Garlic

Garlic's name in Greek, skordo, gives skordalia its name directly: the dip is built almost entirely around raw garlic crushed to a paste and beaten into mashed potato with olive oil, and it is meant to be genuinely assertive rather than a background note. Outside that one dish, though, Greek cooking generally uses garlic with more restraint than its reputation abroad might suggest.

In most braises and ladera dishes it plays a supporting role to onion rather than leading, a clove or two added partway through cooking rather than the generous handfuls that some other Mediterranean traditions favour. Crushing garlic to a completely smooth paste with a pinch of salt, using the flat of a knife or a mortar and pestle, rather than leaving it chopped, is the technique that matters most in any dish where raw garlic is the point, since chunks of raw garlic hit far more harshly than a worked paste.

Raw garlic's sharpness is genuinely difficult to walk back once added to a dish, which is why most Greek recipes calling for it, skordalia included, suggest starting with less than seems necessary and building up to taste rather than committing to a fixed quantity upfront.