Passionate about – cooking

A simple recipe for success

It’s impossible not to admire the resilience of Mary O’Nions, a Limassol-based kitchen goddess whose home-made gastronomic goodies have gained an island-wide cult following. Mary’s also a dab hand at construction – as familiar with a concrete mixer as she is with the kitchen blender, using the little spare time she has between cooking to complete an ambitious conversion of her home in Germasogeia village.

Mary’s achievements are more astonishing given her traumatic past. She lived in Saudi Arabia for many years and during the first Gulf War was Associate Director of Nursing at Riyadh University. She and her ex-husband Gary also ran a social club, run discreetly on a residential compound for westerners. Over the years, the Empire Club had become a popular meeting place for diplomats and westerners, but it served alcohol, which was against Saudi Arabia’s strict Sharia law. Disaster struck one day in 1998 when the ‘Mutaween’, the Saudi religious police, shut down the club and arrested Mary. Then followed 77 traumatic days in a Saudi jail.

After her release, Mary moved to Cyprus and began major reconstruction work to transform the traditional stone-built home she had bought some years previously. (She had signed the contract on the day before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990). With help from friends, Mary carried out much of the building work herself. When she ran short of funds to finish the task, she struck upon the idea of using her baking skills to realise her dream.

“I retired from nursing to become a builder – they used to call me ‘Mad Mary’ around here because I did all this work,” she says laughing, “I’d done so much cement work that I got quite bad arthritis in my fingers, and as I have to finish the upstairs of the house I wondered what I could do? Then I thought, I can cook. So, I just started. I was doing it for people at Christmas anyway and although initially it was to make ends meet, it’s just got bigger and bigger.”

‘Mary’s Kitchen’ took off immediately.

“I made a profit from day one because I started before Christmas and sold out completely. I began selling things at Fasouri Flea Market because my brother and sister-in law have a stall there which we shared before I had my own,” she explains.

After only a year Mary has expanded her small area, taking on a larger pitch from which she sells an average of 60 cakes, 40 pies and 50 jars of preserves every week.

With customers travelling from all over Cyprus to get their hands on Mary’s homemade pork-pies, exotic preserves and delicious range of ready meals, such as corned beef and potato pie and legendary curries – a speciality passed on by a doctor friend from India, the recipe for Mary’s success is simple. It’s all down to a little Mary magic, some old, adapted recipes and, she says, the freshness of the ingredients.

“I only use the finest produce, the best of everything; Cadbury’s cocoa, free range eggs, butter and seasonal ingredients. Plus I’ve got this thing about making everything fresh.” Using as much fruit as she can from her own trees, including what she calls, “The most productive banana tree ever,” is just one element of this winning formula.

Product demand means a seven day week for 66-year-old Mary. A twice weekly grocery shop is required to buy around two kilos each of oranges, lemons and apples plus flour, dried fruit, spices, and, over the past few weeks – virtually the entire local supply of suet to make the filling for more than a thousand of her famous mince pies. Mondays and Tuesdays are dedicated to concocting preserves whilst the remainder of the week is spent preparing the food she sells at the market every weekend.
“I take as much as I can make and make as much as I can,” she says. “I am virtually cooking all week. People say I should get help, but it wouldn’t help me because my kitchen is planned for me, and I probably do four things at once. I can sit here peeling apples or pickled onions with my surgical gloves on watching television. I really enjoy it but sometimes I get so tired. I wouldn’t make any money at all if I was paid for my hours of work.”

Despite her workload, Mary still makes time to experiment with new products.

“I get bored of making the same thing and people get bored of buying the same thing, so I make a variety. I’m asked for things like birthday cakes which I do, as well as other kinds; banana, date and walnut, ginger and black treacle, chocolate orange chip, coffee walnut with my own Irish liqueur and tangy lemon. I sell a lot of those each week. I get everyone buying them – Lebanese, Americans, Cypriots, everyone. So now I make a lot of exotic things like fig conserve with sherry. I use an Australian recipe book that you can’t get anymore; it’s brilliant and has a lot of unusual ones. There are people who come every week and just buy a different jar of chutney.”

Amongst other requests are those for diabetic jam and gluten-free products. “You have to stock these things now.” she says.

Mary is meticulous when it comes to hygiene standards, a practice learned early on in her nursing career, as she explains.

“I was taught the hard way because the woman that ran the operating theatres I trained in used to stick things underneath the trays and you had to find them. It helps to have been a nurse because you know what is sterile and what’s not.”

With Christmas around the corner Mary is busy packing hampers and cooking up a festive storm.

Estimating another year before building work is completed, she remains reticent on whether she will hang up her apron once everything is done. “You know, since I was in prison I live from day to day. I’m 66 now, so my plans are to finish this place, and what I do then is another matter. I enjoy it; it’s very tiring but you don’t get bored, this gets me out of the house and it keeps me occupied.”

Mary’s Kitchen
The Old Bakery
Germasogeia Village
Limassol
Tel: 25 313565/99 302570