The land of Karpathos, though mountainous and wild, proved fruitful, feeding its inhabitants with rich products, grapes, citrus, oil and honey.
The women of Karpathos, even today, knead all together and bake the famous breads in traditional wood ovens. Grind wheat and barley in mills and make handmade pasta.
Local cuisine is based on pasta, with well-known traditional macarounes, made from flour and water. The original lanyard is cut into 3cm long sections, which are pressed well into their center with their fingers to gain a dent. After they have dried they are boiled, burned with butter and served with “tsikomeno” (roasted onion).
In the same way pseudomakarouna are served, which is a bunch of stale bread, boiled until it is softer (two to three minutes), in salted water.
Very wide variety of breads, on the island, of all kinds and flavors: Spicy, onionbread, crispy nutmeg with mastic, cumin and white sesame, with cumin, nutmeg and black mustard.
Spicy onion buns are crisp, with plenty of spices and many onions. They are buns of sesame, crunchy with a fine shape, sprinkled with plenty of blackish wine. We also meet them in neighboring Kasos.
Fine buns were once the wedding buns and served in a bunch of candy. They are large round buns, inside of which are placed, vertically and horizontally, twelve dough strips so that they cross each other by forming small squares between them. Before cooking, they are sprinkled with sesame seeds.
The anthers are stuffed intestines which, after washing well, are filled with rice, pieces of meat and a lot of spices that have been first fried in the pan. Then sew them and put them in a pot of boiling water to cook. Then fry them in a little oil to make crispy pieces of pork, boiled in the pot along with pieces of pork fat “mildas“.
The meat is eaten purely as an appetizer (mezes) or tastes various meals with legumes or omelets. The best pieces are usually fried or roasted with sesame seeds on Christmas Day and baked on Christmas Eve with Christopsomo (Christ’s Bread), the necessary complement of Christmas, which is kneaded bread with cinnamon, mastic, cloves and is sprinkled with sesame seeds. It usually has the shape of a cross.
Jellied from the pork is the main Christmas dish on the island. It is a mixture consisting of pieces of meat and broth derived from the boiling of the cleaned and “perched” (to bury the bristles) piglet. Inside there are harmonious abundant spices (laurel, pepper, cumin) and of course, lemon juice.
The famous Byzanti, which is lamb or goat, stuffed with herbs and rice and is smoked in a covered clay utensil, making it the traditional Easter flavor of the island. At Easter, women are kneading, still the Christokouloures (Christ’s buns), the characteristic “poulous“, that is, delicate salty “buns” in the shape of “eight”, with a red egg at one end. Easter sweet is also the “tourtes”, made with a rolled dough stuffed with a soft sweet mizithra and flavored dill.
Another traditional recipe is ofto, which is goat stuffed with rice, liver and herbs. It is baked in a wood oven for an entire evening and is accompanied by the drila, which is goat’s milk yoghurt.
The island’s rich local cuisine in pies: cabbage pies, kopeles (ladies) (in winter they are stuffed with spinach and leek and in summer with zucchini and zucchini), onion pies, gra (potherb pie with a thick sheet, baking on a tin plate in the wood oven) and zimbilia, a Christmas sweet, filled with raisins, made from the grapes that are not consumed immediately, nor become wine. The raisins, milled, are the main ingredient of the filling of the “zimbilia”, a sweet pie, which, together with nutmeg, is wrapped in the dough sheet, which is then made in white and black sesame mixture and baked in the wood ovens.
Wedding food chondros, that is, roughly grated wheat with meat and tomato. It can be cooked with milk as a cream or even plain in water and before serving it is covered with frizzled onion. This food is also served at the fairs of the island.
Moschopouggia are traditional sweets, very common in all the Dodecanese. In the shape of a half-moon, they are filled with a filling that presents variants and contains mainly walnuts, almonds and sesame, while on top they are sprinkled with powdered sugar.
Takakia are a fried sweet, which is made in small pieces and is made with syrup. Karpathian baklava is a sweet served in joyful events and is made of dough that is created by xylikaki (a wooden tool), is fried in the oil and then it is either dipped in honey or is stuffed with almonds, walnuts and many crust leaves that give it a great height.
The xylikopites are very thin, fried and served with honey. Sisamomeli (with honey and sesame seeds) is offered at weddings for the bridegroom to get the strength, but also to the guests.
There are plenty of fish and seafood on the island, especially a sort of squid, the agriai, that resembles thrapsalon (T. sagittatus), as well as crabs, sea urchins, limpets, while menoula fish, that resembles sardine, becomes pate.
Scaros (bumphead parrotfish) is fish that is abundant only in the Karpathian Sea and cooked stew or grilled with lots of olive oil and lemon.
Regional cuisine includes quince, fig, grape and sour cherry.
From the traditional table, raki and wine are never missing, as the rich vineyards in northern Karpathos produce excellent grapes from which their famous wine is produced. Excellent quality, delicious and quite different. The most popular is semi-sweet red wine, which is produced mainly in the mountainous Karpathos, Othos and Volada. The most well-known varieties of the island are the athiri, the fokiano, as well as the Cretan Thrapsathiri and the Cycladic gaidouria. Of the white varieties, most of them are unknown, such as stroggilathiro, karato, kolokythato, kotiko and siriggi.
A basic element of the diet of the island’s inhabitants is the Karpathian cheeses with a strong taste. The most widespread is the very soft manouli, the armyrotiri, which, as its name suggests, is a very salty and hard cheese, with which the locals usually accompany their pasta and meriari.
