, he's got pride of place.

The other two, the French and the Russian, are just round the back.

For some reason, I'm in a serious holiday mood.

I think it's Greece, really.

And this farm-cum-taverna run by Nakos and his wife Georgia

is just a few miles from Pilos.

You'd never find it.

But I think it's what Greek dreams are made of -

good food straight from the farm,

home-made wine and a fabulous setting.

Now this, this rooster, is the reason I'm here.

Because there's a famous dish with chicken and pasta

that I've heard about but never tasted.

The basic rule here in this taverna

is that if it's not reared and grown here,

it's not on the menu.

I couldn't help noticing wandering around the back of the taverna

this fabulous garden, kitchen garden, I suppose.

But just looking at it and there's loads of tomatoes growing,

loads of beans, lots of onions,

courgettes over there, aubergines over there.

And I was thinking this, actually,

is producing vegetables for the taverna.

It's not like some of our trendy places back home

with these very, very pretty herb gardens with a few vegetables.

Is that for the kitchen

or is it for the journalists?

You can just tell by the look of this,

this chicken is straight from the farmyard.

That is how it's always been on farms.

Let's face it, you're not going to kill a chicken

and keep it in a bag for a couple of days.

No, it's straight in the pot.

Look at that skin, golden and fatty.

Now, I've just learnt an important culinary process in Greece,

which is called kapama, this dish.

Basically it just means taking the rooster, a jointed rooster,

and frying it in lots of olive oil.

And I mean lots.

And then adding tomato sauce and cinnamon

and simmering it until all's cooked.

Now, kapama means heavy.

And I think it is going to be heavy.

But they say it also means extremely delicious.

And they serve it with a tiny pasta,

which is just broken up pasta called hilopites.

And the combination I know,

because I've had it many times here, is wonderful.

I love this pasta hilopites.

Little squares of egg pasta made in the summer months,

with whole-wheat flour mixed with milk

and dried for use in the winter.

It's lovely.

Just this in a well-made stock

and sprinkled with some mizithra cheese.

It's a real delight.

People say, "Oh, Greek food, it's too simple, it's too easy."

But they miss the point

when it's made with really good ingredients like this.

Why would you want anything more complicated?

It just works.

By any standards, this was top-class food.

The place was just right.

And I've always said that I much prefer lunch to dinner

any day of the week.

A long lunch with friends,

good wine and lovely food

is one of the great reasons why we're put on this earth.

I'm sure about that.

-So what do you think?

-I love this.

It's really good. I love the...

I mean, it's just one of those sort of like

big, yummy dishes the Greeks do so well.

Yamas! Yamas! Yamas!

Yamas! Yamas! Yamas! Yamas! Yamas!

I do think that wine goes really well with it.

Don't you?

I've got a friend called Colin who wants your job.

He wants my job?

Yeah, he says you're always going on your holidays.

On my holidays?

Really? Does it look like that?

Eating, drinking wine, meeting great people along the way,

having a fabulous time in filming land.

Yes, I suppose I am!

Yamas! Yamas! Yamas!

So now it's time to cook in my lovely kitchen

on the island of Symi.

A dish that takes me back to when I was in my 20s.

I remember it was particularly soothing first thing in the morning,

after a heavy night on the retsina.

This is galaktoboureko.

So I'm making galaktoboureko,

which is one of the most famous Greek puddings ever.

And, basically, it's a baked semolina custard

wrapped in crisp filo pastry.

And it is absolutely delicious.

And I actually cooked it for some friends of mine in Sydney

and it was the star of the evening.

I'm going to whip up the yolks with sugar and a bit of vanilla

and then I'm going to fold in the whipped-up whites later,

to give a lovely souffle-like semolina custard.

And off we go...

And what I'm looking to do here

is to get a sort of white and fluffy look to my egg yolks and sugar.

So that will take about five minutes.

That's the right consistency now.

I'm going to add my semolina

and that just thickens the whole custard up and gives it body.

