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There is much more to Greek cooking than moussaka, stuffed vine leaves, greasy kebabs stuffed into pitta bread pockets with chips, salad and mayonnaise, and the ubiquitous Greek salad with a slab of feta cheese sprinkled with dried oregano. This may be what most of us encounter on our Greek holidays but if you search around a bit you will discover some very fine dishes indeed. Take the aubergine, for example. It’s essential in a moussaka but there’s much more to it than that. You could write a whole book about cooking aubergines the Greek way. They can be made into a wonderfully refreshing salad, or stuffed with minced mutton or lamb and roasted in the oven, or deep-fried in batter, or fried in olive oil and served cold with a marinade of lemon juice, finely chopped garlic and parsley, coriander, fennel or dill. Courgettes can be given the same agreeable treatment as aubergines, and vegetables à la grecque (cooked in a lemon and olive oil marinade) are really most enjoyable. Baby vegetables such as leeks, onions and artichoke hearts can all be cooked in the same way as mushrooms à la grecque.

In Greece they love to cook with fresh herbs, such as coriander, dill, parsley, mint and spring onions, combined with lemon juice (I swear that Greek lemons produce some of the finest juice I have ever encountered). They like to use coriander seeds and cinnamon to flavour their dishes, and occasionally cumin. At its best, Greek cooking is light, refreshing, tasty and tangy – for example, lamb stewed with Cos lettuce or green peas, flavoured with a wonderful lemon sauce, is an exquisite dish. Stuffed vine leaves don’t have to be briny, vinegary things with congealed rice inside. Like cabbage leaves, they can be stuffed delightfully with a mixture of rice, fish or meat, maybe pine nuts, sultanas or currants.