Home Cooking

Eating with a Cypriot family is an experience not to be missed, should you be lucky enough to be invited. Alternatively, buy a local cookbook and have a go yourself ! Vegetables, pulses and grains, as well as meat of course, make up the majority of a family diet. Eating home cooking opens a whole new spectrum of Cypriot tastes and flavours. Here are some of the dishes you could try from a Cypriot cookbook...... Pourgouri or cracked wheat is steamed together with some fried onions and chicken stock to make a light and nutty pilaf which is always served with plain yogurt.
Louvia me lahana is a good mixture of greens cooked with black eyed beans and served with olive oil and lots of fresh lemon juice.
Koupepia are rolled vine leaves stuffed with meat and rice, especially good when prepared with the spring leaves from young vines.
Melintzanes Yiahni is a superb mixture of baked aubergines, garlic and fresh tomatoes.
Spanakopitta - a pie of spinach, feta cheese and eggs, wrapped in fillo pastry.
Yemista, or stuffed vegetables, uses tomatoes, onions, courgettes, peppers or even aubergines, or marrows.
Moukentra - a combination of lentils, rice and onions.
Try making Cypriot casseroles such as tavas which should be cooked in particular earthernware pots and combine lamb or beef with tomatoes, lots of onions, potatoes and cumin. Or Stifado, a rich stew of beef or rabbit cooked with plenty of onions vinegar and wine.

Pastitsio is a baked dish rather like macaroni cheese with a layer of spiced meat in the middle and white cream on top.

Home made soups are refreshing as well as filling in Cyprus. Taste trahana made from cracked wheat and yoghurt, or avgolemono which is egg and lemon soup in chicken stock.

For a celebration or a large family meal, souvla is very popular. Large chunks of
lamb, flavoured with fresh herbs, are threaded onto a spit and grilled over charcoal. Cypriots often cook souvla on a picnic: whilst at home, ofto, or roast meat with potatoes, is usually prepared. If there is a traditional sealed oven in the garden, then ofto kleftico will be the order of the day. By this method of cooking the meat cooks completely in its own juices and tastes delicious. The dish got its name from the word Kleftis which means robber, and they say that in the past mountain men would cook their stolen meat in sealed underground ovens.
Now for the puddings...

Cypriot housewives have a real flair for these and you should try galatopoureko, which is made with fillo pastry and a cream filling or kandaifi, whose pastry strands are wound into a cigar shape and soaked in syrup. Mahalepi is a creamy pudding which floats in rosewater syrup and is much loved by the Cypriots. Even a rizogalo or rice pudding is rather special in Cyprus