So in that goes.

And now a couple of ladlefuls of warm milk.

And I'm now going to add that back into the milk

and start cooking my custard until it all starts to thicken.

That's really ready to go now.

Just take that off the heat.

Now I'm just going to whisk up some egg whites to fold into it.

When this comes out of the oven, it will be puffed up like a souffle.

And now to just fold in the egg whites...

Galaktoboureko means custard pie.

And what a difference between the traditional British custard pie,

which I like, don't get me wrong,

and the Greek.

It's light and fluffy.

Now, fold in the edges of the filo pastry.

This will give it a really satisfying crunch

to that soft, sweet centre.

I know I've said this before,

but when it comes to pies,

the Greeks really know what they're doing.

Just put plenty of butter on the top,

so you get a nice, lovely glaze when it comes out of the oven.

And we can go straight into the oven with that.

It'll probably take about 40, 45 minutes.

It goes extremely well with orange syrup.

Basically, dissolve about 400 grams of caster sugar in 200ml of water

and heat.

Add the zest of three oranges

and the juice of half a lemon.

All you need now are thin slices of orange to make it look sublime.

And that's it.

The pie by now is cooked

and the semolina custard has a healthy wobble to it.

So that needs to cool until set.

There you have it.

It's a fab dish.

The number one pudding throughout Greece.

"Nostimo," as they say here.

Or at home, "Yummo!"

In the mountains above Pilos there's a taverna.

It's really famous,

not only for food,

but for the music.

It's where you can eat and drink and dance with abandon.

It's the sort of place where, if you're like me,

you discover it on the final night of your holiday and you think,

"Why didn't we know about this earlier?"

Like the best places, it's family-run

and the food is rustic.

To me, it's the sort of food you really want to eat on holiday.

Stuffed courgette flowers with tomato sauce.

Greek meatballs and chips.

Stifado, that's a sort of Greek beef stew.

Fried cheese called saganaki.

Stuffed courgette flowers again,

stuffed with minced spicy pork.

Oh, and this lovely scrambled egg dish with fresh tomatoes and pork.

It's called kayana.

It's very popular.

Pork and chips.

The Greeks do the best chips in the world.

Greek salads.

Well, it wouldn't be Greece without a Greek salad.

And vegetables cooked in a wood-fired oven.

Souvlaki.

Now this kebab brings me back to the first time I ever had Greek food.

Pancakes with mizithra cheese.

A classic local dish

in which you have about five pancakes

layered with this astringent cheese like a cake.

Or a lovely pork chop.

That's got to be for the film crew, because they're so adventurous!

The evening's just warming up,

but I came here hours ago

because I wanted to see how they made this famous lamb dish.

So I met up with Panayotis, who runs the place.

-Yamas!

-Yamas!

-Cheers!

-Cheers!

-Crikey!

-OK...

It's very nice wine.

So what are you cooking?

OK, today we cook lamb with potatoes in the oven.

-And in the wood oven?

-Yes. OK?

Let's begin.

-Shall we start?

-Yeah.

I'm enjoying this. There's nothing to it.

What a wonderful alternative to a bit of barbecuing, really.

Just some potatoes, some lamb, a bit of oregano, salt, pepper,

olive oil, lemon juice.

Done, dusted, in the oven.

I have to admit that this is one of those dishes

I took away with me and cooked back in Cornwall.

Why? Because it's really easy and wonderfully tasty.

You can use a shoulder of lamb or, indeed, thick lamb chops.

But the lamb must cook slowly and be ready

without burning the potatoes.

Important points...

Don't stint on the olive oil, lemon juice or oregano.

Don't forget the rosemary and garlic - about four cloves.

And use plenty of seasoning.

It's a no-trouble dish.

Two hours in the oven.

It's delicious.

You know, people get a bit sort of like,

"Oh, we love Greece, but the food..."

I think, what?! What do you mean, "The food..."?

You know?

