Lentils

Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods of the eastern Mediterranean and they remain the cheapest hot meal in the Greek repertoire. Fakes, the soup, is made with small brown or green lentils simmered with garlic, bay, a little tomato and olive oil, and it is finished not in the pot but at the table, with each person adding red wine vinegar to their own bowl to taste.

That vinegar is not a garnish. Lentils dressed with vinegar are traditionally eaten on Good Friday in many parts of Greece, a deliberately plain and slightly bitter meal for the most solemn day of the Orthodox year, and the habit of reaching for the vinegar bottle at any lentil dinner comes directly out of it. Fakoryzo, lentils cooked together with rice, is the other common form.

Small brown and green lentils keep their shape through a long simmer, which is what a bowl of fakes wants, while red split lentils dissolve completely and are used where a thick puree is the aim instead. Lentils need no soaking, but salt and vinegar both toughen the skins, so they go in only once the lentils are already soft.