Fourni, Our Own Little Islands

We arrived on Fourni Island in the dark and drizzle. We stepped off the ferry feeling a little lost. Two small groups met there on the pier, those arriving and those leaving. They were all residents of the island, it seemed, and they said hellos and hasty goodbyes all together, a mixing of people under the dock lights.
"Are you Merlin?" a woman said in a heavy accent. She was standing under an umbrella, waiting for someone who didn't belong. As she walked us to her hotel - the only real hotel, though there are some guest rooms - she seemed excited. "You're the first guests," she said. "The first guests of the year."
(Click on the image to see it in full size - the panorama thing looks a little dinky on the blog...)

Covered in thyme and oregano, sea grasses and salt-corroded cars, Fourni is a tightly-bunched archipelago that's treated like one island by the Greeks. In the space between Samos and Ikaria (if that name sounds familiar, see our adventures with Kolokassi), not too far from the Anatolian mainland, the place has been mostly forgotten by everyone. We trekked over the main island for two days, returning to town each night having seen only a handful of people in the hours since we left. It's lonely in a perfect, empty way, where the land hasn't been disturbed much on its way up out of the waves.

Above, old windmills on a crag above town.

Food was one of the reasons we came here. The craggy ocean floor around Fourni is supposed to be crawling with crustaceans, and the local dish is an oregano-heavy lobster pasta that sounded good enough to warrant the journey. When we told Niko, the affable owner and cook at Niko's restaurant, that we wanted to try it he looked crestfallen. "No," he said. "The men cannot go out for lobster because of the weather." His despair lifted as he had an idea - "I can make it for you with big shrimps!" he said, holding his fingers seven or eight inches apart to illustrate the size of the prawns.
It was one of three meals we had there, the only open restaurant in town. For a while we thought that there was a second one - a man told us to go to "Jenny's," but Jenny turned out to be Niko's wife.

The fishing boats were on blocks in the harbor, their hulls being patched up and re-painted. It's cold in Greece right now, and the spring winds have kept the fishermen away from their nets and traps. We took a few long walks over the spine of the narrow, main island and had to fight a stiff breeze off the sea wherever we went. The taste of salt stuck to our skin, our faces got windburned and red. At night it rained, during the day we had fitful sun. It felt like maritime spring, when weather comes at you fast and the sky changes in an instant.
We might have been disappointed about the scarcity of seafood - it was hard to scare up fresh fish anywhere, and Niko was too honest to sell us frozen stuff - but we were too in love with the Fourni experience to care. Everywhere we went, people waved. They knew we were there already, news had spread. There are only about 1,600 people on the three inhabited islands, most of them concentrated in Fourni town. Of the twelve official settlements, nine are populated by less than forty people. Plagia could barely be called a hamlet, with only four citizens. Agios Minas is even smaller. Population: three.

Above, a roadside shrine for a local resident.

The ferry comes rarely, especially in the winter. It can be days between boats, or even - if the weather is truly bad - weeks. The islands aren't big enough to have an airport, like most of their neighbors, so life here can feel very much cut off. In some ways, it felt like one of the most remote places we'd visited. Finding a community this closely knit is difficult - the archipelago's website offers a biography about many of the shopkeepers - about the hairdresser's: "Regrettably Kostas Spanos succumbed in april 2004 suddanly to a heart disease. In the meantime Maria Amorianou inherited the barbershop. Maria learned her trade in Pirea and she approaches the regular customers of Kostas as well as the youth."

In the Mediterranean, there's both a sense of inescapable overdevelopment and the hope that something pristine lies just around the corner. Fourni represents that promise of quietude and tradition, where things haven't changed in centuries. Beehives dot the hills. Tiny, whitewashed churches are strung out along the empty road, sitting unlocked with candles burning inside. Goats poke their heads up from behind stone walls and tiny flowers bloom in the weak, march sunlight. This is it: the place untrammeled, to be breathed in like the freshest of air.
Of course, we didn't stumble upon Fourni, it took us a daylong journey by plane and ferry to get there from Athens. Without meaning to make the trip, nobody arrives in that little port - which is what's kept the place as sleepy and wonderful as it is. Closer to the tourist hubs, it would have been gobbled up long ago. It's not a place that's easy for a weekend. There's no clubbing once you're here.

