Annual isle festival celebrates Greek heritage

GALVESTON — Greek food never has been more on American minds and plates than it is now.

Greek yogurt is one of the fastest growing grocery items on the market. Sales of Greek yogurt have increased 100 percent in each of the last three years and now account for 20 percent of all yogurt consumed in America.

For some Galveston County residents, Greek food and Greek yogurt are nothing new. Residents will be celebrating Greek heritage at the 28th annual Greek Festival on Saturday at Assumption of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church, 1824 Ball St., in Galveston.

The festival features traditional music and dancing, Greek dinners and snacks and a variety of imported crafts and food products. Traditional Greek pastries, homemade by the church’s members, will be available individually and by the box.

“We’ll have a wide variety of cookies and pastries,” said Roxann Kriticos, chair of the festival’s sweets committee. “All the favorite cookies, like kourambiedes, melomakarona and koulurakia, are being homemade by church members. Others are making the pastries, including baklava, kataifi and flogeres.”

Flogeres will be making their first appearance in several years.

“Flogeres is similar to baklava, except it’s rolled instead of having flat sheets of phyllo dough,” Kriticos said.

The pastries for the festival used to be made in huge batches in the church’s kitchen, but Hurricane Ike put an end to the communal baking, flooding all the church’s facilities.

“The church has been restored, but our community hall still doesn’t have air conditioning or flooring, and the kitchen hasn’t been replaced,” Kriticos said. “Proceeds from the festival will help us complete the restoration.”

Kriticos has been making Greek pastries since childhood and is partial to the kourambeides.

“It’s a shortbread-type almond cookie covered with white powdered sugar and buttery good,” she said.

She also recommends melomakarona for those with an extra sweet tooth.

“They’re a honey-dipped walnut cookie, very sweet,” she said.

For those looking for authentic Hellenic flavor without the calories that honey and walnut pastries hold, church member Mary Jo Naschke has fond memories of Greek yogurt.

“When I was growing up, my mother always had fresh yogurt in the fridge,” she said. “She would make fresh using the last batch as the starter and then use yogurt as the basis for many sauces, such as the tsatsiki sauce we will be serving with souvlakia at the festival.”

Naschke said the creamy texture of Greek yogurt comes from straining out the liquid.

“In Greece, you can see yogurt in cheesecloth bags hanging from trees when it’s being processed,” she said.

The festival runs from 11 a.m.to 9 p.m. Saturday. Music from Alex Kalos, the Golden Greek, folk dancing and children activities will be presented throughout the day with tours of the restored church sanctuary at noon and 2 p.m.

+++

Yogurt

1/2 gallon milk, fat content of your choice

2 to 3 tablespoons plain prepared yogurt, make sure it contains live, active cultures

cheesecloth to fit 4 layers in a large strainer

To begin, pour all but 2 tablespoons milk into a double boiler or heavy-bottomed pan and turn the heat to medium. If using a double boiler, cover the milk. If the pot is directly on the burner, stir it and watch it very, very carefully so you don’t burn the bottom. The sides will begin to curl when it is ready.

Immediately remove the pot from the stove and carefully pour the hot milk into a glass or ceramic bowl or casserole dish. Put the dish on a cooling rack uncovered, and let the milk cool to between 105 and 110 degrees. About 45 minutes.

Note: Remember to leave the dish completely uncovered at this stage, so the good bacteria from the air can start working their magic.
You might opt to turn on your oven light. Just the warmth from the oven light bulb will provide the perfect temperature for the organisms to make yogurt. Combine the 2 tablespoons of milk you saved with the prepared yogurt in a small bowl and reserve. Resist the temptation to add more than 3 tablespoons yogurt.

Once the milk has cooled to between 105 and 110 degrees, add in the yogurt-milk mixture and stir well to combine. (Don’t forget this important step.) Put the lid on the casserole and cover it with a dish towel. Put it in the oven, making sure that the towel isn’t near the oven light bulb, and leave the oven light on. Leave the yogurt for 7 or 8 hours, or overnight. Strain through the cheesecloth for thick, Greek-style yogurt.

SOURCE: Recipe from Mary Jo Naschke

+++

Kataifi

1 pound of kataifi dough

1/2 pound of butter, melted

For The Filling

1 cup of walnuts, coarsely chopped

1 cup of almonds, coarsely ground

1/2 cup of fine granulated sugar

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves

1 egg white, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon of brandy

Prepare the syrup and set aside to cool.

In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients for the filling and blend well with a wooden spoon.

Kataifi dough comes commercially packaged in a long strip, about 3 inches wide. To prepare it for this recipe, lay the long strip out on a clean work surface and divide it into 18-24 pieces, gently spreading the strands out a bit if they clump together. Each piece will be used to create an individual kataifi roll. Keep unused dough covered with a piece of waxed paper and a damp towel on top of that to keep it from drying out.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Brush a strip with melted butter. Place a tablespoon of the filling at one end of the strip and roll up into a cylinder, tucking in any stray pieces of dough. Take care to roll the pastry tightly so that the filling is securely enclosed. Place the rolls seam side down in a lightly buttered baking dish, close together but not squashed, and brush well with remaining butter. Bake for 45-60 minutes, until golden brown and crispy looking.

Remove from oven, pour cool syrup over the pastry and cover with a clean towel. Let cool about 3-4 hours as it absorbs the syrup.

SOURCE: Recipe from Mary Jo Naschke

+++

Flogeres

2 1/2-by-16-inch sheets phyllo pastry dough

1/4 cup melted butter

3/4 cup chopped toasted almonds

2 tablespoons honey

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 egg, well beaten

1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange peel

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons water

1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange peel

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Prepare syrup. Combine honey, water, orange peel and cinnamon in a small saucepan.

Bring to boiling, lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat and add lemon juice. Set aside.

On a sheet of wax paper placed on a flat counter top, brush phyllo sheets with butter, and stack flat one above the other, using about 2 tablespoons butter.

In a small bowl, combine almonds, honey, salt, egg, orange peel, cinnamon and the remaining butter.

Spread mixture over phyllo sheets.

Beginning with the long side of the pastry, roll tightly into one long roll.

Slice into 8 portions and place on an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake in preheated oven for about 40 minutes or until golden brown.
Pour cooled syrup over rolls as soon as they are removed from the oven. Do not pour hot syrup over hot pastry as it will cause it to be gooey.

Rule when working with phyllo dough recipes: Cool syrup over hot pastry.

SOURCE: Recipe from Mary Jo Naschke