Mykonos food…
Mykonos is an island with 2 identities: the summer, frenzied Mykonos, a mecca of cosmopolitan touristry, and its winter heart. it’s during this latter, unvisited island that the locals reclaim their traditions.
For all its contradictions, the island’s core spirit remains amazingly intact and obscurity is that this a lot of evident than in an exceedingly thriving native cookery supported the best ingredients — fish, barley rusks (twice-baked onerous tack), onions, wild savory, goat’s milk — and on the common-or-garden pig, whose winter slaughter, referred to as hoirosfagia in Greek, remains reason for a feast.
Despite the island’s gift sophistication, its cookery mirrors the time long before the traveller invasion that began within the early Nineteen Sixties, once Mykonos became the charming, undiscovered, windmill-studded land site of the uber wealthy. The island’s ancient cookery remained steadfast, one among utter dearth, the same as the delicious, if poor, cuisines of alternative bone-dry islands within the Cyclades. Onions become the things of a grand savory pie, in an exceedingly crust created crisp with lard. Wild greens realize their approach into fritters, as they are doing everywhere the Aegean; in Mykonos, a greens and tarama (fish roe) fritter could be a specialty throughout Lent.
Like most Greek islands, fish has continually vie a crucial half within the Mykonos diet. the foremost common fish square measure surmullet (barbouni), that square measure pan-fried with tomatoes or with tomatoes and capers in an exceedingly classic Cyclades dish; and skate, that is deep-fried and served with the garlic-potato puree skordalia. deep-fried octopus tentacles square measure a much-savored meze (small plate) too.
All over the Cyclades, marzipan-like confections referred to as amygdalota square measure ancient sweets and they’re Diamond State riguer at weddings. These square measure typically created with blanched almonds; in Mykonos, the almonds square measure cooked and also the amygdalota square measure formed like very little bells, fresh on the skin and damp and soft within the middle.
The pork slaughter, like most concerned in island cookery, could be a lesson within the economy of rural cooks, even those whose land is way a lot of valuable lately as realty than as farming ground. The slaughter takes place at native village homes anytime between Dec. 6, the holiday of St. Nicholas, and Jan. 20, the holiday of Saint Anthony per the Catholic Church calendar. The array of specialties that result square measure enjoyed all year spherical.
Hogs have traditionally been a main supply of supermolecule in Mykonos, and pork’s history here is expressed in an exceedingly litany of native specialties: the louza, a salted, pressed, dry and smoke-dried loin that was introduced by the Venetians, United Nations agency dominated here between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries; savory-flavored sausages that the island is famous; and head cheese, referred to as pichti.
Many of those product don’t seem to be the exclusive domain of native denizens. Louza, the sausages and kopanisti will all be found wide in Mykonos and in supermarkets in Athens. guests to the island may additionally see the normal barley toast, or mostra, that was originally a unit of weight. These square measure served for breakfast, a light-weight lunch and a healthy snack, and historically were the onerous tack that fishermen took with them on long journeys as a result of they keep well. Restaurants have revived their use, and one native specialty requires creating a bread dish by topping the rusks with shredded tomatoes, oil and alittle of spicy kopanisti. With many substitutes, this can be a simple dish to duplicate even in AN yank room.
