Greek Gods, hot Christmases and best friends forever

photo by Elaine Dunstan

Christmas in Australia is hot. Santa dads sweat beneath the scratchy nylon suits but often need no fake stuffing help with the jolly beer belly.

My best friend Belinda's father is Greek. I remember his straight nose, running almost parallel to his face. It gave his profile the kind of mythical grace seen in marble statues of the Gods. He held himself like a mythical God too, casting his cynical appraisal of our human foibles: my died red hair that "looks like you've dipped your head in beetroot", driving me and Belinda to a nightclub, his eyebrow arched, that stern nose flaring it's nostrils as we infused his car with the smell of our cigarette and champagne breath.

As a teenager I was always a little scared of Tony, his uncensored wit. He came in and out of their lives in a mysterious manner - here for a week then gone. Belinda's German/Australian mother Jan ran the house with an unceasing energy. It was a mock-Spanish double story house, flamboyantly and wonderfully kitted-out with Jan's garage-sale finds set amongst a wild tropical garden of palms and creepers and unnerving spider webs. Jan fanatically cleaned the swimming pool of fallen leaves each day and if I turned up when she was gardening with her hair in rollers she would always say "oh God, don't look at me!" and would emerge later with a perfectly coiffed blonde bob and beautifully made-up eyes.

Jan loved cigarettes and stout and having people around. She loved me like a daughter, always ready to praise and acknowledge my attempts at finding myself - despite all the foibles she witnessed in me along the way from when we first met at 12 until her death just a few years back.

I loved going to Belinda's house, and Christmas was always celebrated together at some stage of the day. Jan would have the music up loud by the time I arrived, and a glass would be thrust in my hand. Dogs would be yapping, Jan's best friend Pat would be at the kitchen her red lipstick on, a cigarette fuming in the ashtray, helping in a calm and constant manner giving Jan the space to be the exaggerated personality: dancing to Tina Turner, cooking up a storm, putting roast garlic into mashed potatoes, barking at Tony to check the roasted pumpkin.

I always felt the Greek influence in Belinda's house even when Tony was gone. They ate feta salads for lunch when everyone else was having ham sandwiches. That garlicky mashed potato! They had a way with food that was somehow foreign - they picked at things, little plates of this or that, nuts or olives or even just a clementine, but there was a sense of occasion to it, something was different in their approach to eating that I admired.

Belinda and I were best friends from 12 to about 21, something wild, intensely curious and slightly damaged in both of us, drawing us into connection, a friendship that still feels today, after nearly 20 years of separation due to location, like a sisterhood.

One Christmas it was so hot I remember feeling the unbearable furnace of my car's steering wheel as I drove this time to Pat's house for the big lunch. Pat made tzatziki and salads and Tony had bought a whole lamb that he was roasting on a spit, brushing it with rosemary branches dipped in olive oil, a Christmas cracker-hat sitting wonky on his rippled hair. I was vegetarian at the time, but i got drunk and Tony cajoled me into eating his lamb, mocking deep Greek offence at my initial refusal of the meat. It was the best lamb I've ever had.

My beautiful friend Belinda is a mother now, living in Brisbane, so far away from me our Christmases never collide. I miss you my Belle, thank you for making me a part of your family, and a little bit Greek.

Here is recipe for the Greek classic Spanakopitta, something I ate every day straight out of the paper-bag from a take-away bakery in Rethmynon on our recent holiday to Crete.

Spanakopitta (adapted from Claudia Roden: A new book of Middle Eastern Food)

(serve with salads of cucumber, red onion, tomato, olives and dried oregano and shredded lettuce and white onion both dressed with extra-virgin Greek olive oil and lemon juice)

1 kg fresh spinach

120g butter

120g crumbled feta (or a mix of feta, ricotta and grated Parmesan)

a pinch of grated nutmeg (optional)

a small bunch of parsley or 1 tablespoon chopped marjoram (optional)

salt and pepper

8 to 10 sheets of filo pastry

Method:

Carefully wash the spinach (if using the hardier silver beet cut off any hard stems). Drain and chop then cook gently in a large fry pan in 2 tablespoons of butter and season. Cook until just tender and when cool enough to handle, squeeze out the excess juice.

Add the spinach to the cheese, mixing well, and season again adding the nutmeg. You can now add the chopped parsley or marjoram to the mix.

Butter a large, deep baking dish of any shape. Fit four or five sheets of filo in it, brushing each sheet with melted butter and folding them up so that they overlap the sides of the dish.

Spread the spinach and cheese mix over this base layer and cover with the remaining sheets of filo, brushing melted butter between each layer and on the top.

Bake in a moderate oven 160 degrees Celsius for about 45 mins then increase the heat for the last 5 to 10 minutes to 220 degrees Celsius or until the top is golden and crisp and the base is cooked through rather than soggy.