Sunday feels like the end of summer because Monday morning is cloudy and the wind is blowing hard. But Sunday is hot, and I’m in the sprawling yard of the Greek Orthodox Church. The yard is roped off to form a temporary parking lot, like a family reunion at an aunt’s house because she just, you know, has the one small driveway. I’m on the other side of the plastic rope with two kids, and we’re looking for a baseball.
The kids were bored on Sunday afternoon and so they took an old wooden bat and an old muddy baseball and went out to the far edges of the yard to shag fly balls. I saw one of pop-ups go wayward as I walked out to my bicycle and jumped into the dead weeds to help because I think I saw where it went. And I do, so I pick up the ball and toss it back to the older boy and he asks if I want to play. I say “no” because I’m too old and too drunk on Greek wine and lamb meat to hang around anymore. So I hope on my bike and on a hot wind take the back roads home and fall asleep until I wake up on Monday and summer is gone.
That, for me, is what the festival, which took place last weekend at the Saints Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church on Jay Road in Boulder, has become. It’s become like a childhood memory stolen from someone else’s childhood. It’s a celebration of tradition, joyfulness and food; a summer soup of events that warms the part of souls that don’t jade.
The festival though, more than anything, is a celebration of culture through food. On the dusty grounds, in the shadow of a few tall pines are booths with community members preparing and serving typical Greek dishes: lamb shank, gyros, calamari, souvlaki, spanakopita, loukoumades, saganaki, hummus, pastries, Greek coffee and Greek wine. The experience of eating (all of ) these foods is in the spirit of the festival’s name: A Taste of Orthodoxy. The food is prepared simply, based on communally agreed-upon recipes ostensibly passed down for generations in that church community, if not much longer in the families that now make up that congregation. Watching the preparation of each meal is a perspective you won’t get in a cookbook or on Food Network.
Take the loukoumades, which are little fried donut holes. Over a vat of bubbling oil, an old man in a newsboy hat fills the basin of a pastry-shaping machine to the brim with a simple dough. The machine swirls and with the rotation of a manual crank, the dough is worked down to the bottom of the basin, where a blade cuts the dough and forces a munchkin-sized dollop of dough out of four holes simultaneously into the oil. It looks like a delicious version of that playground game, funnel ball.
The dough balls are flipped after a minute or so, and when the other side is complete, the man fishes them out with a metal rack and puts them in a plastic box on the counter. His wife then waits for the donut holes to cool and drip off excess oil, before scooping them into another plastic vat filled with a homemade (and secret) syrup. The balls are coated in the syrup and then into a bowl. Crushed walnuts, cinnamon and powdered sugar are dumped on top of the donuts, mixed together and then served in a paper tray.
The loukoumades are fluffy nuggets of heaven. They are crispy and flavorful on the outside; warm and slightly chewy on the inside. It’s like a mix between a funnel cake, a croissant and a munchkin. So simple are these loukoumades and yet so happy-making they are.
In another tent, a dozen or so cooks prepare lamb legs. The shanks are marinated — typically this is done in olive oil and herbs, or yogurt — and then braised in a large pot for hours. The lamb is fresh and earthy, tender and juicy. The bone of the shank sticks out a good 6 inches, and you can fork the meat right off the bone with little effort. The fat on one side of the shank is almost like jelly, and the purplebrown meat on the inside needs no condiments or additives, flavored only by rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.
Then there’s the indulgence of saganaki, which has its own glorious booth. Saganaki is fried sheep’s or goat’s cheese. The young couple at the booth tend to two open specially made skillets (called saganaki), with large blocks of the cheese frying away. When ready, the cheese is torched and extinguished with a fruitful squeeze of lemon juice. It is salty and gooey, with crisp edges and the wonderfully robust taste of sheep’s milk cheese (I think it’s feta here).
The preparation of beverages is a process, too. On the other side of the lot, a woman prepares Greek coffee. Coffee grounds are put into a special, single-serve metal brewing pot, which is then filled with water. The brewing pot is placed over a large hot plate, alongside other brewing vessels. The pots are moved around and brought to boil twice before being transferred to a paper cup.
The coffee is as robust as coffee gets, and the grounds linger at the bottom of the drink. I’m warned that the coffee is exceptionally potent, both because of its type and because of its preparation, which is good because by this point, I’m at least a bottle deep on retsina.
Retsina. In the spirit of the festival, I turn to it like a long lost friend. Retsina is a Greek white wine that hits you with a punch of pine flavor. The wine is over 2,000 years old; resin was once used to seal wine jars so they wouldn’t spoil in transit to drinkers of the ancient world, incidentally giving it a resinous, piney taste. Even though wine processes have rendered that practice useless, the distinct taste of retsina and the connection many in the Greek community make to their heritage by drinking it, has allowed it to stick around, thankfully, for modern drinkers.
And if the retsina wasn’t enough, there’s another man in another newsboy hat walking around with a bottle of tsipoura, a Greek moonshine flavored with anise. It is powerful in flavor and efficiency, and people from all walks of the community drink it and laugh when its potency shows on the faces of loved ones. The connection between food and community cannot be shown more clearly than it is here. Food is the singular force here that condenses time and space into one moment in Boulder. It was worth celebrating.
