| 6 | aubergines |
| 2-3 tbsp | tahini (sesame paste) |
| lemon juice to taste (at least 2 lemons) | |
| about 4 tbsp | olive oil |
| 6 | tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and finely diced (to skin them, drop them into rapidly boiling water for a few seconds; the skins will break and they will be easy to peel) |
| 2 | spicy spring onions, very finely diced |
| 1 | bunch of fresh coriander, very finely chopped |
| sea salt and black pepper |
Dry-roast the aubergines in a very hot oven until the skins are blackened and charred. Leave to cool. Cut them in half, scrape out the pulp and drain through a fine sieve to extract any remaining moisture. Put the strained aubergine pulp and the tahini into a food processor and whizz to a coarse purée. Tip into a bowl and whisk in some lemon juice and olive oil (it should not be too runny). Then stir in the tomatoes, spring onions and coriander and season to taste. Chill overnight.
Corfu, April
The journey to Corfu, our first destination in Greece, was miserable. We got to Malaga airport at about 7am with two huge tin trunks full of all my cooking equipment, only to find we had to pay about £700 in excess baggage. Then we discovered that the trunks could not be booked through to Corfu because we had to fly from Malaga to Madrid, Madrid to Athens and Athens to Corfu, and there were no porters in Malaga or Madrid. If we had had to unload the trunks we could not possibly have shifted them. It took four of us to get them on the plane in the first place. However, we finally made it to Corfu at about 1 o’clock the next morning, the Greek Orthodox Easter Saturday, only to find that it was absolutely freezing. We had expected weather similar to Spain and had packed accordingly. To make matters worse we were checked into the most appalling excuse for a hotel I have ever seen in my life. It had no bar, no lift, no lights, the lavatory ran incessantly, the taps dripped and the beds were slatted wooden affairs with thin sponge mattresses. There were no power points, no services or facilities of any kind, except for a breakfast of stale bread and jam plus dreadful coffee made from ground roasted acorns. I can tell you we were feeling very sorry for ourselves, and to make matters worse everybody in the pub before we left had said, ‘Oh, you don’t want to go to Corfu, it’s full of lager louts!’ I was very much in mind of Bob Dylan’s song, ‘You’re lost in worries, it’s raining and it’s Eastertime too.’
I had a cooking sketch to do that afternoon but because a huge Easter procession was planned, all the shops were shut. Acquiring food was really quite difficult, and trying to buy pullovers and waterproof jackets was a problem, which luckily my wife,Tess, overcame.
It never rains but it pours.
In between downpours the sun shone brightly, while a very cold wind, which blew in from Albania just a couple of miles across the water, whistled through the narrow back streets of Corfu Old Town. We weren’t due to start filming until about 11 o’clock, so we wandered about the streets and discovered that the Old Town is a charming place: wonderful Venetian architecture, cheerful cafés, bars and restaurants, and an absurd concrete cricket pitch set in the middle of the park for the expats.
As it got closer to 11 o’clock the streets, which at 9 o’clock had been completely empty, began to fill with people – first a few hundred, then a few thousand, then tens of thousands – all lining the route for the grand procession that was to take place to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. In cynical mood, I took my place in the jostling crowds, waiting without any enthusiasm whatsoever for the band to begin to play – some shambolic, out-of-step, scruffy group of people in motley uniforms, banging drums and missing notes on trumpets, I assumed. But to my great delight and excitement I was completely wrong.
The parade was spectacular. The first band came into view and into earshot through a very narrow street, fanning out as the street widened. Its members were dressed immaculately in blue and gold uniforms with polished silver helmets, and playing the most moving music – classical in style but presumably religious. They were succeeded by sombre-looking priests dressed in black with curious stove-pipe hats, flanking a man, berobed but not of the cloth, as it were, who was carrying a huge crucifix draped with a picture of Christ. Then came more processions – of priests, a female choir, scouts, girl guides and children in neat white socks, blue pullovers and blue shorts, and more bands – some dressed in crimson and again playing spectacularly moving music.
Pot throwing during the Easter Parade in Old Corfu.
It took an hour for the entire musical procession to pass where I stood, and as it fanned out into the wider street the crowd moved in behind it, following it round to the cathedral. After the service, the citizens of Corfu celebrated the Christian resurrection with a pagan ritual. In the times of the ancient Greeks, whenever someone died a member of the family would stay behind as the body was taken away and, as the cortege moved off, would throw an earthenware pot from the house so that it smashed on to the street, warding away evil spirits from the dead and bringing good fortune to the bereaved. Today, of course, this is just a piece of folklore but it’s mightily impressive. Many of the houses in the Old Town are three or four storeys high, all with balconies. Everybody gathers on their balconies and hurls huge clay pots on to the road below. I was doing a piece to camera, pretending to be a famous war correspondent explaining this ritual, when I was actually saved by a Greek policeman who rugby-tackled me out of the path of a down-coming missile. It was damned funny! The crew enjoyed it.
For the next 24 hours, virtually every street in Old Corfu was covered in shattered clay pots. It was like walking on a gravel beach and was hugely good fun. And the sun was shining now, and it really was a pretty place. I believe there were 40,000 people in the streets that day, all crossing themselves as the various parts of the procession passed, and virtually all of them were Greek. The celebration was no cheapskate performance put on for tourists; it was done out of deep belief and longheld tradition.
A priest relaxes, while awaiting the Easter parade.
We broke for lunch and I found a little taverna opposite a vegetable shop that had just opened – luckily, so I could buy food for my cooking sketch. It was a curious restaurant, openfronted, very friendly but they didn’t have a kitchen. All the food came from a sort of shed down an alleyway. We had a wonderful plate of grilled octopus, shrimps and sardines and, as it turned out, the only good moussaka that I was