Sunday 5th May at 4pm: Evanthia Tsekoura’s Cooking Demonstration
Evanthia Tsekoura will demonstrate how to prepare two vegetarian dishes from the town of Kymi on the Greek Island of Evia.
The demonstration will take about an hour.
The starter is a dish called “rodini” – a cheese-bread that is made of yogurt, olive oil, flour and feta cheese. This dish has been very popular because it is quick and easy to prepare. It was the ideal snack for children to take in school excursions. Today it is one of the favourite food pairing perfectly with afternoon tea.
The main dish is aubergine bake with olive oil, tomato sauce and feta cheese. This vegetarian dish was usually prepared the days following big celebrations and feasts with a lot of meat. Cooking the aubergine bake and offering to neighbours was very important for the locals in Kymi since it was their opportunity to boast about the very finest olive oil from their own crop.
About Evanthia…
Mrs Evanthia Tsekoura was born in the Greek island of Evia in a place called Kymi. Kymi had a strong shipping tradition, at the beginning of the 19thcentury it was the fourth most important Greek town for shipping.
Evanthia’s grandfather owned a sailing ship and then a steamer ship, trading goods between the Black Sea and various Mediterranean ports. Her father, after having lived for 40 years in the United States, he came back to Greece to marry his school sweetheart. He became the Mayor of the city. Evanthia was married to Yiannis Tsekouras, and had two children, Hara and George. Hara lives in Athens and she is a high school teacher of French language. George lives in Brighton and he works as an academic in the University of Brighton.
Evanthia started collecting recipes from relatives and friends, as soon as she finished the high school. Over these years, she has managed to gather more than 100 recipes for various dishes and desserts from Kymi and other places in Greece. All these recipes which are written in hand, have been bundled together in Evanthia’s cooking book, what is called in Greek “Evanthia’s tselementes”. She carries her cooking book always with her. The dishes, which she will prepare on Sunday, come straight from her cooking book.