Plastos

June 16, 2020

The coronavirus crisis is, perhaps, along with the economic recession of 2008, the greatest crisis that humanity has faced in the 21st century. The coronavirus pandemic, its rapid spread, the quarantine, the uncertainty and the fear for the future, make us reflect on all the dimensions that constitute human health (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social) and how they relate to food.

Considering the crisis we are experiencing and the questions that arise from it, we turned our attention back to the past to seek information regarding food in periods of crisis, bearing in mind that the past is not repeated and that every crisis has its own unique characteristics. We turned to the project that we started in 2018, The Heritage of Taste , for information. It explored cultural practices related to food and health by collecting oral history testimonies from elderly people in our area (Thessaly). By reexamining our archival material, we observed the ways that specific foods can become the objects or symbols of a crisis. In all fifty oral history interviews that we conducted, one dish, the “plastos” pie, appears the most during the greatest crisis that our narrators faced in their lives: World War II.

“Plastos” is a type of pita (pie), which is made in all areas of Thessaly in many variations. “Plastos” isn’t made with phyllo, but with cornmeal instead. The filling consists of various wild greens from the Greek countryside with some feta cheese. It is quick, as it takes only an hour to bake, and cheap: it can feed a whole family at almost zero cost. “Plastos”, along with bobota (corn flour bread) and batter, were the foods that saved the Greeks of Thessaly from starvation during the Nazi occupation of the country. For many rural families, access to wheat flour has not always been possible. In Greece, most of the food supplies during the 1910s, 1920s and the 1930s were imported from abroad. Even in the flatland of Larissa (Greece’s principal agricultural centre) a few grains were planted, while there are resources mentioning flour of extreme low quality, produced in wheat crops in Thessaly. Especially in times of crisis, its price rose dramatically, and there were huge shortages. So, corn flour was a cheaper solution, and it could also be grown by small families. At the same time, corn is a plant more resistant to low temperatures, unlike wheat, and therefore it was a solution for residents of the mountainous areas of Thessaly.

Wild greens like sorrel, nettles, sow thistles, wild radishes - anything that people could pick from the fields - constituted the filling of the pie. If there were any groats in the household, people might mix it with the greens and the few privileged families who were cheesemakers could add some feta in the filling. They used to sprinkle melted lard on the top of the pie, which had been stored in tins since Christmas, when the pig slaughtering took place. The wealthy families might have stored some olive oil and use it instead of lard. The pie was placed in a traditional round baking pan called “sini”. Once cooked, family members would sit around the table and eat “plastos” straight from the baking pan.

The use of corn flour had various implications: it was an indicator of social class, as it was mainly used by people with lower socio-economic status. Back then, far from what we know today about gluten and celiac disease, the general perception was that wheat flour products were healthier and more nutritious. The farming and agricultural news of the time suggested that growing maize was just a solution to wheat shortage in times of crisis. Several took place in the first fifty years of the 20th century, (the Balkan Wars, World War I, the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the economic recession of 1929, World War II, and the Greek Civil War), which forced the vast masses of the population to cultivate and consume maize. The refined and good-looking wheat products with the fluffy dough were visually more attractive than the “bobota” and its rather rough texture and appearance. All the above, from the 1950s onwards, contributed to the gradual abandonment of the use of corn flour, as the standard of living increased rapidly in Greece and corn flour was carrying a kind of stigma, linked to difficult times of hunger and poverty.

Most of our senior interviewees don't even want to hear about “plastos”, as they have associated it with traumatic experiences, while others believe that it is not worth talking about this pie anymore, as nowadays there is an abundance of food to enjoy. “Plastos” and “bobota” have become symbols of fear and hunger, of the anxiety to secure food, of the transition from a period of crisis to a state of economic growth. However, years afterwards, “plastos” returned on Thessaly’s tables, as the younger generations attempted to revitalize the area’s culinary heritage. By adding cultivated greens, such as spinach and given the fact that corn flour is gluten free, “plastos” turned into a popular, modern, gourmet and healthy dish that can be found in many restaurants in Thessaly (especially in the area of Karditsa).

In these difficult days, “plastos” is not loaded with negative meaning anymore. Most likely, neither plastos, nor any other food will become a symbol of the Covid-19 crisis for us, as hopefully, societies will not face huge food shortages, like those of World War II. The question is, though, why we decided to write this article for “plastos” and not any other dish? Because “plastos” has passed into our collective memory as a food linked to neediness and crisis. It has become a symbol of the struggle for survival of the generation of the 1940s. As we are also facing a crisis today, "the pie with the corn flour" that so many people have talked about, makes us think not only about the difficulties of the past, but also about the strength that made these people overcome them. As human feelings and reactions towards shortages, economic uncertainties, fear and threats haven’t changed much since then, we bring up “plastos” and write about it, as a dish that brings from the past to the present, a message of hope: humans can deal with every crisis, no matter how difficult, no matter how big.

500 g corn flour
1 pinch of salt
50 ml olive oil
500 ml lukewarm water
1 kg spinach
0,500 kg sow thistles
as many fresh onions as you prefer
1 leek
0,500 g feta cheese
some more olive oil

1) In a big bowl, mix the corn flour with one pinch of salt, 50 ml olive oil and 500ml lukewarm water, until it becomes dense slop

2) You lay half of the slop into a baking pan

3) In a big pot, blanch the spinach and the sow thistles for 3 minutes. Retrieve them from the pot and dry them

4) Chop the fresh onions and the leek

5) Mix all the greens and afterwards spread them on top of the slop that you laid in the baking pan

6) Crumble feta cheese on top. Mix them in with your greens

7) Lay the rest of the slop in the baking pan and spread it, until it covers your mix

8) Add some more drops of olive oil on top

Alex is a PhD candidate in History of WWI and modern Greece and Kleri is a cultural manager focusing on the anthropology of health and food and community socioeconomic development.