Wedding Bells, The Cretan Version

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

by Diana Farr Louis

ANDROS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—7/4/11—“In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love . . . .” By summer, though, things turn serious and wedding plans are made. In Crete, at least, weddings are summer events, and that’s because virtually every knot-tying ceremony is a bash worthy of Wills and Kate. A young couple’s nuptials may not summon up gilded coaches or otherworldly hats. In fact, the sole person wearing a hat will be the priest. But the guests will number in the thousands and they will dine like royalty.

Cretan weddings have to take place in summer because there are few buildings big enough to hold the crowd. (And no kitchens where you could spit-roast or bake half a flock of lambs.) So the party commandeers the village square and delegates the catering among dozens of relatives and neighbors. The guest list can range from 500 to 2,000 people.

I first came upon entertaining on this vast scale in Zakros, in the very east of Crete. Maria D., a woman who’d been giving me recipes, took me to the communal kitchen in a shack on the village outskirts. Here a team of men and women were preparing a feast for that evening’s baptism. It was a “small affair,” just 300 guests, because there’d been a recent death in the family.

The catering was organized along gender lines. For days, women had been cooking in their own homes: rolling vine leaves around tiny balls of herb-scented rice, frying miniature meatballs, freezing pastry triangles stuffed with soft cheese . . . . And now they were cutting up tomatoes, onions, and peppers for salads, slicing feta and other cheeses, and arranging food on platters. The men, on the other hand, were standing around two enormous cauldrons that bubbled over an open fire. They were preparing the broth—from a couple of yearling lambs—in which the ceremonial macaroni would be simmered.

In western Crete, the traditional main dish for a wedding (or baptism) is called gamopílafo or wedding pilaf. Rice has enormous symbolic significance—every grain symbolizes a wish for the young couple’s wealth and fertility. But thick tubular pasta? I’m not sure about that one.

In any case, dealing with the meat, whether boiled or spit-roasted, always falls to the men. They are the ones who cut up the animals in chunks that will fit in the cauldrons; they decide how much liquid to add and when the broth is just right. They sprinkle in no seasonings, apart from salt and pepper, but the concentrated meat essence saturates the rice or pasta with its luscious taste. In the old days, when chickens were a greater luxury in these sheep-breeding districts, they were preferred. At 16 to a pot, they represented quite a display of wealth. (Especially if you think that eggs were saved for barter, cash being scarce.)

Also in Zakros, I met Alexandra N.,  Maria’s sister, who specialized in making the sweets that take the place of wedding cake in Crete. They are called xerotígana, literally “dry fries,” which doesn’t begin to capture the delicacy and intricacy of these tightly coiled pastry ribbons. After rolling, twirling, and frying thousands, then dipping them in honey syrup, Alexandra couldn’t wait for the wedding season to end.

She calculated that a kilo of flour would produce 70 xerotígana, and that when working with 20 kilos (44 pounds) of flour, 8 kilos (17.6 pounds) of honey and 2 kilos (4.4 pounds) of sugar would be needed for the syrup. When you add to that the amount of olive oil required to fry them all, you realize how much money and work is involved.

But talking of expense, the priciest item on the average Cretan wedding menu is likely to be the bottled drinks. Coke, Sprite and beer are the only things that have to be bought. Everything else, from the wine to the lamb, is either home-made, home-raised, or home grown.

Here follows a recipe for a traditional Cretan wedding:

Essential Ingredients:

—Between 500 to 2,000 close relatives and intimate friends

—Up to 100 friends and neighbors to help with the cooking, pilaf stirring, lamb basting, sausage and vine leaf stuffing, pie frying, pastry twirling, etc. on the day and well in advance

—As many freezers as can be mustered

—A village square or large open-air tavérna on a summer evening

—Gallons of rakí poured into minute glasses as the guests leave the church

—Bowls of piquant graviéra cheese cubes

—Platters heaped with morsels of roast pork

—Baskets of bite-sized chunks of fresh bread

—Tulle-wrapped bonbonieres—sachets of white candy-coated almonds, sometimes known as “bride’s eggs”—tied with a white ribbon

