Life's Pleasures Quote by Nana Mouskouri

It sounds like a kitchen tip, but it reads like a quiet manifesto from someone who’s spent a lifetime managing intensity. Mouskouri isn’t romanticizing food; she’s demystifying it. The “secret” isn’t exotic seasoning or inherited genius, it’s time and restraint: cook the aubergines ahead, let them shed what they’ve absorbed. In a culture that sells immediacy as sophistication, she argues for delay as technique.

The line about aubergines “drinking” oil is doing more than describing texture. It gives the ingredient a kind of appetite, a vulnerability. Eggplant is porous; it takes in whatever you give it, and if you rush, you’ll end up with something “very heavy.” That heaviness lands beyond the plate. For a touring musician whose public image has often been defined by poise and discipline, the advice feels like lived experience translated into domestic language: prepare early, let things settle, don’t serve the moment at its most saturated.

There’s also a subtle generational and Mediterranean practicality here. This is the voice of someone for whom good cooking isn’t performance content, it’s household physics. Oil is precious, but it’s also a burden if it’s not managed. The intent is care: for the eater, for the body, for the balance of pleasure and lightness. The subtext is almost moral without preaching: what you absorb too quickly will weigh you down; give it a night, and you can keep the richness without the drag.