It's not Thailand, it's not Italy.

It's Greece!

And the food is appropriate to Greece

and once you get into the sort of frame of Greece,

it's the best food ever.

THEY SING IN GREEK

I think this would make a jolly good advertisement

for our National Health Service.

Here we are, men all in our 60s, leaping around like spring lambs.

The tall man, the better dancer, is an olive farmer.

I'm sure it's the olive oil that keeps his knees going.

That, a healthy diet of fish and the odd glass of wine...

Yes, it's the much-talked-about Rick Stein diet!

PLATES SMASH ON THE GROUND

Well done, Ricky!

Cheers...!

There's one dish I saw being cooked in that taverna

which is served from the poshest hotel restaurants

to the little taverna next door to the bus station.

It's so popular and it's...

cheese saganaki.

First thing to do is to coat the cheese in semolina.

This, as you're probably thinking,

is not a terribly difficult thing to cook.

The accompaniment I best like with this fried cheese

is honey and black sesame seeds and a little bit of oregano, of course.

So I've got my pan hot here. Just add some olive oil.

I think the secret with cooking the kefalotiri

is not to cook it too much.

So it's a sort of lovely combination

of slightly molten cheese on the outside

and firmer cheese inside.

And you get this lovely satisfying combination.

So those are just about done.

So they go just straight into my serving dish.

And now to heat up some honey.

Greek honey is quite wonderful.

A revelation.

Honey and Greek yoghurt, the best breakfast there is.

They always seem to do it with black sesame seeds,

but it's just very nice with ordinary sesame seeds, too.

I just think the black ones

look very spectacular on top of the cheese.

I don't know why,

but it's just a very satisfying combination of flavours.

I've only come across this dish on this trip.

I mean, I don't remember it in the early days in the '70s in Greece.

I'm finishing off with a bit of oregano.

Now, actually, the way it's most often served is char-grilled.

But I just think it's much better fried like this.

It's delish.

The cheese to use is kefalotiri or halloumi.

The Taygetos Mountains made the southern border

of the famous Spartan empire.

It was like a wall.

Whoever fancied attacking Sparti from the south

had to get over this lot.

Full of chasms, ravines,

with nigh-on impenetrable passes.

CAR HORN BLARES

And if you were mad enough,

you then have to face the deadliest fighting force on earth,

the Spartans.

Men of few words, who were trained in the art of battle since infancy.

While much of Greece had quite a sophisticated diet,

from what I've heard,

most of the Spartan soldiers ate black broth called melas zomos.

It was made with salt, vinegar, pigs' legs and blood.

Lots of blood.

By all accounts, it was horrible.

But then again, it was a challenge.

It wasn't for the weak-spirited.

In the words of an Italian gourmand,

"No wonder they didn't fear death after eating this awful soup!"

I'm going to the Byzantine city of Mystras,

built overlooking the Plain of Sparta,

on the side of the Taygetos Mountains.

It was often mistaken for Sparta,

although it was built a mere 1,400 years

after the Spartans had been and gone.

It was a thriving place to do business,

famous for silk and mulberry trees.

Sometimes I find ruins a bit hard to imagine what it was all like before.

But here at Mystras, I get it.

I mean, this was the second most important Byzantine city

in the empire after Constantinople.

And there was 40,000 people that lived here.

And just walking round the streets, you get that sense of it.

And also, for me, a sense of the food

and sort of almost an idea of the smell of cooking.

And the smell of cooking to me would be very much imbued with spice,

because the Byzantines brought spice from the Eastern world

into places like Mystras and Constantinople.

And funny enough, this morning I was just coming here,

ordered a coffee,

there was some cinnamon straight in the coffee.

I thought, "Well, that's what it's all about."

The other thing, of course,

the Byzantines introduced a certain item into their cooking

which hitherto had not been used because,

in the western part of Christianity,

they regarded it as a symbol of the devil

because it represented a trident.

Yes, the fork!

