Cooking Greek In America: Q&A with John & Maria

John and Maria Frangakis are my parents and the inspiration for Phyllo Files. They emigrated from a small village in Chios, Greece with my brother and sister in the late 1960’s. They had no running water or electricity when they left Greece, and grew almost all of their own food. I sat down with them in their New Jersey kitchen to ask them about differences cooking in Greece and the US. And, for the record, learned that some of the Greek foods I grew up with, they started cooking after moving to the US. Responses have been edited for clarity.

PF: What did you grow in Greece?  

Maria: Everyone grew their own wheat. We lived off the fields, from the gardens, we had everything. Eggplants, potatoes, onions, peas, we used to dry them, fava beans, and chickpeas.

John: We made olive oil. From grapes we made wine, brandy, ouzo. From the figs too.

PF: Did you make bread?

Maria: Yes, we used to make big loaves, to last for at least two weeks. Because it was at least a day’s work. It was very hard.

John: We would use 40 pounds of flour at a time. In about October, we would sow the wheat, and harvest in the summer by hand.

PF: Were there any ingredients you would buy from the city?

John: Rice, sugar; things we couldn’t grow. Two or three times a year? There was no car or transportation.

Maria: Mostly we used to live off the fields. We had chickens, eggs. Our milk, from goats and sheep. And from that milk, they were making cheese.

PF: How did your cooking change, if at all, when you first moved here?

A: Maria: Not much difference with ingredients and what we cooked.

John: There’s no comparison, it was much easier here. We didn’t have electricity in Greece, no running water. We’d have to go to the river to get water, and filter the water. And we had refrigeration here.

PF: Did you have trouble finding certain ingredients, did you have to travel to find them?

Maria: Yes, things like the phyllo. If someone went to Philadelphia, or New York. Philadelphia, when we moved here [New Jersey], Philadelphia had a lot of Greek stuff.

PF: Did you notice any difference in ingredient quality?

Maria: The pomegranates in Greece were much better.

John: And figs

Maria: The figs in Greece were wonderful. And apricots were something else.

PF: Where there any ingredients that you started using here?
Maria: Meat, because we didn’t have much meat there.

John: And there was more cheese.

PF: Did you learn more Greek recipes after moving here? And how?

Maria: Yes, from other Greek ladies at church and from books. Like pitas. Certain villages, make pitas out of everything. Yiayia used to only pumpkin pita when someone turned on the bread ovens.

PF: You didn’t make spanakopita in Greece?

Maria: No, in the village, we didn’t have spinach.

PF: Did you want to cook more Greek stuff in the US?

Maria: Well, we liked some of the stuff, pastitsio, moussaka. We didn’t make it often there.

PF: Why not?

Maria: There wasn’t an oven to bake it in, it was difficult to make there. We had the vegetables, but didn’t have the ground beef, and sometimes milk and butter. It wasn’t really even butter, it was made from vegetables and hard to find.

PF: Were Americans you met interested in your food?

Maria: Some people liked our food. They liked moussaka, pastitsio. Everyone wanted me to make massourakia, for school, kids, teachers, church. They got crazy for them. I used to buy the walnuts with the shells, crack them and chop up the nuts.