Even though this is the third (fourth?) time I’ve been to Eressos, there was still plenty of new food things to find out about. One day we were out walking around in the “campo”–the little farm plots around the village. Here’s the view from the big hill and fort:
In one side yard, we happened to see this guy with a giant cauldron over a fire. He invited us in and explained how he was making trahana.
Later that day, after the guy had cooked the milk, stirring constantly, for about nine hours, till it was about a third of the volume, we popped back in. (Yes, after all the hard work was done.) He loaded us up with a foil package full of fresh, warm trahana–the milk mixed with coarse bulgur. It was sour and toasty and sweet, and the bulgur was perfectly fluffy. The guy showed us how the next day, he and all the old ladies would sit down and form the giant tub of trahana into these patties, which would be dried in the sun for a couple of weeks and then stored for winter use in soups and things.
The next night, we had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Costa’s, and he served us these grilled trahana cups, filled with spicy feta. It was trahana-making season all over–these were from some other family entirely.
It was the grilling that made me realize: trahana is the missing link between pasta and kibbeh. Not that you were looking for one–neither was I. But…trahana is dried like pasta and used in soups. But it’s made out of bulgur, and you can work it into all kinds of shapes and cook it different ways–I had grilled kibbeh in Syria last time I was there.
It was also the beginning of tomato season. In the yard two doors down from us, we saw sun-dried tomatoes in the process of getting dried in the sun. Peter complimented the grumpy-looking man on his garden and he actually grinned.
It was not Easter, but our other favorite restaurant made us special Eressos Easter lamb, which they’d also served at the dinner after Peter and I got married. I was able to concentrate on it a bit more this time. And I even got the recipe, which, traditionally, involves baking in a community oven for about nine hours. Ingredients include cinnamon and dill–this combination strikes me as somehow quite obviously Turkish, though I have no real evidence why. This photo doesn’t even begin to capture the amazingness. Those are chunks of liver in the foreground.
My godmother (less formally, the woman who runs the hotel we usually stay at, who happened to get drafted to be my godmother back in 2005, when I had to get baptized before I could get married) brought us this pastry from the new bakery. It’s a specialty of Eressos, but as Fani told us, it’s rare to see it for sale, as it’s usually only made at home. It was filled with almonds and nutmeg.
Sweet, sweet summer…
See: Greece Food Photos #2, Greece Photos #1
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