We are adventurous eaters. Aside from a few obvious restrictions from allergies and Drink Your Carbs, pretty much anything else is fair game. If we’re travelling and the local delicacy is squirrel heads our only question is: “How are they prepared?” As long as they aren’t battered, fried or drowned in a cream sauce, we’re all over it.
Of all of the foods we’ve been fortunate to try, the most perfect Drink Your Carbs food we have ever come across was Meat Cooked in the Manner of Thieves on the Greek island of Crete. Whole, salted fish-on-a-stick in Kyoto, Japan was a close second, but it just can’t compete when it comes to backstory.
Of all of the foods we’ve been fortunate to try, the most perfect Drink Your Carbs food we have ever come across was Meat Cooked in the Manner of Thieves on the Greek island of Crete. Whole, salted fish-on-a-stick in Kyoto, Japan was a close second, but it just can’t compete when it comes to backstory.
Fact: We took this trip four years ago. At the time, the Greek economy was weak, but there was an overwhelming sense of optimism in everyone we met. The Euro crisis changed all that. Greece of today is a far angrier place. We mention this to explain why the Greece we recall sounds very different from the one pictured on the news. Without this context, it might sound as though we skipped traveling all the way to Europe and instead swung by the souvlaki stand at Epcot Center.
We have mentioned before that renting an apartment or villa is by far the easiest way to travel on Drink Your Carbs. If you have a kitchen, you can shop for local meat and cook you own healthy, low-carb meals. We certainly don’t recommend cooking all of your own meals. You need to get out and explore the local fare. However, being able to fully control even one meal a day makes a huge difference in limiting your dietary damage.
Fact: While visiting London a few years ago, we were served deep-fried toast under the name “Typical English Breakfast.” We have no idea how throwing slices of white bread into a deep fryer became typically English. All we know is that, unbelievably, there exists a less Drink Your Carbs breakfast option than the typical American breakfast of hash browns and big stacks of pancakes.
Our rented villa was a big house on the edge of the town of Meladoni with four bedrooms, a large kitchen and two living rooms. The walled garden was full of fresh herbs and orange trees laden with fruit. A huge barbeque grill dominated one side of the house and a modest, but beautifully maintained, swimming pool sat on the other. If not for the fact that the weather was unseasonably cold, the pool would have been perfect for dips in the late afternoon after we’d returned home from touring the island. Instead of swimming, our afternoons were spent huddled around the barbeque for heat as we drank Raki and prepared grilled dinners of various local meats.
Fact: Raki is most certainly the official drink of Crete. Raki is a liquor as clear as vodka and as rough drinking as a shot of rubbing alcohol. It’s distilled from grapes, although it’s less grappa than moonshine. In defense of Raki, the more you drink the easier it goes down. And, in an emergency, it could probably run a car.
As far as we could tell, every family on Crete distills their own Raki. After a family’s grapes are pressed into wine, the remaining skins and seeds are distilled to rescue any lingering alcohol. Raki is not aged. The moment it drips from the still, it‘s ready to drink.
Raki seems almost designed for Drink Your Carbs. Raki is always served straight up, at room temperature. No matter how unpalatable a given batch might be, it’s never blended or sweetened. The No Mixer Rule has been in effect on Crete for centuries.
We were served Raki everywhere we went. It showed up in small pitchers after every lunch and dinner. It was served by shopkeepers to thank us for making purchases. It was offered every time we were invited into someone’s home. If you ask, there is Raki available for purchase at every gas station, supermarket, bakery, butcher shop, vegetable stand and even the occasional sandal shop. We bought one bottle that was made by the Monks at the Monastery of Aghia-Irin. In spite of the fact that the Monks have been perfecting their recipe since the 14th century, it was by far the hairiest bottle we purchased and was the only bottle we could not finish.
One concern about cooking too many meals in your villa is that you might be tempted to prepare the same foods you eat at home and miss some of the local flavors and specialties.
On Crete, this would not be possible. Even a food as common as chicken is very different when bought in a Cretan butcher shop. In America, we expect our meat to be unidentifiable as to the original animal. Our steaks look nothing like cows. Our chops and ribs are stacked and uniform so as to avoid looking pig or lamb-like. Even chickens are tucked and trimmed until they barely evoke images of fowl.
Cretan chickens look as though they have been little more than de-feathered. The heads are removed, but the long neck is left fully attached and intact, as are most of the internal organs within the chicken’s cavity. But what really separates Cretan chicken from the chicken we’ve grown accustomed to in America is the butchering technique.
