Greece

In much of Greece the Christmas table belongs to pork rather than turkey, because village families traditionally slaughtered the household pig in the days before the holiday and kept the fresh meat for Christmas. Christopsomo, a sweet bread marked with a cross of dough, bakes on Christmas Eve and is cut with a prayer, the pieces handed out from the oldest family member to the youngest. Melomakarona and kourabiedes share the cookie plate, and fried diples are drenched in honey syrup. The season runs to New Year's, when vasilopita, a cake with a hidden coin, is cut at midnight; whoever finds the coin has luck for the year.

The Greek chapter moves from winter soups to the start of Lent. Fasolada, the white bean soup sometimes called the national food of the Greeks, and fakes, lentil soup, are everyday winter dishes that also suit fasting days. Lahanodolmades, cabbage rolls with egg-lemon sauce, stifado, beef braised with small onions, and prasopita, a leek pie in phyllo, are winter mains. Portokalopita is an orange syrup cake for afternoon coffee. Halvas simigdalenios, semolina halva made without butter, milk or eggs, and lagana, a sesame flatbread, are eaten on Clean Monday, March 15, the first day of Orthodox Great Lent.

The Greek menu opens with Saganaki, a slab of graviera or kefalotyri dipped in water and flour and fried in olive oil, finished only with lemon and eaten at once. The main course is Moussaka, eggplant layered with ground meat in tomato under a thick béchamel that bakes into a golden crust. Dessert is Loukoumades, small balls of yeast batter fried and soaked in honey syrup, then finished with cinnamon or sesame.

Greek Orthodox Easter falls on May 2, 2027. On Holy Thursday, April 29, families dye kokkina avga, red eggs, and bake tsoureki, a braided Easter bread, and koulourakia, butter cookies. On Holy Saturday afternoon they cook magiritsa, the lamb soup with avgolemono that is the first meat dish after Lent, eaten after the midnight Resurrection service, when the red eggs are cracked in the game of tsougrisma. On Easter Sunday the table holds spanakopita, tzatziki and patates lemonates, lemon roast potatoes, around the lamb, here arni kleftiko, baked in parchment as an oven alternative to the spit.