My big Greek adventure

I first went to Greece when I was 17 as a treat for passing my A levels (not with great distinction I have to confess). My mother and I went on a cruise round the islands about which I can’t remember a great deal apart from having a crush on one of the cabin stewards who bore an uncanny resemblance to Sean Connery in his James Bond heyday. And was probably my mother’s age. Nothing came of it I'm sorry to say although mother, of course, was profoundly relieved.

My next visit was even more momentous. It was in September 2001 when I was at Athens airport that I heard that a plane - and then another - had crashed into the twin towers. We spent the next week - as the world did - in a state of shock.

It was on that visit that we visited Kefalonia. I’d been commissioned by Bon Appetit to write a piece about island wines and by Sainsbury’s to write a food and travel feature about the island, inspired by the interest in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin which had just been made into a film. (Aaaah, those were the days of lucrative commissions!)

The charm of Kefalonia

We hung out with the Kosmetatos family who owned the island’s best known winery Gentilini for a couple of days. I remember the breathtaking blue of the sea on island’s most famous beach, Myrtos and Petros diving off the rocks for sea urchins which we ate on the spot and still remain the freshest and best I’ve ever eaten. At the end of a couple of days we’d bonded - as you do - and they urged me to come back sometime for Easter - which they said was as important to the Greeks as Christmas and absolutely the best time of year to visit the island.

I treasured that thought but never got around to it. My late husband Trevor wasn’t much of a one for travelling. Having been brought up in France, like a true Frenchman he could never see the point in going anywhere else. As I travelled a lot it seemed unfair to go somewhere without him when we could travel together. I didn’t even want to - but now … Why not?

I plucked up courage to write to Petros and his wife Marianna. ‘You remember 15 years ago inviting me to come back for Easter? Well could I possibly make it this year?’ Very sweetly they said yes. I booked a plane without a second thought.

Athens' cheap airbnb

As flights to Kefalonia didn’t start until May I needed to fly into Athens so thought I might as well go a couple of days ahead and spend some time in the city first. I trawled airbnb and was amazed to find how cheap rooms were, picking a room in a pretty flower-covered house in the Chilandri district about 15 minutes from the centre for - wait for this - £17 a night. It doesn’t look remotely like a dodgy hostel and has attracted glowing reviews so how come so cheap? I hope to find out.

My plans to spend time in the city have also been hijacked by a couple of winemakers with whom I was put in touch with by Theodore Kyriakou of The Greek Larder who is hosting his own Easter feast this weekend for which there may still be places. Apparently Athens is part of a winemaking region called Attica. Who knew?

So that’s the plan. I’m sitting writing this on an Easyjet plane hoping they haven’t lost my luggage this time as they managed to do for six days on a trip to Galicia last summer.* Press and other work trips apart, it’s the first time I’ve travelled on my own since Trevor died in October and it feels quite strange.

What will I find? Will Greece be traumatised by its economic woes? How will it be coping with the refugee crisis? Hopefully there won’t be an earthquake (always a slight worry - Kefalonia suffered a devastating one back in 1953 and a couple of less severe but significant ones back in 2014) What will Greek Easter be like? Will I be able to stomach (pardon the pun) the entrail soup that is traditionally served at midnight to mark the end of Lent?

Well I hope I’ll find time to tell you. Follow me on Twitter (@winematcher and @food_writer) and Instagram (food_writer) if you’re interested. I might even have a crack at Snapchat. You never know ….

* it did arrive, thankfully.

Photo ©kwasny221 @fotolia.com

The healing power of pie

As some of you who follow me on Twitter and Facebook will know I lost my husband suddenly three weeks ago. It’s obviously hard to write about it while it's still so raw but I wanted to tell you about something quite unexpected that has helped - and is helping - to heal the pain.

A couple of nights after he died a chef friend, Chris Wicks, turned up with an absolutely magnificent fish pie. “I just thought you’d have family round you’d need to feed and you wouldn’t feel like cooking.” Or eating, he could have said. So true. The very thought made me feel nauseous but we needed to eat, all of us - and the amazing thing was - the pie was so delicious - luxuriant, creamy, stuffed with seafood - that we actually tucked in and enjoyed it.

