Homegrown Cuisine in Corfu | Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes | BBC Documentary

[Music] [Applause] I've just been reading in Lawrence Darrell's really good book about the Greek islands that he sort of rather jokingly blames Homer for talking about the rosy-fingered dawn coming in to Corfu because he said it was actually rosy-fingered well he arrived on the same ferry at about the same time in the morning but it's not particularly rosy-fingered for me but what he also says is that special feeling of arriving at a Greek island and Corfu is an excellent first island to arrive it's the first island I ever came to it just has the feel the land feel about it that this sort of easy way you slip into a port if any of the islands in the early morning is something quite special for me memories of the early 70s traveling over land and land rover arriving here in Corfu and then going on to lots of other islands on very very antiquated ferries one indeed but shortly after we went on it psyche [Music] if memory serves me well this place hasn't changed at all since the last time I came albeit with much longer hair and a burning desire to find the best beaches with the coldest beers on the island blah [Music] I know it's too early in these two Vernors are shut but I'm looking forward to souvlaki those kabobs maybe lamb salads stuffed vegetables moussaka the whole business of traveling makes me so hungry [Music] I've always thought Corfu a magical place is this pink early morning light that gets me was a very calming effect Lawrence dole wrote about Corfu and said the sedative quality its bewitched disengagement from all concern is something you will not belong in feeling here the air around you becomes surly more and more anaesthetic more blissful more impregnated with holy sleep you will realize that this is exactly what happened to the conquerors who landed here they fell asleep and this island slip from their nerveless fingers into the freedom it is always desired freedom to dream [Music] the famous Darryl family lived here in the white house Lawrence referred to it as like a dice sat upon a rock it's now a restaurant and as I got closer to it I realized it was closed of course how I could have tucked into some local octopus or grilled sea bass but I'm off to have lunch with an old coffee eight family who are friends of our researcher over here but they don't live right by the sea in true Mediterranean tradition they live amongst the olive groves in land I've noticed these nets stretched between the trees set there to catch the right black olives when they draw I know the green ones are picked by hand and pressed to the best olive oil and the difference between black and green olives is that one's ripe and one isn't you'd be surprised even amongst a seasoned film crew be making programmes me for years how much of a revelation that was but anyway the SU Carlos family have lived here on this small farm for at least eight generations we're like the old coffee Fiat families they'd grow their own food la knees making skordalia which is very common in all over Greece but the coffee Fiat skordalia I think is the best the best recipes sometimes it's made with bread but more commonly made with potato olive oil garlic and lemon juice after crushing about a dozen fat cloves of garlic to make a paste she then does the same with boiled potatoes and makes a creamy mash and then straightaway she adds the garlic paste this is for people who like to live on the edge where foods concerned anyway she blends that together now it's olive oil and this comes from the ripe black olives from their farm after that she adds lemon juice and that's it this is a really good example of a local dish it's all from their garden lemons potatoes garlic and the oil I can't tell you how important it is for me to taste a famous dish where it comes from well I've been watching Lennie make this and with growing sense of them appetite because I love things like this just tastes of it wow that is so hot with garlic unbelievably hot and I would say pun German lemon and oil it's it's really really very good case we share honest on the onami papa Spiros is 82 has just retired as a local priest he puts his obvious sprightliness down to clean living not much meat lots of fish and vegetables plus red wine and garlic I'll just give a rundown on some of these dishes this is of course a Greek salad tomatoes olives cucumber peppers and traditionally they helped themselves to feta and these are famous in Corfu spinach pies spanakopita baked in phyllo pastry then a bit of luxury for my benefit I suspect freshly boiled crayfish and these are just potatoes roasted in olive oil with onions and a bit of rosemary naturally there are stuff courgettes with rice tomato sauce dill and parsley and garlic and then octopus sauteed with onion garlic red wine tomatoes and macaroni which soaks up all the juices well as usual on this trip I felt it a bit of a loss because I couldn't speak the language but Papa Spears's son Perry used to run a pub in England her you had a probably not just five and a half years what did you miss most about Corfu all that time this weather the weather the food I mean all right wish to do our own food this sort of you know this or we'll do it ourselves you know but it's different like a new sort of atmosphere you know to be with my mum and dad you know tomorrow I think your dad is a sort of walking example of Mediterranean foods wonderfully good for you how old is he now then 82 82 he looks just as fit as a fiddle yeah you know climbing still climbing up the trees and every yeah every day is doing something at the you know little farm with God you know really flying potatoes or vegetables or stuff like that you know it's you wanted to sort of to encapsulate