Skopelos is an island that honors and keeps alive its tradition over the years.
This is evident both from its historical monuments and from its local cuisine. Delicious dishes of local produce that satisfy even the most demanding, while its sweets will surely impress you.
Housewives gladly make fresh traditional sweets, the most popular of which are Avgato and Chamalia.
So let’s get started!
Avgato (Recipe)
Avgato is a spoon sweet made from plums- the island’s most famous fruit. It got its name from the egg-shaped plum, as αυγό (avgo) means egg in Greek.
Ingredients:
- 40 medium sized plums (Avgato variety)
- 800 gr sugar
- 2 tablespoons of glucose
- lime water
- 3-4 drops of lemon juice
- 1 glass of water
- almonds
Dissolve a handful of mineral lime in a large bowl of water. Remember to wear gloves while touching the lime.
Core the plums by carefully pressing from the top to the back of the fruit with a sharp object. Peel them with a knife and place them in the lime water. Put every plum in the limewater right after you peel them so that they don’t oxidize and turn brown.
After finishing this process, leave them in the lime water for 2 hours, stirring regularly, so that the lime does not sit on the bottom of the bowl.
Remove the plums from the basin and rinse them with plenty of running water. Make sure to wash them very well so that all the lime is gone.
Leave them in a strainer for 5 minutes to drain. Place an almond in the hole that left the seeds.
Put them in a large saucepan. Add the sugar and a glass of water.
Boil on high heat, skimming when foam begins to form. Continue boiling for about 30 minutes until the syrup is thickened. Five minutes before the end, pour the lemon juice.
Pot the sweet into sterile glass jars and store in the refrigerator.
Chamalia (Recipe)
Chamalia is a traditional welcome sweet, made with almonds. A treat at festivals but mainly at weddings and baptisms. There is no way you can go to a festival in Skopelos and not be offered one!
It is based on three ingredients: almond, rose water and icing sugar.
Ingredients:
- 4 glasses of almonds peeled and smashed
- 1 glass of powdered sugar
- half a glass of rose water
- icing sugar for powdering
Put the almonds and sugar in a bowl. Mix well. Add the rose water and knead the mixture to form a firm dough. Take a little bit of dough, shape it with hands and give it different shapes.
Place on a buttered baking tray and put in a warm oven for only ten minutes. When we take them out, let them cool. Then dip them in the rose water, dust them with lots of icing sugar and place on a platter.