It is Sunday today, but my day was busy like any other weekday. A busy bee...
In the morning I had some early classes to teach (I teach Greek -modern and ancient and Latin) and then I had to become a student in order to attend my MSc meeting with my attendant professor. The meeting took too long, because we had a lot to discuss, and when it ended I felt my head explode.
So, my partner suggested we go to a tavern to eat (anyway neither of us had the time or the appetite to cook).
If you remember from my previous post, based on Greek customs, fasting has begun, that's why we chose to eat seafood.
So we went down to the beach closest to our city, fortunately the day was still sunny, and we walked on the beach to enjoy the sun.
It is a custom, also, these days, for young kids -and some times, adults- to fly kites, we were lucky enough to see two of them grazing the sky...
But stomachs were grumbling, and off we headed to the taverna. We have visited the same place before and knew about the big portion of food that each plate has, (that's the reason we choose the specific one).
First, we started with a little wine...
And then decided to have for starters some dishes. Bear in mind that the portions in this taverna are big!
Every time we go out to grab a bite, we prefer instead of salad to have wild edible greens -boiled- with olive oil and lemon. They are very tasty and good for our health. The plate, though, was enormous...
Since we would eat fish, we decided as starters to have "alipasta". What is "alipasta", you will ask.
And I will gladly explain to you. "Alipasta" is a way to preserve food in brine usually or dipped in salt. These are fish (in this case) that after processing are placed raw in brine or a lot of salt and kept for a long time. In Greece we keep sardines, herring, mackerel, marinated anchovies in this way.
It's a bit like Greek sushi ... but it is also one of the greatest "mezes" for wine, tsipouro or raki!
The sure thing is that you need a lot of water (or wine) to quench your thirst.
Continuing with the starters, we had fried zucchinis with "skordalia".
Look at the size of the dish...
"Skordalia" is a Greek traditional side dish that looks like puree, made usually with potatoes or wet bread and plenty, plenty of melted garlic. (Thus its name, skordo is garlic in Greek).
I simply adore the way the zucchinis are cut...
We were already full, and thank god we had ordered only one plate more, one of my favourites, married sardines.
We call this dish with sardines this way, because we put one fillet of sardines on top of another, making a "couple" of them, rinse them with salt and origano and straight to the grill. Then, they are seved with a mix of olive oil (as you can see, we use olive oil a lot) and lemon.
And a close up, ready to be eaten... It's one of the most delicious fish dishes
We left no prisoners, though. Even if the food was a lot, we ate most of it (left some onions, as you can see in the picture)
And as always, in the end, along with the bill, comes the "kerasma", a little treat from the owner(usually sweet). This time there were four pieces, two for each one of us, of chocolate cake and ravani (another greek sweet cake)
After all that food, we went for a walk along the seashore, this time to help us digest. But the weather was still nice ( a bit cold, but no rain or snow) so it was enjoyable.
As I am writing these lines, I still have beside me two things: a soda -to help me digest and a big bottle of water (too many salty things!). But I am happy for the taste.
All pictures taken by me, with my mobile phone.
Till next time!
Thank you for reading
