Greek cookery has been influenced by its neighbors and especially by the Turks who dominated Greece for long periods. Typical ingredients include tomatoes, onions, eggplant, grapes and grape leaves, okra, artichokes, lemons, and seafood. Meat revolves around lamb and mutton and goat. Olive oil is the common fat used. To love Greek food one must at least like olive oil. The favorite cheese is from the goat’s milk, feta. Kasseri is a creamy, mild cheese, Manouri, an unsalted, soft white cheese. Dinner comes late, about 10 p.m. and includes the Greek salad usually containing sardines, cheese, olives, and tomatoes. Baklava, the many-layered pastry heavy with honey and sprinkled with nuts, is the best known of Greek desserts. Retsina wine and ouzo, a very potent licorice-flavored wine, are favorite alcoholic drinks.
The Greek salad is well-known in New York City and elsewhere with large Greek communities. It comes with or without feta cheese. Added flavor comes from oregano, olive oil and lemon juice. Fasolada is a favorite bean soup. Not everyone is fond of grapevine leaves stuffed with meat, egg and lemon sauce, characteristic of Greece and of several Middle Eastern countries. Another favorite is Mousaka, baked eggplant with cheese, tomato paste and ground lamb. Clams, octopus, shrimp, mullet, and squid are favorite seafoods.
THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER But still the sweetest voice was Greece Metro Map mute That river-valley ever heard From lips of maid or throat of bird; For Mabel Greece Metro Map Martin sat apart, And let the hay-mow’s shadow fall Upon the loveliest face of all. She sat apart, as one forbid, Who knew that none would condescend To own the Witch-wife’s child a friend. The seasons scarce had gone their round, Since curious thousands thronged to see Her mother at the gallows-tree; And mocked the prison-palsied limbs That faltered on the fatal stairs, And wan lip trembling with its prayers! Few questioned of the sorrowing child, Or, when they saw the mother die, Dreamed of the daughter’s agony. They went up to their homes that day, As men and Christians justified: God willed it, and the wretch had died! Dear God and Father of us all, Forgive our faith in cruel lies, Forgive the blindness that denies! Forgive thy creature when he takes, For the all-perfect love Thou art, Some grim creation of his heart. Cast down our idols, overturn Our bloody altars; let us see Thyself in Thy humanity! Young Mabel from her mother’s grave Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, And wrestled with her fate alone; With love, and anger, and despair, The phantoms of disordered sense, The awful doubts of Providence! Oh, dreary broke the winter days, And dreary fell the winter nights When, one by one, the neighboring lights Went out, and human sounds grew still, And all the phantom-peopled dark Closed round her hearth-fire’s dying spark And summer days were sad and long, And sad the uncompanioned eves, And sadder sunset-tinted leaves, And Indian Summer’s airs of balm; She scarcely felt the soft caress, The beauty died of loneliness! The school-boys jeered her as they passed, And, when she sought the house of prayer, Her mother’s curse pursued her there.
