Greece is the word Old World culinary traditions celebrate food, friendship and family for local cooks

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Anastasia Kalea didn’t really want to be in the kitchen last Thursday.

It’s not that she doesn’t like to entertain – for Kalea, a meal without friends is no meal at all. She didn’t complain as she prepared a glass of cool frappe (pronounced fra-PAY), a whipped iced coffee beverage popular in her native Greece, for her guests.

But it was clear she wanted to be somewhere else. You could see it in her eyes. And on her shirt. And on her coffee mugs.

She wanted to be home for the Olympics.

Kalea, 26, has been in Orono for nearly four years, working toward a Ph.D. in food science at the University of Maine. When she’s feeling a bit homesick, a trip to the kitchen takes her back to her hometown of Kozani, where her mother and grandmother prepared her favorite foods.

“I started cooking when I went to study in Athens away from home,” Kalea said. “I always loved my mother’s food and I had to find a way to cook it because she couldn’t possibly be there.”

On Saturday and Sunday, Kalea will join members of Maine’s Greek community at the 66th National Folk Festival to share the secrets and stories behind traditional Greek cuisine.

“What is typical about Greek cooking is it’s a family thing,” Kalea said, relaxing while a batch of Zematisti Kourambiedes Kozanis baked in the oven. “We ended up deciding it would be better if we all cooked together and there were two or three people helping in the preparation of each recipe.”

Kalea recruited friends from St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Bangor, where she teaches literature and traditional dance to younger members of the congregation. Fellow UMaine student Charalampos “Harris” Georgiadis will prepare meat-based main dishes in the tradition of his hometown, Thessaloniki, which is an hour away from Kozani, so his cooking style is very similar to Kalea’s.

Though Alex Dragatsi grew up with a Lebanese mother and a Greek father, his cooking is decidedly Greek, and he will share the secrets behind Avgolemono (egg and lemon soup) and Tsoureki (a sweet Easter bread). Helen Koulouris of Brunswick, whose grandparents have owned several Greek restaurants in the United States, will prepare desserts. And Vassiliki “Kiki” Panakis of Millinocket and her daughters Maria, Eleftheria and Georgia will show audiences how to prepare appetizers, main dishes and dessert.

“We thought we wanted to get the girls involved, younger people, and I knew Kiki’s daughters grew up eating Greek food and they’ve been to Greece many times, so it worked out very nicely,” Kalea said. “They grew up here, and it would be an interesting thing to see how [their perception of Greek food differed from hers]. I expected them to like more the Americanized Greek cooking and they were not familiar with that at all.”

Many dishes served in Greek restaurants have been adapted to American tastes. Obviously, there’s no such thing as “Greek salad” in Greece, and the traditional salad of Kalea’s region consists mainly of tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and hunks of feta – no greens or thick dressing.

“It depends on where the Greek restaurant is,” Kalea said. “In the restaurants in New York and Boston, the recipes are more close to what I used to taste back home. I think a lot of it has to do with the availability of ingredients.”

In the kitchen of her Orono apartment, tall cabinets are stocked with bottles of olive oil imported from Greece. She keeps a substantial block of feta in her refrigerator, but she says she has a hard time finding good cheese here. A small, empty bottle of ouzo sits on a shelf, and as the fragrant meat sauce for Moussaka simmers on the stove, she adds a dash of Greek white wine.

In Kozani, a northern Greek city about the size of Bangor, the standard Moussaka – a layered casserole of eggplant, meat sauce and bechamel – is prepared with a layer of potatoes at the bottom, which is unique to the area.

“The difference is, it gives more structure, and I think it’s better, but I can’t be objective,” Kalea said, laughing. “Most people back home fry eggplant, which my mother never did because it gets very oily. I like it so much that I always wanted a second piece, but you can’t do that when it’s very oily, so we found a way that I can have a second piece.”

Though Moussaka is always a favorite, Kalea equally likes Frikasee, a dish that combines spinach, lettuce, celery dill and lamb, topped with avgolemono, an egg and lemon sauce. It is a tradition in Kozani to top many dishes, especially those with tomatoes, with lemon juice. Because Kozani is in a mountainous region, pork and lamb are more common than seafood, and the seasonal availability of fruits, vegetables and meats strongly influenced cooking in the area.

