From Kleftiko to Greek Dancing

Thursday morning began bright and early with a heavy helping of meat.

Okay, so I guess this is kind of misleading.  I didn't eat meat for breakfast Thursday morning; rather, we spent the morning at a butcher shop filming the process involved in making kleftiko.

Kleftiko is the term used for a particular way of preparing meat in Cyprus.  Many moons ago, kleftiko was invented by Cypriots as a way to eat meat in a time when such an act was forbidden/illegal.  People would take their meat and cook it in an oven that was buried in the ground and then covered up.  This prevented the smell of cooking meat from escaping, which prevented the discovery of the meal.

You may have noticed that Kleftiko sounds like klepto (or maybe you didn't, I didn't at first), which makes sense because they kind of mean the same thing.  The Cypriots were basically stealing the meat because it was illegal and klepto means "to steal." Thus, the term kleftiko was born.


I have never seen so much raw meat or so many dead animals in my entire life.  Fortunately the butcher's shop was cold enough that there was no smell.  Unfortunately, the whole environment didn't seem to be very sanitary as men used their bare hands when chopping the meat and there were an incalculable number of flies flocking around various animal parts.

Sound appetizing?  Yeah, it made me lose my appetite too, which is probably why I'm not a butcher.

Making kleftiko though is a rather lengthy process between the preparation through the actual cooking.  First, terracotta pots (resembling slightly rounded flower pots with no hole in the bottom) are filled with a mixture of herbs and spices and then layered with lamb meat.  Then a certain amount of alcohol is added with some juice and more herbs and spices.  Once the pot is full, it is covered (these days with foil) and taken to the oven.

The gentleman we visited was making traditional kleftiko, but in addition to the lamb meat, he included a lamb's head and chopped up cow's tail to the pots.  The lamb's head and cow's tail are also a form of kleftiko, but when you order kleftiko in a restaurant you will only receive the lamb meat.  You have to specifically ask for the cow's tail or lamb's head. And apparently people do order it.

The oven that the kleftiko is cooked in is also traditionally Cypriot.  It looks like an earthen dome and the modernized version has a steel door.  These ovens get exceedingly hot prior to the kleftiko being cooked and, once the kleftiko is in the oven, the meat is cooked for eight hours before it is removed.

Observing the kleftiko process I learned several things: I could never be a butcher, I would never have the patience to make kleftiko and, while I do not like lamb, the flavor of kleftiko is actually quite good.

Later that evening, we had another group dinner where we watched my group's film of the baklava experience.  After that, Laura and Constantia were taking a group of students to eat a Meze at a tavern in the old city.  The Tennessee group was invited, even though we ate beforehand, to participate in Greek dancing there.

Naturally, I was curious to experience traditional Greek dancing.  So I went.

Sadly, there was only about ten minutes (of the three and a half hours we were there) that any dancing took place.  And we were the only ones dancing in this restaurant, which happened to jam packed with tables.  So, here we were, a group of 15 Americans, weaving our way in and out of the narrow spaces between tables and chairs, trying not to hit people or knock food off their tables while we danced to the live music.

While the dancing lasted for a much shorter time than I had hoped for, it was still a tremendous amount of fun.  And, for just a few minutes of my trip, as no one spoke and everyone just danced, I felt like a true Cypriot.

For those ten minutes, we were all speaking the same language.