Sage

Faskomilo is drunk far more often than it is cooked. Greek sage, a shrubby relative of the common garden sage with softer, greyer leaves, grows wild across the mainland and the islands and is picked, dried and kept for tea rather than for the pot, brewed with honey and taken for a sore throat or an unsettled stomach. Most of what Greece sells abroad still goes into herbal tea.

Cooking with it is a smaller story. Crete throws sage onto the coals when smoking pork for apaki, so the smoke carries it rather than the pot, and elsewhere a leaf or two goes into white beans or a slow pork braise, doing the same background work bay does. It is used dried rather than fresh, since the fresh leaf is furrier and more camphorous than most cooks want.

The sage sold in British and American shops is usually the common culinary sage, which is stronger and more astringent than the Greek plant. It works as a substitute in cooking if the quantity is cut back, but it makes a harsher, less floral tea. Dried sage loses very little over a year, so a bunch brought back from Greece and hung in a dry cupboard keeps perfectly well.