And though the plane helped get us close, it meant more to step onto land with rolling legs and the sound of waves in our ears. An island, after all, should feel like part of the sea.
We left Fourni the day after we were supposed to, getting onto the ferry at six thirty in the morning after an overnight hold because of wind. One cafe was open on the waterfront, its tables semi-full with a collection of departing islanders and bored fishermen.

The night before, everyone knew about the hold. Nikos was expecting us, though we thought we'd said goodbye for good the previous evening. He'd made us tomatoes stuffed with rice, a light and creamy fava and a big plate of steamed broccoli. No boats had gone out to fish. It didn't matter, dinner was delicious.

The Layover

There are worse places to be stranded for 5 hours than a Greek island - especially Samos. By the time we boarded our ferry to Fourni, we'd been utterly charmed by the place and wished we'd had more time. We arrived at noon and left at dusk, right as Samos slipped into her evening attire, dark and glittery. Our boat pulled away from the dock and the sun set behind the mountains as if the two were attached by a string.
It's an island used to these sorts of visits, a quick once over by travelers on their way to Ephesus in nearby Turkey, or other east Aegian islands. Samos is a ferry hub, neither close enough to mainland Greece to be a hotspot, nor far enough to be alluringly remote. When we arrived, this information board listed our next boat at 2:15 as opposed to the 6 oclock departure we'd been expecting. We were excited. Who likes a long layover? The woman inside informed us that the sign was old. "Another agency. Closed five years ago." She pointed to a luggage storage room, a welcome curve-ball. We'd be able to do more than sit at a cafe and stare at the sea after all.
Samos is one of the sunniest place in all of Europe with sunlight estimated at about 74% of the time. Well, we hit the other 26% - a mix of sun and clouds, as they say. Sunday's a fine day for that sort of thing, ducking into a cafe here or a museum there. Older women in black came back from church and joined their neighbors at a coffee shop. We followed the scent of bread and the tracks of a few loaf carrying men to find a bakery, hidden down a backstreet. Unable to find anything to really put on our sweet-smelling sesame roll, we treated ourselves to a more proper lunch. And this is where the series of pleasant surprises began.
12:30 is an unthinkable time to begin lunch in Greece, but we haven't quite acclimated to late feedings yet. So, we sat down at Kouros tavern, joining a trio of old men and a family with two young children. The Early Bird crowd. When shown the fish selection by a bemused young waiter, we asked for an order of each. Both the plump sardine and the thumb-sized red mullet could have dangled from a necklace, that's how beautiful they looked. Shiny silver and iridescent pink. The red mullet still shone bright pink through the light batter and was so tender, it fell off its barely visible bones. We've never seen or tasted anything like it. Their moist, delicate sweetness went perfectly alongside the meaty bitterness of the sardine (cooked in the same fashion). Truly awesome.
Oh, we'd also ordered a small carafe of "open" wine (meaning "house"), writing it off as a necessary cultural experience. Samian wine has been renowned since Classical Antiquity. Who are we to pass it up? While it was nothing exceptional, it gave us a midafternoon energy boost. Just when it began to rain again. These children in the main square didn't seem to mind, but everyone else huddled back indoors. We slipped up the stone staircase to Samos' Archaeological Museum, where we found a shuttered ticket booth and an open door. A woman turned the lights on for us and her grandson, noticing our bewildered looks, shouted: "It's free today!"
This part of the world is just so rich with ancient history, chock full of archeological findings. Still, Samos' collection was shocking. The island is the birth place of Hera, Zeus' wife. So, naturally, a massive temple was erected for her around the 8th century BC: The Ireon. Statues from the excavated site stand around the museum's first building. All intriguingly headless. One female was the twin of a statue on display in the Louvre. Another held a bird in her arms and had a long dedication inscribed in the folds of her dress. The pièce de résistance was the colossal kouros - the largest surviving kouros (male statue from the Archaic period) in Greece. Over 16 feet tall it was mind-blowing and, in a room of its own around a corner, popped up out of nowhere.
In awe, we were ushered out across the street to the second building. Here, the collection was focused on pottery, tools, trinkets for Hera and, as we like to call them, "ancient Precious Moments." There had to have been close to a thousand pieces in their "archaic sculpture collection," including a bronze pine cone and a bizarrely large number of bronze griffin heads that used to adorn cauldrons. Other griffin heads from the Ireon can be found in the MET. Birds, turtles, wooden figurines, the findings were the most diverse of any Archeological Museum I've been to. (I get a little sick of spearheads and nails to be honest). All from the island of Samos.
The Ireon site itself was too far for us to visit and make our ferry in the evening. Who knew we'd want our five hour layover to be longer. It is still being excavated, which I find fascinating. I would love to have seen the holes in the earth and the lone standing column. To imagine all the statues we'd seen whole and erected in the flower covered field. Instead, we just strolled back and forth on the waterfront until it was time to collect our bags at the ferry office and embark on our next leg.
Samos is the birthplace of Hera, Pythagoras (of theorem fame), Epicurus and the astronomer Aristarchus, who is the first person recorded to have suggested the Earth moved around the sun. We didn't know any of this when we arrived, not bothering to do much research on what we figured would just be a lunch stop and quick dilly dally. I feel like one of those people who say, "I found love as soon as I stopped looking." Travel is like that sometimes. The best stuff just kinda sneaks up on you.

