Prawns

Garides covers everything from the tiny Symi shrimp, eaten whole with their shells and heads still on straight out of the fryer, to the large king prawns grilled over charcoal or baked in tomato. Size decides the dish entirely, and the two ends of that range have almost nothing in common beyond the single name they share.

Garides saganaki is the best known preparation: prawns cooked in a tomato sauce sharpened with ouzo, finished with crumbled feta and baked briefly until the cheese softens without fully melting. It is served in the small two-handled pan it takes its name from, and it is eaten with bread rather than rice, since the sauce matters as much as the prawns.

Buy raw prawns rather than pre-cooked ones, and keep the heads and shells, since almost all the flavour in a prawn sauce comes from them rather than from the meat. Prawns need two or three minutes at most and travel from translucent to opaque to tough very quickly, so they go into a sauce near the end and not at the start.