A Recipe for Cheese and Spicy Lovers

A presentation of the famous Greek appetizer with the Turkish name Bouyourdi and the memory of my first tasting experience.

Photo by the author

The tsipouro (Greek spirit) glasses were empty. Someone in the company signaled to the waiter for the second round. It took him only a short time to show up from inside the tavern carrying the tray of chilled tsipouro and a meze to accompany it. Other than the earlier one. Bouyourdi was its name.

It was an August afternoon in 1976. We were a bunch of eighteen-year-olds eating under the shade of a plane tree in a tavern in the square of a village on Mount Pelion. We had just finished school, the university had accepted us, and we celebrated with a vacation in Mount Pelion. The mythical mountain where the Twelve Olympian Gods had their summer residence and the Centaurs lived.

Image by the author via Canva

We spent the mornings exploring one by one the magnificent beaches at the roots of the mountain and the afternoons the villages perched on its slopes.

And, of course, we indulged in the local gastronomy that revolved around the ritual of drinking tsipouro. Finally…