Thessaloniki Indokaridopita (Ινδοκαρυδόπιτα)

Thessaloniki indokaridopita is a coconut syrup cake from the city's home and pastry-shop table, a soft semolina crumb soaked until every square is fragrant but still clean enough to lift with your fingers. It isn't walnut karidopita with coconut pushed into it. It has its own name because the coconut is the point, indokarydo, the Indian nut as Greek groceries still call it.

The move that decides it is the coconut. Toast it only until pale blond before it meets the batter, because raw coconut goes dull under syrup and dark coconut turns bitter. Pale is enough. Then the semolina and yogurt do their quiet work, giving you a crumb that drinks the syrup instead of collapsing.

In my Thessaloniki notebook this sits among the name-day cakes, the kind that leaves the house in a covered tapsi and comes back empty. Bake it in the morning, syrup it while the cake is hot and the syrup cool, and leave it alone until afternoon. A recipe written down is a recipe saved, but this one is still very much alive.