Περιγραφή
Pork lard for cigarettes back fat
The pig, in the most ancient times, was an important factor in the household economy. Every outdoor family raised a pig every year, for their nutritional needs and called it threftari. In earlier times, when meat was a kind of luxury, for the villagers, who only ate it at Christmas, Halloween, festivals and Easter. However, since the families at that time were numerous, they took care of securing the corresponding amount of meat. That is why every agricultural family kept one or more domestic pigs. To buy a Halloween pig for heh, they found it difficult to choose, because they wanted it to be a pig that wouldn't grunt (grunt) and wouldn't envy them. Here in Pinia and especially in Kapeli, a now-extinct breed known for its delicious meat, Kapelisia pigs or Karamoutzes, as they were called because they had a long, narrow snout, were raised on acorns and dug with their noses to find food in the ground and below from the foliage. It is with great regret that we know that this breed no longer exists. Usually by tradition, the fattest member of the family was sent to choose the pork to fatten.
They said that when they went to buy it, they didn't talk on the street because the pig was whining, also they never buy it on Sunday because the pig is a dirty animal. They also wanted the piglet they chose to have its tail twisted, because if it was straight they considered it burnt, while with a twisted tail it was healthy and would grow quickly. First job when they took him home, was to make him tread an iron so that he would become iron and never get sick. They also poured a little oil into his ear so that it would grow quickly and not get damaged. The housewife who fed them, so that the pig would come to her on the first day, smeared her shoes with wash so that the pig would smell her. From a young age, it was installed in the koumasias, outside the villages and far from the house, to avoid its awful smell. His diet was generally obtained from various scraps, with bran from the milling of wheat, corn, acorns, wild grasses and whey. When he grew up, he was called anesmidi and the male pig was castrated to grow faster and fatter. When the pig did not eat its food and whined constantly, it was scalded. They would take a red-hot iron, open his mouth and insert a piece of wood to keep his mouth open, and cauterize his palate. This process wanted someone to know how to cauterize it. A pig to be slaughtered had to be reared for about a year. Most of them were slaughtered when they weighed more than a hundred okadas, usually reaching 80 to 150 okadas. They were usually slaughtered on Halloween, for Halloween food and not only. A family relied mainly on the large nutritional benefits, but also on the other products obtained from domestic pork. Pig slaughter was an ancient special rite. In traditional culture, the manifestations of popular worship were integrated into the agricultural economy. Pig slaughter from the ancient Greeks was transmitted to the Romans, and later to the Byzantines. During the Turkish rule, the Greeks preserved the custom, where it was preserved unchanged until the 70s, and in some areas in many villages it still prevails. Often the people justify the pig carcasses in their own way, incorporating the divine drama into their own experience. Pig carcasses have a sacrificial character and echo ancient expiatory and purgatory sacrifices, accompanied by magical and superstitious acts, such as divination.
The Romans, during the feast of the Brumalia at the end of the year, sacrificed pigs to the God Saturn and the Goddess Demeter. The pig represented the embodiment of the vegetative and reproductive demon, because with its gluttony and digging for its food, it destroys the vegetation, either because of its luxury. Pig slaughter usually did not coincide on the same dates throughout Greece. In other areas they slaughtered them a few days before Christmas and in others they started from Christmas Day onwards. Most pigs were slaughtered on December 27, the day of St. Stephen's memory. Where they were slaughtered before Christmas, this celebration was called "pig crown".
In the Peloponnese they slaughter mainly during Halloween. But there were also several areas that slaughtered them a month or more after Christmas. The etiquette of the ceremony was the day of "Slaughters" or "pig feasts" which began very early in the morning with the lighting of the fire to make the water very hot with which to pluck the pig. Pig butchers were usually groups of friends who slaughtered each other's pork. A special etiquette was followed for the slaughter. For example, the slaughter was done with a special black-handled knife and the perpetrator was the head of the family.
As soon as it was slaughtered, they placed a lemon in the carcass's mouth and incensed it, so that the meat would smell, with the deep breaths it takes, until it cools down, and they covered it with a sack to remove the evil pimple that might have they had on them. With the animal's blood, they formed a cross on the forehead of small children for headache. The pig's snout (karamunja) was nailed to the wall or over the door to ward off evil spirits and goblins. They carefully examined his spleen and liver and divined the future of the family.
The pig butchers, according to the etiquette, ate the first meze, which was the carynjaflos or karoutzos (the pig's larynx at the point where the butchering incision had been made). It was the first meze, which was cooked, to drink a glass of wine and at the same time wish, happy birthday, good food and next year with health, to make the same and bigger pork again. While many times, this meze, was roasted on the coals, the pork, even after being slaughtered, would get up and run for a while, full of blood, until it cooled down and fell. After the carcass was cooled, it was washed with boiling water. They covered the carcass with a sack and poured boiling water on it and when it was cooked, that is, it was ready, then they scraped it by rubbing it with the sack or with various sharp objects. With the plucking, the wetting began, that is, they began to scrape it from its rear legs until they reached its tail. Then the legs were cut off at the knees, the soles of the legs were pierced, a piece of wood as thick as a rack of sour cream was passed through it and it was hung, usually from a tree or a balcony of a high-rise house, so that the butcher could butcher it. At first they cut off the tail, which they used to disguise themselves at Halloween. They sewed two pig tails onto their caps when they wanted to represent the devil with flexible horns. As soon as the scraping was finished, it was the turn of the gutting. Carefully the butcher opened its belly and removed all the animal's vital organs.
