Raisins

Raisins are simply grapes dried in the sun, and Crete and the Peloponnese have both produced them at scale for a very long time. Greek cooking uses them mainly on the sweeter side of savoury: not as a dessert ingredient in their own right so much as a way of putting a little sweetness inside a pastry, a pilaf or a cake that would otherwise be flat.

Cypriot baking leans on them hardest. Raisins go into the cheese and mint filling of flaounes at Easter, and into kolokotes, the Lenten hand pies of pumpkin, coarse bulgur and cinnamon where the sweetness plays against the earthy pumpkin. On the mainland they appear in fanouropita, the eggless spice cake, and in kollyva, the boiled wheat prepared for Orthodox memorial services.

Buy them unsulphured if you can, and soak dry, hard raisins in warm water, orange juice or a little brandy for ten minutes before they go into a batter, since otherwise they pull moisture out of the crumb around them. Tossing them in a spoonful of the flour keeps them suspended rather than sunk on the bottom of a cake.