Kontosouvli

Kontosouvli is souvlaki's oversized cousin: fist-sized chunks of marinated pork threaded onto a long spit and turned slowly over coals for hours. Where souvlaki is a street snack eaten in three minutes, kontosouvli is a festival and Sunday-taverna dish that occupies an afternoon.

The name combines konto (short) and souvla (spit) — short relative to the whole-lamb souvla of Cyprus and Greek Easter, though the spit is still long enough to need a stand and, usually, a motor. In northern Greece especially it is the standard thing to set turning when there is a crowd coming.

The chunks are large deliberately, because the cook is long. Pork shoulder in pieces of six to eight centimetres is threaded tightly onto the spit so the mass turns as one cylinder, with the pieces pressing against each other — that contact is what keeps the interior moist over two or three hours.

The fire is moderate and the spit sits well above it, because the aim is slow rendering rather than searing. As the outside colours it is carved off in ragged pieces and the rest keeps turning, which means the dish is served progressively over an afternoon rather than all at once — the same logic as a doner spit, at a domestic scale.

Pork shoulder or neck, well marbled. Loin will be dry within an hour. The marinade is Greek and simple: olive oil, lemon, oregano, garlic, mustard in some versions, and plenty of black pepper, left overnight.

Charcoal, banked to the sides rather than directly under the spit if you can manage it. A motorised rotisserie makes this a far easier dish; turning it by hand for three hours is traditional and genuinely tedious. Pieces should be roughly uniform so the cylinder turns evenly.

Carved onto a platter with lemon wedges, oregano, and bread or pita to catch the fat. Tzatziki, a horiatiki salad and fried potatoes complete the table. Retsina or a local red, and the eating stretches across the afternoon because the cooking does.