Man, all the vital organs of the animal, after the corresponding treatment, ate them. The bladder (bladder) was not eaten, but after special processing it was used for topi, for a tobacco bag, a bag to store seeds (tomato, cucumber, cabbages, pepper, onion, etc.) and it was also used for a pouch. the bubble, they took out the pig fart, then put it on a plate and cut it into pieces. Then they poured vinegar, oil, garlic, salt and ouzo on it and placed it in the sun to dry. Then they hung it in the fireplace in the smoke and the they used when they boiled cheese.After the rennet they take out the bile, which they peel off carefully so it doesn't spill.
The fluid of the bile was used as medicine to drive away lice. "We take a teaspoonful of pig's bile, mix it with a wine glass of wine and anoint the head. The lice will immediately die or disappear." Also, the bile liquid was used to water the pregnant mares so that they would not reject. If the pig was black without any sign of another color (unmarked) its bile was used to make animal amulets. Then, if it was a male, they took out their testicles (negligible) and grilled them, for many it is a very good meze. After the testicles they removed the kolia (colander), this was used for the preparation of bekrimeze - the infamous splenander, together with the spleen and the heart of the carcass. The liver, lung and kidney were eaten in different ways. The intestines were made into sausages and giblets. The toenails, belly, tail, ears and head were made thick. The cheeks, or moukula, were roasted on coals or in the oven. Sometimes these parties continued to roast and eat the carcass and drink wine.
From where they had hung the carcass, they cut pieces of meat, mainly from the thighs and shoulders, the well-known chops, and threw them on the coals, and the feast lasted well. As soon as the evisceration was finished, the butcher would also remove the basilisks (mustard from the pork ribs). This undiluted whiskey was kept and used as a lubricant, in the arvylas, saruchias, weapons, knives, etc. They also used the fat from the basil to make kourabiedes and other sweets, where they also put a little butter in it to make it musky. With its skin, because it was very hard, they made pig skins, or put it on top of the samarias, between the mattress and the wood, so that the water wouldn't pass, while with its hair they made brushes. When they weren't skinning the pork, they were basting it with boiling water. Then they skinned or stripped it. That is, with a knife they cut five centimeter wide strips from the top and pulled them with force and they came out, always with fat and skin. Cigarettes were made from this skin. After they finished stripping, they took the strips of skin and cut them vertically into small pieces, these were called fat or must. Then the housewives would wash them well and leave them in water for two or three days to drain the blood, of course changing the water regularly.
Then they lit a fire and placed them in a cauldron and melted them. After the fat melted, small pieces of skin and meat remained in the cauldron, and these were the cigarettes. Chigrides are a type of food made of fried pork skin, fat and meat. The cigarettes were made without putting anything else in the cauldron, not even water or oil. Of course, in some areas, they also added herbs or spices, while there were also some who made them by adding coarsely chopped onions and wine in the cauldron, or with fried leeks. The cigarettes could be stored in lagins, along with the fat, and when they wanted to use them, they would take out the appropriate amount they needed and then seal it again.
Chigarides were a quick and easy food and were cooked in various ways, such as the famous kayanas which are eggs fried with chigarides, also trachanas with chigarides and chopped roasted onion, and finally chigarides with finely chopped herbs. Many times the women boiled the cigarettes for several hours, until they absorbed all the fat and slowly dried out. They had them as dry food, something like today's shrimps. In the olden days in difficult times they would cut a slice of bread and spread fat with cigarettes on it and quench their hunger. - Mother, we have no bread, and we are very hungry! and the jar is empty, we have nothing to eat! The flour is gone, so are the cigarettes. -Kids, if you are hungry and want to eat homemade, pull out and ask. And if the papaya doesn't have bread and cigarettes, let the fields that have caucalides be fine!
The cicadas and salted meats in general, because they did not want to be kept at a temperature, were placed in vats with fat and stored for almost a year. During the difficult times, when the place was ravaged by the Turks and bandits, when they made pastes they placed them in large baskets and then dug a hole in the ground and hid them. In case they were looted and hid in the mountains and forests, when they returned home, they dug up the hides and after the looting they at least found food. In their movements, because they were done on foot and were time-consuming, for snacks, they took with them cigarettes, bread, onions, olives, cheese and whatever other snacks they had. Crickets have nurtured generations and generations of people in the countryside. The older of us ate them, quenched their hunger, and tasted them in times of famine. Today, many of us long, as for all the traditional foods of our country, to try and taste them one day.