Do you ever feel you belong to a certain country that is not your birth or ‘growing up place’? Greece is that place that feels like home to me. I am not Greek, nor do I have greek blood or relation in me. And I have only discovered it in my adulthood. But every time I am back in Greece I get an overwhelming feeling of familiarity and warmth towards it. I somehow understand it all. I understand why a middle aged Greek woman would out dresses black for far longer than she should, I appreciate how everything has to be home made including the feta cheese, bread and olive oil. I love the drama of it all and I love how every other home has its own little chapel in the garden.. and to cut a long list short I love Greek music.
I was introduced to the voice of Nena Venetsanou ten summers ago and I was hooked. One of my favourite albums for this legendary singer is a collaboration with the composer Mikis Theodorakis. Epitaphios (Epitaphs) are poems written by the poet Yannis Ritsos in 1936 when the Greeks where fighting the Germans. The poet says “For me my senses, my basic auditory perception, come from the people. And this is what came out of me. It is what I sang, danced, and listened to, since I was a child” Theodorakis composed the piano music to these poems. The opening song is about a mother in the middle of the street that laments for her dead, killed child with people protesting in the background. I find great pathos in this music especially that mothers in this part of the world; Syria and Palestine have lost and loose their children in unfair situations on daily basis. The human life is so similar in its fragility and pain and it is all expressed in this universal music.
Anyhow the dessert in the post is inspired and adapted from Magda’s blog post at http://mylittleexpatkitchen. Revani is what we call in the Middle East Harrisa; an ultra sweet and delicious dessert made of semolina. This adapted version is a lot lighter and it could actually be called a Coconut cake. 
