Last Updated on October 28, 2023

Understanding Cretan Cuisine 

A unique hotel, just a few kilometres from Chania in Crete, Mistral, established for thirty years caters exclusively for solo travellers.  It’s a place where you can pick your own pace and your own interests and shape your holiday around that, but still have a home from home to return to in the evening.  Family-style meals are served around a long table with wine flowing and plenty of conversation from the guests who come from all walks of life.  Those solo traveller friends of mine who have tried are unanimous in their love of the experience and hospitality shown by the family and team that runs the place.  People return year after year – sometimes booking two trips!   It’s a good place to get an idea of Cretan cuisine – but, by joining the Flavours of Crete activity week, you can learn a lot more about this uniquely healthy way of eating.  In my next feature I’ll cover the kind of dishes you can expect to learn about – this article is an overview of the activities that you can join.

The largest island in Greece, Crete is generally warm and sunny by June through to September, but during the shoulder season, while the weather is a few degrees warmer than in the UK, you can need a jacket during the day and a cardigan or sweater in the evenings.  So, from Mid-April through to the start of June, the entrepreneurial hoteliers run a series of activity weeks, which are mirrored toward the end of the season, from September through October. 

The year starts with Walking Week – guided hikes through Crete.  A well-established week, I learnt that the team at Mistral tailor the walks depending on who is there.  Next for 2023 is Flavours of Crete, the week that I was invited to join.  The promise of trips to local organic farms, apiaries, olive oil mills and more together with cookery classes sounded fabulous.  And like every holiday at Mistral, if one of the activities isn’t right for you, no one will pressure you into taking part.  

The activity weeks all start on a Tuesday and end on a Tuesday so you will be picked up at Chania airport by the team.  It’s entirely possible to book a few days on either side of your activity week (or indeed another full week) and on the Flavours of Crete trip, there were people doing just that.  In fact, you could spend three happy weeks of ‘activities’ – starting with walking, then food and drink and then health and well-being (the third trip in the sequence!).  Or you could spend some time on the beach and by the pool!

The stand-out memory for me from the Flavours of Crete trip is one of authenticity.  It became a running joke that wherever we went, Adonis (who runs the hotel with his wife Aura) was ‘related to’, ‘lived next door to’ or ‘grew up with’ the people we were visiting.  At the Aviary, set high in the hills that surround Chania, we learnt that the beekeeper had been Adonis’s neighbour. 

The organic farm was just down the road from the hotel – and owned by the uncle of Manos, who drove us on excursions, served drinks and was generally around to help.  We learnt that in the winter season, when the hotel is closed, Manos helps on the farm.  And at this time of year, it’s where the fruit and vegetables we ate every day come from.  

And, of course, our cookery classes were from Mistral’s own chef, Kiki, who has taken over from Adonis’s mother, but still uses many of the original recipes we all enjoy!

We started the week by learning more about olive oil – what else!  In fact, the importance of olive oil in the Cretan diet was reiterated on several occasions. While we all know about the Mediterranean diet, the Cretan version uses over 30kg of olive oil a year – and that’s at least twice as much as mainland Greece and more than 20 times as much as we consume here in the UK on average.  First, we visited the ancient olive tree of Vouves.  At least 2,000 years old and possibly over 4,000 years old, it still produces olives and is believed to be one of the oldest trees in the world.  It’s been a protected natural monument since 1997 and there’s a small museum nearby, the Olive Tree Museum of Vouves, where you can learn about traditional olive cultivation and see some of the tools used for hundreds of years.  

From there we went on to Biolea Astrikas Estate.  Something of an old hand at visits to olive oil mills, I was genuinely astonished at how much I learnt from our very enthusiastic guide.  I have visited a traditional olive oil mill in Tuscany but, in the frenzy of harvest-time oil production found it hard to follow the method.  Not so here.  The principal difference is that, unlike the modern centrifuge method, Biolea uses an updated version of the old way of producing oil.  Once the olives are harvested (using sticks and nets), they are cleaned and any leftover sticks and twigs are removed.  Then, they are crushed for 20-3o minutes between three massive granite millstones.  The resulting paste is turned gently before being spread on round filters in a press. The filters are stacked up a bit like a burger and then pressed to release the oil.  The remaining pressed mixture is pomace which is used as a fertiliser or burnt.  And the liquid gold that results is true cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil.

Our guide was passionate about explaining that when you buy olive oil, you need to be very careful about how it is labelled. To preserve the maximum health benefit from olive oil it needs to be marked as cold pressed – not cold extraction for instance.  She also explained that the amount of oil produced from olives depends on the time the olives are harvested and the weather throughout the growing season – anything from a ratio of 6:1 olives to oil down to 4:1 at best.

Once the oil is extracted it’s left to settle in a tank for 6 to 8 weeks before being bottled in dark glass bottles to help preserve all the nutrients.

A tasting will probably convince you to buy (I came home with two bottles!) and whether you visit with the group from Mistral or by yourself, you can book and enjoy what we came to know as a ‘light lunch’ – where you’ll feast on olive oil rich traditional Cretan dishes. We all agreed that the chef preparing lunch at Biolea produced some excellent dishes – including Staka me ayga , a Cretan speciality of eggs in cream

Some of the trips on the Flavours of Crete week overlap with regular excursions that the hotel runs.  So, the next day, we headed off to Falassarna Beach and then on to Sfinari to learn about making Kakavia soup at Sunset Restaurant. 

There’s more about this in a previous feature about Mistral, but this time I learnt a little more about the family that runs Sunset Restaurant.  Everything from fish to fork comes from the family.  They grow their own vegetables and the fish is caught by Nikos, one of the sons, who is a spear fisherman. 

 

Eleni, the matriarch, runs the show in the kitchen, cooking old family recipes like the famous Kakavia soup. Her husband, Gianni, runs the wood-fired grill outdoors and does everything from growing vegetables to foraging for seaweed and even the sea salt we ate.  Their youngest daughter, Marilena and another son, Tria, manage the restaurant and serve guests. 

Your ‘light lunch’ here will include a Cretan version of Greek salad with Mizithra rather than feta and a whole range of special dishes that are in season – perhaps one made with foraged seaweed, cuttlefish stuffed with more Mizithra and then grilled on the barbecue. And of course Kakavia.

We learnt that traditional Cretan food doesn’t use spices other than pepper.  Instead, the flavour comes from garden herbs, very fresh vegetables and salt.

It’s impossible for me to visit a local farmer’s market without buying things to bring home.  At Kolymbari I ended up with a jar of olive paste, a massive packet of dried oregano, Cretan mountain tea and a pack of walnuts.  All for less than 10 euros.  If you have space in your suitcase, I’d recommend all of that and more. Cretan herbs seem to be packed with flavour – and the olives are just delicious. 

A tour of Pnevmatikaki winery and then a wine tasting with (you’ve guessed) a light lunch followed.  We thoroughly enjoyed trying both the wines made with indigenous grapes and those using more common varieties.  Pnevmatikaki is a well-regarded winery with two recent Decanter wine bronze medalists  – Eklektos Red (2019)  and Moscato Spinas.  I rather liked the gold medal-winning Mithymnios (Cretan Marouvas) which is made from Romeiko and for me was almost like a fortified wine – a sherry or Madeira.  Apparently, it’s a traditional recipe!