Some food just tastes better in its original surroundings.

A good greek salad tastes better when you are sitting at a table overlooking the sea, that it ever does at home in Deepest Sussex – even if you have the ripest homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers, the posh feta you have splurged on, really good olive oil.

(Though it has to be said not every Greek salad in Greece is brilliant – just saying.)

But though I am on about Greek food in Greece, can I just add I had one of the best dosas I have had in a long time in a tiny south Indian street place in Athens – see below.

But back to where I was, and apparently, and not entirely surprisingly, the Greek salad as we know it had only been around since the 60s or early 70s.

‘Everything started at the end of the 19th century when the Greeks were still ‘counting the wounds’ from their bankruptcy of 1893 and the Greek-Turkish war of 1897.

The main meal then consisted of vegetables – cucumber, olives, onions and (later) tomatoes and just sometimes cheese, with bread.

If you lived in the countryside, you took your vegetables whole, wrapped in a cloth, to the fields.

If you lived in Athens, you cut them up, put them in a dish and added olive oil, salt and oregano – that’s posh city folk for you.

Apparently, there was some tax which limited what you could charge for a basic salad to locals, and the growing number of tourists arriving in the 60s and 70s.

Folklore has it that an enterprising restauranteur in the Plaka area of Athens dropped a slice of feta on top and that meant it was no longer a basic salad – and he could charge what he liked. 

My take aways ( as it were) from this year’s Greek holiday (want a photo – well here you go) were Fava, chickpea stew and lamb baked with thyme ( and no doubt, time.)

Fava, just in case you don’t know, is basically yellow split peas cooked to a creamy mush with added flavourings.

It is a popular appetiser but beware, in the wrong hands it can turnout bland and, occasionally and unforgivably, lumpy.

If you get the flavourings right you can eat it by the spoonful all on its own. If you don’t you need all kinds of additions to make it tasty.

We had a very good version on the day we met our new friends, and the Best Beloved and I had another lovely and delicious lunch with them ( see previous blog about picking up friends on holidays).

It was Sunday lunch.

Unlike in Deepest Sussex , chickpea stew is a local Sunday lunch tradition, cooked for a long time on the stove and in the oven.

It had a dark, almost gravy-ish sauce, was unctuous and generally very good. I am pretty sure it was started Friday and left to its own cooking devices for a good long time and then kept to let the flavours all steep in.

I had the tavern’s speciality of lamb with thyme and though I am sure this is a speciality of eating places across Greece, it was very good indeed.

We left our dog with long-suffering neighbours whilst we went on this jaunt to sun-kissed shores (want another photo? well if you insist.)

And as this island has very little in the way of shopping-for-a-thank-you-present to offer, I decided to bring Greece to them and cook a Greek meal.

So by the time you read this, I will have made a chickpea stew with lamb and thyme and maybe Fava to start.

I will let you know if it was a satisfactory thank you.

If not, the dog gets it…..