Peach

Greece is one of the largest peach growers in the world and the biggest exporter of tinned peaches in Europe, almost all of that crop coming from the plains of Imathia and Pella in Macedonia, around Veria and Naoussa. Very little of it reaches a Greek home kitchen, where the peach is a short high-summer fruit bought ripe from a stall and eaten within a day or two.

In the kitchen the treatment is deliberately minimal. Peaches are eaten fresh in high summer, sliced over thick strained yogurt with honey for breakfast, or cooked into a light kompostes, poached in syrup with a strip of lemon peel. They are also preserved as a spoon sweet in the same way apricots and quince are, though they hold their shape less well.

Buy by smell rather than by colour: a peach picked hard will soften but will never gain any sugar, so a fruit with no scent at the stem is not going to improve. Keep unripe peaches at room temperature, since the fridge turns them mealy and dry, and only chill them once they give slightly under a thumb.