For centuries, in Britain, too,

the fork was regarded with great scorn.

People ate with sharp daggers and their bare hands

and the fork was deemed far too fancy and not manly enough.

Well, this should be fun.

The local gastronomic society have invited me for dinner.

And the theme is going to be Byzantine food,

so I'm really looking forward to it.

It was the local gastronomic society of Preveza,

a town further north, that invited me.

Its president and cook is Pavlos Alexandrou.

I'm looking forward to this food, I must say.

-Come inside.

-Thank you. Thank you.

Pavlos told me this is an authentic recipe

dating back nearly 1,000 years.

It's beef cooked with wine and some vinegar,

black pepper, sea salt...

..orange juice,

a lovely mixture of sweet and sour.

Cumin.

Lavender.

Yes, lavender.

And finally honey.

The dish is called beef oxymeli

and it reminds me of a lot of old English cooking.

And that, probably,

would have come back with the Crusaders from the East.

A mixture of sweet, savoury and spice.

And so it was time to eat.

There were other dishes there, too, apart from the beef.

There was rabbit fried and cooked with wine.

And kokoretsi,

that's the shepherds' dish made from grilled intestines from young lambs.

And bream with fennel,

covered with Greece's most famous sauce, avgolemono.

Egg and lemon, of course. That's lovely.

But you know it's a bit difficult because, as far as I knew,

no-one spoke any English.

And so it was quite hard for me to show my appreciation.

Fortunately, Nathalie,

one of the younger guests, spoke English.

Saved!

HE SPEAKS IN GREEK

What did you say?

He said,

"Well, thank you for coming here in Preveza for visiting us.

"And was it nice?

"Did you like it?"

I liked it very much.

OK, thank you.

What did you like?

Well, everything.

-But more than that...

-More specifical?

-Specifically?

-Yeah.

I liked the beef with the honey and the orange with the cumin in it.

Very Byzantine, I'd say that was.

Agvolemono. Can you pronounce...

Avgolemono.

Avgo lemono.

Oh, no, avgolemono.

Right. Egg and lemon.

And I loved the kokoretsi.

I didn't think I would, but I did.

I loved the rabbit. I loved the beans.

I loved the fish. Everything!

Everything!

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

-Yamas!

-Yamas!

-OK!

-OK.

-Yamas, yamas.

-Yamas.

This is a bit of hero worship for me,

because it's the home of Patrick Leigh Fermor.

He was an adventurer and a great travel writer.

As a young man, he walked the length of Europe to Istanbul.

He was also a hero in the true sense of the word.

His exploits in the Second World War were made into a film in the '50s

starring Dirk Bogarde.

It was a story of derring-do.

A young and dashing British officer kidnaps a German general.

Unheard of, but true.

Patrick Leigh Fermor is one of those Englishmen

who the Greeks take to their heart,

like Byron, like Admiral Codrington and Gerald Durrell.

The Greeks are like that.

But once you're their friend, you're their friend for ever.

Wow...

I've heard about his study,

but to come here is just fabulous.

I mean, my first feeling is like he's just sort of left

to go and buy something down in the village.

A bottle of ouzo or something.

I mean, I just love studies like this,

where everything's left as it was and you get such an impression

of what somebody is like by their books, more than anything else.

I mean, there we've got Deborah Devonshire,

his best friend.

They wrote to each other all the time.

And over there it says, "own books".

Oh, I like the look of that.

I mean, he was a man of prodigious intelligence, incredible memory.

He used to have dinner parties, large dinner parties.

He loved people,

loved talking, he drank quite a lot, smoked a lot.

And somebody told me, I'm sure this is going too far

but, at one dinner party,

he recited The Owl And The Pussycat

in Hindustani backwards.

That's the sort of man he was.

Oh, look, here we are...

Winnie The Pooh in Latin, of course.

Couldn't just be in English.

He's got laurel leaves and a toga on!

So what else have we got here?

Bruce Chatwin really, really got on well with him.

