During your holidays in Samos you should not miss the chance to take a tasty tour sampling the local traditional dishes. The dishes of Samos have a particular taste and the connoisseurs can immediately tell that they are greatly influenced by tastes of Asia Minor, due to refugees that have inhabited the island during the past century or so.
Specialties of the Samian cuisine include all the different ways of cooking young goat’s meat, kid, one can possibly imagine. Stuffed kid back baked in the oven and kid leg with garlic (skordato), with potatoes, are the ones you should definitely taste.
Only unique can be characterized the so-called “Giorti” which means “celebration”, a meat dish offered when the locals celebrate a saint. The “Giorti” is goat which is boiled for about 12 hours in a cauldron, with lots of onions and wheat. The food is served hot, immediately after the end of the Divine Liturgy. You should also not forget to taste “katimeria”, delicious pancakes served with goat cheese or “petimezi”, grape juice condensed to thick syrup by boiling.
Naturally the Samians do not limit their diet to meat. You can also sample stuffed vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplants, onions and zucchini, all filled with minced meat and/or rice, flavored with delicious wild herbs of Samos and cooked in the oven. Other famous Samian dishes include courgette flowers stuffed with rice and local delicious “bourekia” patties made with pumpkin, as well as the local cheese “dermatotyri” (which is stored in animal skin, hence its Greek name, literally meaning “Skin cheese”). Locals sprinkle them with cheese or pour some honey on them, depending on their taste.
The food is always accompanied by excellent quality dry or sweet wine and “suma”, the local tsipouro, made from grapes of the aromatic variety Muscat. Famous for its vineyards, Samos produces excellent wine varieties, which are exported to many countries and have won numerous international awards. The most well known label is “Samos”. The “Samos” wine is internationally speaking the first and the very best ambassador of the Greek wine and you should definitely accompany your lunch or dinner with a glass of it.
If I remember correctly, also boxadakia are a Samian dish. They are cooked pieces of meat, often lamb, wrapped in fried eggplant slices. They are then cooked in the oven together with tomato and peppers. Absolutely divine! Remember to look for them on the menu during your next visit to a Samian tavern.
What about baby foods, are they available at local super markets at all? I remember a few years back having a nightmare of a time trying to locate some jars in Santorini… I wonder if the situation has changed since those days. From what I understand the lack of ready-made baby foods in Greece is simply a result of the local love for anything freshly made. I suppose the Greek mums would feel unworthy if they fed their babies with fruit of dishes that were made who knows when and in some cases contain who knows what.