“Patatato” the recipe | Amorgos island

 

Ιn how many ways can a cook experience a meal preparation?

How does it feel like when you’re cooking for hundreds of people as part of a religious ritual?

How does it feel like preparing old recipes that have travelled through time, in order to feed pilgrims that pray to a Saint?

It is when the love and the attention that cooks give food are added together that cooking becomes a form of prayer..

Patatato  is the climax of culinary preparations that always start a few weeks in advance. It is a traditional recipe of Amorgos, cooked when the local people prepare one of the well known panigyri (fair) in the Aegean, to celebrate the name of Virgin Mary (Panagia).

Patatato is their most famous trademark recipe made with goat meat, potatoes, tomato and onions, cooked in an open fire.

The sweet fatigue on the cooks’faces after cooking this meal mirrors their accomplishment.

What a sense of fulfillment..

They all well know that around a plate cooked with such devotion,people always come closer together..

Amorgos island, 15 of August, Virgin Mary’s feast.

 

The recipe of Patatato

 

• 1 kilo of goat meat
• 6 large potatoes
• 3 tablespoons of tomato paste
• 2 onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 glass of white wine
• A small cup of olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cinnamon
• Allspice

 

We chop the potatoes in large even squares, wash and drain them, then mince the onion and the garlic.

After heating the olive oil in a big pan, we pour in the wine and the onions, stirring until they start to wither. We then place the meat in the pan, continuing to stir. We add in the potatoes, the tomato paste dissolved in water, stirring a couple of times, and then add the rest of the ingredients. We pour in enough water to cover the food and leave it to take a strong boil. We then lower the heat and leave the mix to boil for about 3 hours.

© words by Maria Alipranti

© photos by Christos Drazos