Koulourakia

There I was in the middle of my kitchen, rolling Koulourakia (my family's namesake cookie, our family name being Koulouris) with my daughter.  Suddenly I was not in my kitchen, but was sitting late at night around the kitchen table of my Thea Leni.  My Yiayia and mother were there, and I was quietly doing the pre-Easter work of rolling the little subtlety sweet butter cookies sitting between my elders.  There was the typical Greek bickering between Yiayia & Thea Leni, so typical of sisters.  Yet there I was in my own kitchen, not on Cape Cod, not in Wakefield, Mass, but in Eastport, Maine; and I felt a distinctive feeling inside me.  It was an urging in me, telling me how important it was to keep these traditions alive.  I don't have the luxury of sitting with my mother day after day learning the ins and outs of each of her recipes, so I am left to my own devices.  I am charting a course through memory and my chef know-how to learn the recipes of my family.

Koulourakia are a distinctive cookie with an egg wash and a sprinkle of sesame seeds on top; they are also traditionally made only for Easter.  You can make some in rounds to hold your red eggs for the egg cracking game, others you make into a simple twist.  I always recall as a child not caring for the cookie as much as the Kourabeides, a round sugar cookie coated in powdered sugar, but as I sat after a lamb dinner and bit into my little twist I found that it was delicious, tasty and delicate.  Such a treat.

I talked with my brother Nick after dinner and we recounted memories of family gatherings, and shared a longing to ask questions to the generation of our Papou, Yiayia & Thea Leni, but alas they are all gone now.  There are so many stories lost, and I find myself wanting to hold on tight to everything I can remember.  I also find myself wanting to gather information and relocate my Greek roots.  I know that connecting to my ancestors through food will be an important step for me, learning those recipes and teaching myself new ones.  This helps the grief to create new pathways of deeper connection within myself.