Kleftiko, the slow roast with a stolen past

If I could only order one meat dish in Cyprus, it would be this. Kleftiko has no showy technique, just meat, salt, bay, a tightly closed dish and a lot of oven time. Patience is what makes it great, and that’s also why a bad one is easy to come by. Here’s what it is according to the Cyprus Food Virtual Museum, and how I’d order it. For where it sits among the island’s other dishes, start with Cypriot food.

A name that means stolen

The museum explains that «kleftiko» comes from the Greek verb to steal, and ties it to a custom among shepherds across the island. They’d dig a hole in a hillside, light a wood fire, lay carob branches or vine leaves over it, put the meat on top and close the hole. The meat cooked for hours without smoke giving anyone away, and was eaten sitting on rocks with a glass of brandy. Another version has the meat sealed in mud and opened days later. The museum even calls it «tolerated theft», a form of food sharing that anthropologists have found in many rural societies.

In Kythrea, today in the northern part of the island, the salted meat went on carob leaves into a pit on the slopes of the Pentadaktylos, a fire was lit and the hole covered with earth and wood. Sometimes it went into the village wood oven in the morning and came out in the afternoon, so tender it fell off the bone. It was eaten on its own, without bread, with an onion.

How is kleftiko made today?

The recipe the museum recorded in Kyperounta is a lesson in restraint. Pieces of lamb in a roasting tray, salt, a splash of brandy and five or six bay leaves. The tray is covered with its lid or with foil and goes into a moderate oven for about three hours. It’s served with fresh salad and potatoes. In Xylotymvou it was made with tougher mutton or goat in a clay pot called a ttavas, with a little water, bay and potatoes, in the traditional oven. The Famagusta tourism board describes it with bay and oregano, served with potatoes or pourgouri, the island’s cracked wheat, and Limassol’s board sums it up as lamb slow-cooked in a clay oven.

«Ofto», the word that sometimes comes with it on menus, simply means roasted in Cypriot. So «ofto kleftiko» and «kleftiko» are the same thing.

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Weddings, feasts and Sundays

According to the sources the museum quotes, ofto kleftiko has been the main dish at village wedding feasts for the past century, with tables laid out in the streets, in courtyards and in school playgrounds. Today it’s mostly eaten in family tavernas, at weddings in banqueting halls and at home after long fasts and on the big religious holidays. For that part the museum draws on a 2019 entry by the Cyprus National Commission for UNESCO, «Traditional Ofto Kleftiko of Cyprus», which also describes it as a hallmark of Cypriot culture now found in the resorts.

The Sunday roast

The Famagusta tourism board places it inside a wider custom, the Sunday roast, meat and potatoes cooked for hours in an ordinary or wood-fired oven, which will sound familiar to any British reader. It also lists it among the area’s twenty traditional dishes, next to afelia, pork marinated in red wine and coriander, and rabbit stifado with plenty of onions. For a family or a group at the table, kleftiko is what I’d order, because it’s made in quantity and gets better when the tray is big. For me it’s the very opposite of fast food, and you can taste it.

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Where I’d order it and what I’d avoid

I’d look for a village taverna with a wood oven, at lunchtime on a Saturday or Sunday, when it makes most sense for the kitchen to roast a big tray. And I’d ask one simple question, whether it was made today. Kleftiko that arrives within ten minutes in an over-thick sauce makes me think of the microwave. How to find a good taverna in each area is covered in where to eat in Cyprus.

It’s worth not confusing it with the grill. If you fancy meat on skewers over charcoal, that’s Cypriot souvla, and if you’d rather try a bit of everything in one sitting, order a Cypriot meze, with its long procession of small plates.

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