cyprus – Better with Lemon

On Sunday, Steve and I will travel to Cyprus for a week. We’ll spend some time with my family in Nicosia, travel a bit, and then all go to Paphos for Easter weekend. While I was growing up, Easter was a holiday I was ambivalent about. On the one hand, we had no school and the weather was almost always beautiful, with wildflowers blooming everywhere around our house. On the other hand, Easter week was so gloomy. There was the somber church service on Thursday night, when a big cross was carried around by the priest while chanting ominously “crucify him, crucify him” in ancient Greek. Then on Friday night, church service was equally dreary with a huge casket-like box in the middle of the church, representing Jesus’s tomb, completely covered in wildflowers and flowering herbs like rosemary. So, it was a gloomy service but a well perfumed one, adding to the dissonance of the occasion.

Things would change on Saturday night when there was the midnight service celebrating the resurrection. At precisely midnight, the church lights would turn down, everyone would go quiet, and the priest would emerge from the apse with a single lit candle, proceeding to light the candles of worshippers in front of him who would then light the candles of the people behind them, and so on, causing a wave of light to swiftly spread through the church and out into the courtyard, all while everyone was chanting the Byzantine resurrection hymn that they learned from the time they were in first grade (“Christ has risen from the dead, he has conquered death…”). But even this seemingly joyous night was fraught with some anxiety for me because the custom was (and still is) for men to light up giant bonfires outside the church and to explode homemade fireworks. Every year there were several men who lost fingers, entire hands, eyes, and they continue to do so today.

On this trip, we will be with my family on Saturday night in a little chapel outside the hotel we are staying in in Paphos, the westernmost city in Cyprus, on the Mediterranean. Bucking tradition, the service will begin at 11pm instead of midnight (because the priest has to be at his regular big church for the midnight service), which means that we will be able to go have the traditional Easter soup after the service and go to bed at a slightly more reasonable hour.

My family is not religious (my mom is the only one who really believes in God, but she has no affinity for the church and its priests). But there is something about Easter in Cyprus, specifically the Saturday midnight mass, that we all find beautiful. When you look past the religious symbols and iconography, ignore the mythical resurrection story, what you find is part of the soul of the people of the island. For those few moments when the holy light sweeps the darkened church that is filled with people’s voices chanting, you can’t help but feel a sense of awe. For tradition, for community, for family.

All of this to get me to share with you this recipe, which has nothing to do with Easter, but a lot to do with Cyprus. I fiddled around with a recipe I found on Food and Wine for a grapefruit cake one day and managed to turn it into something that we immediately loved. This isn’t a showstopper visually. It’s a simple, toothsome cake, but it is filled with flavors of early Mediterranean spring, combining orange blossoms and the oranges they turn into. It’s hearty but delicate. It demands your attention with every bite. So, enjoy it and happy Easter or happy Passover if you are celebrating next week.

Orange Blossom Cornmeal Cake – Adapted from Food and Wine

Ingredients:

3/4 stick (85g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup medium-grind cornmeal
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs
1/3 cup and two teaspoons (85g) vegetable oil
finely grated zest of one orange
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon orange blossom water

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly grease a 9-inch cake pan (or springform pan). Line the bottom with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour with the cornmeal, granulated sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate medium bowl, whisk the eggs with the melted butter, oil, orange zest, orange juice, and orange blossom water until they are combined. While whisking constantly, add the butter mixture to the flour mixture in a slow, steady stream. Whisk just until well blended. You can also use a spatula to finish mixing the batter. Don’t overmix.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 45-50 minutes, until golden and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

Transfer the cake to a rack to cool for 10 minutes. Run a sharp paring knife around the edge of the cake, then invert it onto the rack (or remove the sides of the springform pan). Peel off the parchment paper. Carefully flip the cake right side up and let cool.

Before serving you can sprinkle powdered sugar on the cake but it’s really not needed.

We have a tradition. When I go back home to visit my family, my mom makes the foods of my childhood that I miss. There’s koupepia, grape leaves stuffed with meat and rice and cooked in a tomato sauce, there’s rabbit stewed in onions and red wine, and there’s always makaronia tou fournou, known as pastitsio in Greece.