We visited three separate butcher shops while on the island, so we know that the butchering we saw was not limited to a single individual or store. It works like this: first, the neck is hacked off with a large wooden-handled cleaver and the fleshy tube that is the detached neck is set off to the side. The body of the chicken is then carefully bisected down the middle. That was the only part of the process we found familiar. Once the halves are separated, both are subjected to brutal treatment.
Instead of being carefully dismembered into individual breasts, thighs and legs, they are cleaved apart into random chunks. Picture Norman Bates hacking apart Janet Leigh in the movie Psycho. Now replace Norman’s knife with a heavy meat cleaver, the shower with a large butchers block and Ms. Leigh with half a chicken laying cut side down. Even the sound screams low budget horror. Whack! Whack! Whack! The practice produces unpredictable pieces of commingled white and dark meat. Also, bone shards that must be picked from your teeth like buckshot from a hunted pheasant.
The treatment of pork and lamb must be equally violent. We bought already prepared chops and ribs from the refrigerated case, and while they looked similar to meat we might have bought at home, the splintering of the bones indicated a less-than-gentle process. There are very few cows on Crete and we never saw beef sold, but we assume that butchering a cow Cretan-style would involve a jackhammer.
The meat on Crete is among the absolute best we have ever tasted. Chicken, goats and lambs run free on the hillsides. Animals graze on wild onions and oregano that grow everywhere like weeds. The animals are marinating themselves from within. It is a complete mystery as to why such wonderful meat is subjected to such primitive butchering.
On Crete, this would not be possible. Even a food as common as chicken is very different when bought in a Cretan butcher shop. In America, we expect our meat to be unidentifiable as to the original animal. Our steaks look nothing like cows. Our chops and ribs are stacked and uniform so as to avoid looking pig or lamb-like. Even chickens are tucked and trimmed until they barely evoke images of fowl.
Cretan chickens look as though they have been little more than de-feathered. The heads are removed, but the long neck is left fully attached and intact, as are most of the internal organs within the chicken’s cavity. But what really separates Cretan chicken from the chicken we’ve grown accustomed to in America is the butchering technique.
We visited three separate butcher shops while on the island, so we know that the butchering we saw was not limited to a single individual or store. It works like this: first, the neck is hacked off with a large wooden-handled cleaver and the fleshy tube that is the detached neck is set off to the side. The body of the chicken is then carefully bisected down the middle. That was the only part of the process we found familiar. Once the halves are separated, both are subjected to brutal treatment.
Instead of being carefully dismembered into individual breasts, thighs and legs, they are cleaved apart into random chunks. Picture Norman Bates hacking apart Janet Leigh in the movie Psycho. Now replace Norman’s knife with a heavy meat cleaver, the shower with a large butchers block and Ms. Leigh with half a chicken laying cut side down. Even the sound screams low budget horror. Whack! Whack! Whack! The practice produces unpredictable pieces of commingled white and dark meat. Also, bone shards that must be picked from your teeth like buckshot from a hunted pheasant.
The treatment of pork and lamb must be equally violent. We bought already prepared chops and ribs from the refrigerated case, and while they looked similar to meat we might have bought at home, the splintering of the bones indicated a less-than-gentle process. There are very few cows on Crete and we never saw beef sold, but we assume that butchering a cow Cretan-style would involve a jackhammer.
The meat on Crete is among the absolute best we have ever tasted. Chicken, goats and lambs run free on the hillsides. Animals graze on wild onions and oregano that grow everywhere like weeds. The animals are marinating themselves from within. It is a complete mystery as to why such wonderful meat is subjected to such primitive butchering.
Case Study in Cretan Butchering: One evening, toward the end of our trip, we served an irregularly shaped piece of grilled chicken breast to our friend and traveling companion, Tricia. Tricia is at best a reluctant meat eater. She prefers white meat that in no way resembles the animal it came from. We examined every piece of the chicken we had grilled and served her the most benign-looking piece.Half way through eating it, she flipped her chicken over. Still attached to underside of the breast was the chicken’s lung. It was wrinkly and pink and looked like a deflated balloon.
Three questions remain unanswered:
- Why is it that the lung is always served to the person least able to cope with it?
- Is it possible that finding a lung in your chicken is lucky, like finding the plastic baby in a New Orleans king cake?
- Why was the lung still wet and pink when it really should have been cooked to gray?
While grilling outside on the open-air barbeque, we had been drinking liberal quantities of Raki. Perhaps the whole incident can be blamed on a combination of moonlight and moonshine.