Another chef friend, Stephen Markwick, heard about this and brought his own equally amazing pie - this time chicken and tarragon - a few days later which I shared with my husband’s and my oldest friends one memorable evening when we talked endlessly about Trevor and joyously remembered him. It reminded me that it was still possible to laugh.

Since then there have been other food offerings. Supplies of Spanish jamon and a homemade tortilla from my beautiful Menorcan daugher-in-law, Maria (plus a mac and cheese which I’ve just happily remembered I stashed away in the freezer). A great hunk of creamy Gorwydd Caerphilly from cheesemaker friends Trethowan's Dairy. Some fresh farm eggs, laid that day, from a neighbour, a box of indulgently chocolatey muffins from an American friend (which our youngest son managed to squirrel away) and a box of Hotel Chocolat chocolate fingers which popped through the letterbox from a new friend, Nicky. They got rapidly scoffed by our youngest too. Choc therapy.

Others have offered to come over and cook. Lovely idea - more intimate, less stressful than a restaurant although I have had a couple of great meals at our local, Wallfish, in the past 10 days. (They also offered to let me use the restaurant as an office in between services if I was finding it difficult or depressing to work from home. I wasn't doing much work at all to be honest but it was an incredibly kind thought.) Local feels good right now.

Finally this week we held a magnificent Irish-style wake for Trevor at his much-loved Bell’s Diner where we sat round big tables and shared incredible food and wine. Nothing fussy - clams and beans, rabbit stew - his favourite kind of food. It’s all been about comfort this past couple of weeks.

How useful is this to you? Maybe you’re not as obsessed with food as I am or lucky enough - I know I am - to have friends who are chefs but everyone can provide food of some sort: a pan (or even a couple of cartons) of soup, a homemade pasta sauce, a quiche or some cold ham and tubs of salads, even a pack of porridge - I treated myself to Rude Health’s Fruity Date porridge the other day. Someone told me a friend had provided her with a side of smoked salmon. Healthy food to pick at is especially welcome. You don't want to be living off toast.

I hadn’t really thought what people need when they're bereaved. Flowers seem obvious and they’re beautiful but they die and you don’t need a reminder of death*. But food is comforting, sustaining and nourishing: something that literally keeps body and soul together. Don’t ask whether the person wants it - they’ll more than likely say "no, I’m not hungry, please don’t go to the trouble" but they'll welcome it, believe me. Make it perishable so they can't just put away it in a cupboard.

Be a feeder.

*Another good friend send a couple of light-hearted books to read “for those moments you wake up in the middle of the night” So right. I can recommend The Red Notebook to fellow insomniacs. And from another, a bath oil called Inner Strength. We all need it.

The joys of open-top motoring - and headscarves ...

This week I have been mainly driving around the south of England in a large open-top Beemer. No, it’s not our car, we were offered it by the nice people at BMW who obviously got me confused with the Guardian motoring correspondent. But who was I to disillusion them?

The idea was to do an English *ch*mp*gne trip - not that you’re allowed to use the C word - taking in a few nice hotels on the way. (Well you don’t want to park your posh car outside a Travelodge do you?) As the UK’s sparkling wine vineyards extend from Cornwall to Kent that could have taken some time so we decided to concentrate on the English fizz heartland around Hampshire and Sussex.

So what was the car - a BMW series 2 convertible twin turbo for you cognoscenti - like, you’ll want to know? Well, to put it technically, large and fast (3.5 litres is lorra lorra power as the late, much-lamented Cilla Black might have said). We dubbed it Brendan (we name all our cars) after the Liverpool Football Club manager. How could we not - it was red?*

Not having had a new car for years it was also deeply confusing, like putting an Amstrad owner in charge of the latest Mac. We couldn’t for the life of us fathom how to program the satnav which, it turned out, didn’t matter that much as half the wineries we visited were buried deep down country lanes. Fortunately we’d also taken our own satnav, a map and a set of instructions but even that didn’t prevent us getting hopelessly lost around Hambledon (right) and having to ignominiously walk into a small industrial unit to ask our way. The village of Hambledon is currently cut off its most direct point of access but still!