John Betjeman.

Two John Betjemans.

Jamaica Inn, very dear to my own heart.

I just get such a sense of him.

I mean, lovely just to see the books that were really special to him.

And I know I would have liked him.

This is Elpida, Patrick Leigh Fermor's housekeeper and cook.

And this is her famous moussaka.

You can't have a programme about Greek food without moussaka.

Elpida...

Did Patrick Leigh Fermor, did he like a moussaka?

He didn't like it at all.

But once I made it. I cook it without telling it to him.

And I made a pot for four and he ate it all

and then he asked me, "What was that? It was delicious."

And I said, "It was moussaka."

And he said, "Moussaka?! I hate moussaka!

"I have never eaten moussaka!

"But from now on, I will eat it from you."

And he asked me to cook it again.

Elpida told me her secret of a good authentic moussaka

is to fry all the vegetables in olive oil first.

That's potatoes, the aubergines and courgettes.

Put aside and let them cool and drain.

Now, the minced lamb, fried in onion and garlic.

She uses a good half dozen of these big, juicy tomatoes.

There's no water, just the juice of the tomatoes.

Lots of seasoning.

A cinnamon stick.

And a bay leaf.

To be honest, I've never had moussaka with potato before, but...

-Really?

-No, I never.

But it's really, moussaka to me, almost a vegetarian dish.

I know it's got lots of mince in it,

but it's really about these lovely Greek vegetables

cooked in olive oil.

-Don't you think?

-Yeah.

And also, I notice you really fry the veg first.

Yes, because it's a better taste.

It gives a better taste.

And is that the secret of a good moussaka?

Yeah, absolutely.

I thought so. I thought so.

And have you got any more, Elpida, secrets of a moussaka?

My secret is about the mincemeat.

I cook it only with fresh tomatoes and without water at all.

Without water?

I cook it only with the tomato juice.

Excuse me, but your shirt is wet.

Oh, blimey!

But it is blinking hot here. It really is.

I mean, I thought Mediterranean heat,

not like India when we were filming there, drenched in sweat.

But it is hot.

-Yeah. I'm like that as well.

-Oh, good on you.

I just get a bit embarrassed, really.

Because, you know, lots of presenters

have new shirts all the time

and it looks like they never sweat.

I just seem to spend all my time...

You can't do anything about it.

-It's the climate.

-It is the climate.

I like you.

So, I'm sure you know about layering the dish.

First of all, potatoes,

then a coating of minced lamb...

..aubergines...

..more mince...

..and finally courgettes.

Now, add the remainder of the mince on top.

This is followed by a very creamy bechamel sauce,

maybe 200 grams of butter and the same of flour.

Add more flour if necessary.

Put in about a litre and a half of full-fat milk.

You need lots of this sauce to be layered on top

to make it really creamy.

Whisk it until it's thick and smooth.

Turn off the heat,

because you don't want the three beaten eggs to scramble.

Season well with lots of pepper and salt

and then three-quarters of a teaspoon of nutmeg.

Once that's done, grate, if you can get it,

some graviera cheese.

It's a hard sheep's milk cheese, a bit like manchego.

Now then, how long in the oven, Elpida?

How long?

How about 20 minutes, half an hour?

-OK.

-Just to get brown on the top.

-We can wait.

-Yeah.

Finally, a little blessing of the grated graviera cheese.

And here it is in all its golden glory.

A good moussaka home-made

is a rare and many-splendored thing.

Well, I think you know what I'm going to say.

It's the best moussaka I've ever tasted. No question about it.

I think what I really love about it is it's so light.

It's just light as a feather.

I think this is making me very excited,

because what I want to say is people are quite rude about Greek food,

but they don't get to taste a moussaka like this.

I mean, this is seriously a world-class dish,

the way you've cooked it.

-I believe that.

-OK, well, cheers! Yamas!

Yamas!

By the way, what's your favourite English dish?

Chicken curry.