“A basic concept of Greek cuisine is local ingredients,” Kalea said.

Much of the cuisine is linked to religious holidays – it wouldn’t be Christmas without Kourambiedes, and on Easter, eggs convey the symbolism of rebirth and they are used heavily in such dishes as Tsoureki and Avoglemono.

But it doesn’t have to be a holiday for a Greek cook to prepare a feast. A Japanese friend who visited Kalea in Kozani ended up with a stomachache because every place they went, people began feeding her the second she walked through the door, and when she couldn’t eat any more, they packed the rest in aluminum foil and made her take it away.

“When Greeks want to show that somebody is welcome in their house, they have to treat him to something they cooked as soon as he enters the house,” Kalea explained. “Preparing a nice meal for a visitor in the house is an honor and a duty at the same time. Offering food and the best homemade wine is an expression of good feelings – that we like you.”

When she invites friends over, which is often, Kalea is no exception. During a recent visit to her apartment, she immediately prepared a frappe for her guests and set out a bowl of chocolate. Then she started preparing the dough for Kourambiedes Kozanis, Christmas cookies topped with almonds. As they baked, she set to work making a pork and leek stew, stopping to cut fresh thyme from a flowerpot on her windowsill.

“That’s the architecture of my hometown,” she said, pointing to the hand-painted building that decorated the pot.

Around her, religious icons and photographs from Greece were on display, and as she prepared the bechamel sauce for Moussaka, she separated two eggs over an Athens Olympics coffee mug. Kalea was far from home, but as she shared memories of her family, food and traditions, the cooking brought her back to Kozani, to her mother’s table, and to her grandmother’s knack for confusing salt with sugar and nutmeg with black pepper.

She laughed, and as she sauteed and chopped and tasted each dish, the menu became irrelevant. It was the preparation, rather than the product, that mattered.

“Love and company – those are the two secret ingredients.”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

Moussakas

Makes 12 servings.

For tomato sauce:

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 medium onions, diced

1/2 cup red wine

1/2 cup water

Salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1 pound ground beef

1 cup crushed tomatoes

Salt and pepper to taste

Whole nutmeg to taste

For Moussaka:

2 large potatoes, peeled and sliced about 1/8 inch thick

1 medium eggplant or 2 small eggplants, sliced about 1/4 inch thick

1 tub crumbled feta cheese

Salt

Bread crumbs

For bechamel:

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter

6 tablespoons flour

Whole nutmeg

3 cups milk

2 egg yolks

Salt

Sprinkle eggplant with salt and broil until browned on both sides. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cover the bottom of a large, deep-sided baking pan with 1 layer of sliced potatoes and 1 layer of broiled eggplant.

Prepare sauce by heating olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and onions and saute until translucent, about 3 minutes. Add ground beef and spices (grate nutmeg directly over pan to taste) and cook until lightly browned. Add wine. When wine is evaporated, add tomatoes and water and bring to a boil. Stir, season with salt and pepper and simmer until sauce reduces, about 10-15 minutes. Pour over eggplant.

Sprinkle a layer of feta cheese over sauce. Set aside.

Prepare bechamel by melting butter over medium-high heat. Add flour and cook, whisking constantly, 3-4 minutes. Lower heat, add milk and whisk until smooth. Cook, adding freshly ground nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste and stirring frequently, until mixture thickens, about 7 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer to a bowl. Let cool 5 minutes and mix in egg yolks.

Pour bechamel evenly over feta and sprinkle breadcrumbs on top sparingly. Bake 40-60 minutes (depending on the dimensions of your pan), until the bechamel sets and becomes golden brown. Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes and serve.

Hirino me Prassa Kozanis (Pork and Leeks Stew of Kozani)

Makes 4 meal-size servings or 6 appetizer servings.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 bunch (7-8) scallions, chopped

2 pounds boneless pork loin, cubed

2 large leeks

3 cups water

1 cup red wine

1/3 cup celery leaves (see note)

1 medium carrot

2/3 cup crushed tomato

2 tablespoons oregano

Sea salt

Black pepper

Juice of 1 lemon

Cut pork into 1-inch cubes and marinate in 1/2 cup wine, salt and pepper for at least 1 hour.

