St. Nicholas kicks off this summer’s Greek food festival season
There are three Greek churches in Manchester, and each opens its doors each year to share Greek culture — and especially Greek food — with the greater community.
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, hosts the first Greek festival in Manchester of the season: its annual Lamb Barbecue, which will take place Saturday, June 20, and Sunday, June 21.
Emorfia Valkanos, who goes by the name Amy, is the president of St. Nicholas’ Parish Council. She said she is always excited when it comes time for her church to host the Barbecue.
“We are the first of the three,” she said, “and we’re celebrating our 78th year of having this event. It’s a lot of great Greek food that actually came from original recipes from Greece. So these are like direct recipes from yayas’ [Greek grandmothers’] kitchens in Greece and we’ve been keeping those recipes for 78 years. You feel like you’re stepping into Greece with the music and the smells of the food and the sounds. It’s just a very pleasant sensory experience that brings you back to Greece. It’s really a fun time.”
The event takes place over two days. The first day celebrates many different Greek foods, Valkanos said, while the second day is narrowly focused on one particular food: gyros. Given that the parish has called the event a Lamb Barbecue for more than seven decades, lamb takes center stage.
“The lamb is actually barbecued and it’s marinated in the old pappoús’ [Greek grandfathers’] marinade sauce. Then it is put on skewers and it is charcoal barbecued. And when that starts cooking, it will make you hungry even if you’re not actually hungry. We have a great chicken meal that we marinate in a special Greek marinade and then also barbecue that.”
According to Valkanos, other Greek dishes are prepared by teams of volunteers in advance.
“We have dolmades,” she said, “which are grape leaves, which are stuffed with hamburger and lamb and spices. We have the spinach pita [spanakopita] as a staple, of course. We have Greek meatballs that are homemade in a homemade sauce. We have, let’s see, pastitsio we serve, which is like a Greek lasagna topped with a bechamel sauce. And then we also have our sides, which are going to be homemade Greek green beans, and we have the rice and of course the bread is our side. It’s good food.”
For some people Greek festivals are all about pastries, and this is something Valkanos impatiently waits for each year, she said.
“We’ve been working on these as a team. There’s probably about 10 core members that do the full-on baking, but we’ve got people coming in and out to help us make baklava, the koulourakia, which are the butter twisted cookies. We’re going to have paximadia, which are a sort of Greek biscotti. They’re wonderful.” There will also be kataifi, she said, which are in the baklava family, and have received a lot of attention during the past few years as an ingredient in Dubai chocolate.
There is an ongoing debate at St. Nicholas, Valkanos said, about whether they should make loukoumades, the popular fried dough balls soaked in syrup. “We don’t have those,” she said, “at least not this year. There’s a machine that we would have to purchase that actually makes them. We’ve been talking about maybe bringing them back, but right now they’re not going to be on the menu this year. We are the smallest of the three churches. So this is a big event for us to put on. But with everything, there’s just so many other pastries that we’re doing. There’s a selection that anybody will be happy with.”
Lamb Barbecue and Food Festival
Where: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, 1160 Bridge St. in Manchester
When: Saturday, June 20, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Gyro Day is Sunday, June 21, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Featured photo: Greek pastry. Courtesy St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church