Paprika

Paprika comes into Greek cooking through the north, where Macedonia and Thrace grow the red peppers that are dried for boukovo and for the sweet ground paprika sold in local markets. The Florina pepper is the best known of these. Sweet paprika is used more for colour and gentle warmth than heat, dusted over fava, over tirokafteri, and over grilled meat and potatoes as they come off the heat.

Hot paprika does a different job and in a Greek recipe is usually standing in for boukovo, the coarse dried chilli flakes of the north, which are fruitier and less even in texture than a fine ground powder. Both turn up in sausage dishes such as spetsofai, in bean stews, and in the spicier end of the cheese dip family, where the name kafteri means hot.

Paprika burns fast. Dropped into hot oil it scorches within seconds and turns bitter, so it is safer added to a pan off the heat, or stirred into liquid, or scattered over a finished dish. Colour is the honest guide to freshness: a bright red powder is still worth using, while one that has faded to brick or brown has lost most of what it had.