Athens and European Street Art

The journey from Caucasus to Thrace, from the enormity of Istanbul into the quietude of Cyprus – to tell it all by a fire at night, it would sound like a tale of caravan dust. We passed along a route that felt like the fringe of the real. In other words, this leg of our trip hasn’t felt like Europe in that classical, normative way.

But then we arrived in Athens. And what is Athens? It’s everything that Europe is, when the continent is reduced to its (narrowest) definition: twisting streets, buzzing motor scooters, leaf-shaded cafes, faded rooftiles, cigarette smoke, ancient buildings – and great, vibrant street art. Graffiti is a huge part of European urbanity, and we’ve been away from it for so long that it was suddenly fresh.

My most vivid recollection of the first time I was in Switzerland is of the graffiti. This wasn’t just tagging and big letters like I was used to. It seemed like art, like someone had created something worthwhile in the space between pretty buildings. This, of course, in perhaps the most bucolic country one can imagine.

If someone has never been to Paris or Rome, has never taken a European train or strolled the banks of the Danube, they might have an idea of Europe as a place where Graffiti is somehow antithetical to the way of life. But stone walls aren’t immune to spray paint, and the European landscape is more drenched in the stuff than anywhere else I’ve ever been.

One very good reason: except for a few picturesque and prim villages, every European town is in possession of some unfortunately ugly buildings. The continent has been populated with them in spurts and fitful bursts, concrete slab growing like fungus in the wake of war and tourist-discovery. To blame are the hotel developers and communist planners, the urbanization of cultures… but mostly a general lack of interest. In America, we had to build our cities beautifully to have beautiful cities at all. In Europe, they took it for granted that their cities were beautiful – and forgot to keep them that way. Who can blame someone for wanting to paint over this?
Athens felt, in so many ways, like a return to Europe proper, the Europe that feels comfortably clichéd from movies and first visits. It’s a place to feel at home as a tourist, because “the tourist” is a familiar role, like the role of the gruff bartender or the kindly baker. Even a neophyte traveler can slip into the part casually, like a second language. Self-conscious amazement – “the old men drink wine at nine in the morning!” – trumps caution, the eyes seem to take in more detail. The street art can be jarring, but it’s also revelatory. Why didn’t I expect this? Is this what Europe is really like?
In big parts of Europe, the answer would be no. Surprisingly, the poorer and more distressed a country is, the worse and more rare its graffiti. In former USSR block nations, there’s much less than in Western countries, and it’s done with more malicious intent. It’s not art in the same way, just spraying against a wall.
We spend a lot of time in places where being “the tourist” is to be in severe contrast to normal. At the beginning of this block of countries – in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia – we felt a kind of hunching of our shoulders, a tightness of gaze, our minds on safety. Not long ago, those mountains were full of bandits. We saw police openly bribed, the men are mostly veterans of recent civil wars. I just read about a suicide bomber in Dagestan, in a town some twenty miles from where we slept. Compared with that, pickpockets and vandals seem almost quaint. Athens is a very safe city.

