What’s nutty, mild or sour, crunchy or creamy, slow but also fast food, ancient and also thoroughly contemporary? One Greek product fits all these descriptions: timeless trahana, a milk-based granular grain product, and its regional relatives, such as xinohondros from Crete and hahles from Lesvos.
Trahana is one of the oldest foods in the world. In Greece, it is still made at home but also in small workshops around the country, typically at the end of the summer, when it can be left to dry under the hot August sun. There are many regional variations. The basic recipe calls for cooking cracked wheat with milk or buttermilk until the mixture becomes a dense mass, almost like overcooked oatmeal. Once cooled down, this mass is broken up into chunks, which are laid out to dry on and under nets so that air circulates around the pieces and they dehydrate evenly.
Then they are either broken into small but still rather substantial pieces (as the Cretan variety, xinohondros) or pushed through a fine-mesh sieve to get granules that are larger than Moroccan couscous but smaller than pastina. On Lesvos, a large island in the northeastern Aegean, the local trahana is called hahles or koupes, and is shaped into small cups. One of the most delicious, if simple, Greek country mezedes are these koupes lightly roasted in a fireplace and washed down with a stinging, delicious glass of ouzo, the national drink of Greece, some of the best of which is produced on Lesvos as well.
Trahana and its cousins are cooked into soups and stews (here), adding a complex, deliciously sour, milky note that is surprisingly satisfying. It’s one of my all-time favorite Greek foods.
