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Contents |
Meals
Seafood
Seafood dishes include calamari, octopus in red wine, parpouni (red mullet), and sea bass. However the most traditional fish is salt cod, which up until very recently was baked in the outdoor beehive ovens with potatoes and maybe tomatoes if in season. Guilt head bream is also very popular as it is relatively inexpensive and like sea bass extensively farmed. Up until recently salted herrings bought out of wooden barrels were also a staple. They are still enjoyed, but not as much now that fresh fish and meat are regular alternatives.
Calamari is either fried in batter, or better still stuffed with rice, cumin, cloves,and maybe mint, and then baked or grilled. Cuttle fish(soupies) can also be cooked like this, but are also cooked in an onion sauce(yiahni), but not usually as in greece or italy where they add garden peas. Octopus, due to its robust nature, is made into a very tasty stiffado(stew, stufata etc.) with wine, carrots, tomatoes and onions.
Vegetable
Some common vegetable preparations are potatoes in olive oil and parsley, pickled cauliflower and beets, zucchini, kolokasi (taro), and asparagus.
Cyprus potatoes are delicious, they are long and waxy, though not overly so. Locals love them baked in the oven, preferably the outdoor beehive(fourni), they add salt, cumin, oregano, and some finely sliced onion. When they barbecue, some Cypriots put them into foil and sit them in the charcoal to make them like jacket potatoes - served with butter and/or as a side dish to salad and meat.
Salad vegetables are eaten at every meal, sometimes whole, and you chew them like a rabbit! More often chopped and sliced, and dressed with lemon and good olive oil. In the summer the usual salad is of celery leaves and stalks, parsley, corriander leaves, tomatoes and cucumber. Puslane or Glystiridha is very popular as are wild dandelion leaves. Feta cheese, though not completely traditional, has become very popular indeed, especially in the North where it is an ever present on the dining table.
In the early spring, artichokes are in season, cypriots do not eat the leaves, but the stalk and hearts. A common preparation is braised with garden peas, with a little onion and perhaps a chopped tomato.Meat is sometimes added.
Bamies(okra- ladies fingers) are baked in the oven with tomato and oil, and Kounoupidhi (cauliflower) is also given this treatment.
Cauliflower is also made into Moungra, a sour pickle covered with a liquor made from vinager, yeast and mustard seeds.
Goloji is a gourd rather like a marrow but thinner. It is sometimes stuffed with rice and meat(yemistes-greek, dolma-turkish)- as is common in all areas of the middle east and asia minor, but also sliced into rather thick slices and cooked with fresh black eyed peas.
Vazania(aubergines) can be prepared in a veriety of ways, stuffed, moussaka, but commonly fried and stewed rather slowly in some oil, where the cooking time brings out the flavour and also allows them to shed the oil they have absorbed.
Meat
Meat based dishes include lounza, souvlaki, souvla, sheftalia and pork sausages.
Being only a very recently urbanised country, traditionaly cypriots ate fresh meat once a week on sundays. This was usually a boiled chicken, served with a starch, maybe pasta, maybe pourgouri, cooked in the liquor. This would stretch the meat to go round the family. Other fresh meat dishes were only enjoyed very occasionaly, sometimes en mass as a feast such as a wedding. Nowadays, as people are better off, and meat is available traditional meat dishes are enjoyed frequently.
Tavvas is a lamb casserole, rather like a north african tagine, but is spiced with a good deal of cumin. Afelia, when well prepared, is a delicious saute of pork, red wine and corriander seeds. Psito or 'baked' is large chunks of meat and potatoes cooked in the oven, plenty of fat is used in its preparation, traditionally this would have been renderred pig fat, but nowadays sunflower oil is used. Olive oil is used as a dressing for salads, vegetables and pulses, and not used to cook meat dishes.
Preserved pork meat is very popular, and before refridgeration, the main source of red meat available to greek cypriots(turkish cypriots do not eat pork). During the initial brining of meat to be cured, cypriots also add wine and therefore there is a characteristic flavour to most of the charcouterie from the island.
Lounza is made from the pork tenderloin. After the innitial brining and wining, it is smoked. Although it can be aged, many prefer younger, milder lounza. It is often cooked over coals or fried with eggs, as well as a sandwich filler or part of a meze. Stronger than Lounza and made from the leg, is Chiromeri, which is just as any smoked air dried ham from southern europe is, though of course the wine flavour makes it characteristically cypriot. In non mountain areas, the same meat used for chiromeri, are cut into strips along the muscle compartments and dried in the sun as 'Basta'. The shoulder of a freshly slaughtered animal is cut up into chunks about the size of an almond along with a smaller quantity of chopped back fat these too are wined and brined, and put into intestines and smoked as saussages called Loukanika. The Italians have a saussage of the same name.
A practice most traditional, but dying out fast, is renderring pig fat to use as a cooking medium and a preservative. The loukanika mentionned above, as well as chunks of fried salted pork meat and fat can be kept in earthenware jars, submerged in the lard for a long time even in the heat of the island.