why Mediterranean food so special Jim show picture of your phone yeah that's right well I'd like to propose a toast [Music] I love Greek food and I love how enthusiastic the Greeks are about their cooking - a lot of people misunderstand it because it is frugal and it is simple and it's born out of two things in my view the landscape and the Greek temperament itself which is very laid-back and there's one dish that's the first thing I tend to think of when stepping assuring Greece and I imagine that everyone orders it when they first arrive and that's the Greek salad and I'm sure they say why don't we this all the time it's so healthy and it's so simple just tomatoes cucumbers red onions black olives dill crumbled feta though sometimes they do it in chunks olive oil and finish with a sprinkle of dried oregano so good under a hot coffee at Sun with a glass of cold red cedar but it won't taste quite the same in the driving rain of a cold English summer such is life you know everywhere we go in the Mediterranean you pick up the history of wherever it is and it's been overrun by loads of different peoples there's been famines Wars people have moved from the coast up to the mountains because of parrots and mosquitoes and it's just a continual flux of of things going on here and indeed I mean our civilization Western civilization goes right back to the Mediterranean I think that's why we all have such an affinity to to the Mediterranean because we understand that much of our language and most of our culture comes from here but when you come down to the food of the Mediterranean it's all about it's about poverty about the people are almost used to live here you know almost used to be what it was all about I mean now everybody wants a view of the sea but food really is about is about spared us about about a small number of ingredients and about making do and the sums of it is she'll sort of I don't know dignity about the sort of cooking here it's not flamboyant it doesn't use ingredients from all over the place I mean funnily enough I was talking to a chef in coral corfu town the other day and he used to cook in New York he said you know in New York any one dish there'd be 10 or 15 ingredients just in the one dish here two or three and make that dish and make five or six other dishes as well and it is that sort of like respect I think respect for ingredients that I really really like about the Mediterranean while we have on for today artichokes with peas and carrots that's a daily special it means like 30 minutes to me that's pork in lemon sauce this is Niki Garros who was born in Cork who studied cooking in New York got fed up with fancy cheffing and came home so soft so that's called Basti Tala rooster in wine sauce we have chickpea soup on the menu every Wednesday and lamb fricassee slowly simmers it's gonna be ready for the egg lemon sauce in a bit I like meeting chefs lighting they can watch them at work and find out what works for them whatever simple simple is good if you have good ingredients if you place one or two in a kettle and cook them and you cook them right it's gonna come out great simplicity of flavors that's it five five good items you can make 10 different dishes that's what we do here you use tomatoes peppers aubergines what else beef and we make on regular basis on the menu 15 to 20 items with these same ingredients combined and every item is unique that's it I guess well today Nicky's making this a really rich rabbit stew stuff our dough Nick what's the displacement with a rabbit I use the light paste of red sweet red pepper white pepper black pepper and a little bit of cumin more next thing we're trying to brown it from one side because it's very small if we use both sides it's gonna tear we're gonna use some clarified butter and a little bit of olive oil we use half and half because olive oil is extra virgin and it's gonna give more flavor than we actually need this stove is searingly hot but it's perfect for browning and given the intensity of color to the rabbit it literally takes a few seconds to give them the right color that's on officially leave off next step I know you saw we use more oil than we actually need it that's because we want ad in the same pan the onions we'll let them sit there let them brown burn on one side and we add some sugar in order for the onions to caramelize that's homestyle vinegar good red wine and tight and a little bit of dry white wine with the glaze we're gonna use all the juices from this pan alright this next is adding the garlic some cumin some nutmeg a couple of bay Leafs crushed peppercorns and dried rosemary then we add some tomato product that's only for color some sea salt and some black pepper and cook for a lot an hour an hour and a half it really depends on how intense a fire is but yeah around an hour it must be a real set of change you know from busy New York life back to old Corfu how does it feel what's it like living here well poor fool my roots my parents are from here I grew up here some years I went to school and then it's a big change coming back but it's my my life next what happens next is here I can't predict what's gonna happen later than that but right now I'm here Corfu is my life here what happens next for me is that I get to try this incredibly rich D fodder I had some in a restaurant last night and it wasn't the same dish this is intense and sweetly caramelized I'm a bit of a connoisseur rabbit and I think this is probably the best rabbit dish I've ever tasted it's it's tender young rabbit and the stefarr dough is excellent a real depth of flavor and there's just a bit of cumin and and chili in there and it can giving a slight sort of Eastern flavor to it we're just thinking this restaurant would never have a Michelin star but in terms of sort