Crete's Wild Interior: The Shepherd's Kitchen

The gastronomy of coastal Crete—the mezedes of the harbour tavernas, the fresh fish, the dakos of the tourist restaurants—is well documented and genuinely excellent. The gastronomy of the interior is almost entirely unknown outside the island itself, and it is in many ways the more interesting cuisine: austere, protein-heavy, defined by the landscape of the Cretan mountains rather than the sea.

The shepherds of the White Mountains—Lefka Ori—have maintained seasonal transhumance for centuries, moving their flocks between the coastal lowlands in winter and the high pastures above 1,500 metres in summer. Their food has been shaped entirely by what is available at altitude: fresh-killed lamb, the milk of sheep and goats that feed on wild mountain herbs, foraged greens and roots, dried legumes carried up at the start of the season.

The cheese of the Cretan mountains—graviera, aged in cloth and turned weekly, hard and crystalline with a flavour that combines sweetness and a sharp animal intensity—is among the finest produced in Greece. The process is essentially unchanged from pre-classical antiquity: raw milk, animal rennet, pressing, salting, ageing in cool stone chambers. The best graviera smells of the herbs the sheep ate.

In the mountain villages of Anogeia and Askyfou, you can still find kapheneia where the food served is kitchen food rather than restaurant food: slow-cooked lamb with stamnagathi (wild chicory), bean soups made with the local fasolia, bread baked in a wood-fired oven that morning. This is the cuisine that fed shepherds and warriors. It requires no presentation and no explanation. It only requires eating.