—A pale pastry rosette or xerotígano for each guest, wrapped in cellophane

—A Cretan lyra or fiddle to play while the bride dances with the bachelors—the prize, her kerchief (not a blue garter)

—One large bowl of honey and walnuts and a mother-in-law waiting on the doorstep of the couple’s new home with a spoonful to “sweeten up the bride” and one for each of the bachelors to “sweeten up their prospects”

—A little finger dipped in the honey for tracing a cross on the lintel and a red pomegranate for the bride to smash on her spotless floor (to ensure wealth and babies, preferably sons)

—Long tables set with immaculate white linen and bowls of peanuts roasted in salt-encrusted shells and tiny coriander-scented rusks for nibbling with rakí before the mezédes are paraded in. Trays piled with fried lamb’s liver, home-made sausages, olives, pickles, marble-sized meatballs, miniature pies encasing creamy myzíthra cheese, or herbs and greens gathered from the mountains, stuffed vine leaves, and salads, to tease the appetite before the pièce de resistance, the wedding pilaf, is served, followed by the boiled meat

—Course number three, the patatáda, baby lambs roasted in the oven with potatoes or, less traditionally, on the spit. Required for show but often barely touched

—Barrels of strong, tawny wine, one perhaps as old as the bride or groom

—Case upon case of soft drinks; neither home-made nor home-grown (this can be the most expensive item on the menu)

—A lyra and two lutes to set the stage for mantinádes—traditional couplets, half-sung, half-spoken, some centuries old, some made up on the spur of the moment: “Today the eagle is united with the dove,” “The sun and the moon are crowned” and, in a lighter vein, “Bride, where you are going, watch your step, love your father-in-law, but give your mother-in-law the boot”—and for dancing, dancing, dancing till the next day

—Hundreds of extra plates for throwing at the dancers’ feet, not to mention a few flower pots and chairs

—Shotguns for firing exuberant, deafening volleys into the air, and/or large signs declaring “Shooting on these premises is strictly forbidden! By order of the police and the management”

—Traditional wedding presents: cash-stuffed envelopes to help the couple set up house

 

Optional:

—The proikológoi or dowry bearers, young men to carry the furniture, kitchen equipment, linen, and blankets to the new home

—The nuptial mattress—to be made fruitful by rolling a baby, preferably a boy, on it, once it’s made up

—Several old shirts to be worn by the bridegroom at “the small wedding,” the party the night before the actual wedding, and torn off by his friends in a ritual shedding of old bachelor habits

—Oh, and I almost forgot! The bride and groom, the priest, and the all important koumbáros and koumbára—the Best Man and Bride’s Attendant, who handle details such as the ring, “wedding crowns,” and church matters

And here is a recipe for Wedding Pilaf (gamopílafo) on a scale you can reproduce at home without feeding the 5,000.

 

1 lb (1/2 kg) lean lamb

1 2 kg (3-4 lb) free range chicken

2 liters (8 cups) chicken or meat stock (optional)

2 cups (400 g) rice, preferably medium grain (Arborio, Valencia, Nyhaki)

60 ml (1/4 cup) lemon juice and an extra lemon

salt and freshly ground black pepper

2-3 tablespoons warmed stáka, crème fraiche, mascarpone, or hot clarified butter (optional)

 

Place the meat and chicken in a large soup kettle and cover with cold water or stock. Bring to the boil, season with salt and skim well. Simmer for 1 hour or longer until you have a rich stock (skim off the fat if you wish) and remove the meat to a platter.

Pour 1440 ml (6 cups) of the stock into a clean saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the rice and simmer until the rice has absorbed most of the stock. Stir in the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Cover the saucepan with a clean dish towel and the pan’s lid and remove from the burner. Let stand 5 minutes, spoon on the stáka or crème fraiche, and serve. Slice the meats, sprinkle with more lemon juice, and serve them separately. Serves 4 to 6.

Note: Stáka is cream skimmed from ewe’s milk that is cooked with a little flour until it separates into a dense, impossibly rich substance like clotted cream and yellowish stakovoútiro, a clarified butter, sometimes used in frying. Stáka is found only in western Crete and some Dodecanese islands.

Author’s Note: I originally wrote these two “recipes” for my book, Feasting and Fasting in Crete.