And it’s also a tumbledown, ancient place where there are lots of vacant lots and neglected buildings. There are so many sacred places – in architectural and religious terms – that the rest of the sprawl feels disposable. People tear down buildings built centuries ago without flinching. What’s a hundred years in the face of the Parthenon or the temple of Zeus? What value does a blank wall have, when it's part of a broken building? It's all part of the layering of history, the growth and decay of the millennia.

(I’m not condoning property damage, of course.)

Walking around Athens, we ducked in and out of neighborhoods that played parts in a colorful whole, taking in the riot of energy and vibrancy. It felt like springtime. That it felt like Europe sounds strange, when we never left, but that was the flavor and sound of the place to our unfamiliar senses. Rebecca said that Athens is a place where you arrive and instantly feel that everywhere before is a long ways off, long ago in the past.

No Need To Worry

We almost didn't come to Athens at all. It felt like we'd just read too many things about Greece's capital on the bathroom wall. That she was that sort of city. A Bad Apple, like the Big Apple circa 1970. We'd heard it was crime-ridden and unappealing, but couldn't put our fingers on just where this nasty rumor had gotten started. Even more worrisome was the possibility of, once in Athens, not getting out. These fears were more founded as reports of strikes have peppered the news for weeks (with a few riots thrown in). Every mode of transportation has been shut down at one point or another. This has, I'm guessing, kept visitors at bay. The state of Greece is a hot button issue at the moment and that doesn't always scream Vacation Spot.
On the day we arrived, Greece was right there on the New York Times' front page (or their website's home page at least). Bailout measures had been passed - Greece's economy would live to see another day. Germany and France fit the roles of hero or villain, depending on who you ask. Batman and Robin or Boris and Natasha. It's an intense time for the European Union and the Eurozone. When we started this trip a year and a half ago, we would look back in amazement about using francs and lira in European travels past. Now, we wonder if the fact that we've used a common currency in seventeen different countries will be remarkable.
It was Friday and a police swat car was parked beside a public park. Men sat inside, in full riot gear, their plastic shields piled up outside. Slouched in seats and chatting about Lionel Messi, they seemed altogether casual. Either there wasn't much to keep them on their toes or they were just so used to it all. Signs of previous riots sprung up here and there. A cracked glass security stand stood across the street from this smashed in car window. A few storefronts on the same block had new paint jobs, used to cover up who knows what.
But the beautiful, balmy day wasn't to be disturbed. The closest thing to an angry mob we saw was in the fish section of the Central Market. The classic Lenten Friday scene. Scoops of squid filled big paper cones. A big fish was tossed from vendor to gutter out of pure necessity, not Seattle style. One of a dozen old women vying for his attention could have snatched it right out of his hands, had he not. Outside, this butcher worked in peace - his glasses giving his white coat a dash of 'laboratory.'
There were no shuttered store fronts and picket signs. Just a lot of people very hard at work. We saw men all over the city, pushing grocery carts full of scrap metal. They gathered the pieces near train tracks and outside of warehouses. We saw one man, either incredibly forward thinking or particularly lazy, waiting outside of a metal working shop with an empty basket. The trash had to be put on the curb at some point. This man was sitting under the shade of a tree, an afternoon's work complete. He came over to pose with his collection, proud. Metal is worth a lot these days.
Of course, there were workers with more traditional jobs. The florist, relocating to an outdoor table in such fine weather. The sidewalk portrait drawers and handmade jewelery sellers. Men selling donuts and koulourian (identical to the Turkish simit) from carts set up at the wee hours of the morning - the perfect food for early-to-rise commuters and late-to-bed clubbers. Taking "traditional" job a step further, we saw a man sitting cross-legged amidst a pile of long reeds, weaving baskets.
The youth were not in revolt, they were in cafes drinking iced coffee and playing nard. I was amazed at how many teenagers were hanging out playing board games - being social without media. I had visions of a New York coffeeshop where people reached into their pockets and purses to grab that familiar rectangle filled with endless possibilities. A deck of cards. (A girl can dream). But that's just the sort of city Athens is. Bustling and convivial, confident and brash. It charms you with its ability to hold on to the best elements of eras past. Whether that's playing backgammon instead of Bejeweled or organizing a rally instead of an online petition.
We saw a little bit of action at the very end of the day, but it wasn't bailout related. A man with a bullhorn led a short multi-aged procession in a few chants. Syrian flags were waved. Their route probably wasn't too long, judging by one woman's choice of stilettos. As much as strikes are a nuisance and riots are scary, there's something wonderful about the possibility for one or both to pop up in Europe at any given time. I think it was unfair of us to hold it against Athens. It's been doing this democracy thing for a long time - being vocal is a tradition. Though it is fun to come up with jokes like, "Athens is very workaday." "You mean work a day per week?" I think strikers get a bum rap. Still, I'm sorta glad everyone decided to show up for work while we were in town.

