To Fast Or Not To Fast? Or Feasting While Fasting

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

by Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—3/14/11—By the time you read this, we will be one week into Lent. In Greece, always a little bit different from everywhere else, Lent starts on a Monday, Clean Monday, rather than Ash Wednesday. Marked by kite flying and feasting, rather than sooty foreheads and church going, this is a day of celebration, not penitence.

As I’ve said before, it’s one of my favorite holidays (see “My Vegetable Love,” 3/12/10). But this year, I’m toying with the idea of keeping to Clean Monday fasting foods for the whole of Lent until Easter. This is not as dire as it might sound. Fasting Greek-style does not mean a regime of bread and water, or even carrot juice and colon-cleansing flaxseed drinks.

The truly devout Orthodox turn into almost-vegans four times a year—for 40 days before Christmas, the last two weeks in June and the first two in August, and even on Wednesdays and Fridays in non-fasting periods. These add up to a total of 190 days, give or take a few. This means no food produced from any creature with blood, hot or cold, running through its veins passes their lips. No cheese, no milk, no eggs, not even a crisp fried anchovy or a canned sardine—which certainly don’t look as though they have ever had blood.

Their discipline makes our Western notion of sacrifice for Lent—giving up chocolate or spinach as we used to do as children, and eating fish on Friday—seem pretty half-hearted. Some of the most pious Greeks even take their self-denial one step further and abstain from olive oil two days a week. In this nation, the largest consumer of olive oil in the world, to cook/eat without it is the ultimate sacrifice.

I will not be heading in that direction.

For you who are already vegans, my decision to cut out all animal products from my diet for 47 days may also seem tame and hardly newsworthy. But let’s set the record straight: this has nothing to do with religious conviction, nothing to do with my sentiments regarding animal rights or saving the planet. I want this experiment to be fun; a challenge to my creativity in the kitchen.

Untold generations of Greek women had to make their food palatable and nourishing for their menfolk and children during the fasting periods. While the Orthodox Church was not as fanatic as the Catholic priests under Charlemagne, who allegedly condemned meat-eaters to death, fast-breaking was a serious sin. So, housewives thought twice before sneaking some grated cheese onto their pasta or a little ground lamb into their pilaf. Instead, they tried to make their simple dishes more interesting by using different vegetable combinations, aromatic herbs plucked from the hillsides, and copious amounts of olive oil, which they even poured in and on scrumptious, non-oily, cakes and sweets.

I’ll take lots of inspiration from them, as recorded in my Ionian and Cretan cookbooks, but also from other belovéd books, which I’ll share with you as the weeks roll by.

But, first, in this run-up to Lent, I feel like Italo Svevo in Confessions of Zeno, trying to decide when and where to have his last cigarette. In the end, he gave up smoking regularly because the thrill implicit in the idea of the last puff was addictive in itself.

Technically, I should have already stopped eating meat. The second Sunday before Lent is called Apokrias—from Apo Kreas, which has the same meaning as the Italian Carne Vale (Carnival)—“forsaking meat.” But I’ve already decided to disobey the rules and have a mountain of lamb chops on Cheese Sunday, the last before Clean Monday, when I shall also be having my last taste of dairy.

Giving up meat per se presents no hardship: I rarely cook it any more. And my husband, whose name translates as “Joy of the People,” craves it even less than I do. What is difficult to resist is a slice of spicy French sausage or jamon Serrano, but out of sight out of mind. I looked longingly at the cans of foie gras and rillettes de canard in the cupboard, knowing that if we don’t eat them now, we won’t want them again until next winter, and will have then moved them behind the napkins.

On a more mundane note, I’ll have to fry that half-opened packet of bacon before Monday, finish up the Normandy butter, and do something about that mysterious frozen broth in the unlabelled Ziploc bag or else ignore it until May. The newly discovered goat’s milk yogurt will have to be gobbled, and the cheeses folded into a final cauliflower gratin.

Last weekend, at a lunch party, a friend unveiled an incredible sheep’s cheese from Crete. Better than Parmesan but practically impossible to find even on that island, much less in an Athens suburb. Our friend offered to get us some, but I was in a quandary, knowing that if it were in the house I would not be able to keep my vow. Then he called, saying the shop owner near him had run out and would not be ordering it again. Disappointing though it was, the news came as a relief.

Meanwhile, like Italo Svevo, I’ve been awarding myself last treats: a perfectly roasted guinea fowl (the only one in our supermarket), a huge helping of crème brûlée at that lunch party, two platefuls of chicken Marbella and a divine meatloaf—both from The Silver Palate cookbooks, which I hadn’t looked at in years. Other delicacies have included a grilled salmon sauced with lemon curd and ginger, a pumpkin moussaka—recipes I’m yearnng to copy—a sumptuous platter of perfect fried barbounia (red mullet), and that promised mountain of perfect char-grilled tiny lamb chops.

But I’m ready for Lent now, looking forward to lots of bean, lentil, and chickpea soups, Greek ladera dishes (vegetables stewed in oil), taramosalata by the bucket, and artichokes a dozen different ways.

And, I almost forgot to mention, as much seafood as I can afford. The Orthodox fast is not totally vegan. Mussels, shrimp, scallops, clams, oysters, octopus, lobster . . . have no blood. And wine is only prohibited on Holy Saturday.

Let’s drink to the Greek way of fasting.

Recipe for Taramosalata (Greek Fish Roe Purée)

And here is my recipe for taramosalata, easy to make and wonderful to have in the fridge for snacks or the centerpiece of a selection of Greek mezedes (hors d’oeuvres).

In Greece two kinds of tarama (carp or more commonly cod’s roe) paste are available: the fluorescent pink version which is over-salted and the more subtle and more expensive pale beige paste from Scandinavia. Some cooks like to use a mixture. In the US, you may be able to find only the dyed red variety, in which case you may need more bread to counteract the salt factor.

3 ½ oz/100 g tarama paste

lots of lemon juice, from at least 2 lemons

4-5 thick slices country bread, crusts removed, crumbed in the food processor

1 small onion

¼ cup water

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil and

¼ cup peanut or sunflower oil, combined in the same pitcher

Squeeze the juice of half a lemon or more into the tarama paste and stir well with a spoon. Put the tarama paste, a handful of bread crumbs, and the onion into the food processor, and blend. Dribble in the water and oils alternately, add some more bread crumbs, and continue until the mixture is pale and fluffy, the bread is used up, and no more oil can be absorbed. Add more lemon juice, until the dip is neither too fishy nor salty. Serve with fresh bread, crackers, bread sticks, raw sliced vegetables—carrots, fennel, peppers, etc.

Don’t fret about exact amounts and double the recipe for a big party.

(Most recipes will tell you to soak the bread and then squeeze all the water out of it. I prefer this method, which I learned in Corfu. It makes a lighter dip. I also have come to use a blend of oils, since olive oil on its own can have too strong a taste.)