Middlesex

OLIVE OIL YOGURT CAKE

It was my grandfather Seymour (we call him “Papa”) who suggested Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex to me over cups of egg and lemon soup at the Greek diner in my hometown. I think it must have been the book that made him want to eat there, because usually we went to Johnny’s Luncheonette for breakfast, where a class photo of my mom and her twin sister hung on the wall and he could get a pastrami scramble with rye toast.

I was home from Brooklyn to celebrate his eightieth birthday and had just started my blog a few months earlier. Papa was full of ideas about what books I should write about, but mostly he wanted to talk about Middlesex, which he had just finished a few days prior. I am impressed by my grandfather’s kindness, intelligence, and open-mindedness pretty much every time I speak with him, but this day will always stand out in my mind. Here he was, an eighty-year-old man, a former butcher who had grown up in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Boston, speaking eloquently about gender identity and the struggles of intersex people.

I went and bought the book as soon as we finished breakfast. Unable to put it down, I read it over the course of only a few days. My grandfather was right, not only that it is a beautifully written and compelling story, but that it is filled with food. Cal Stephanides is born a girl in 1960 to a mother and father who are both first-generation Greek Americans. The Stephanides family, who formerly owned a diner that served typical American fare like cheeseburgers and milkshakes, eventually open a chain of hot dog stands called Hercules Hot Dogs. Inside of the Stephanides home, however, standard American food is not allowed, as Cal’s mother, Tessie (who feels that her husband “is more in love with hot dogs than her”), believes that the grease will disrupt their digestion, and instead she insists on cooking them only traditional Greek foods.

Cal’s grandmother Desdemona is living proof of the benefits of a Greek diet. At ninety-one years old she has “the arteries of a fifty-year-old,” and shows no signs of slowing down. Impressed by her perfect health, a German doctor named Dr. Muller asks her to participate in a longevity study as part of the research he is doing for a medical journal article on the Mediterranean diet. Dr. Muller has denounced his German heritage when it comes to cooking, forgoing bratwurst, sauerbraten, and Königsberger Klopse and opting instead for Greek foods like “eggplant aswim in tomato sauce… cucumber dressings and fish-egg spreads… pilafi, raisins, and figs” because he believes in their power as “life-giving, artery-cleansing, skin-smoothing wonder drugs.”

He asks Desdemona how much yogurt and olive oil she consumed as a child, and shares with her statistical graphs showing the life spans of other cultures—“Poles killed off by kielbasa, or Belgians done in by pommes frites, or Anglo-Saxons disappeared by puddings, or Spaniards stopped cold by chorizo.” Much to the dismay of Desdemona, who is more than ready to say her good-byes, the Greek lifeline keeps going and going.

Once Cal realizes the effect that the Mediterranean diet is having on her grandmother’s body, she starts wondering how it might be affecting her own. At this point, Cal is twelve years old and still living as a girl. Over the summer, she has just become aware that all around her, girls are developing breasts and “growing modest,” while she remains unchanged. She concludes that the Mediterranean diet that is keeping her grandmother alive against her will must also be to blame for her painfully slow sexual maturity. It must be, she thinks, the olive oil that her mother drizzles over everything that is keeping her body from changing, or the yogurt that she has for breakfast every morning that is stalling her breast development.

As readers, we know from the start that olive oil and yogurt are not the reasons for Cal’s slow development. Eugenides has told us that the real culprit is 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, a condition that caused both doctors and Cal’s parents to mistakenly identify him as a girl when he was born, based on his external anatomy. You would think that a story about a condition so rare would be difficult for most readers to relate to, but the genius of Eugenides’s storytelling in Middlesex is that he makes Cal’s story, and his struggle, accessible. Some readers will connect more with Calliope, the awkward preteen girl who is confused about the changes happening (and not happening) to her body, who feels freakish and lonely and left behind. Some will relate more to Cal, the forty-one-year-old man, falling in love with a woman and wondering if he will be enough, or too much, for her. Most everyone will relate to a character who is imperfect and insecure, who tries to find humor in tragedy, and who wants, above all, to be loved.

MIDDLESEX

Olive Oil Yogurt Cake

Serves 8

1½ cups plain full-fat Greek yogurt

⅔ cup olive oil

3 large eggs

1¼ cups sugar

¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Juice and zest of 1 small orange

2½ cups all-purpose flour

2½ teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ cup raw almonds, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan, line the bottom with a parchment paper circle, and grease the parchment.

In a large bowl, whisk together the yogurt, olive oil, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and orange juice and zest. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing until a smooth batter forms. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and scatter the almonds over the top.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Let the cake cool slightly before serving, or cool it completely and eat it cold.