The Great Reconstruction Project

We don't post too much about the major tourist sites. After all, what's the point? Chances are, you've already seen hundreds - if not thousands - of pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum. There's not much new to say.

But chances are, you haven't seen a lot of pictures of the Athenian Acropolis that show what it really looks like. Since 1983, Athen's great symbol has been undergoing a prolonged, much delayed fix-up. My thought, when we first arrived at the Temple of Athena Nike, was "why do this at all?"

Right now, Athen's heart is a messy construction site. The machinery's been here so long that it's gotten rusty; stacks of marble and crates of who-knows-what seem part of the landscape itself, like so many bits of Periclean rubble. This will all be cleaned up one day, I didn't mind it at all. It was actually interesting to see the cranes and the lifts, the drills and tin-roofed sheds. I didn't mind that the Parthenon was partly covered. What was troubling was that the whole thing had somehow lost its oldness. It felt too new.

What I'd imagined of the Acropolis was a windswept, sunbaked mess of rocks. In my image, the columns lay about like dead trees after a fire, some standing, some fallen, their foliage gone. The stone was blackened by time, the crumbling rock half-inset into the hard-baked ground. This, of course, comes from grand-tour romanticism - but what's wrong with that?

This isn't the first time that the Acropolis has been re-furbished, but it's certainly the most comprehensive effort. The Parthenon and the structures that surround it were actually in pretty good shape for their first two millennia. Initially built between 447 and 432 BC, it wasn't until the 17th century AD that it was significantly damaged. Ottoman held Athens was attacked in 1687 by the Venetians; the hilltop was fortified and used as a gunpowder magazine. Unfortunately, the gunpowder blew up during the fight and the buildings were almost demolished. Subsequent looting by Turks and, later, by the British further ruined the Acropolis and scattered its many important works of art.

An attempt, in the 1840's, to restore some of the columns went poorly and actually did more damage. Work carried out then focused primarily on the Parthenon, while the other buildings were mostly ignored. The marble was arranged haphazardly, the workmen didn't care which piece went where and the actual outline of the building was shifted, for some unknown reason. Worse, the iron pins and ties that they used rusted and split apart a few stones. As air pollution increased, the stone deteriorated even more. By 1983, the Acropolis was in a very sorry state.

