Chilli

Greek cooking is not hot food, and chilli belongs to specific regions rather than the whole country. Boukovo, the coarse flakes crushed from sun-dried red peppers, is the northern Greek form and the word a Greek cook is most likely to use; a fresh hot pepper is a kafteri piperia. Neither has anything like the reach of oregano or pepper across the repertoire.

Where it does appear it appears clearly: tirokafteri, the whipped feta dip whose name means burning cheese, spetsofai, the Pelion dish of country sausage and peppers, and the bean cooking of Macedonia and Thrace. Fresh chillies are used more sparingly still, usually sliced raw over a finished dish or fried whole alongside sausage rather than simmered into a sauce from the start.

Boukovo and standard chilli flakes are not the same thing. Boukovo is coarser, redder and fruitier, closer to a dried sweet pepper with heat behind it than to a straight burn, and a recipe asking for it will taste thinner if a very hot commercial flake is swapped in measure for measure. Like paprika, it scorches in hot oil, so it goes in with liquid rather than at the start.