Lamb and Goat is also preserved as Tsamarela, very salty to prevent the fatty lamb from going rancid. Very popular amongst both communities is preserved beef. The whole silversides and briskets are salted and spiced quite powerfully to make Bastourmas, probably the origin of pastrami, and the same meat and some fat is chopped finely and made into Bastourmas Loukaniko- saussages. These preparations probably come from the armenian community, but are found all over the middle east.
Food preparation
Frequently used ingredients are vegetables such as courgettes, green peppers, okra, green beans, artichokes, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and grape leaves, and pulses such as beans (for fasoulia), broad beans, peas, black-eyed beans, chick-peas and lentils.
Pears, apples, grapes, oranges, mandarines, nectarines, mespila, blackberries, cherry, strawberries, figs, watermelon, melon, avocado, citrus, lemon, pistachio, almond, chestnut, walnut, hazelnut are some of the commonest of the fruits and nuts. Some of the most well-known spices and herbs are: pepper, parsley, roka, celery, mint, thyme, oregano and others. Traditionally though, artisha(cumin) and kolliandros(coriander) seeds make up the cooking aromas of the island
There is a variety of sweet snacks, which are found in some of the café bars around Cyprus, though if you want to enjoy the honey and syrup doughnuts called Loukoumades, best to head for one of the roadside shacks that specialize in them. Honey is also used for the pastellaki, which is a snack prepared with sesame, peanut and honey syrup.
Cypriots grill over charcoal. They use halloumi cheese, olives, mushrooms, loukanika sausages and of course Kebabs. These are either souvlakia(shish), sheftalies or Gyros(doner), they are made from various cuts of lamb or pork, sometimes chicken, and very rarely beef, very often stuffed into pitta bread, along with a salad of cabbage, parsley, and raw mild onions, tomatoes and cucumber. Greek cypriot souvlaki is usually made of pork, whilst the Turkish Cypriots use lamb in their shish kebabs. Similar in appearance, the flavour is quite different especially as the turkish cypriots sometimes use a spicy marinade. Gyros(doner) is quite similar and the taste is different only due to salad or dressings added.
Mint is a very important herb in cyprus, it grows voraciously, and locals use it for everything, but they particularly add it to dishes containing ground meat. For example the cypriot version of macaronia tou fournou(pastitsio), contains very little tomato and generous ammounts of mint. The same is true of Kioftedhes(keftedhes-meat balls)which are sometimes laced with mint to provide a lovely contrast with the meat.
Pourgouri(bulgar wheat) is the traditional carbohydrate other then bread, it is steamed with a little tomato and onion, a few strands of vermiccelli pasta are often added to provide a texture contrast. Along with pourgouri, natural yoghurt is a staple, thick and fresh. Wheat and yoghurt come together in the traditional peasants' breakfast of Trahanas, a primitive form of pasta, where the cracked wheat is steamed, mixed with sour milk, dried and stored. Small amounts reheated in water or broth, provide a very nourishing and tasty meal, especially with added cubes of well aged halloumi.
For the greek cypriots, there are many fasting days imposed by the greek orthodox church, and though not everyone adheres, many do, and on those days effictively all animal produce must not be consumed. They eat pulses instead, sometimes cooked in tomato sauce(yiahni) but more usually simply prepared and dressed with good olive oil and lemon. On some days, even olive oil is not allowed. These meals when well prepared are delicious as well, the hot sun renders the vegetables very tasty indeed. Raw onion, raw garlic, and dried red chilies are munched along with these austere dishes to add variety of taste to the simple meal, though this practise is dying out. If you are a visitor to Cyprus, it is well worth tracking down such a meal, though you will never find it in a restaurant near a tourist area!
Maybe because pulses are consumed on fasting days, there are very few dishes that combine meat and dry pulses, such as one might find in Italy or Spain. Cypriots get their full protein because they eat rice or bread alongside lentils or beans. A typical example being Moutjentra, a rather sloppy pilaf of rice, lentils and fried onions. This dish is to be found in many cultures all the way to the Indian subcontinent.
Foodstuffs
Dietary norms
Drink
Non alcoholic
Ayrani is a traditional yoghurt-based drink made of whey which is also found in several countries of the region. In bygone days it was sold on streets by individual producers but it is now found on chilled supermarket shelves.
Triantafylon, a syrup made from the extract of the Cyprus (Damscus) rose is enjoyed as a refreshing sweet cordial. You either add water or milk in it especially in the summer months. It is also used to sweeten machalepi (traditional Cyprus sweet)
Alcoholic
Chilled local beer is a popular drink. The local breweries of KEO and Carlsberg command the lion's share of the market.
Wine has a long tradition on the island, evidence of which goes back for millennia. Commandaria is a popular desert wine.
Cyprus also has a tradition of brandy production, with Cypriot brandy having been produced by various Limassol-based distilleries since 1871. Cypriot brandy is commonly drunk with meze dishes, and forms the base for the distinctive Brandy Sour cocktail, developed on the island in the late-1930s.
Zivania, a grape distillate similar to raki or grappa, is a popular spirit.
See Also
External links
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