Chicken curry?

-Yes!

-I like it.

I don't particularly care for these road signs.

If I was on a camping holiday here,

I think it could well upset the missus.

I'm sure it's just a playful bit of target practice,

but it helps reinforce the feelings that this area

for hundreds, many, many hundreds of years,

was a land of brigands, pirates,

cut-throats and, by and large,

some extremely difficult but resilient people.

The Turks ruled Greece for centuries,

but they gave this area, the Mani, a wide berth.

I'm not taking my eyes off this infernal road.

I can't stand heights.

Down there somewhere at the bottom

is one of the most important places in Greek mythology.

It's the entrance to Hades, the gateway to hell.

I'm travelling with Rupert Smith, a classical scholar

and one of those Englishmen who relish morsels of Greek history

like a cormorant with a shoal of sprats.

I'm pretty glad this is a paved road, I must say,

because I'm not a great lover of hairy roads like this, but...

-It's a good view from this side of the car, I can tell you.

-Oh, I bet.

I'm sorry, but I'm enjoying being the other side.

God, that is so special.

It's pretty good, isn't it?

So this is somewhere not many tourists get to.

It's a village called Mundanistika.

Mundanistika?

The people of Mani mainly fought either between villages,

the various clan chieftains fighting each other,

or within villages,

hence each house having its own tower.

So, like, these are two neighbours.

They would be shooting at each other?

They could be, yeah, if they were having a feud, a vendetta.

The towers, pretty as they may be,

are an indication of what a vicious and violent place this was to live.

They were permanently fighting each other for this barren land.

You can see over here, tiny little terraces.

What's it worth fighting for?

Because that was all they had.

You know, they didn't have any lush meadows.

They just had these hillsides,

which they had to chop up into tiny terraces,

you know, just to support themselves.

And that's how life went on.

They'd stop occasionally, they would have a truce or tregua,

using the Italian word, for some reason,

when they needed to go and bring in the harvest

or if there was a funeral or a baptism or a marriage.

You know, life had to go on in that respect.

They had to feed themselves and marry each other and what have you.

In fact, there was one extraordinary case

where two families are fighting,

they were actually from different villages,

there was one family from the north fighting another in the south,

shooting at each other across a very narrow area

and one of the attackers saw a woman who was going back and forth.

A young woman, going back and forth,

in and out of the tower where the defenders were,

and he thought, "Cor, I like her."

And he said, "Right, stop! I want to have a truce.

"I want to marry that girl."

-And...

-I don't believe it!

They stopped,

they called the priest

and they were married right there, bang, in the middle of the battle.

And then they went back to shooting each other.

I've never been to a place like it.

It's like a ghost village.

Just looking into one of these houses...

Will it be a kitchen?

I don't know. But there are all the clues.

Mostly to the drudgery that was the women's work.

Harvesting the grains, crushing the olives, making the bread.

The men would be keeping lookout

and having the odd pot-shot from tower to tower.

Life, like the landscape, was as hard as it gets.

Why didn't they pack up

and go to Missolonghi or go to Athens or something?

I think they would say,

"Freedom is the answer."

They could live the way they wanted to live,

you know, not bothered by whoever was in charge, mainly the Ottomans.

When the Greek War of Independence came along,

they had their own rallying cry, separate from the rest of Greece.

The rest of Greece had a rallying cry, "Freedom or death!"

Whereas the people of Mani,

because they felt they were already free,

talked about, "Victory or death!"

So, you know, that was their view.

They were free. The rest of Greece was in chains.

It doesn't look like it, but in a way,

I'm sort of thinking of Cornwall now, really.

Because, in a way, Cornwall's like a peninsula

off the end of the rest of Britain,

and there's a certain sense of independence

and individuality about it.

Topographically, it's extremely similar.

If you carpeted this in sort of green and flowers,

you would have Cornwall.

Shall Trelawny live?

Shall Trelawny die?

There's 40,000 Cornishmen will know the reason why!