of like enjoyment and fun it beats Michelin places hands-down for me because everything comes from the market you know cooking shouldn't be too difficult you just put what's there as Nick was saying earlier and you just cook it simply and rely on the raw materials the ingredients to say oh I mean this place does it in spadefuls that's the sort of place was chick chick pea soup on the menu you know it must be Wednesday it's that sort of a place well the thing that I particularly like about core film and I love all Greek islands but this one is really quite sophisticated and I think that's largely to do with all the different nations that have lived here particularly the Normans in the early times and the Venetians that were here for about five hundred years and that's no more apparent than in the food industry Oh a lovely mix of sort of Italian and Greek really the pasta in it of course but also us British were here the French would look at this Boulevard modeled on a Parisian boulevards the Liston is called and the British yeah well the British bought ginger beer and cricket I've actually seen them play cricket on that green over there a little bit rough but jolly good fun and latterly of course we bought things like fish and chips roast beef with real gravy and to quote Monty Python watney's red barrel but I mentioned earlier a dish called pastitsio and it's a great favorite of mine to start with you need to make a meat sauce it's quite similar to bolognaise sauce actually this is garlic onion and finely chopped sell softened in olive oil and then some minced beef which has to brown a bit before you add a glass of red wine and a tin of chopped tomatoes and then a couple of dessert spoonfuls of tomato puree or as Nick would say tomato product I really like this pastitsio I mean it's got the unique flavors for a sort of typical pastor and a mince dish of cinnamon kefalotyri cheese I just think that some Greek cooking is very sort of them underrated this is lovely hearty food it's like a sort of Greek version of a of a shepherd's pie or actually a cottage pie because it's beef not lamb but it's it's just those little subtle flavors and you know I think we do the Greeks a big disservice and going on holiday there and just having sort of tepid vegetable dishes because this is you know I think pretty stylish stuff stylish enough to add a cinnamon stick and a little bit of ground cloves oh gosh I forgot to mention Oregon Oh in addition to the cinnamon of course very characteristic flavoring lots of Greek cooking sometimes they sprinkle it on Greek salads and often you get it on supermarkets as well and you know when you're walking through the Greek countryside maybe on an island somewhere you can smell it I just saw like conjure up an image of the smell of Oregon Oh maybe some bells tinkling on the odd goats walking by and that sort of curiously eerie sound you get at dusk I've been a bit nerdy and went on the internet and find out it's called a scops owl it's a little tiny owl which nobody can ever see needless to say the crew thought it was a car alarm going off anyway while the past is cooking and this is pen a make up a standard white sauce with butter flour and milk it's not difficult providing you stir until the flours cooked out mmm tips on white sauce making well lamb some people feel you should put hot milk into a sort of cool sauce I feel you should put cool milk into a hot sauce but whichever way you do it you need to add it in about three phases otherwise it danger of it and splitting once it's there and with a consistency like fairly thick cream great some fresh nutmeg into it and then season it too now take the cooked pasta and mix it into a third of your white sauce making sure that you get most of it in the bowl and not on the kitchen floor just after coat it and then in with the grated cheese that lovely kefalotyri cheese which will have such a distinctive flavor in the finished dish mix well and pop in a couple of beaten eggs for extra richness now layer it in a buttered baking dish it's really like making a lasagna as you alternate the pasta with the meat sauce finish with pasta on the top and pour over the rest of the white sauce what I like about this dish you can serve it up for 10 people or so who want to seriously chat over a meal including you so that you don't have to keep getting up and down because it's all done beforehand you can all help yourself and maybe just a salad to go with it and some red wine lastly sprinkle with that salty tangy Kevlar tiri which incidentally is a hard sheep's milk cheese and bake in a hot oven for 40 minutes until it gets a lovely golden top pastitsio is the greek version of the italian pistachio which means a hotchpotch grabbing a bit here and a bit there and you could see it is like a lasagna layers of pasta meat sauce and bechamel but it's something that Greeks have made all their own [Music] I'll always associate the sound of Swift's with old corfu turn it's a constant hurried Twitter and like me their main interest is in eating hoovering up as many nuts as they can I really like corfu tongue and I remember coming here thirty years ago when money was a bit tight absolutely starving and ending up having a kebab one of the most delicious things you could eat on a budget look that's not too bad let's beat that with your spitter yeah the meat and we call it Pitt I guess because it's not from lamb lamb they call it in Turkey deposed alarm the truth is they eat lamb because it's not smelling like the poem so we have it Peeta heroes for your leaders for my pork and chicken and we'll put Satsuki tomatoes lettuce onions six pork oh you like one absolutely all right I'm told this is the best place in Namco food Oh heroes heroes yes big with heroes not about never saying do you