There were some other embarrassing moments when we couldnt lock the car - or thought we couldn’t (it remains unlocked if you stand by it, Mick from BMW had to explain), start it (our suitcase was jamming the roof mechanism) or get it out of park. That resulted in yet another call to the longsuffering Mick who had to get an engineer from BMW to talk us through it. (Key needs to be in car not in husband’s trouser pocket apparently.) This was mainly due to our incompetence though to be fair there is a separate manual devoted to the electronics which probably takes a couple of days to master. It may also not have helped that we were lowering and raising the roof with childish glee at every opportunity, wearing down batteries gaily as we went.

But I’d forgotten the sheer heady pleasure of driving a fast car in the open - not mere driving to get from A to B but the glorious old-fashioned art of motoring. The earthy smell of damp, leafy woods (as you can see (right), it was typically English summer weather) as Brendan soared up hills, hugged corners and nipped round slower cars which obstructed his progress - though we wisely decided not to engage with three utter madmen who were involved in a lethal car chase outside Billingshurst. Blimey, what is Sussex like these days?

I’d also forgotten the immense sartorial appeal of the headscarf, an accessory I’ve been wrongly dismissing as mumsy for years, which not only helps you to arrive at your destination without looking like a demented dish mop but to appear as if you were born to drive a car like this.

Friends of Faceboook, over which I shamelessly plastered images of our trip were full of admiration at our latest acquisition but sadly I had to disillusion them them. Brendan wasn’t ours. So thanks, BMW. I still think you probably got the wrong woman but you made my car-mad husband very happy. It was a blast.

PS More on the wineries we visited, the wines we tasted (and spat out, I assure you), the food we ate and the beds we slept in another time ...

*yes, I know that could have meant we're Man U supporters but how on earth could you think that?

A day in the life of a wine writer

I wouldn’t say that yesterday was a typical day in the life of this particular wine writer but it was certainly an eclectic one, starting with one huge supermarket tasting (Asda), going on to a Dom Pérignon lunch and finishing with another one (Morrisons).

Few would regard that as anything like work but it takes its toll on the tastebuds so I thought I might pose myself the kind of questions my friends and relatives tend to ask:

So how many wines did you taste?

Hmmm, about 180 I’d guess

How could you possibly taste anything by the end of it?

Good question. The fact is that you’re not going to taste as well at the end of the day as you do at the beginning, particularly after a *cough* Dom Perignon lunch at which not much (actually no) spitting was done. But you get enough of an idea to tell whether it’s a cracking wine or ... er....crap

But don’t your personal preferences come into that?

Yes and no. I must say 20-odd young sauvignon blancs become quite wearisome as does a line-up of huge, overripe 14.5% reds but you try and look at them from the perspective of readers who like those styles. You can still tell which are the stars

Doesn’t it make you drunk?

Not drunk precisely but you do inevitably absorb some alcohol through the lining of your mouth. I wouldn’t want to drive after a tasting

What’s Dom Pérignon like?

Pretty extraordinary. In the case of the 2005 which was being released yesterday, exotically rich, honeyed and vinous - i.e. it’s not just for quaffing at a party. We also ‘tasted’ - i.e. drank - the 1998 and 1971 which costs a cool £1801 at Hedonism

Blimey! So how much is the 2005?

£130.

That seems a bargain by comparison. But is it worth four times the average champagne?

Oooo, tricky one. For most people the answer's obviously no but it’s not about value for money, it’s about style, theatre, entertainment .... Think of the fashion industry. You can get cheaper shoes than Jimmy Choos but if you want them and can afford them you buy them. DP is an experience not just a drink. (Makes note to self to use that line somewhere)

Would you buy it?

If money were no object, yes. Given the current state of my bank balance, no.

So what did you eat?

An elegant little crab, raw asparagus and samphire salad. A simply gorgeous dish of guineafowl with broad beans and lashings of tarragon butter and gariguette strawberries with set cream (panna cotta to you and me) and brown butter and rye shortbreads. Cooked by Skye Gyngell of Spring (to which you should go by the way. Particularly at this time of year)

OK, let’s get back to the real world shall we? What about the supermarket tastings? Which was better - Asda or Morrisons?

If you like crisp Italian whites the 2014 M Signature Verdicchio is a real bargain from Morrisons at £5.49. And Asda’s Extra Special Douro 2013 - a big dense spicy red made from the same varieties as port - is a steal at £5. Look out for these vintages though. I can’t vouch for the earlier ones

Were you tired at the end of the day?

As a dog ….

Image credit: Tim Durand