Food from the Village

In the middle of the gift-buying season, we thought we’d indulge ourselves in something local, for those who might be looking to take away a taste of the place in their luggage across the seas or who frankly need a rest from recreating foreign flavours in their kitchens.

Just recently, a group of Cypriot chefs won an international award for their reinvention of Cypriot food, using local ingredients to create new tastes. But the idea was not new. It might just possibly have begun life in the pages of this book, published already six years ago and yet is little known among local domestic deities.

Polycarpos Demetriou has almost incongruously been reinventing Cypriot peasant food for the highly prestigious Annabelle hotel in Paphos for over 25 years. Thane Prince, weekend cook for the Daily Telegraph, coaxed the secrets out of him on a visit to the island in search of an answer to a persistent question she could not make go away: why had Cypriot cuisine been neglected in the Mediterranean food-bible boom? Out of the happy coincidence this sunny, meaty, fruity, nutty, syrupy, doughy book was born, which, with the help of Henri del Olmo’s most refreshingly un-quaint photography, is making us look at this intriguing little place and its culinary peculiarities all over again with hungry eyes.

The pork kebab, for example, is not simply abandoned to its desiccated fate on the charcoal, but is pampered for a few hours in a lemon, olive oil, garlic and oregano marinade bath in the fridge. Vegetarians unusually get a look-in, with a vegetable version involving much thyme, and olive bread (elioti) gets friskier with chopped tomatoes, spring onions and pine nuts. Cuttlefish learns to swim with broad beans, peppers, aubergines, fresh rosemary and dill, while red mullet is rescued from the cheap oil treatment with spring onions, spinach and lemon-parsley sauce. Lamb Akamas involves sliced white bread, walnuts, pistachio nuts, tomatoes, olives and even dried lavender among other surprising ingredients and the humble lentil soup gets a generous splash of cream. And, frankly, partridge with caramelised figs and commandaria sounds a darn lot better than some stodgy turkey stuffing. If, after all that, you’re still craving for sweets, you might as well let the honey do its job.

Food from the Village is published by Thanos Press and is available from Moufflon Bookshops (£14.20)

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.