Corfu is one of the northernmost and westernmost islands of Greece and the Ionian Sea.
It is located at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea, near the mainland. Its northeastern coast is quite close to the coast of Saranda, Albania.
A Little History
The name Corfu is an Italian corruption of the Greek koryphai (“crests”) and is often a more familiar moniker to visitors than the Modern Greek name. According to legend, the island was Scheria, home of the Phaeacians in Homeric epics.
A Corinthian colony established about 734 BCE supplanted a settlement of Eretrians from Euboea. Proudly independent and even hostile to its mother city of Corinth, the new colony was reduced (c. 600 BCE) by the Corinthian tyrant Periander, but later it regained independence and devoted itself to commerce.
Corfu took no active part in the Persian invasion (480 BCE) of Greece, but in 435 it sought the assistance of Athens in a quarrel with Corinth, a request that became a primary cause of the Peloponnesian War.
Corfu quit the war in 410, but a new alliance with Athens (375) resulted in hostilities with Sparta.
The island’s favorable position between Greece and Italy attracted powers from east and west. In succession, it fell to Goths, Lombards, Saracens, and Normans and was fought over by the kings of Sicily and the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice.
The Food
As a result of the Venetian rule in Corfu, the Venetians influenced the island with their own cuisine and their own way of eating. They brought new products and taught the people of Corfu how to eat them. Corn, tomatoes, beans, peppers, but also coffee, chocolate and much more came to Corfu from the Venetians.
In the first centuries the influence was on the aristocracy, but at the end of the 19th century the inequalities between the social classes were alleviated and the two cuisines (aristocratic and the kitchen of the pauperology) intersected and the unified local Corfiot cuisine was created which reaches to this day almost unchanged. It is no coincidence that most of the recipes of modern Corfiot cuisine have an Italian name and Venetian origin (bianco, pastitsada, burdeto, noumboulo, salad, panada, papalina, poulenta, propetes, savoro, sofrito, etc.).
The "marriage"
of two cuisines
Pasticcio dolce is a rare Corfu recipe, a remnant of Venetian cuisine. Between two layers of dough place a mixture of well-cooked meats (beef, pork, chicken, snipe, blackbirds, sausages, lard) and thick spaghetti with grated cheese and dill. The result creates an incredible feast of flavors. A variation of the pasticcio dolce was the pasticcio of Nona (grandma) which was the first dish of a Sunday family lunch.
Between the leaves of the dough together with the spaghetti are placed the thick spaghetti with tomato, salt, pepper, sugar, grated cheese, boiled egg slices, pieces of ham, salad (salami), and the meat (chopped pieces of chicken and beef or beef) with its sauce and spread cheese, a little pepper and three soups on top. A complex recipe that derives its origin from the cuisine of ancient Rome.
Enjoy it with friends and family,
while the Ionian breeze messes up your hair!
Reference: Encyclopedia Brittanica & Chef Spyros Voulisma
