The fruit, which matures in September, is packed with beneficial properties. Chief among these is a very high calcium content, three times that of milk. To make carob syrup, Yiannis cuts the pods and soaks them in water for several hours. He removes the beans from one and places them on a wooden table.
“If we were to weigh these, we would find each is exactly 0.2 grams,” Yiannis explains, saying that the word “carat”, used as a unit for weighing precious stones and gold, stems from carob. “And not just that,” he says as he skims the scum from a pot where the extract from the pods will continue to simmer away until only the syrup is left. “They say that Queen Cleopatra also loved carob syrup. It was the ancients’ face-lift cream!” As the sun sets behind the carob and olive trees of Sitia, I can’t help thinking that, even if this last claim isn’t true, the earthy charms of the carob are more than enough to entice you to try it as such.