have a do kebabs no ok fair enough what's enough that's a spices and in the sauce spicy sauce from tomato and many many spices all right ok thank you very in filming lands someone else picks up the tab I think it's a really good idea here not to mention anything that might well be Turkish in origin I remember once asking for Turkish coffee here big mistake that's very good not quite as I recall them last time I was here about 30 years ago it's got everything in it including chips I know they're not the best of friends the Turks and the Greeks and when you start to look at the history here and the invasions and subsequent sieges by the Ottoman Empire you start to realize that history does leave an indelible stain behind although the Turks had tried several times to capture corfu town and completely rubbish the countryside they were never able to capture this place so near and yet so far so as a general rule it's not a good idea to ask for a Turkish coffee the next morning as per I found myself drawn to the market this was in a state of transition until they're building a new one but even so as a cook it's always good to see what's fresh and seasonal I love fresh Peas I came upon this store run by Fe Mahalo selling wild greens she collects herself for me them now there's two different types here on this particular lot they're for boiling like for salad boiling salad this lot here you can make vegetable pie what see that LE which is a special cooking that Greeks do with oil and salt and sauce but that's why I got them separate when I was a child I used to go on picking these because I loved it you know cuz my grandparents showed me but my children are not interested between other things so they won't know it's a shame to eat them so well you know what happened the next morning she gave away her grandma's secrets yeah zaku Lia see it's one of the main wild vegetables it's a pop one Effie I'm sorry I'm gonna have to keep cooling these weeds because that's what people will think but why do you like these wild green it's a pity to say this is a weed which is so good for you this is so healthy why is it a weed I mean maybe something bad let's try to wide you off that's okay you won't want me up with this because I've grown up with this you've lived a long time in Melbourne didn't you yes definitely and I really Mitch to mix the vegetables in Melbourne you do is you couldn't find this I mean lot of people they deal with herbes they're also very good herbes but these are also very good because you can actually eat them helps you only drink them so you put it in cooking to smell nice but this you actually if you have your stomach with so that's what the better this particular one it's a fantastic vegetable it's the king of the white vegetables this one and you can make a raw salad with it and it's perfect raw salad it's better than later so you can mix it up with mother would let us and rocker and all these things perfect salad should try that so if I was to start eating all these regularly would I be changed first of all I would change well back at her farm fno mum gave the greens a bit of a wash preparing them for boiling she said they only need to cook until they soften because she believes any more than that reduces the healthy properties of the Greens ok now we're making a fresh Zegna salad for this particular vegetable which is perfect for salad also it also cook it but it's better oh I already like this bumping into Effie in the market the other day this lists or a salad you'd never find in a restaurant around here and then it's just what the locals eat and I'm really looking forward to trying it yes I mean in the restaurant you won't find it because they won't bother who is going to bother gumpa quite vegetables and then clean them up and do this it's easy to just buy lettuce isn't it but I don't know what that we see it's famous chefs all over the world after you say we're doing a bit of salt vinegar now you doing the lettuce you can add the oil to it now so we'll put a bit of salt vinegar and oil now the salad is ready to eat the vegetables are cooked now yeah steaming hot put them in a plate if you like spinach just wilted you're going to love this it's being cooked very quickly in a small amount of water she very often puts greens into pies which I'm told is a very core Fiat thing to do but this is on its own with good local olive oil and to give those bitter greens and extras in your vegetables already nice and fresh very fresh in a funny sort of way I can understand why her children don't like this it's seriously grown up food [Music] love it it's just occurred to me out of everything I've eaten the Greens the lemon the oil the wine the vinegar the only thing that the EFI's paid money for over the counter as the salt actually that lunch with Effie and her family gave me an idea to cook a wild green omelet the base of it is thinly sliced leeks which I'll fry until they're soft and then this lot a range of green leaf vegetables mostly salads which are managed to get back in Padstow I think turnip greens or cavalo Nero would be good in this too this is something I never tried before but that's what these trips are all about and I know it'll work lots of fresh greens free-range eggs and good Greek cheese I went for a walk last weekend sadly without the dog and I was just looking I won't pass some sort of rough um hedgerows and I could see all the same sort of vegetables and wild greens that Effie had shown me over in Corfu but I was thinking I just don't know what to pick and I was thinking of there's probably not ten people in this country that would be able to show me what to pick which is a pity because it makes going for a walk so much more fun but I have bought ins what I think would really make this a wild water omelette