For the Greek Orthodox Church, Lent means serious fasting—doctrine asks that members abstain from meat, dairy, and eggs for the duration of the forty days. And whether or not that’s followed to the letter, it still results in a banging Easter, or Pascha, celebration, often featuring a whole lamb or goat centerpiece and a parade of other dishes. Now imagine those traditions in the hands of a chef—specifically chef Pano I. Karatassos, who heads up the renowned Greek spot Kyma along with his family’s Buckhead Life Restaurant Group in Atlanta.
“Oh, it’s a party,” he says. “I’ve got little lights hung all over the backyard, where I’ve got my outdoor kitchen, my grills, my rotisserie, my smoker. All day long we’ve got Greek music playing and we’re celebrating and cooking. It feels like you’re in Mykonos.”
The menu, planned by Karatassos and his brother, is no joke—and this year, Kyma sous chef Jasen Wade is lending a hand, too. There are dishes by the dozen including meats, soups, stews, spreads, and pies. “I have to be super, super organized,” Karatassos says. In fact, he creates a list and timeline document so extensive that it runs for pages and outlines everything from who is spearheading each dish to exactly when it should be prepped, which kitchen it should be cooked in, and what time it should be plated.
Karatassos’s own day starts at 6:00 a.m., when it’s time to put the whole lamb on the rotisserie. The family, encompassing some fifty people, starts arriving around 9:00 a.m, and a flurry of cooking—puntuated with with sips of ouzo or tsipouro—ensues to prepare the likes of lamb leg, rack of lamb, grilled pita bread, gigantes (a baked bean dish), spanokopita, youvetsi (a lamb and orzo stew), olives, stuffed grape leaves, magiritsa soup, lemon potatoes, Greek salad, a whole host of spreads (think feta–red pepper and eggplant), and baklava and cookies. By 4:00 p.m. the full buffet is ready, and everyone piles their plates high and comes back for as many helpings as they can manage.
Above all, Karatassos’s favorite bites are the lamb dishes. By the time Sunday arrives, he will have already marinated the leg and rack of lamb for five and three days, respectively, in vinaigrettes of olive oil, garlic, lemon, thyme, and rosemary. But the whole lamb, roasted for eight hours on the day, is the true star. “We baste it with garlic, lemon, olive oil, and butter,” he says. “The skin is thin and crispy, and when you do it right, you can see the meat braising and bubbling on the inside. It’s gorgeous.”
The celebration carries on until 10:00 p.m. or 11:00 p.m., at which point Karatassos passes out a key item on his list: to-go boxes. “When you’re done fasting, all you want is this kind of food,” he says. “Everyone helps themselves to leftovers, and we all eat Greek Easter for two or three days afterwards.”
Below, find his recipe for a spicy feta and red pepper spread—which Karatassos calls the Greek pimento cheese—that will add a little Greek flair to your own Easter table. The recipe requires roasting the peppers the day before and draining them overnight in the fridge, but the execution couldn’t be easier.