Victory or death!

Victory or death!

We spent a long time up in that almost deserted village.

And we met one of the only inhabitants,

who gave us some superb

wild mountain oregano to take home with us.

They say the generosity of the Maniots is second to none.

I've often found that, the harder the landscape,

the more generous the people are.

I honestly had no idea this beautiful place was here.

But for me, it cried out like a siren from the Odyssey,

"Come to me!

"I've got fresh sardines waiting for you!"

This is how I think of Greece.

Look at those little darlings straight from the grill.

A carafe of cold retsina and the inevitable Greek salad,

which I eat every day with great delight.

I was looking at what we call the call sheet,

which is what you have every day to see what's happening and it says,

"Travel through the Mani with Rupert

"talking about the village with the towers in it."

It was really interesting.

But then he just said,

"Actually, I had some very nice sardines

"at this place called Quail Bay."

-Is it Quail Bay?

-Port of the Quails, yeah.

And as soon as I heard fresh sardines, I thought,

"Hm, history is one thing.

"Fresh sardines is something totally different."

And I had in my mind all I wanted,

fresh sardines, Greek salad

and Greek chips.

Greeks make the best chips in the world.

I don't know whether it's the waxy potatoes or what they cook them in.

Always fresh.

They never taste as good back home.

Well, ours are all right, but...

Seriously, I'm in heaven.

And I want to cook now a dish that I think would certainly be recognised

by the people who tended those terraces

overlooking the sea many years ago.

So in my kitchen on the Island of Symi, let us begin...

That is gigantes stew.

Big beans with spinach and tomato.

So first of all, I've just got lots of olive oil,

because these dishes are characterised

by a great deal of olive oil,

in a pan with, first of all, some garlic and onion.

But the ingredient that I remember best about this stew,

which you find all over Greece, is wild oregano.

Rigani, as the Greeks name it.

Now you find this dish all over Greece.

But this one is a memory for me of the Mani.

And the smell of it...

When you look at the barrenness of that village

and you look at the vegetation around it...

And, in fact, the vegetation in much of the Mani, it's so barren.

You think, "How could anything grow there?" But it does.

So there we have the fried garlic and onions,

the oregano.

And next I'm going to add some paprika and tomato.

And a good teaspoon or so of tomato puree.

And now I'm just going to chop some tomatoes to go in there, too.

I first had this dish in Epirus in northern Greece

and it was lovely.

But the flavours really came alive for me

as my journey took me further south into guaranteed sunshine.

Sunshine really makes things taste better.

Locals collect wild herbs

the same way as they collect the wild greens or horta,

which goes very well with the giant butter beans.

But I'm opting for spinach here

because it's much more readily available at home.

Sometimes, gigantes comes with spinach, sometimes without.

But I'm doing it with spinach.

I'm just turning it over a little bit.

And it's very simple to cook.

You just let it wilt down in its own steam.

So that'll take about two or three minutes.

So that's really wilted down nicely.

Spinach like this is almost a sauce

and I know, in a lot of Indian dishes,

they use spinach just to thicken the sauce.

And that's really what's happening here, too.

So that's ready to go into my casserole.

But first of all, my gigantes,

my big butter beans,

which I've cooked for about an hour, an hour and a half,

at a very gentle pace, so they become tender, but don't break up.

And now for my spinach and tomato sauce.

Stir that in.

Now, I now need to put some more seasoning in,

because I didn't cook those beans in salted water.

So quite a lot of salt in there now.

Some pepper.

There we go. And now a bit more water.

It's a little bit dry.

But I want a really tight sauce when this all finishes.

And finally, some more olive oil.

Can't have enough olive oil in this dish.

Perfect, perfect dish for good-quality Greek olive oil.

Give it a final stir.

On goes the lid.

And now into a sort of low to medium oven

for, well...

..really almost as long as I like.

Time to go for a swim, at least.