work that you can buy in supermarkets or green grocers so I've got I did actually gather some dandelions and some wild garlic because I know about those but I've got some rocket sorrel spinach watercress I think that's about it this is going to make a substantial omelet so don't be stingy with the eggs I'm using about eight here so that'll be okay for about six people like the idea of a Spanish omelet you know the thickener that's actually generally baked in the oven and I love Horta the Greek while grits I put the two together and now there's some cafeteria cheese and feta and some dill and mint give it a good Greek flavor and I think it works really well chop the dill and mint together but keep it quite coarse don't do it like mint sauce put them in with the rest of the ingredients and then season the whole thing as much as you like now turn it into one of those nonstick and quite deep baking dishes because of course the eggs will rise in the oven then bake it until the eggs set say about 45 minutes in a medium oven these types of omelettes were primarily designed to be taken out to the fields where people would be at work so it's food that holds together and it's best eaten when it's cold I like it with tomato and onion and a chilled glass of white wine so this is perfect for people planting rows of garlic and artichokes and for ladies who lunch I'm going inland to the hilly interior of Corfu to the village of peripheral once upon a time in the 14th century the village was here around this lake near the coast but piracy mosquitoes and malaria forced them to find a new place to live so they moved up into a healthier climate high in the hills and they lived here for centuries then another invasion came to Corfu and this time it was tourism the British Germans French and Italians came in droves to the coast and so that villagers moved to open up bars and restaurants and all the other trappings essential to the holiday business and they left paren Thea one by one never to return now it's got an eerie ghostly quality you can practically smell the pies in the Baker's shop it would have done great business in its heyday when the village was full of life and 1,500 people lived here it's a modern Mediterranean Greek tragedy one of parrots malaria tourism something which is repeated time and time again on my journey funnily enough it's food coupled with tourism which is bringing the village back to life Thomas and Vasa syriacus decided to cook authentic food here a word amongst well mainly German tourists has spread and now people are coming back here to taste traditional corporate food like this briam this is a coffee at ratatouille really and it's made with potatoes courgettes aubergine Zin green peppers and a good strong purpley onion tomatoes and fennel I was lots of Greek cooks and they all seemed to cut vegetables this way I wouldn't want to do this with my knives back home I came here a few months ago and tried this dish and wasn't really expecting much but I was genuinely taken by the intensity of flavor it was better than ratatouille and I had to watch butter make it since then I cooked it with great success at home in a nutshell it's baked summer vegetables and you don't have to do all that pre frying malarkey that is so labor intensive in a ratatouille everything is assembled in a roasting tin vasa pours on some oil sunflower oil in this coasts but it doesn't seem to affect the flavor and then she loosens up some tomato puree and pause that over and then a bit of water and it's ready for the oven about an hour on a medium setting but if you can slow cook it I think it becomes even more intense well that's the finished thing and one thing I've discovered on this Mediterranean trip is that yes I could nearly nearly be a vegetarian well this looks absolutely lovely Thomas I'm watching vaso make that dish I just think oh I could do that because you just chopped in a few things in here putting a bit of oil some dill and when you taste it you just think how can that be how could it be such a wonderfully intense really you know if you have a recipe about maryam and you have so many grams cuz there's so many grams potatoes and you make it and I make it it will be never the same it depends on your hand that's how how you do it I gray are gray Thomas I was thinking through this good you're bringing people here I think you've almost saved this village because people are coming now because of the food and actually thinking about maybe buying somewhere here yes we have a customers they coming up here because of the food I have a lot of them the living call for they come two years ago I'm gonna go and they think like that they like to buy something here to live here but you know these people they love it so it is now if they will exchange it will be look more than you or I don't know they were they won't like it anymore I don't know what's gonna happen 10 years for 20 years but if is anything happened like that I will take all my chairs and tables ago away some not stay here when the village is different I love this place so I think I'm not I am in love with this I am in love to come here and stay here this part of Corfu the southeast coast is one of those places which form the very crux of the Mediterranean dream [Music] those little piers set on that silky calm sea the land of small Taverna serving fresh fish from the grill it's all a bit quiet now and the busy time starts in a few weeks as far as I'm concerned late spring early summer is the most magical time in Corfu but I remember coming here and finding Sphero they're all called Spiro in these putts a restaurant owner like myself working away on the beach preparing some anchovies just for himself well I came here last year and I watched Spiro doing these anchovies filling them