Koulourakia Cravings

June 25, 2020

When the sun climbs to a certain height and the days lengthen accordingly, my cravings for koulourakia call me to the kitchen. Twisted within these Greek sweetbreads -- I call them cookies – are joyous memories of a spring semester abroad as an undergraduate student. My first tastes of the buttery sesame-covered confections came during a short trip to Greece, where the April sun sparkled off the Mediterranean in a magical way. In that moment, nothing of the future and certainly no thoughts of a pandemic nudged its way into my mind. Almost mysteriously such brief moments have now become vivid food memories.

These moments intertwine with pangs of early motherhood and marriage, creating an overwhelming hunger for memory. Five years after the semester abroad, I encountered koulourakia again, when New Hampshire next-door neighbors called me from my summer gardening. Charlie and Eva Kotikas were gardening gurus to me, the new homeowner and young wife next door. Together the older couple tended vegetable and flower beds—beautifully tiled, seeded, and weeded all summer. Originally from Salonica, Charlie and Eva grew an abundance of basil, tomatoes and eggplant. They offered me lessons and advice—only when I asked. More importantly, they offered me koulourakia.

The Kotikases brought their food traditions as well as their gardening skills as they immigrated to America. Eva’s koulourakia sent me back to my own brief time in Greece. I don’t know how often she baked them, but the container in her kitchen was never empty. She always produced one or two for me when our mutual gardening paused for conversation.

When my son began helping me in the garden, toting the green watering can that was near his height, he toddled over as soon as Charlie and Eva appeared. When her dainty hands extended koulourakia, his watering can tumbled like a forgotten friend. Exchanging chores for koulourakia, he grasped a cookie in each fist and toddled home triumphantly. I carried along another half-dozen or so in a baggie, a ready supply to complement our evening coffee and milk.

After leaving our neighbors, I gained a colleague in Missouri who often spoke of her Greek relatives in New Hampshire. As I chatted with Marianthe Karanikas about what I most missed, koulourakia came into the conversation. She gladly indulged me by copying the recipe from a book that had been gifted to her by another Greek American. (That recipe is below).

My koulourakia are never quite the same as Eva’s, nor are they like those I first tasted in Greece, but they do send me back for a moment, in my mind, to days that seem to have been full of simple joys.

1 cup butter or oil (I always use butter)
1 cup sugar
3 eggs (save 1 egg white for wash)
¼ cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
5 cups flours
3 tsp baking powder
¼ cup sesame seeds

Beat butter softened at room temperature, adding sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into mixture and combine. Knead until well blended.

Shape each cookie. Place on lightly greased baking sheet, 2” apart, and glaze tops with beaten egg white. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350° F. for 25 minutes.

For shaping: break off a small piece of dough. Roll between palms of hands or on cutting board to make a rope 4” long. Braid or coil it, or twist it into a hairpin, wreath, figure 8 or an S.

I prefer the hairpin twist, because that’s what Eva always made. But, according to Yanilos, they may be shaped into a wreath or “coiled into a snake,” reflecting the ancient tradition of worshipping the snake for its healing powers.

Etta Madden, a literary historian and professor at Missouri State University, also writes and teaches about utopian foodways and American women abroad.