Another concern of renting a villa or apartment is that it can limit the time that is spent mingling with locals. Evenings spent in the villa or afternoons lounging by the pool might otherwise have been spent in restaurants or bars or even just wandering the streets of an unfamiliar city. Once again, this was not a problem on Crete. Not only did we meet a ton of locals, we were adopted by a Cretan family who brought us home for Easter dinner.
On past trips, most of our socializing with locals took place at night in pubs. The closest thing the town of Meladoni has to a pub is the old men who gather around plastic tables at the local Shell station to drink Raki alongside the gas pumps. We’ll never know how the local gas station became a community gathering point. We never stopped to ask or to see if they would pour us a drink. The scene was not particularly inviting. It was all men. They were all dressed head-to-toe in black. They glared suspiciously each time we passed. Their behavior would make a lot more sense if it turned out that they weren’t just drinking socially, but rather planning a bank heist.
We didn’t meet the family who adopted us in a local bar. We met them during Easter services. The friends we were travelling with regularly attend church. The last time we went to church was 17 years ago during our honeymoon in Venice, Italy. We woke up early one morning to attend Mass in St. Mark’s Basilica. The woman who ran the youth hostel where we were staying woke up even earlier than we did in order to brew coffee and make us breakfast. She did this out of respect for the fact that we were obviously very religious. We didn’t have the heart to tell her that we actually just wanted to see the Basilica without waiting in a two-hour line.
On the evening of Good Friday, we found ourselves standing in front of a beautiful church in the center of Meladoni. Crete was in the middle of an unusual cold spell. We could see our breath against the clear black sky. Families streamed in and out of the church. Inside, we could hear priests chanting. The question that kept us frozen in the courtyard was, “Is it okay for people who aren’t Greek Orthodox to go inside?” Luckily, that question was overheard by a local woman who answered us in a perfect Long Island accent, “You’re welcome in any church in Greece.”
Inside the church, priests chanted from behind a screen, out of sight. Worshipers lit candles and placed them in boxes on either side of the altar. As the boxes filled up, an old man stepped forward to scoop handfuls of candles out of the boxes and extinguish them in a bowl of water. As if to prove that the universe has a sense of humor, the man whose job it was to extinguish the flames of the faithful looked a lot like the late Christopher Hitchens.
The crowd was not particularly quiet, reverent or attentive. People talked and laughed. Children played right up until the moment that the priests came out from behind the screens to conclude the service. Suddenly, a hush fell over room. Everyone who was still in the courtyard pushed his or her way inside. Children who moments before were chasing one another through the crowd now stood reverently at their parent’s feet.
We filed out of the Church after the service to be greeted by a 10-foot column of flames. While it was a shock, we should have seen this coming. While standing in the courtyard we noticed teenagers piling wood in the middle of the narrow street that ran alongside the church. We were completely mystified as to why local kids would stack logs on the evening of Good Friday, but we were too timid to ask. It became clear the moment we saw the bonfire.
Flames reached nearly as high as the church steeple. It must have been visible for miles around. Oddly, we seemed to be the only people concerned about flames leaping to nearby buildings or lapping at the overhead power lines.
On past trips, most of our socializing with locals took place at night in pubs. The closest thing the town of Meladoni has to a pub is the old men who gather around plastic tables at the local Shell station to drink Raki alongside the gas pumps. We’ll never know how the local gas station became a community gathering point. We never stopped to ask or to see if they would pour us a drink. The scene was not particularly inviting. It was all men. They were all dressed head-to-toe in black. They glared suspiciously each time we passed. Their behavior would make a lot more sense if it turned out that they weren’t just drinking socially, but rather planning a bank heist.
We didn’t meet the family who adopted us in a local bar. We met them during Easter services. The friends we were travelling with regularly attend church. The last time we went to church was 17 years ago during our honeymoon in Venice, Italy. We woke up early one morning to attend Mass in St. Mark’s Basilica. The woman who ran the youth hostel where we were staying woke up even earlier than we did in order to brew coffee and make us breakfast. She did this out of respect for the fact that we were obviously very religious. We didn’t have the heart to tell her that we actually just wanted to see the Basilica without waiting in a two-hour line.
On the evening of Good Friday, we found ourselves standing in front of a beautiful church in the center of Meladoni. Crete was in the middle of an unusual cold spell. We could see our breath against the clear black sky. Families streamed in and out of the church. Inside, we could hear priests chanting. The question that kept us frozen in the courtyard was, “Is it okay for people who aren’t Greek Orthodox to go inside?” Luckily, that question was overheard by a local woman who answered us in a perfect Long Island accent, “You’re welcome in any church in Greece.”