and just curing them with a bit of salt and some lemon juice and I just thought they were dead fresh and he served them up with some oregano I have to confess I actually borrowed the idea cuz I had this were all the prestigious banquet to cook at the Japanese embassy a few months ago I was racking my brains to think what would go down well with the Japanese who loved raw fish and I just remembered Spiros dish and I did it with some Cornish sardines and it was lovely more important if Japanese guests really liked it funnily enough not like this because this is how recipes evolved one day an Italian pilot was having lunch here and told Spiro about the way the Japanese cure their fish with lemon juice and salt well Spiro tried it and from then on it's always on the menu except he adds world Oregon oh and olive oil so from very small fish to one of the largest that swims around here the grouper and this is one of the most famous dishes on the island cooked by Spiros wife Maria it's called Bianco maybe that's left over from when the Venetians lived here because it just means white in Italian and the dish is white whitened with the flesh of the fish garlic and potatoes as mrs. Carrodus told me in no uncertain terms Lamanna no no well I didn't understand all of that but basically what I'm getting from here is so typical of so much Greek cooking there's not a lot to it but I've tasted this Bianco before and I can tell you it is utterly wonderful and all she's saying is I think is it's got olive oil garlic the fish of course there's the grouper some water some Nero there oh yeah potatoes money salt and pepper and lemon that's it and when you taste it you think there must be more to this it is so good well a man said there's not a lot of ingredients in there but there's a lot of what is in there loads of garlic I couldn't believe the amount of black pepper that's gone in there but that's what makes Greek cooking so vivid is it was so much seasoning in it and it just makes it different we we just wouldn't dream of putting that much pepper back home in there but you need to if you want that flavor and the all-important potatoes but not too many of them I thought of putting this on the menu in my restaurant because I really liked it but the only way the customers in Britain would like it will be chunks of fish off the bone cooked in this garlicky lemon and peppery sauce and I thought nah I'm not doing that because you need the bones of the fish to give the liquid its gelatinous quality without that it wouldn't be the same and someone would be bound to sue me for getting the bone in their throat anyway thank you very much I Keith looks lovely his mother cooked this no looking and smelling delicious this is really lovely I'm so pungent with olive oil and so much garlic and with the thickening from the potatoes it reminds me a bit of a of a buried and I wouldn't mind guessing like buried it's a fisherman's dish in origin and I'm thinking about because of the simplicity of it and the few ingredients and they'd all be ingredients that the local fishermen could get hold of easily like potatoes olive oil garlic lemon juice salt and pepper and water possibly even seawater and I love that about this dish I just think you can see sort of the the trace the history of a dish and very simply in this Bianco [Music] it's early in the season inside re and they're gearing up for the onslaught to come I may be wrong but I don't think they'll beacuse of holidaymakers asking for plates of Bianco here or we just passed to McDonald's and I'll say we've got John Smith's extra smooth on draft there and some carrots and some Guinness and there's an English pub just here where I'm assuming you can watch English football matches on wise speak telling and it's quite nice because they're all getting ready for the season a lot of anticipation here and also quite nice it's a Darian Tobias Beecher relatively sort of small Enclave to sort of mass tourism in an otherwise beautiful island but I'll have the same with extreme snobbery why on earth would you come somewhere like Greece to drink English beer and watch English football on on on television I mean what's wrong with great further tantum if you want all that sort of stuff as plenty of places in England to indulge yourself I'm at left Keamy because a few months ago I had a really good meal here of artichokes and please left Kimia is a sort of place that doesn't get too much attention from holidaymakers it's the place you'd come to after being sunbirds on the beach and you really want to try just a smidgen of authentic Greek hospitality before you go home but I've come to meet the pandas family at their little restaurant Loula makes fine use of her homegrown vegetables and she wouldn't stop talking about them unfortunately I couldn't understand a word you're nursing my iPod or upside mirror I'm tied up with a nipple not got here I've just had aa it's very very quickly I've just translated what Lulu was saying and basically they're thistles artichokes them cultivated thistles but these are almost wild and she says they have a much better flavor and she uses as I mean all kinds of dishes stews casseroles and she actually mentioned a dish of cuttlefish and artichokes which I'm very interested in in the Mediterranean old cars never die they become green houses again it's part of the frugal tradition of waste not want not Lula is getting some early broad beans for the dish and at this size you don't need to pod them you eat the whole lot one of the things that slip into your mind I was just thinking of a line in a Kingsley Amis novel because the green man says and now I could starve in a room full of artichokes that call my fate here well obviously I don't speak Greek but I was just thinking as she was telling me how to