Chop leeks, discarding the tough top leaves. Remove leaves from celery and set aside. In a large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium-high heat and saute scallions until soft, about 2 minutes. Add pork (reserving marinade) and oregano. Stir-fry until lightly browned, and add marinade and remaining wine. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add leeks, carrots, tomato and water. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Add celery leaves and simmer 10 more minutes. Check pork for doneness.

Remove from heat and serve, garnishing the top of each bowl with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Cook’s note: In this recipe, you will only use the leaves from a bunch of celery. If you can’t find celery with leaves at the grocery store, try your local farmers market.

Kihia (Striftes Tiropites Kozanis or Kozani’s Cheese Pies)

Makes 4 servings.

These little pies, a traditional breakfast food in Greece, get their name from the Greek word for snail, which they resemble.

1/2 pound prepared phyllo dough, chilled

4 tablespoons canola oil

1 egg

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

2 tablespoons butter

Ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Scramble the egg and mix it with the feta. Lay 1 layer of phyllo on a dry countertop or cutting board. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of oil on the dough and top with a second layer of phyllo. Spoon a quarter of the egg and cheese mixture lengthwise down the middle of the dough. Roll into a long, narrow cylinder and use a dab of oil to stick the dough together, if necessary. Then, twist the cylinder into a snail-shaped spiral, pinching the dough to secure. Brush tops of Kihia with butter. Repeat. Bake on a greased pan for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown. Serve warm.

Horiatiki Salata (Salad from the Village)

What we call Greek salad in the United States is quite different from the traditional Greek version. This salad has no greens and no soupy dressing.

2 large, ripe tomatoes, preferably heirloom, diced

1/2 European cucumber, sliced

1/3 medium yellow onion, sliced very thinly

1 scallion

2 hunks feta (about 1/4 pound)

1 tub kalamata olives, drained

Olive oil

Balsamic or red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon oregano

Layer ingredients in a circular pattern in a shallow bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar to taste, and then sprinkle with oregano. Serve at room temperature.

Zematisti Kourambiedes Kozanis (Pastry with Syrup from Kozani)

For cookies:

3 sticks butter, melted

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

2 eggs

1 teaspoon baker’s ammonia (see note)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 bag unbleached flour (you won’t use the whole thing)

2 tablespoons semolina flour

1/2 pound blanched almonds

For syrup:

6 cups sugar

5 cups water

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar and bring to a boil, stirring until slightly thickened. Let cool for 10 minutes. Dissolve ammonia in juice of 1/2 lemon. Pour 5 cups unbleached flour in a large bowl. Make a crater in the center and pour in liquid ingredients. Mix with your hands, adding semolina flour and enough unbleached flour to make dough slightly firmer than that of a pie crust.

Roll dough into balls, press an almond in the top of each cookie and bake in 2 greased lasagna pans for 30-40 minutes, until golden brown.

In the meantime, prepare syrup by combining sugar, water and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and stir until syrup is slightly thickened. Set aside.

When cookies are done, let cool in pan. Pour syrup atop cookies and let them soak for several hours. Serve with strong coffee.

Cook’s note: Baker’s ammonia (pronounced ah-moe-NEE-ah), a leavening agent, is available at Greek markets or through King Arthur Flour. It has a distinct flavor and yields a crisper cookie. Baking soda can be used as a substitute.

Foodways Stage schedule

Saturday, Aug. 28

12:30 p.m.: Appetizers, Anastasia Kalea and Eleftheria Panakis

1:30 p.m.: Main entree, Charalmapos Georgiadis

2:30 p.m.: Main entree, Vassiliki, Eleftheria and Georgia Panakis

3 p.m.: Desserts, Anastasia Kalea and Georgia Panakis

4:30: Dessert, Helen Koulouris

Sunday, Aug. 29

12:30 p.m.: Appetizers, Anastasia Kalea and Eleftheria Panakis

1:30 p.m.: Main entree, Anastasia Kalea (with sign language interpreter)

2:30 p.m.: Main entree, Vassiliki, Eleftheria and Georgia Panakis

3 p.m.: Desserts, Sharon Margaronis

4:30: Dessert, Helen Koulouris (with sign language interpreter)