We went to Greektown. In this not-quite-warm spring we’ve been having it was a particularly lacklustre day, with a bitterly cold wind snapping around. So we decided to eat a lot of pastry. It was a very good decision.
We had spanakopita and galaktoboureko at Athens Bakery. The galaktoboureko, a first for us, consisting of thin layers of filo with a semolina custard in the middle, topped with a slight sprinkling of cinnamon. Reminiscent of gebakte melktert. At Athena Bakery we had tiropita, pastry filled with feta, egg and yoghurt, and a most beautiful little pistachio asawer baklava, rolled in the shape of a bracelet. We gave the loukomades a miss – they reminded us too much of koeksisters. The last stop was Akropolis, for kreatopita, a filo pastry filled with slightly spiced ground beef, perhaps a little bit of clove and a little bit of cinnamon? It tasted like the ground beef my grandmother makes, which is to say, the type of maalvleis we find on the South African platteland. I don’t want to eat it every day, but it’s comforting in its own way.
This is what we brought home. The kreatopita and baklava, and candles narrower than my pinky, from Athena Bakery, which sells both pastries and various Catholic accoutrement. Some lamb souvlaki for dinner, along with the most delicious tzatziki I’ve ever had, which I expect is largely due to its fat content.Also, marinated olives. For future meals – dried grains of wheat, for some salad involving koring. I have a faint memory of my mother making a salad of cooked, cooled koring mixed with some mayonnaise, raw onion and parsley, but I may also be confusing it with her rysslaai, which is the same dish but with rice instead of koring. Crimplene kos, yes, but delicious nonetheless. I suspect I’ll swop it into salads requiring bulgur or couscous or quinoa. And then some tahini, mostly for salad dressings, but also for the hummous tahina recipe from Zahav, which must be made.
CAKE AND DECAY 