Green Gatherer of the Gods

As a high school student of art history and later on as a cynical college graduate, Greece, for me, was known for only a few things… the stories of gods and goddesses, the beautiful architecture of the Acropolis, and finally, the bus loads of backpack clad tourists that descended her shore’s every summer to eat Kebab with Tzatziki while laying on the beach and doing absolutely nothing. Of course I was aware that over the years some of the nuance and romance had been lost to me. Hell, I just assumed that these were the kinds of things that happened when places like Rome or Athens, for example, became dirty from over development or simply stagnant within a historical framework best suited for ‘lights, camera, and action’. To my surprise, what I found in the island of Crete and with the students of Food Culture was something all together different. Nothing in my conventional education could have prepared me for my one day with Minolas and his masterpiece of living history- the wild green salad.

You see, it’s not so much what he has created in the kitchen but rather how he comes to find his ingredients that makes Manolas’ such a great artist. For local patrons of his tavern the salad is a major part of their meal. Loaded with fresh greens and herbs, it could surprisingly hold the spotlight against a giant T-bone steak or nice veal chop. Using methods learned from his father as a child, each day Minolas goes into the fields surrounding his village and searches for naturally occurring edible plants. In this way, Minolas has a day to day relationship with the environment. The landscape of Crete becomes the determining factor in what he will serve on his menu and the cooking becomes an artistic endeavor. We all know that first there are experiments and than there is science. In the case of the wild green salad the possibility of having an exact recipe will never happen. But do we have to ask why? After all, each new dill sprig or dandelion blossom changes the complexity of the dish and each new day holds a discovery of new flavors for Minolas’ and his patrons.

The tradition of wild green salad is rooted in Greece’s history and particularly that of Crete which has been consistently dotted with conquests and very little trade. With the Turkish and Venetian invasions, the need of the peasants to find a consistent source of food was among one of the top priorities. Now for me it seems that the seeds of creativity had been sown long ago into the essence of the Cretan people. It was and is an island with relatively limited resources and aside from the weather which is increasingly arid and hot further into the summer months, the land is less than hospitable being both rocky and mountainous. Many Greeks in the past thought it ideal for the growth of wild greens and herbs so they began collecting them and using them as a main staple of their diets.

Being someone from the United States, I couldn’t help but think about the notion of private and public land use, how in rural areas in Arkansas you can still see signs marked “No Trespassing” and how in Crete no one seemed to mind at all whether someone just so happened to end up on the other side of the fence so to speak. Upon inquiry, Minolas explained that his neighbors saw nothing wrong with coming onto each others land nor in him taking their plants for use in his restaurant. It was something they kept in their historical memory, the shared effort to survive, and perhaps it is this makes the unspoken law socially acceptable today.

After our long day of accompanying Minolas in the fields, asking questions in the hot sun, and trying to fight off Raiki hangovers we all decided that it was finally time to eat our hard work. When the plate arrived in front of me, I couldn’t help but be humbled by what I had learned from Minolas just hours earlier. All the cynicism about lost culture faded away from me as I observed a simple salad which was so obviously ingrained in every Cretans’ life. The stark white plate bore a yin-yang contrast to the richness in color of the dark greens, light greens, yellows, and reds interwoven as a harmonious blend of borage, purslane, baby asparagus, dandelion, and mint. The entire salad was drizzled in olive oil and lemon juice and nothing else. It led me to treasure each distinct taste and texture of that day’s harvest and as it so happened, Minolas’ wild green salad was a simple but surprisingly hearty dish. It left me feeling full and contented but more importantly, I felt as if I had incorporated into myself, into my very being, a piece of living history.