BREAKING BREAD
Fishmonger holding an octopus at Kapani market
Opposite: Octopus on the barbecue at the Douzis household; Thomas preparing the meal; bowls of Greek salad, feta, hummus and melitzanosalata; preparing peppers for the gemista
a good deal. I follow Thomas through Kapani’s labyrinth of cobbled streets, originally the Ottoman bazaar, where breeze blocks of Greek feta and mounds of olives sit alongside Asian spices and Macedonian saffron. In the seafood aisles, as fishmongers in blue
aprons shout over rows of iridescent skins, Thomas inspects a stall. A whole octopus is proudly produced from an ice box and a serious discussion in Greek follows, the fishmonger running his thick thumb over the creature, indicating where to cut first. We have no time to linger though, and
after buying a bag of ripe beef tomatoes from a colourful grocer’s stall (“We need big ones with thick skins for the gemista,” instructs Thomas), we head to a legendary maker of Greek yogurt, passing the ruins of a Roman market on our way. Dorkada, a traditional yogurt and pastry
shop, looks lost in time on a street of busy balconies sporting washing and plant pots. “Traditional Greek yogurt is made with sheep’s milk, not cow’s milk like we mostly eat now,” explains Thomas as we head into the shop. The owner, Yanis, appears and sticks out a muscled arm to shake my hand. He invites us through a back door and pulls open a cabinet, revealing tubs of maturing yogurt.
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“We buy the milk from farmers in Kilkis,
north of here,” he explains. “It arrives every day at 6am, and by 2pm the yogurt is ready. My family have been doing this since the 1960s.” He pushes a pot into my hands as a gift. Back down the hill, we pass bakeries, gyros
bars and blacksmiths. Thomas points out the spot where, during the construction of the metro network, a trove of ancient treasures was unearthed, including gold wreaths and statues, plus thousands of tombs. As we walk, I ask about the city’s changing food scene. “I think Thessaloniki’s food is now probably 50:50 traditional and modern Greek,” he says. “But what is modern food, really? I prefer traditional.” The last stop on our shopping trip is for
trigona panoramatos (filo pastry cones dunked in syrup and filled with custard cream), which were invented at the family- run Elenidis cafe in 1960. “This is a mecca,” Thomas grins, pushing open Elenidis’ glass door to reveal swish grey walls and glass cabinets filled with cones. “You should always go to specific places
for their specialities,” he adds, as our box of trigona is piped with cream. “I could get these in another shop, but it’s part of our culture to
go to particular places. My family have always come here.”
ALL EYES ON THE GEMISTA Thomas’s stylish open-plan apartment is on a street full of tall buildings painted cream and cornflower blue, a shade so distinctive of Greece. There’s a baklava shop downstairs, which he warns me is “very dangerous”, and a giggle-inducing lift that’s so tiny, we have to take it one at a time. Inside his home, we’re met by Lefteris, who’s
joining us for lunch and has already begun chopping onions on a huge marble countertop. Sunshine pours in, illuminating a wall of books and family photos and revealing clues to Thomas’s and Alexandra’s former lives in London, Athens and New York. I sit at the counter and watch as Thomas
contemplates the octopus; he wouldn’t normally buy it whole and clean it himself, but he’s doing so today in my honour. After gutting it, he drops the tentacles into a pan of all-spice and white wine, then adds a bay leaf. “This neutralises the fishy flavour,” he tells me. Next, he adds a splash of pomegranate
balsamic, explaining that it was made by a farmer near Halkidiki, south west of the city.
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