Traditional Cuisine before Mount Athos, Halkidiki region

The three hundred kilometers of coastline that provide a wide variety of catches and seafood, the neighborhood of Mount Athos and the 2500 monks and their diet based on vegetarianism and fish eating, the presence of refugees from Asia Minor and Pontic with flavors of their particular homelands, but also the wealth of mother earth in the tens products, create all those conditions so that the before Mount Athos area of ​​Halkidiki to boast of its gastronomic variety, in quantity and quality.

Rare raw materials by their generous nature, effort and toil producers and the incomparable housekeeping and cymbalism of the inhabitants, invite to a unique game of smells, colors and flavors.

Its rich vegetation Mount AthosOf Holomonta and Aristotelian mountain covered by a flora with plants and herbs which the locals use for drinks and infusions, while at the same time offering its juices to be made rarely ash from fir, pine, chestnut, heather, flowers, rustle. In the same areas, in the forests of chestnut, oak, beech, pine and fir you will find a wide variety of mushrooms which grow frantically in mushroom fields (porcini, truffle, dark-colored nuns, yellow-eyed eggs, etc.) and feed the cooks and housewives who create mushroom pies, mushroom meatballs and other specialties. In the same places winter-summer one meets the king of hunting, him wild boar, where he too cooked in a variety of ways.

Dairy products mainly yoghurt and slice from flocks of lambs and cows that eat the rich flora of the area. The cheeses they flavor the pies, pastries and the famous fried bread made from the grains of the plains of Marathousa and Nea Rhodes.

Wine Blessed by the vineyards of the monks of Mount Athos, most importantly the winery of Claudia Papagianni in Arnaia and the winery of the Chromitsa share, used by Evangelos Kourtakis and which today produces, among others, Kormilitsa, the official wine of the Kremlin while tsipouro is made from marcs.

In the area of ​​Olympiada there is one of the largest mussel farms of the country, while in seven traditional fishing ports a fleet of fishermen supplies the place with fresh fishes.

The most typical recipes of the area before Mount Athos are giaprakia, the tops (zucchini flowers) fried or in the oven.

From sweet In addition to the jams and desserts produced from the fruit trees of the area, donuts with honey, the macaroon flowers of Ammouliani, the orange pie and the sweet leaf of Nea Roda are common.