One of Anna Mamakos' favorite childhood memories involves waking up in the wee morning hours on Greek Easter Sunday.
Her mother, a Greek immigrant, would already be hard at work in the kitchen of their Amesbury home, preparing the traditional Easter feast her extended family would gather to enjoy that afternoon.
Mamakos would drift back to sleep to the aroma of simmering lamb and baking cookies.
"I can remember going to bed and waking up and smelling the food," she said.
Today, you can find Mamakos in that same kitchen where she grew up, except now she's the one preparing the dishes for her own family's Greek Easter celebration on Sunday.
Mamakos, who moved back to her childhood home with her husband and two children more than 30 years ago, can still hear her mother offering up instructions as she hurries around the kitchen buttering phyllo dough and dying Easter eggs.
"I tell her, 'OK, Mom, I'll do it that way,'" Mamakos, 77, said.
Being raised Greek was a way of life for Mamakos. Her parents, both immigrants from the island of Lesvos, were immensely proud of their heritage and instilled that pride in Mamakos and her two brothers.
It was only natural that Mamakos married a man with a similar background. She met her husband, Peter, at a Greek dance in Boston, and, together, they brought up their son and daughter with the same values they had learned as children.
And that meant family and church as foremost in their lives.
"Every Sunday, we went to church and had dinner at our house," Mamakos said, recalling her childhood. "Everyone came."
Mamakos' mother learned her kitchen skills in Greece when she was a nanny for a family whose cook taught her all the secrets of their native cuisine. Mamakos' mother passed them on to her, and she, in turn, has shared them with her son and daughter, Mike and Cathy.
"They both know how to cook the Greek food," Mamakos said of her grown children.
This Sunday's Greek Easter celebration — the date of which is based on the Julian calendar and always follows the Jewish holiday of Passover — will incorporate the same traditions Mamakos and her family have enjoyed for years.
She and her husband will attend the midnight service Sunday at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Newburyport, where Mamakos sings in the choir. After the service, they will join the other parishioners in breaking the Lenten fast with a meal of soup, cheese and a red-dyed hard-boiled egg, symbolic of Christ's blood.
Even though she won't get home until as late as 3 a.m., she'll be up early cooking the Easter dinner that will feature lamb as the centerpiece dish.
While many Greek families still cook their lamb outdoors, Mamakos, like her mother, roasts hers in the oven. She has the lamb leg deboned, then rolls the meat, stuffs it with an abundance of garlic and then rests it on the bones in the pan. As the meat roasts, in the same pan with the potatoes, she bastes it with lots of butter, lemon juice and drippings.
"Nine out of 10 Greeks like it well-done," she said of the roasted lamb.
Spanakopita — a spinach pie made with layers of phyllo dough slathered with butter — will be served both as an hors d'oeuvre and during dinner. Dessert will feature more phyllo dough as the basis for baklava and the custard-filled galatobouriko.
And there will be dozens of the Greek Easter cookies called koulourakia. The cookies are made from a butter dough that's rolled and braided, brushed with an egg glaze to make them shiny, then sprinkled with sesame seeds. Sometimes, Mamakos adds colored sprinkles for her 21/2-year-old grandson, who calls them "Yaya's cookies."
While her mother used to make the cookies in a long braid, Mamakos prefers to make them a bit shorter.
"(My mother) used to say, 'No one's going to be satisfied with that,'" Mamakos said. "And I would tell her, 'Then, they can have more than one.'"
As Mamakos readies the meal, memories of Easters spent with her parents — not to mention her mother's serrated kitchen knife — will be close at hand.
Mamakos hopes to now create those same joyous occasions she once enjoyed for her two young grandchildren, James and Elianna.
"You have to have those memories," she said.
Anna Mamakos' Greek Easter Menu
Appetizers
Olives and Feta cheese chunks
Spanakopita (spinach pie triangles)
Feta cheese triangles
Main course
Easter soup
Greek salad
Spanakopita
Roasted lamb with roasted potatoes
Tsoureki (sweet bread decorated with Easter eggs)
Desserts
Koulourakia (Easter cookies)
Baklava
Galatobouriko (custard dessert)
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Favorite tools
Her mother's serrated kitchen knife
Pastry brushes
Food processor
Her hands
Favorite ingredients
Butter
Phyllo dough
Beans for white bean soup
Koulourakia (Braided Easter Cookies)
(Pronounced koo-loo-ra-kya)
1 pound butter, room temperature
3 tablespoons shortening or oil
2 cups sugar
6 eggs, room temperature, beaten
2 tablespoons vanilla
1/2 cup orange juice
6 teaspoons baking powder
8 cups flour (approximately)
Grated zest of 1 orange
Sesame seeds
For glaze
2 eggs
2 tablespoons of water
Cream butter and shortening until creamy. Add sugar slowly, and beat until fluffy.
Add eggs, beating well. Add vanilla, orange juice and zest. Mix until well-blended.
Mix baking powder with flour and add to the butter mixture.
Knead and add more flour to make a soft, pliable dough. Shape into twists.
Combine eggs and water to make glaze and brush onto cookies,
Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake in a 350-degree oven for 20 to 23 minutes, or until golden brown.
— Anna Mamakos
Mageritsa Apli (Easter Soup, Simplified)
(Pronounced May-er-it-sa Ap-li)
3 pounds lamb shoulder (chops are fine)
2 pounds lamb bones
2 stalks celery
1 large carrot
2 large onions, quartered
3 quarts water
11/2 bunches scallions, chopped fine
1/4 cup minced fresh dill
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1/2 cup long grain rice
Salt and pepper, to taste
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
5 egg yolks
3 lemons (juice)
Simmer meat, bones, celery, carrot and onions with salt and pepper in the 3 quarts of water for two hours. Stain broth and reserve. Discard the vegetables.
Remove meat from bones and shred. Add meat, scallions, dill, parsley and rice to the broth. Simmer, covered, for 15 to 20 minutes. Reserve 2 cups of broth.
Make a roux of 4 tablespoons butter and 4 tablespoons flour. Stir and cook for 1 minute. Slowly add the 2 reserved cups of broth to the roux. Stir until smooth.
Beat five egg yolks and slowly add juice of three lemons. Add eggs to the roux, then add that to the broth and rice. Soup is done.
— Anna Mamakos
Spanakopita (Spinach Pie)
2 pounds frozen, cut-leaf spinach
1 extra large onion, chopped
1 bunch scallions, chopped
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
1 pound Feta cheese, crumbled
1 pound cottage cheese
8 large eggs
1/4 cup farina (a meal made from cereal grains, nuts or starchy roots to absorb extra moisture in filling)
Pepper, to taste
1 pound phyllo dough
1 pound butter, melted
Thaw spinach, drain and squeeze out as much water as possible.
In a large bowl that will hold all the ingredients, beat the eggs.
Add all the ingredients, except the phyllo and melted butter. Season with pepper. Mix thoroughly and set aside.
Prepare a 12-by-18-inch baking pan by buttering bottom and sides. Place eight sheets of phyllo in the pan, buttering each sheet as you go and letting the first four sheets overhang on the side. Pour in the spinach filling, pulling in the overhanging phyllo and buttering every bit of phyllo.
Place eight sheets of phyllo on top, buttering each and tucking in the sides with the blunt edge of a pastry brush or spatula. Score top of phyllo sheets for ease in cutting after baking.
Bake in a 325-degree oven for 45 to 55 minutes, until golden brown.
Note: Spanakopita is best when eaten warm, not hot. Also, don't skimp on the butter — butter and phyllo dough complement each other.
— Anna Mamakos
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