In a large sunlit kitchen on Eumelia farm, an idyllic agritourism and wellness retreat set amid the endless olive groves of Greece’s southern Peloponnese, my classmates and I take turns using a long dowel-like rolling pin to stretch and roll balls of dough that we hope will become filo pastry. It won’t be the flaky, paper-thin kind sold frozen in supermarkets though; the pastry we’re striving for is two to three millimetres thick, the kind you’re likely to catch a whiff of while walking past this area’s many outdoor wood-fired ovens.
When we’ve each created an approximation of our host and teacher Marilena Karadima’s perfect circle of pastry, we use them to make savoury spinach pies that we snack on while we learn to cook other traditional dishes, including a hummus-like dip called fava, made from yellow split peas, a roasted aubergine dish brought to Greece by refugees and moustalevria, a pudding made with Eumelia olive oil, local walnuts, flour, sesame seeds, and must (juice) from the farm’s grapes.
