Giant Beans

I am making my Butter Bean and Chorizo stew.

Loosely based on a Greek dish which I first enjoyed at a wonderful Epirot greasy spoon cafe in Ioannina called HbH (pronounced Evie) this is a wonderfully satisfying concoction of olive oil, butter beans, tomato,  chorizo and oregano.  super with bread and butter.  The Greeks apparently eat more bread than anyone else in Europe.  And damned good bread it is  as I remember.

My first visit to Greece was in 2003 nearly ten years before my second visit. The first visit was a few days in Athens followed by a week in Ioannina in Epirus near the border with Albania.

Beautiful weather all round.  Till the last couple of days when it snowed.  Back to Athens we went in the bus with a snowstorm at our heels.  Two feet of snow in Athens.  The snow lay glistening on the orange trees.  Wonderful drinking in Plaka though in a little bar with a distillery out the back.

The tea by the way has cooked.  Lovely taste and beautifully oily.  A nice Greek olive oil appropriately. Ah wonderful.

The city of Ioannina I can recommend to anyone.  Beautiful situation on a lake. An island community with regular ferries in the lake.  The island also contains a former monastery which was where the infamous Ali Pasha the despot of Ioannina was shot.  Ali was in an upstairs room when someone on the ground floor fired a shot through the ceiling and into Ali Pasha.

Ali Pasha defied the Ottoman empire and its armies.  He was probably the one man (according to Misha Glenny) who could have stymied insurgent Greek nationalism but the Ottoman state preferrewd to kill him.  Not that he turned up his nose at killing either.  A bloodthirsty reputation persists.

Lord Byron paid him a visit n the 1820's and was not favourably impressed.

Ali Pasha's Albanian roots mean that the present-day Greeks don't really give him his place either but then history is always written by the victors.

Ioannina is clearly a formerly Turkish town.. The Ottomans only lost it in 1913.  The architecture of the town still shows evidence of its roots.  An ancient mosque.  The old Bazaar. Arabic script on gravestones and monuments.  The muslim population were exchanged in the 1920's of course for Smyrnan Greeks expelled from Turkey in the exchange of populations.

The other ethnic minorities are still evident though.  Vlachs and Sarakatsani people.  The area itself is rugged and beautiful in the shadow of the Pindus Mountains.  While there we made a number of excursions to the impressive Vikos Gorge.  This was reached through the quaint village of Monodendri (One Tree).  The gorge itself is guarded by a monastery and the monks over the years cut paths through the cliff walls to little cells where they practised their devotions.  Going along these paths is still quite un-nerving.

The arched bridges are very characteristic of the region as well.

The highlight of our stay was a trip to Albania.  The guy we were visiting suggested the trip one afternoon and we were up for it.  Jumped into the Land Rover and took off down the road.  Off the highway and onto a dirt track. At the top of a rise Alexandros proudly proclaimed we were in Albania.  We were a bit dubious. Where was the barbed wire?  All sold for scrap.

Driving into the country was like a scene of post-apocalyptic devastation.  Deserted house with curtains blowing our through broken windows.  Deserted villages.  Everyone had departed for Greece or Italy.

Eventually, about seven or eight clicks inside Albania we came to a village and in the square were three old guys who were herding goats.  They were sat round a table playing cards.  We waved a bottle of Raki and were invited over.  I remembered as a kid in Montrose there was a "Colloquial Albanian" phrase book in the local library.  Fortunately these guys spoke a Greek that Alexandros could understand.

They tried to interest us in buying a few Kalashnikovs that had been looted form police armouries in the upheavals associated with the collapse of socialism in Albania.  They offered them at a very reasonable price. in US Dollars.  Euros didn't interest them.. One hundred US Dollars was the price for what looked a perfectly serviceable assault rifle.  Unfortunately they had no ammunition left.. They had sold all the bullets they had (several thousand rounds it appears) to some guys from Crete the week before.

It seems that they like their firearms in Crete.   Anyway we declined their offer.  It would have been a difficult article to take home as a souvenir.