Secrets from the Greek Kitchen: Cooking, Skill, and Everyday Life on an Aegean Island (Volume 52) (California Studies in Food and Culture)

Creativity in the kitchen is a normal part of everyday life in US homes. This article explores improvisation by mothers in home cooking as exemplary of the creative process. Western analyses of creativity have typically examined innovation after-the-fact, and showed how something innovative constitutes something novel that is discontinuous with the past. This is reading creativity “backward” in terms of outcomes. We provide a “forward” reading of creativity that examines the conditions and constraints which give rise to improvisation. This offers insight into cooking as a form of personal and social creativity that is grounded in the familiar, and infused with cultural values of self-expression and pleasing the family. This article thus discusses how improvisation is shaped by individual agency and social structure. Creative behavior is limited yet inspired by the material, social and symbolic constraints of the context in which it occurs, including in this case the broader context of the politics of food. Our forward reading of creative cooking practices indicates how cultural production leads to social change through the mediation of agency and structure. Secrets from the Greek Kitchen explores how cooking skills, practices, and knowledge on the island of Kalymnos are reinforced or transformed by contemporary events. Based on more than twenty years of research and the author’s videos of everyday cooking techniques, this rich ethnography treats the kitchen as an environment in which people pursue tasks, display expertise, and confront culturally defined risks.

Kalymnian islanders, both women and men, use food as a way of evoking personal and collective memory, creating an elaborate discourse on ingredients, tastes, and recipes. Author David E. Sutton focuses on micropractices in the kitchen, such as the cutting of onions, the use of a can opener, and the rolling of phyllo dough, along with cultural changes, such as the rise of televised cooking shows, to reveal new perspectives on the anthropology of everyday living. Content: List of Illustrations List of Video Examples Acknowledgments Introduction: Why Does Greek Food Taste So Good? 1. Emplacing Cooking 2. Tools and Their Users 3. Nina and Irini: Passing the Torch? 4. Mothers, Daughters, and Others: Learning, Transmission, Negotiation 5. Horizontal Transmission: Cooking Shows, Friends, and Other Sources of Knowledge 6. Through the Kitchen Window Conclusion: So, What Is Cooking? Epilogue: Cooking (and Eating) in Times of Financial Crisis Notes References Index Introduction: Why Does Greek Food Taste So Good? -- Emplacing Cooking -- Tools And Their Users -- Nina And Irini: Passing The Torch? -- Mothers, Daughters, And Others: Learning, Transmission, Negotiation -- Horizontal Transmission: Cooking Shows, Friends, And Other Sources Of Knowledge -- Through The Kitchen Window -- Conclusion: So, What Is Cooking? -- Epilogue: Cooking (and Eating) In Times Of Financial Crisis. David E. Sutton. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 221-232) And Indexes.