Every Christmas, every Greek Easter, and every New Year's Day, we go to my grandparents in Brunswick. We have done so for my whole life and will for the rest of theirs.
Before the meat is ready and we go inside to eat, everyone sits on plastic chairs under cherry trees encased in so much bird-proof netting they're almost impossible to identify. Bottles of VB are shared between ornate crystal glasses that glint in the sun. Yiayia offers plates of kefalograviera cut into tiny tiles, and rebetiko plays from the ancient radio in the kitchen, the sound scratchy, blown-out and perfect as it streams through lace curtains.
The smell always hits me as I get out of my car, swirling around and engulfing me, giving me what I call sore heart – excessively warm feelings that ache.
Papou has one of every animal under the sun on the spit, rotating in a symphony: chicken, lamb, pork, quail. He'll make a show of shaving off the crunchy edges as it turns, distributing morsels delicately into eager hands with his tongs. You can see the smoke billowing off the spit halfway down the street. The smell always hits me as I get out of my car, swirling around and engulfing me, giving me what I call a sore heart – excessively warm feelings that ache. Yiayia's duties are the stove, oven and desserts. Olive oil braised dishes, sides and salads. Bread and cakes. It would seem like the work is uneven, and in this department, it is. We joke that Papou always explains to us how to make the dishes he's not involved in cooking.
Inside, the table is dressed with a lace tablecloth underneath plastic sheeting. There's a glass chandelier decorated with clip-on koalas, a photo of everyone from my grandparent's village standing in the town square before they all left next to a framed picture of Princess Diana.
My family loves coming together to eat. Source: Ella Mittas
When we were younger, the kids sat at a small table in front of the telly. Now we sit with the grown-ups. Everyone has their designated spots at the table, as we've had for my whole life, but we pretend we don't know where to sit once the food is out. A charade of confusion: everyone jokes there's not enough room, who's plate is who's we'll never be able to tell. We eat dolmades made with silverbeet from the garden filled with rice and mince. Pita with cheese inside. Pickled green tomatoes. Cabbage with lemon and olive oil. Yoghurt with garlic. We drink beer, and there is always an offer of wine but who knows how long the wines have been in the house, we joke probably 20 years.
These meals have given me a sense of community and belonging I haven't been able to locate in the rest of my life.
Yiayia makes my favourite dessert, galaktoboureko, for all big occasions. Galaktoboureko is a semolina custard baked in filo and covered in honey-laced syrup. The pastry is golden brown from being baked in butter. She uses a tepsi to bake it – a round silver tin. The dessert gets scored into diamonds before it's baked. The semolina custard firms up and sets, and then the pastry puckers underneath, softens from being immersed in syrup. After dessert, we eat plates of sugar melon cut into cubes. They are served in the middle of the table, on more crystal with a pile of forks.
This is how it goes; this is how it's always gone. Our family has always organised itself around eating. And these meals have given me a sense of community and belonging I haven't been able to locate for the rest of my life. They seem separate from the rest of Australia but are a version of Greece abstracted from the real thing; their traditions are built on distant memories.
Eating galaktoboureko with my family is the perfect way to spend an afternoon. Source: Ella Mittas
The language spoken is 'Gringlish', a mix of both places. I've always felt that somewhere inside this place is where my true identity lies. I've looked for more concrete examples of that elusive sense of community for years: a place where it exists in its entirety, where it's set in stone. But no matter how many times I went searching for it in Greece, all roads led back to Brunswick. Now, I use my career in food as an endless homage to my family. Recreating these meals for others to bring me closer to the culture. Or, our version of the culture at least.
Greek custard pie (galaktoboureko)
Greek custard pie in syrup (galaktoboureko) is my favourite dessert. The construction of creamy custard wrapped up in crispy pastry and soaked in syrup is hard to beat.
Serves 10
Ingredients
Custard
- 150 g fine semolina
- 200 g caster sugar, divided into 2
- 400 g cream
- 600 g milk
- 4 eggs
- 150 g salted butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Pastry
- 250 g salted butter, melted for brushing the filo
- 450 g filo pastry
Syrup
- 550 g caster sugar
- 450 g water
- 1 lemon rind
Method
- Preheat your oven to 165°C.
- For the syrup, combine the sugar, water and lemon rind in a pot, place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Once the sugar has dissolved completely, set aside to cool.
- In a second pot, add the cream, milk, 100 g sugar and vanilla. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil.
- As soon as the cream mix has come up to heat, whisk in the semolina. Do this incrementally: if you add too much at once your mix will get lumpy. Whisk until the mix thickens: five to seven minutes.
- Once the mix has stopped thickening, remove it from the heat and add the butter. Continue whisking until the butter is completely incorporated and the mix has cooled slightly.
- Separately in a mixer, beat the eggs with the other 100 g of sugar until white and fluffy.
- Once the semolina mix is lukewarm, gently fold through the egg mix with a spatula.
- Melt the butter for the filo. Generously brush a baking dish with some of the melted butter then start assembling the pie by spreading sheets of filo in the dish and brushing with butter.
- Repeat the process with half of the packet of filo, then spread the custard on top and fold over the filo that is hanging over the edges. Brush with butter.
- Set one sheet of filo aside and add the remaining sheets over the custard, drizzling each one with melted butter. Then carefully cover it with the final sheet, tucking it under the edges of the pie.
- Score your pie into serving-sized pieces with a sharp knife; this will help keep the pastry intact when you're cutting it later. Then pour the remaining butter over the top and bake for around 1 hour or until golden and crunchy.
- When ready, remove from the oven and pour the cold syrup over the pie.
This recipe is from Ela! Ela! From Turkey to Greece, Then Home by Ella Mittas ( RRP$60).
