As I stare at the piece in my hand, a soft, white napkin lying below it, I wonder what it holds. I can feel my hands itching to curl around it and my mouth watering for the taste of it. The slightly toasted outer layer of the pastry would sing to the most gluten-intolerant individual, let alone me.
“It’s spinach and cheese wrapped in filo.” I don’t have to turn my head to know it’s my mother’s whisper hitting my ear.
“I know what it is, Mom.” And how could I not when Spanakopita is part of our family just like the amusing uncle who doesn’t know when to stop his jokes?
No, I know what the pastry holds physically, but I don’t know the entire history behind it. I don’t know how, exactly, it came across the ocean from Greece, manifesting itself in our family, in our history. Beyond the variety of cheeses and fats making up the filling, Spanakopita holds that connection through my family, linking my ancestors all the way to the youngest generation.
I remember climbing on the mountainous chairs to the dining room table, planting my knees and rolling up my sleeves. My mom’s “station” was across from mine as she showed me how to cut the filo into strips, putting it in a wapping pile of spinach and cheese, and folding it up like a flag. Years may have passed and never have I forgotten how to make this crucial pastry.
Over the years, my technique changed, manipulated to fit more of the filling my young taste buds used to dislike. Pinching corners and layering butter to seal the thin bread strips over each other, I can remember the method down to the minute details.
But that’s the thing, I only know what I was taught: the process. I don’t know the lengths it may have taken to remember the recipe after escaping the war with the Turks. I don’t know if Spanakopita bonded connections together as they mourned over the loss of the lives because of that war. I don’t know how far the roots of it go, through how many generations, deep into Grecian history.
Come the school year, when I needed to bring in a dish representing my family’s origins, less than a heartbeat passed before I knew I would make Spanakopita. Little did I know what the entire, 3-day process would entail. Because it was my project, my mother not only encouraged me but forced me to participate in every part of it, from the mixing to the baking, which can only be done on the day one would like to eat it.
As I came upon the recipe my great-grandmother wrote, I saw “love” as an ingredient and couldn’t help but think how cliché it sounded. It’s that idiotic “secret ingredient” that makes home-cooked meals better despite having to actually make them yourselves, which I find to be both important and incredibly laborious.
After eating Spanakopita made by someone in my family, I finally understood you don’t taste the supposed “love.” You see it in the faces of those who eat it, drawing them together through the adoration of their culture and food. You feel it in the way your heart swells with joy and appreciation, partially because you weren’t the one who had to spend 3 days making it.
I may not know how the recipe survived the barren journey to America, in the aging mind of my ancestor, but I know how important it was for that to happen. I know the smiles my family and I share as we bite into the pastry go beyond the taste and to a deeper level of connection.
I know, as I finally bite into the piece in my hand, my mother doesn’t want me to like Spanakopita because everyone else does, but because it’s important to our history as Greeks, as a family, and to each other.