Above, the massive crane, built to lift huge pieces of dense rock. It's designed so that it can retract beneath the Parthenon's roofline when not in use - so that people's pictures won't be spoiled too much.The process has been long, expensive and arduous. About three hundred tons of stone were taken down to be repaired, reassembled or put into their proper place. But the real work was done on the ground, where thousands of pieces of rock were catalogued, examined and re-fit into the various structures - like a giant, architectural jigsaw puzzle. Replacement stone, when it has been used, has come only from Mount Penteliko's marble quarry, which was the ancient source of most of Athen's building material (the quarry has been protected by law, and is now only used for providing material to the reconstruction project).
I should say, before going further, that visiting was spectacular. In the early hours of a cold March morning, we spent the first half hour of our time there virtually alone. Athens spreads out beneath the citadel in all its glory, the Acropolis - no matter how altered by the construction - floats above the city like Zeus' cloud made into rock. This is, after all, the starting point of our imagery for the ancients. It's a masterpiece of European architecture, the foundation of myth, one of the wonders of the earth! If you get the chance, of course you should go.But things aren't what they used to be. The statuary has been completely removed to the brand-new Acropolis museum, everything on view at the site itself is a copy. There's something dispiriting about that, and about the bits of strangely white replacement marble - some of it injected, "liquid" stone - that's visible in odd places around the compound. The officials have said that there are no plans to restore the site to it's pre-explosion condition, only to return the buildings to their historical layout and to protect against future damage. The columns are all standing, though, and the place looks well-scrubbed. New.

Even if it's being done in the most sincere spirit of preservation, the work still feels somehow fake. I would rather see it broken. The thing about the best ancient sites is that they're old. We want to feel that they're old. The cranes and scaffolding don't bother me because they're temporary. But so much about the reconstruction seems at odds with what it is to be the Acropolis, or any other timeless thing.

Isn't it sometimes more accurate, more real, to see something at the end of its evolution? Great things are built, they decay, they lie in scattered pieces in the sun. To see that is to come up against the past and marvel at the thousands of years between the builders and ourselves. To see this is to see a recreation - not the hand of Pericles, but the hand of... who? A scientist? Some architecture professor? The bureau of tourism? After all, you can always just fly to Nashville and see this.

Things Cypriot People Like

KEO brand products. It started as a beer company, but since Carlsberg (made in Cyprus) is still the most popular brew on the island, KEO has ventured into all things hard: red and white wine, commanderia, ouzo, brandy. They've also made their beer more noticeable, by putting it in 630ml bottles - an absurdly large size. Their branded glasses are strangely small 10oz mugs, which only accentuate the bottle's enormity. Take that 500ml Carlsbergs! (Note: this is South Cyprus specific. In Northern Cyprus, Efes beer from Turkey was the beverage du jour).
Lunch Trucks. Especially down in Limassol, the lunch truck acted as workplace cafeteria and drive-through window. Specializing in sandwiches, burgers and sausages, they most often had a big bowl of relish and a condiment dispenser out on their counter. Some smaller trucks served only iced coffee and frappes.
This kind of lock. New and old buildings as well as countless bathroom stalls had the slide-the-pole-through-a-loop method. Probably not something that would be super noticeable to the average person, but I have a strange inability to get doors opened and closed handily. These posed a challenge.
Glyko. The Greek word 'glyko' literally translates into 'sweet,' but in Cyprus it means something altogether more specific. It's a sweet pickling of fruits and nuts which completely transforms them into a candylike treat. For example, the black glyko on the plate above is walnut - shell and all. Next to it is a clementine, complete with peel. Unique and delicious.
The Greek flag. It should go without saying that this is also a Southern Cyprus specific thing. In Northern Cyprus, you'd see the Turkish flag now and then, but mostly the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' flag flapped away in the sky. In Southern Greece, though, you rarely even saw the Republic of Cyprus flag - only the Greek one. This was surprising because the Republic of Cyprus is not and has never been part of Greece (though there have been many historic efforts on both sides to make that the case). Still, there was ole blue and white and nary a Cypriot flag in sight.
Dried gourds. We saw a few hanging from porches in Northern Cyprus, bleaching in the sun and drying. Why? We couldn't tell. Then, in Southern Cyprus, we began to see the finished product. Traditionally, they were used to serve wine, but nowadays are more decorative.

