By Anne Ruisi
Homemade savory food and sweets based on recipes handed down through four generations of Birmingham’s Greek community will draw about 30,000 people to the 49th annual Greek Food Festival at the Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral Oct 13-15.
“It’s our expression of comfort and love,” said Fanoula Gulas, president of the church’s Philoptoches Society, a women’s philanthropy group. “Hospitality is important to our culture.”
Sonthe Burge, a longtime parishioner in charge of baking koulourakia butter cookies, agreed.
“We love to cook,” said longtime parishioner Sonthe Burge. “This is a way to share our heritage, culture and faith with the community.
Menu offerings for the 10,000 people expected each day will include longtime favorites, such as souvlakia, pastichio, Greek chicken, spanokopeta (spinach pie), dolmathes (stuffed grape leaves), Greek rice, veggie plates, Greek salad and gyros. Greek pastries on hand will include baklava; kourambethes, also known as Greek wedding cookies; melomakarana, a Greek honey cookie; and koulourakia, or butter cookie twists.
As they have for nearly 50 years, church members prepare most of the food in the church kitchen.
“We do all the baking, the pastries and the pastichio,” Gulas said, referring to the popular casserole dish sometimes called “Greek lasagna,” made with Greek-style bechamel sauce instead of the tomato sauce Italians use to make the signature dish.
Baking is a major project involving hundreds of pounds of ingredients and hours of preparation.
Burge has overseen the volunteers baking koulourakia, a butter cookie, for 30 years. After mixing ingredients, the dough is hand rolled, cut in strips and twisted before it’s baked.
“We make more than 1,000 dozen each year, probably 1,100 dozen this year,” Burge said.
Volunteers started making baklava in June and continued with cookies at regular baking sessions they call workshops. Sweets were baked in batches. Each batch of koulourakia, Burge said, calls for about 7 pounds of flour and makes 21 dozen cookies.
Burge also helped to make other cookies and the pastichio, which is prepared in advance.
Constant Cooking
While the pastries and cookies are prepared months ahead of time, the rest of the food, such as Greek chicken, rice and green beans with tomatoes, is prepared fresh every day during the festival, said Pete Graphos, a Crestline resident who has been the festival’s kitchen manager for the past 15 or 20 years.
“Last year we cooked 13,000 pieces of chicken, 500 pans of pastichio – each pan has 24 servings. That’s 10,000 servings,” Graphos said.
About 20,000 dolmathes, or stuffed grape leaves, were served last year and rice was cooked in two 50-pound batches every hour.
The Greek chicken is marinated in lemon juice, butter and seasonings for 24 hours before it is cooked for an hour in one of the church kitchen’s eight convection ovens, Graphos said. Each oven can cook 100 pieces at a time, so that’s 800 pieces of chicken cooked every hour.
The cooking is constant during the festival, but the kitchen is like a well-oiled machine, with about 10 volunteers at a time working. Great kitchen equipment, including sophisticated Combi ovens that are programmable, and the volunteers help make it a success.
The ovens, for example, can cook 20 pans of pastichio at once, all automatically. The same goes for the green beans and tomato dish.
“It all comes out perfectly,” Graphos said.
The ingredients help achieve that perfect taste. The lemon juice used for the Greek chicken isn’t domestic; it is imported from Greece and has more flavor, Graphos said. The seasonings, also imported from Greece, are sprinkled on both sides of the chicken to give it more flavor.
“We take a lot of pride in the quality of our food,” Graphos said.
Gulas said there is another element that raises the food to a higher level.
“Every single item is touched with love,” Gulas said.
Food plates will be individually priced and Greek pastries will be pre-packaged and sold in the food lines. Soft drinks and Greek beer and wines will be available onsite to complement the meals.
Music, Tours and Wine
Besides good food, there will be entertainment, with Greek music and dance performances by close to 100 church members, from “sweet little kids to high school,” age, Gulas said.
Mediterranean and Orthodox souvenirs will be available at the festival’s Greek Market Place, as will the church’s cookbook, “The Greeks Have a Recipe for It,” which has been updated several times over the years with new editions, Burge said.
“It’s an easy-to-follow recipe book, it’s not hard to use it,” she said. “My copy is from 1981, the fourth printing.”
The Holy Trinity – Holy Cross Greek Orthodox parish was chartered in 1906 and is the fourth oldest Greek Orthodox parish in the Southeast.
Self-guided tours of the cathedral, the only Greek Orthodox cathedral in Alabama, will be available during the festival and parishioners will be available to answer “every single question” between 10:30 a.m. and 9 p.m. Organizers suggest schools and church groups call ahead to schedule a tour.
“We encourage guests to take a look at the beautiful iconography and art” in the church, Burge said.
The festival is not only an opportunity to share the love of good food and hospitality but is a major fundraising effort for the church. The church, in turn, donates a portion of festival proceeds to charities.
This year the sale of 1,300 pans of frozen pastichio at $50 each will go to charity, including Children’s of Alabama, the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama and the Firehouse Shelter, which the church supports by providing a meal once a week throughout the year, Graphos said.
The hours of preparation and effort to stage the festival every year are worth it, the volunteers agreed.
“We truly enjoy doing this for Birmingham,” Gulas said. “We’ve worked so hard on this. We’re tired, but we love it.”
Graphos agreed.
“It’s a joyous thing and a lot of fun,” he said.
The Greek Food Festival is open 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Oct. 13-15, with drive-thru service from 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Online ordering will be available at birminghamgreekfestival.net and orders can be taken and delivered just by driving up.
Those who want to enjoy their food onsite can do so in the tented dining area.
