This last weekend Pandelis came up to still his raki, with the assistance of Nectarius who owns the kazani next to our house. Being English we worry about being rude and imposing ourselves there, but it’s more the case that not turning up to try some proto raki and eat brisolas, is rude. So, on the Saturday, Pandelis arrived at 8.00AM to start the fire and get to work making raki.

We went down to Makrigialos for breakfast, then on the way back stopped in at the butcher’s and bought two kilos of pork chops. We dropped those off in the kazani building then disappeared into our house for a while, doing a bit of work, whatever. At 3.00 we wandered out whereupon Nectarius stuck some brisolas on the barbecue. We then sat eating barbecued pork, baked potatoes, pomegranites etc and drinking raki.

I brought out a jar of my chilli sauce for the Cretans to try with their brisolas and was surprised, despite its heat, how much it was enjoyed. Occasionally we cleared our palates with lemon and salt – as with tequila – and then finally stumbled off to bed at midnight.

The next day Pandelis arrived at 9.00, looking slightly the worse for wear. I was too, and required large amounts of coffee and water, and some breakfast, before I started to feel human again. A Liverpudlian called Roddy came up to our house at about 1.00 – bringing two kilos of brisolas – and an hour or so after that we again went over to the kazani. The chilli sauce again went down well and I provided quite a few of the Cretans with some plants I had been growing. The local drunk turned up and bartered some sweetcorn for raki, got wiped out fairly quickly – he probably has just a few ounces of liver left – fell asleep in his chair with snot dribbling out of his nose, got up and staggered a few yards to some nearby stone steps and fell asleep on them for a few hours before later getting up and weaving his way down into the village. Pandelis finished doing his raki and left at about 8.00. We stayed there with Nectarius, his wife Eli and his son, and again didn’t get back home until about midnight.

Next weekend Nectarius is making his raki and our attending his compulsory. This next week I’m swearing off the booze in readiness. It is perhaps a good thing that we’re heading back to Britain on November 3rd, since the raki season is only just kicking off. A whole month of kazanis and I’d be the one with the dribbling nose.

As I mentioned before on this blog, I was given some tobacco plants by some friends and am now growing them. Now, I smoke rollies, and one of the problems with rolling tobacco, especially here, is that it dries out. There are numerous solutions to this but generally what you do is put some moist bit of vegetation in the tobacco pouch. We were using mint, because we have so much of it, but then I thought, why not stick a green tobacco leaf in? I did, and, when the leaf dried up I mixed it with my rolling tobacco and smoked it. It was pretty tasteless and only by checking the numerous tobacco growing Internet sites available did I find out why.

The leaves have to be big, sticky, starting to turn yellow and the stalks snapping like celery before they are ready for curing. When I finally got a leaf like this, which was after the plant was about three feet tall and flowering (and after I topped out the flowers), I partially dried it out and put it in my tobacco pouch. When it was dry enough in the pouch, I crunched it up and smoked it as before. The taste I got was of cigars so later, when I had a good bunch of such leaves hanging up and curing, I thought I’d try an experiment. Before the leaves were completely dry, and therefore still sticky and malleable, I cut out the stalks and with the remaining half leaves made a cigar. Later still I decided that a cigar the size of a cruise missile might not be something I would want to smoke. I took it apart again and turned it into three reasonable sized cigars. They looked rough, but the right colour…

This Saturday we had three couples round, all friends, and one of whom provided me with the original plants. After copious alcohol, I decided we should try one of these cigars. It constantly needed relighting because it was still too damp, but the taste was exactly right, very good in fact. I microwaved the next one to dry it out further and it smoked a lot better. I can’t remember smoking the third one because by then the raki was kicking in and people were dancing in the kitchen.

The next day was kazani day right next to our house. Nectarius, who was stilling raki, obviously wanted us to come over but we hid ourselves away for most of the day, quite rightly suffering a severe hangover. Later, at 9.00PM and to be polite, we popped over and had a few rakis and some barbecued pork. I told Nectarius about the cigars and he said he will provide the raki and I’ll do the cigars. This week I’ll make some more, since there’s another raki making session occurring here next weekend. Out of interest I’ll take pictures of the whole process and post them here.