Gypsy Kitchens: Cooking Kolokasi

Cyprus has snow. Even now, in March, people are skiing in the high Troodos. Installed in the small mountain hamlet of Silikou, our breath has been white in the evenings and we have our drinks by a blazing hearth. The cold and altitude have brought our thoughts back to hearty winter-roots and warm food. So, on a rainy day in our stone cottage, we decided to cook up a Kolokasi stew, a filling and simple Cypriot specialty. One thing that worried us: Kolokasi is poisonous.
Kolokasi is a bit of a mystery food. Better known in English as taro (or dasheen), it's extremely rare in Europe - most Taro is cultivated in southeast Asia and Malaysia, where it originated. The course roots were once popular in the Roman empire, after being introduced by way of Egypt, but as Rome declined, so too did Kolokasi. Now, it's only grown in significant quantities in two places on the European continent: the geek island of Ikaria and in Cyprus.

The first time we saw Kolokasi for sale, we actually thought they were some kind of huge mushroom.
High levels of calcium oxalate in taro give the root its toxicity, and make it inedible when raw. There are a few ways to minimize the poisonous effects - soaking the roots in cold water for 24 hours, for example. But nobody would want to eat kolokasi raw anyway, and the best way to get rid of the poison is to thoroughly cook it - just like rhubarb. Some people suggest cooking it with baking soda, but we made a mistake and added baking powder. Not that it mattered. We're still alive.
We bought our kolokasi from a man who sold them on the roadside. He had two varieties - one larger type and these small ones. It wasn't clear what the difference between them was. He was also keen on selling us potatoes instead, maybe because they're not poisonous. Declining the potatoes, we picked up a few carrots and onions.
The cooking process wasn't too difficult, just the basic peel, chop and boil technique. The skin was tough and covered with small hairs. Slime formed on the white flesh as it was cut - a kind of milky, white, slippery stuff that got all over the cutting board and our hands. It's supposedly possible to minimize this sliminess by breaking the kolokasi apart with your hands, but you'd have to be incredibly strong. The roots are denser than potatoes, and hard to get a grip on. Plus, the peel is too unappetizing to leave on.
Though it's been common on the Cyprus roadsides, supermarkets and vegetable stands, we hadn't knowingly eaten any taro on the island. So this isn't really a recipe, it's more of an experiment - the goal was to see if we could cook the kolokasi, eat it and survive. We added garlic and tomato paste to our liquid, but otherwise kept it simple - we were curious about how this stuff tasted, and didn't want to muddy up the flavor.
It took about an hour and a half of cooking to make the cubes fork-tender. Interestingly, the crisp edges of the cut kolokasi dissolved as we boiled it, and the whole stew turned into an orange, chunky mash, which isn't so bad on a cold night in the mountains.

A more traditional Cypriot recipe involves making a kind of soup with pork and celery, which makes sense. It would be a great thickening agent in place of more traditional stew roots, adding starch to the broth while remaining somewhat whole.
So, how did it taste? Pretty bland. The flavor is somewhere between that of potato, yucca and plantain. It wasn't much different than any other root vegetable slurry - except for the nervousness about getting sick. For a few hours after eating, we paid careful attention to our stomachs, watching for some sign (who knows what) of low grade kolokasi poisoning. It wasn't until the next morning, really, that we were completely convinced that we'd made it through okay. Maybe baking powder helps too.

Check out all of our recipes.