Cretan-homes, Crete property estate agents

Winter drawers on

by Ann Lisney

As far as the locals are concerned, summer is definitely over and preparations are being made for winter. Their floor rugs are coming out of their summer storage, their washing lines are festooned with winter underwear and their children are back at school (strikes permitting!). On the tourist strips along the coast, however, things are still in full swing and the visitors from northern Europe are still revelling in, what is for them, warm sunshine.

Here in our village, we have had the grape harvest and the treading, the figs have been picked and dried off, the almonds will soon be shelled, baked and salted, and the olives are swelling up nicely after a shower or two of rain.

But what really spells the turning of the seasons is when the ladies of the village start making their pasta (xilopetes) for the winter. I had my induction into the ritual last summer courtesy of a master-class from two village ladies in my own home, but this year felt confident enough to go it alone. Well, not quite alone – Rob kindly offered to help.

I remembered that for every kilo of flour I would need three eggs, half a litre of goats milk and a generous teaspoon of salt, so we bought the ingredients and set to work. Our plan was to make three kilos of tagliatelle-like pasta, which we reckoned would see us through the winter.

Not many mixing bowls are large enough for this sort of quantity, so I copied the village tradition and turned to the large plastic bowl used for carrying wet washing.  Forgetting quite how to continue, I started with the dry ingredients and added the liquid ones. When everything was in, the mixture was still fairly dry and took a devil of a lot of squeezing, pounding and kneading to get it into something like pastry consistency.

We split the mixture into six and tried to encourage each lump through our pasta machine. Let no-one say this is an easy process! Rob and I took it in turns, and our arm muscles were soon twanging in protest at the unaccustomed exercise.

Each small sausage of pastry had to be flattened out into a very thin sheet, which is easier said than done, as it ended up with me standing in the kitchen winding and holding up the strip as it came out, and Rob standing at the far side of the living room with both arms outstretched – and the stuff was still coming out of the machine.

When all this was done, the sheets had to be fed back in through the cutting blades to make the tagliatelle strips. These have to be laid out to dry (we put sheets over all our living room furniture and draped them over) for five days Perhaps I should have said – don’t start this when you are expecting visitors! At the end of that time, the dried pasta can be collected up and stored in an airtight container until needed.

So, exhausted but triumphant, we were the proud possessors of three kilos of home-made xilopetes.

Next day I went to see ‘Mama’ – my elderly friend in the village. “Anna,” she announced, “it is time to make xilopetes. I will come to your house tomorrow, and then you can come to my house the following day.”

What could I say?

So on the following day I did it all again, this time with the experienced help of Mama, and Tula, another village lady. Of course they did it all properly – they mixed the milk and eggs together and then added the flour (doh!) until it was the right consistency; they did not try to put the strips through on every single setting from 0 to 9, and they very sensibly cut the strips into 9 inch sections before putting them through on the closer settings, so we did not get unmanageable lengths. As I was still the novice, I was only allowed to catch the stuff as it fell from the machine and drape it on the sheets to dry. (Another five days with no visitors!)

The next day it was beginning to feel like a production line as we all reconvened at Mama’s house and churned out another batch…..

As I was in a state of total exhaustion, Rob took me out for a meal that evening. The waiter announced with a degree of pride that his special of the day was a pasta dish. I protested weakly that I was a bit ‘off’ pasta as I had been making xilopetes for the last two days. The waiter gave me a very curious look and exclaimed: “Just like my grandmother!”