The Greek Monk Who Brought Holy Mount Athos Cuisine to the World

Father Epiphanios of Mylopotamos, the Greek monk who archetypal brought Holy Mount Athos cuisine to the world. Credit: Vima Orthodoxias

Father Epiphanios of Mylopotamos was the Greek monk who archetypal brought Holy Mount Athos cuisine to the world.

The writer of the publication “The Cuisine of Holy Mount Athos” made monastic cooking, based mostly connected food and legumes, an important summation to the steadfast Mediterranean diet, and precise fashionable successful its ain right.

The book, which contains 126 recipes prepared by Mount Athos monks, has been translated into English, Spanish, German, Russian, Romanian, and Bulgarian.

Epiphanios, an fantabulous navigator by immoderate measurement adjacent extracurricular monastery walls, had traveled each implicit Greece and Europe, bringing his ideas, expertise, and recipes to Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and beyond and winning planetary distinction.

Well-known chefs person invited him into their kitchens to larn culinary techniques and ingredients from the antheral of God.

The Mount Athos monk was a skilled winemaker arsenic well, producing exquisite wines from his vineyard astatine Mylopotamos, a dependency of the Holy Monastery of Megiste Lavra.

His Mylopotamos wines, which person besides won planetary awards, person been exported to respective countries astir the world. Epiphanios besides produced his ain olive oil.

The lad of a winemaker, the polymath monk was calved successful Nikisiani, located successful Kavala in northern Greece, successful 1956. His begetter had a sizeable vineyard successful an country that has been renowned for its vino accumulation since past times.

Έφυγε από την ζωή ο Γέροντας Επιφανιος ο αρχιμάγειρας του Αγίου Ορους, σε ηλικία 64 ετών ύστερα από πολύχρονη μάχη με τον καρκίνο…. Αναπαύσου εν ειρήνη!! pic.twitter.com/ejQqguFwZ6

— fable (@legend_74_) December 11, 2020

The Greek monk Epiphanios and the Holy Mount Athos cuisine

Since Greek Orthodox monks astatine Athos are not allowed immoderate meat, they subsist chiefly connected legumes and vegetables, portion they are capable to devour food connected Orthodox holidays.

However, arsenic Epiphanios has explained successful interviews, the fasting limitations lone served to crook him into a overmuch much inventive chef. Perhaps the astir challenging of all, however, is that for astir 200 days per year, the Orthodox are not adjacent allowed the depletion of olive oil. Hence, monks continually alternate betwixt fasting and non-fasting foods.

Since each monasteries cultivate their ain integrated vegetables, herbs, and fruits, the staple ingredients are of the highest quality. Additionally, Epiphanios besides uses fennel, parsley, mint, reddish pepper, cinnamon, allspice and cumin successful astir of his recipes for added flavor.

While food is reserved for Easter and different Christian holidays, for the astir part, monks subsist connected vegetables, pasta, fruit, grains and different types of seafood, specified arsenic octopus. Once again, the seafood limitations often spark the instauration of archetypal recipes.

Another concealed of Mount Athos cuisine is dilatory cooking successful chromatic ovens utilizing wood oregon adjacent cooking straight implicit unfastened fires. There is nary existent request to unreserved the cooking procedures because, aft all, monks person each the clip successful the satellite to hole a meal.
According to Epiphanios, bully nutrient takes clip to prepare.

The benefits of monastic cooking are invaluable. Alternating betwixt fasting and non-fasting foods allows the full assemblage to remainder and to sorb each the nutrients. Diseases that are associated with excesses of diets are uncommon connected Mount Athos.

Intestinal oregon tummy cancers are precise uncommon among monks portion bosom diseases and strokes are adjacent rarer.

Greek Orthodox monk Epiphanios and Mylopotamos

Epiphanios visited Mylopotamos successful Mount Athos successful 1990 aft spending a twelvemonth astatine the Monastery of Saint Catherine successful the Sinai.

He acquired beingness ownership of Mylopotamos from the Holy Monastery of Megiste Lavra for 2 cardinal drachmas, oregon astir 6,000 euros. He was allowed to not lone physique connected tract but besides beryllium liable for its maintenance, restoration, and upkeep.

Once there, helium invested a large woody of clip and vigor into restoring the fantastic Byzantine analyzable of Mylopotamos, which had been burned successful a fire. The monk virtually brought the monastery backmost to life.

The vineyard adjacent to the sea, which yields the marvelous Mylopotamos wines, surrounds the analyzable and boasts a state-of-the-art winery. The dependency besides has an awesome library, with 4,000 ecclesiastical books, manuscripts, and works by modern writers and historians.

Epiphanios passed distant successful December 2020 astatine the property of 64, aft a agelong conflict with cancer.