prepare the artichoke that the sort of language of cooking is some sort of universal really and I mean that I couldn't be doing anything more enjoyable than sitting with really preparing the artichokes because I suddenly feel perfectly at home and I was just thinking one of the most enjoyable things about this whole tour of the Mediterranean is actually watching fairly ordinary local cooks go about their own business of cooking because you know I'm just so used to cooking in a sort of busy restaurant kitchen and actually you learn so much from just talking and watching local ladies like Lula doing the job while we were busy doing the artichokes I couldn't help noticing the ladies busy tilling the soil next door when they looked as if they should be taking life a little easier I thought this would be a good time for me to ask them what was their secret for a long life what you got is like watashi Bali they said they're only 36 now I'm joking they were in the late 70s and they just said if you want to eat you get to work it's as simple as that it's the work that keeps you going this is a balloon like lots of Greek cooks Lulla assembles all the ingredients in the pan before putting it on the heat with the artichokes she's also got some leeks from her garden I suspect it's one of those dishes she uses everything she has in season and then she adds fronds of dill or igano and dill they're the herbs of Greece to me then flat leaf parsley and those baby broad beans just topped and tailed she chops up mint the local Greek stuff is quite spiky and then olive oil and that's it I don't mean to be looking for vegetarian cooking because it's not actually vegetarian cooking this dishes that don't happen to contain any meat or fish but I do think one of the very distinctive things about the cooking of the Mediterranean is a whole load of vegetable dishes it's a bit early for Lula's peas so she's using frozen ones and nothing wrong with that I think the frozen pea is a great culinary success story when I told my friend I was coming to the Med all he could talk about was grilled crayfish boiled lobsters with mayonnaise and sea bass barbecue with fennel I'm sure you can find that in Club Med but in the villages of Puglia Corsica and Sicily the locals strangely have a more prosaic tart which I relayed turn by mobile phone I suppose if you went to all the expensive places it would be wall-to-wall lobsters and red mullet Lula's thickening the dish with a mixture of lemon juice and cornflour and that's it that's all there is to it the artichokes had become al dente and the lemon juice gives it a bit of sharpness Lulla son Yanni works as a barman the nearby holiday resort of Cabos and he joined us for lunch mainly because he's the only one who can understand what I'm saying so is this a typical dish that you need to know my guest yes it is would you serve dishes like this in the restaurant this is the only this is we serve in their style traditional great kitchen and yeah it is nice to have them fresh from the garden oh it's lovely and I mean do you get tourists to the restaurant not many I feel I feel but why not my name they don't like the this kind of food I think they used to the fast food sandwiches and things like this it has like it denies they don't know what is here what is it they look in the catalog in the list and they order pizza you know this is crazy do you not think the if you put that in front of a British tourist and said eat it would they not be delighted with it I don't think so from my experience no I don't think so it makes me very sad me talk well would you tell your mother this is absolutely delicious and it's these simple little vegetable dishes that I'm finding in Greece that give me the most pleasure and I'd like to yeah [Music] well here at AAG is spirited and rather enjoying it because it's where gerald durrell and his family and maybe one or two other animals came for picnics when he was young one of the things i've actually been here before that i find strange is looking across at albania over there it looks sort of naked and the reason is that there's no olive groves over there and the reason for that is that Corfu was governed by the Venetians for nearly five hundred years and the the price for being governed if you like was to supply oil to Venice not for eating but for lighting the city on the other hand Albania governed by the Turks not interested in olives no olive trees except just for what's grown over there for the local families there's something else that I find different and that is that there's not one hotel over there but I imagine in the next 10 or 20 years all that will change and we'll all be looking to buy apartments in Albania ah this is interesting welcome to AMC call for free customer care line for further information and support we wish you a pleasant stay in Albania see what I mean [Music] so that was the end of my trip to core food but in a way it reminded me very much of New Yorker in the sense that both these islands have been known to the tourism industry for the best part of 50 years or more and yet both away from the obvious holiday hotspots have got great beauty wonderful food and a soul crying out to be discovered [Music] I came here not by ferry or sailing boat but by plane after a short visit home and the land rover came the long way round with all the gear I first came to partner when I was 18 I think I must have been pretty industrious even then because I had two jobs the first one was working in a nightclub I think it had a Egyptian theme because I had to wear a fez and the other job is in column a or I was cooking fried eggs and patatas Fritos I remember and during the washing in the quite the dirtiest dishwater I'd ever seen but the porters of all this was to buy a leather jacket