A couple of thousand years ago,

there was a Roman poet called Martial,

who I would have got on terribly well with.

He said,

"If pale beans bubble for you in a red earthenware pots,

"you can oft decline the dinners of sumptuous hosts."

How true is that!

These Romans really knew their stuff.

There's nothing new gastronomically, except foam!

And that won't be around for long.

Now, some feta and parsley.

This is the town of Areopolis,

named after Ares, the god of war.

This is where the battle started for Greek independence.

These Maniots were as tough as old boots.

Petrobey, the head guy here,

took on the Turks and gave them a bloody nose.

It was like a bolt of electricity,

a signal throughout the whole of Greece.

But I declare today I've had quite enough history, thank you very much.

And I'm only interested in goat.

Cooked here by Maria, in the very heart of Areopolis,

an extremely agreeable town.

Well, I've just watched this being cooked.

Oh, it is so good!

People come from far and wide for this.

They call it young goat.

It seemed to me to be quite big for a young goat.

I thought it was lamb to start with, but it's not.

I suppose it's because I've been filming in India recently

and the goats are tiny.

These are serious Maniot goats with big, big muscles.

It's absolutely lovely.

And what Maria did first of all was just take a big,

well, I like to say a washing-up bowl,

and she had all the goat in there

and then she chopped lots of potato in there.

I just loved watching her doing that,

because it's not like a chef getting on the chopping board.

It's like a proper housewife doing it like that.

So she cut up, cubed lots of potato.

And then about three or four cloves of garlic in there, too.

And the next thing she did,

I couldn't see what she'd done to cook them,

but she took a whole plate of spring onions

and put those in there.

And then what I thought was leeks, but in fact it was green garlic,

it was like garlic shoots that she put in there, too.

Now, she already had the artichoke bottoms already prepared and cooked.

And so she added those in with the goat.

And now she started to make the marinade.

She started with lots of lemon juice, about 100ml.

And you could taste that in the potatoes, actually.

It comes through really pleasantly.

Next, she added about a tablespoon of tomato puree.

And then a couple of tablespoons of passata, tomato passata.

Then about a teaspoon of pepper

and then loads of salt.

The locals here are very keen on their Maniot salt.

It's sea salt and quite sort of moist

and they say it's saltier than any other salt.

And she used a lot of it.

I mean, I'd probably just go for a couple of teaspoons back home,

but I wouldn't quite get that sort of bang of saltiness.

So good.

And then she added mustard powder, about a tablespoon.

And then sugar.

Again, about a tablespoon.

And finally, for the marinade,

she added about 100ml of water

and just poured it over the potatoes in the artichokes.

And then got her hands in there and just turned it all over.

And the next thing she did I thought was fabulous.

She took a really large roasting tin and tons of fennel, loads of fennel.

I really like that bit, because it's such a local herb

and really pleased to see it being used in such large quantities.

It was about that deep in the dish.

And then she took the artichoke bases and the potatoes

and then she put all the goat meat right over the potatoes.

And then she poured all the marinade on the top of that.

And then she went mad, wild, with the olive oil.

She poured about 150ml of olive oil all over the top.

And then that went into a hot oven,

about 200, 220 degrees for three hours.

And here it is.

And I can tell you it is very nice indeed.

The goat is deliciously moist and tender.

And more than that, I love the combination of the olive oil

and the fennel and the lemon juice.

Yes!

Next time, I'm leaving Greece and heading for Turkey.

But not before some delicious red mullet and grilled octopus.

Octopus is Greece.

And now to Turkey...

THEY SHOUT

You have to shout in this country!

Fabulous!

Just the one, thanks, for me.

More fish.

And that means lovely, spicy stews,

great bread and more spice.

Definitely, more spice.

I mean, this is just so exciting.

And why shouldn't you have a breakfast like this?

It's so voluptuous, I would say.

And if you haven't tried koftas on the motorway,

well, this...

..is heaven!

And so my gastronomic journey from Venice to Istanbul continues.