Over the years, I’ve gotten recipes from my mom so that I could make these dishes myself whenever I wanted to. It’s not very easy. She has no written recipes and her measurements and directions don’t use American standards. When she says a cup of flour, she’s talking about a drinking glass she’s always used to measure. There are no exact times either. You may cook something until “it drinks its water,” meaning that the liquid evaporates, or until it katastithei, which means that its sauce thickens.

So, I do my best and transcribe the recipes as well as I can and when I come back to New York I try them out a few times until I get the exact measurements that result in a dish as close to my mom’s as possible. An additional problem is that the ingredients may be different or tough to find. That’s the case, for example, with this recipe for pastitsio. While almost everything is readily accessible in the U.S., the macaroni my mom uses is tough to find. Though, as I explain in the recipe, any round macaroni would work fine. For a while, I couldn’t find halloumi either, the cheese from Cyprus that’s made with sheep and goat milks and has salt and bits of mint in it. It’s famous for not melting, so you can grill it or sauté it in a pan, but here it’s grated and added to the dish. Fortunately, halloumi is now sold in all grocery stores.

So, here it is. My mom’s recipe for pastitsio or makaronia tou fournou. It’s not a difficult recipe, but it does have several steps. It’s a great project for a Sunday. If you are concerned about the quantity this recipe makes, after the pastitsio is cooked and cools down completely, you can cut it in portions and freeze them, wrapped in plastic. Whenever you want to eat it, defrost it in the fridge overnight and then reheat it in a 300° F oven for 15 minutes or until it’s warm through. Don’t microwave it because it will give it a strong egg taste.

I guarantee you that you will not regret making this dish. It’s a perfect combination of pasta, meat, and cream. I’ve been making it myself for years but my mom still makes it for me when I go home. After all, no matter how close my own pastitsio gets to my mom’s, hers is always better.

Pastitsio (Makaronia to Fournou / Μακαρονια του φουρνου)

Notes: The pasta my mom uses is Mezzani A. If you can’t find it, use any thick, tube-shaped pasta. The chicken bouillon cubes are essential, so don’t skip them or change them. My mom has always used the Maggi brand. Same goes for the halloumi cheese. It’s irreplaceable in the recipe. Fortunately, most grocery stores carry it.

Ingredients:

Meat layer:
1-1.5 lbs ground pork or chicken
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
7 oz (200 gr) diced tomatoes in juice (half of a 14.5 oz can)
½ cup chopped parsley
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 chicken bouillon cube, crumbled
1/4 cup red (for pork) or white (for chicken) wine

Pasta layer:
1 lb mezzani pasta (see note)
1 whole halloumi cheese, finely grated
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 chicken bouillon cube, crumbled
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Bechamel sauce:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (or shortening, or combination of the two)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 liter milk
2 large eggs
1 whole halloumi finely grated
3 tablespoons unseasoned, dry breadcrumbs

Directions:

First, make the meat layer. Cook the onion in olive oil over medium high heat, stirring often, for about 4 minutes. Add ground meat. Cook for another 5 minutes, stirring often and breaking up any clumps. Add wine, salt and pepper, cinnamon, parsley, 1/2 maggi and tomatoes. Stir together and cook until almost all liquid has evaporated, about 12-15 minutes. Set aside and proceed with the rest of the recipe. DO AHEAD: Meat can be prepared up to 2 days ahead and stored in refrigerator, covered.

Then, make the pasta layer. If pasta is long, break into thirds, about 4 inches long. Cook pasta in plenty of unsalted water till al dente. Drain and return to pot. While still hot, add maggi, butter, and egg while stirring until the butter is melted. Add the halloumi. Stir well until everything is combined.

Put 3/4 of cooked pasta in bottom of 9 by 13 oval pan that is at least 2 ½ inches deep, then add meat and finally add remaining pasta on top.

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Make the bechamel. Melt butter in a medium pot over medium heat. When butter melts and begins to bubble, whisk in flour and cook, whisking frequently, until flour is cooked and just begins to turn darker in color about 5 to 6 minutes. Add all the milk at once, whisking continuously until thoroughly combined. Continue to simmer until thickened, about 10 minutes. Lightly beat eggs, temper them with a little of the hot thickened milk, and add carefully to béchamel, whisking constantly. Remove from heat. Add grated halloumi and stir well.

Spread bechamel on top of pasta and meat making sure to cover all the way to the edges. Smooth top with back of spoon. Sprinkle breadcrumbs on top and bake at 350° F for about an hour till top is golden brown.