Inside the church, priests chanted from behind a screen, out of sight. Worshipers lit candles and placed them in boxes on either side of the altar. As the boxes filled up, an old man stepped forward to scoop handfuls of candles out of the boxes and extinguish them in a bowl of water. As if to prove that the universe has a sense of humor, the man whose job it was to extinguish the flames of the faithful looked a lot like the late Christopher Hitchens.
The crowd was not particularly quiet, reverent or attentive. People talked and laughed. Children played right up until the moment that the priests came out from behind the screens to conclude the service. Suddenly, a hush fell over room. Everyone who was still in the courtyard pushed his or her way inside. Children who moments before were chasing one another through the crowd now stood reverently at their parent’s feet.
We filed out of the Church after the service to be greeted by a 10-foot column of flames. While it was a shock, we should have seen this coming. While standing in the courtyard we noticed teenagers piling wood in the middle of the narrow street that ran alongside the church. We were completely mystified as to why local kids would stack logs on the evening of Good Friday, but we were too timid to ask. It became clear the moment we saw the bonfire.
Flames reached nearly as high as the church steeple. It must have been visible for miles around. Oddly, we seemed to be the only people concerned about flames leaping to nearby buildings or lapping at the overhead power lines.
Fact: The risks involved in igniting a huge bonfire on a narrow street in the middle of town paled in comparison to what occurred after services the next night. At the end of Midnight Mass, after the priest recited the words “Christos Anesti (Christ has risen),” men ran from the church to fire guns into the air. One man pulled an Uzi from beneath his leather jacket and unloaded a magazine in a matter of seconds. People inside the church and in the courtyard cheered the chaos.
While Good Friday bonfires are a tradition throughout Greece, greeting the resurrection with gunfire is Crete-specific. The tradition is made all the more Cretan by the fact that most firearms are banned by the European Union. Cretans have a reputation for being fiercely independent. No regulatory subcommittee in Brussels is about to change that.
The night ended with a candlelit procession through town. It was during this ritual that we were adopted. As the orange glow of the bonfire faded, baskets of candles and a large wooden cross were brought from the church. The candles were distributed and lit. Young men then hoisted the cross above their heads and led us on a procession through Melidoni. As we walked, the family we had been talking to before the service invited us back to their house for “café” which turned out to be a euphemism for wine.
Their home was over 300 years old. It had passed through the generations. They were the only family ever to occupy it. The floors were originally dirt. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing and the sole source of heating was a large stone fireplace.
Over the years, the house had been repeatedly updated and was completely modern. Yet they managed to preserve much of the original details and character. The original stones of the walls still formed archways above the windows and doors. The centuries old fireplace still stood as the centerpiece of the kitchen. The combination of old and new was stunning.
Their home was over 300 years old. It had passed through the generations. They were the only family ever to occupy it. The floors were originally dirt. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing and the sole source of heating was a large stone fireplace.
Over the years, the house had been repeatedly updated and was completely modern. Yet they managed to preserve much of the original details and character. The original stones of the walls still formed archways above the windows and doors. The centuries old fireplace still stood as the centerpiece of the kitchen. The combination of old and new was stunning.
Fact: According to the World Health Organization, Greece has the most cigarette smokers per capita in the European Union. According to an Oxford University survey, Crete has the highest percentage of smokers in Greece.
The Cretan attitude towards smoking was summed up by one of our hosts. He took a long drag off a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the stone fireplace. “The EU says that we are not allowed to smoke in enclosed spaces, not even in our own homes. But this is Crete. Would anyone else like a cigarette?”
By the end of the evening, we were invited to Easter dinner. It took place in the family’s farmhouse at the bottom of a deep valley, down a long dirt road. There were ample reminders that this was a working farm. The family’s goats and sheep roamed the grassy hillsides above. A nearby enclosure housed chickens and pigs. The farmhouse itself predated the house in town by nearly a century. It was constructed from stacked and mortared grey stones. It had been a ruin when the family acquired the land. It had been lovingly restored to serve as home base for family celebrations. No one lived there. There were no bedrooms. Most of the house was occupied by a wooden table long enough to serve three generations of family and invited guests.
The main course was the most perfect Drink Your Carbs entrée ever conceived. On the surface it looked like roasted lamb. Roasting lamb on a hand-turned rotisserie is traditional throughout Greece. However, our family had a slightly different culinary practice that took roasted lamb and gave it a Drink Your Carbs twist.
