Secret Greek recipes

Secret Greek recipes

my Grandmother’s knowledge and skills in Greek cooking are
unsurpassed. Yaya ('Grand Mother' in Greek) Maria was born in 1917 in Asia Minor, in a small town called Smyrni which was Greek at the time, located on the Turkish coast. In the age of five in 1922 when the Turks invaded, she and the rest of the family (both parents killed in the invasion but her two sisters and two brothers survived together with other relatives) left and arrived in the Greek coast and decided to live in Athens, in a suburb known as Kaisariani. They lived there until 1940 when the Second World War broke out. There was famine and very few jobs around and while the war lasted she had to work in a house as a servant and cater her family at the same time with the threat of the Germans above her head day in, day out, for five years. She is a very strong character and at the time she could cope with everything: cook for the Ambassador’s house she was working in, and with her salary been not in money, but in primary commodities like flower, corn, bread, olives some fish etc. she had to return home and cook for the rest.
My Grand Mother (Photo: 1954)
Where Greece is located in the World
She was always doing her best with cooking but her experience was little at the time and apart from the basic knowledge of traditional Greek food preparation there was not much else she could offer. The War ended in 1945, and she was married to a Greek soldier who survived the War and was promoted. They had two children, out of which the first died in birth and the second was my mother. Because of my grandfather’s military job, and continuous transfers depending on duty, they had to move around Greece very often-even twice in one year sometimes. A soldiers salary was not enough to feed the family,
and the only thing that Yaya Maria could do well was cooking, so in every new transfer she was getting a job at a local tavern and cook local specialties for the customers while learning at the same time.
For twenty years, and until my grandfather got an early retirement from the Greek Army, they have traveled and lived in most of the mainland as well as the Greek islands. From the Northern parts of Greece in