because Serb Palmer was famous for its leather it still is and I eventually did buy this jacket it was blue but I just remember that that blue leather jacket was probably the most precious thing I've ever owned the beautiful cathedral of parma dominates as it was intended to the smaller ornate amaze palace you see the arabs ruled here in peace for several hundred years christians jews arabs they all live peacefully and palmer was prosperous then Along Came the Crusaders under James the first to Spain and it was all a different story I remember going around the emmys palace here and the guide saying in 1229 the Moors who'd been here for four hundred years left and the Christians took over and I remember thinking that's not what happened and I went up to him and I said at the end of the tour and I said it wasn't like that I've been told that the streets were running with blood for four days that that every more man woman child and their dogs were slaughtered in a massive massacre he said yeah it's true but we don't like to tell the tourists that I've been coming to Parma since I was a boy and I've always been enchanted by the tall buildings and narrow streets you really feel you're in medieval Spain and its influence is primarily Catalan and that can be seen with his gaudi style architecture so prominent in Barcelona centuries ago the Catalans ruled all the islands in this part of the Med including Sardinia and Sicily but it's 12 o'clock and time for lunch well for me the Spanish tend to eat later they don't start to have dinner until 10:30 at night I just couldn't do that and that's why tapas is such a great thing to have I'm told that tapas was originally named after the pieces of bread that sherry drinkers in Andalusia is to cover their glasses with to prevent fruit flies falling in but then it grew into snacks lots and lots of little snacks well this is where I think toughest are so popular lots of little courses it's how people like to eat these days that are grazing I suppose you have a few of these in one bar then move on to another but here we have some prawns sizzling hot with some local chili chili peppers to add spice this is perfection this is America hum and it's hand-carved Padron peppers from Galicia every now and then you have a really hot one which makes you jump a bit here we have dates just wrapped in bacon and grilled perhaps the most famous dish in Majorca here Pam Bali that's some bread with tomatoes Rama let Tomatoes just sort of grated over them and some local olives very very bitter little all those those but I love them and here we've got a stew of tuna is actually bonito which is a type of tuna with with vegetables with peppers tomato garlic and onions like a ratatouille and finally this is love it or you hate it food I remember I first had this when I was five years old I feel very proud about that sepia that's couple fish cooked in its own ink jus now when I was fired I recall the taste of being with not a great deal of affection but I did try it I'm going to explore as much as I can of Majorca that includes going inland although have been many times here it's never really crossed my mind to go to the interior after all the whole ethos of a holiday here was always to do with the sea and all it brings but as you'll find out there's superb food to be had here including the best lamb I've ever tasted cooked in an oven which has got to be a couple of hundred years old and that was way up in the mountains we're only intrepid German cyclists go and this is probably the most famous dish here traditionally eaten at Easter time it's called frito Meyer con and it's made with awful liver and heart mostly and vegetables I know it doesn't sound very nice to a lot of people but it's lovely and I really hope it's dishes like these that will increase in popularity as holidaymakers discover they want more than just the sea and cold beers [Music] I'm really enthusiastic about the islands cooking but one must also remember that Majorca is about mass tourism and it doesn't get much bigger than here at magaluf so I thought it'd be a good idea just to go round on the beach and in the streets behind the beach and ask people what they like to eat when they're here well I didn't really come here for the cuisine so chip says Engraving I'm walking today Absalon paella before I leave like start to Spanish this as well so tonight yeah we are going Chinese now so nobody's told you that there is a really really nice local food no well that comes as no big surprise but now I'm told you can get these factory produced pilots and they come in an authentic plastic paella dish handy for the microwave but of course it's the usual suspects on the menu the ones that have always been here since I first came as a teenager way back in the sixties [Music] you [Music] well I have to say having just been to magaluf that asking all those young people about what local specialities they were looking forward to eating that it was not let me say the first thing that came to their minds nor the second nor indeed the third drink beer in particular yes but not food I suppose one has to say as with animals so it is with humans at certain times in life food does not matter so next time in majorca great seafood and rice and in Spain a novel way of fishing and a bull friendly festival with great food you

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Views: 308,577

Rating: 4.8871031 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc, rick stein, rick steins mediterranean escapes, tv chefs, food and drink, mediterranean food, rick stein chef, cooking documentary, food documentary, corfu documentary, kerkyra, bbc full documentary, bbc full episodes, Corfu, Feta, Wild greens

Id: Lft8U7D6Rmc

Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2019