melomacarona for Baa

The month before Christmas is described as the Christmas Lent for the Greek Orthodox Church. No meat, eggs or milk to be consumed. So, a treat for friends visiting would be a dessert that is vegetarian, needs no fridge (very old recipe, not only before Christianity, but also probably before the Greeks themselves) and has all the "atmosphere" of a winter sweet.

Melomacarono comes from meli (= honey) and macarono, meaning worked dough, which is today found in the term "macaroon", a cookie in England.

There are several variations, this one is called "phoenicia" and obviously refers to the phoenecians, ancient people originating from where today Israel and Palestine still struggle.

Materials:

3 1/2 cups oil (usually corn oil, can be sesamy oil 25%, olive oil for the die hard Mediterraneans)
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup ash water (>> take a big spoonful of clean ash from the fireplace and mix it with 4 glasses of cold water. Let it settle overnight, take the water from the top. If you don't have it, use plain cold water)
1/2 cup brandy
2 1/2 small spoons baking powder
About 1 1/2 kilo soft flour. (Soft flour is made from hard wheat, and hard flour from soft wheat. What this means, I don't know)

Filling

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
cinnamon, powder
honey

Mix the oil, ash water, brandy and sugar, add baking powder and then enough flour to obtain a soft dough. Cover it and let it settle.

Prepare the walnuts (shell and dice). Mix them with cinnamon and add some honey, until they are all bound together.

Take a small amount of dough, size and shape like a very small lemon. With your fingertip make a small hole on the top, fill it with the filling and cover it on top by squeezing the dough from the sides. Put them on an oiled baking tin, slightly apart as they rise, and bake them in 200C oven until they are golden. Take them off, and keep them outside the fridge. The art is in how crispy or soft they are, the balance of oil and sweetness, and the amount of cinnamon. They are offered when the kids come for Christmas carols, and the lent does not permit offering the other Christmas sweet, kourambiedes, which contain butter. I will describe this one, later. It is still Autumn and Christmas is along way. Here in Crete, it has not rained yet.

Best wishes to you all for a quiet, healthy and constructive winter.
God rest the souls of those gone in the tragedy.

Greetings from Crete

Dimitri