Assumption celebrates its annual Greekfest
By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com
Hospitality is at the heart of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church’s annual Greekfest.
“This is our annual Greek festival,” Costas Georgopoulos said. “It’s a two-day event that we hold over the weekend to promote our Greek hospitality.”
Assumption Greek Orthodox Church’s annual Greekfest is a community event. Just about everyone in the congregation gets involved in one way or another, but a lot of the leg work falls on Georgopoulos as he’s the Parish Council President.
“I’m wrapping up at work,” he said the Friday before the festival, “so I can take all of next week to work on the Festival.”
According to Georgopoulos, Greekfest is a key to the church’s role in the larger community.
“It’s inviting people to an event and enjoying Greek culture, our food,” he said, “inviting them in as part of our family. Hopefully they enjoy our food, music, pastries, just the overall joyous occasion and we try to provide that to them. It’s not just about our food; it’s also [about] our spiritual aspect as well.”
Which is true, but with that said, one of the main draws for Greekfest is the food. As it’s a Greek celebration, of course there will be lamb.
“Our traditional lamb is lamb kabobs,” Georgopoulos said, “and we put that on skewers and we have a barbecue lamb machine, which cooks the lamb like a rotisserie. We also have half chickens, which we season with our Mediterranean seasoning and we cook in the oven. And then we do our specialty, which is called the “Greek lasagna”; it’s called pastichio and it has Greek noodles and beef hamburger and then we have a bechamel sauce that we put up in the oven.” It’s traditional Greek comfort food, he said. “It’s a long process to make it, so a lot of folks don’t make it at home because it’s very labor-intensive.”
And then there are the pastries.
“Of course, we have our traditional baklava,” Georgopoulos said. “That’s probably our best-known pastry. When people visit a Greek festival, baklava is kind of the main item.” Assumption’s baklava is a traditional New England version, he said, “with honey syrup, phyllo dough, and walnuts for the nuts. But then we have kadaifi, which is shredded phyllo dough. It’s the same as baklava, but it’s not actually the rolled phyllo dough, so that’s a little different type of texture. But still, it’s the same thing with walnuts and honey syrup. Then we have our finikia, which is our cinnamon honey cookies with walnuts.”
Georgopoulos said his personal favorite that he looks forward to all year is the loukoumades, small doughnut-like balls of pastry that are deep-fried and soaked in hot honey syrup, sprinkled with cinnamon and garnished with chopped walnuts or toasted sesame seeds. Every village or city neighborhood in Greece has its own take on loukoumades, he said.
“They each have their little spin on it … depending on what part of Greece that they come from they’ll have small differences, which is great because I love varieties.” The same goes for the loukoumades from each Greek church parish, he said. “Each church usually has one recipe that they use that gets handed down through the generations.”
Lastly, Georgopoulos said, there are the gyros.
“We do authentic gyros,” he said. “We have the gyro cones [of meat on a spit] and we have machines in the back that, you know, turn the gyro on. We cut the meat off the gyro and serve it on a traditional gyro bread with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and tzatziki sauce. It’s a mixture of beef and lamb.” To avoid confusion, he said, the Greekfest staff call them “JAI-roes” rather than the more authentic Greek pronunciation of “YEE-roes.”
“It’s 100 percent supposed to be called a ‘YEE-roe,’ though,” he said. “If you go to Greece and you say ‘JAI-roe’ they’re not going to know what you’re talking about.”
Greekfest
When: Saturday, Aug. 23, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 24, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Where: Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, 111 Island Pond Road, Manchester, 623-2045, assumptionnh.org
Admission is free; bring money for food.
Featured photo: Loukoumades. Courtesy photo.
