Kyra Vangelio’s blue notebook
Forty years of pies in a school exercise book, and why we never photograph it.
The notebook has a blue cover and the word Τετράδιο printed on it, the way school exercise books did in 1970. Kyra Vangelio, Petros’s grandmother, started writing in it the year he was born, and wrote in it until the year she died.
It is not a cookbook. There are no quantities, or not ones you could use: “flour, as much as it takes”, “a handful of the good cheese”, “salt, you know”. What it has instead is which pie for which day, which greens are good in which week of March, which neighbour’s leeks were better than hers, and, in the margins, who came to lunch.
Petros has been cooking from it for six years and says he has made about half of it properly. The other half he is still working out, which is why the pie of the day on Thursday is sometimes a surprise, to him as well.
Guests ask if they can photograph it. We say no, gently. It is not a secret; Petros will tell you any recipe in it. It is just that it is hers.