The patriarch of the family was, in his youth, one of the greatest poachers in all of Crete. He stole animals from shepherds all over the island, the family informed us with no shortage of pride. For years he remained at large, despite strong suspicion regularly cast in his direction. The problem was that no one could ever catch him in the act. The secret to his success, he told us, was that he only stole to eat. He never kept or sold a stolen animal. The moment livestock was in his possession he would gather friends and feast. Long before the sun came up, the evidence had been eaten.
Eventually his luck ran out and he was thrown in jail. When that did nothing to deter him, he was exiled for several years from the island. For the record, he is now an upstanding citizen. From his time as Crete’s leading poacher, however, he became an accidental world-class chef.
Instead of roasting an animal whole on a hand-turned spit, our outlaw hero butchered the animal onto multiple skewers that were then perched in a ring around the outside of a campfire. His reasons were twofold: meat cooks faster in smaller pieces and faster is better when trying not to get caught. More importantly, the skewers were positioned outside the campfire, rather than being locked into a rotisserie. If the owner of the animal happened along, the patriarch and his friends could each grab a skewer and run in separate directions. One of them might be caught, but they’d never get all of them.
Meat cooked in the manner of thieves is healthy, low carb and protein rich. The animals they procured were pasture-raised, filled with healthy fats and free of hormones. But this is true of all meat raised on Crete. What separates meat cooked in the manner of thieves is that it is designed to grab and run. While we never saw anyone racing across a hillside swinging a smoking skewer, the fact that the cooking method anticipates this behavior is enough for us to declare it as the most perfect Drink Your Carbs food in the world.
There is one small downside to cooking meat in the manner of thieves. Cooking the meat evenly is exceedingly difficult. Managing one skewer on a turn crank is simple. Managing five skewers that must be rotated by hand is another matter.
Most of the meat was cooked perfectly. It was crisp on the outside, tender within. Andrea did, however, come across one piece that was at the extreme end of rare. The moment she exposed the pink meat, one of the older women at the table grabbed her by the wrist and said, “Don’t eat that. That one’s still running up the hillside.”
The main course was the most perfect Drink Your Carbs entrée ever conceived. On the surface it looked like roasted lamb. Roasting lamb on a hand-turned rotisserie is traditional throughout Greece. However, our family had a slightly different culinary practice that took roasted lamb and gave it a Drink Your Carbs twist.
The patriarch of the family was, in his youth, one of the greatest poachers in all of Crete. He stole animals from shepherds all over the island, the family informed us with no shortage of pride. For years he remained at large, despite strong suspicion regularly cast in his direction. The problem was that no one could ever catch him in the act. The secret to his success, he told us, was that he only stole to eat. He never kept or sold a stolen animal. The moment livestock was in his possession he would gather friends and feast. Long before the sun came up, the evidence had been eaten.
Eventually his luck ran out and he was thrown in jail. When that did nothing to deter him, he was exiled for several years from the island. For the record, he is now an upstanding citizen. From his time as Crete’s leading poacher, however, he became an accidental world-class chef.
Instead of roasting an animal whole on a hand-turned spit, our outlaw hero butchered the animal onto multiple skewers that were then perched in a ring around the outside of a campfire. His reasons were twofold: meat cooks faster in smaller pieces and faster is better when trying not to get caught. More importantly, the skewers were positioned outside the campfire, rather than being locked into a rotisserie. If the owner of the animal happened along, the patriarch and his friends could each grab a skewer and run in separate directions. One of them might be caught, but they’d never get all of them.
Meat cooked in the manner of thieves is healthy, low carb and protein rich. The animals they procured were pasture-raised, filled with healthy fats and free of hormones. But this is true of all meat raised on Crete. What separates meat cooked in the manner of thieves is that it is designed to grab and run. While we never saw anyone racing across a hillside swinging a smoking skewer, the fact that the cooking method anticipates this behavior is enough for us to declare it as the most perfect Drink Your Carbs food in the world.
There is one small downside to cooking meat in the manner of thieves. Cooking the meat evenly is exceedingly difficult. Managing one skewer on a turn crank is simple. Managing five skewers that must be rotated by hand is another matter.
Most of the meat was cooked perfectly. It was crisp on the outside, tender within. Andrea did, however, come across one piece that was at the extreme end of rare. The moment she exposed the pink meat, one of the older women at the table grabbed her by the wrist and said, “Don’t eat that. That one’s still running up the hillside.”
Meat Cooked In The Manner of Thieves
