This is a traditional dessert of Naxos that you can find quite easily on the island. It is a walnut pie that has breadcrumbs but it is also common to use hard bread or rusks.
You can enjoy it like it is or with some ice-cream vanilla or even better good quality mastic ice-cream!
I think that this dessert matches the Christmas holidays and winter perfectly cause of all the spices! I enjoy having it in a cold day with some coffee, chocolate or even with a shot of kitro (citrus liquor – traditional liquor of Naxos).
Ingredients
Syrup
- 165ml water
- 150 sugar
- 1 tablespoon honey (the ideal would be to use thyme honey from Naxos that smells like heaven)
- Lemon zest (2 stripes)
- 2-3 clove
- 1 bark/stick cinnamon
- orange zest (1 stripe) – optional
Cake
- 75gr crushed walnuts (you can use finely chopped walnuts but the ideal is to rush them with pestle and mortar cause like this you will have different sizes of the walnut pieces)
- 100gr breadcrumps
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon clove – powder
- Zest of half a lemon
- 3 eggs (yolks and whites separate)
- 20ml liquor citrus (traditional product of Naxos)
- 30gr butter (the best would be fresh butter but you can also use margarine)
How to?
- To prepare the syrup add all the ingredients together and boil them for a couple of minutes
- Let the syrup cool down while you prepare the cake
- Preheat the oven in 180 degrees Celsious
- Stir in a bowl all the dry ingredients and add the 3 yolks
- Add the liquor and the butter and stir well
- In another bowl beat the egg whites until stiff
- Add the 1/3 in the walnut mixture till it is well incorporated and then repeat 2 times with the rest of the egg whites. Be carefull not to overmix the dough.
- Butter a baking pan and add your dough
- Bake until is golden and thourougly baked (you can check with a toothpick)
- Let the pie cool down and then with a fork make holes on top. Like this it will absorb better the syrup.
- You can turn the melachrino upside down, so that you do not see the holes you did
Melachrinos means “with dark color” and it is nowdays used to describe someone with dark brown hair for example. It derives from the ancient greek words μέλας (melas – dark) and χρώμα (chroma – color).
Bibliography
Yannis and Stella @Apollon, Naxos 