Sardine

Sardeles are the cheap, oily, strongly flavoured fish that Greek summer cooking genuinely runs on, sold by the kilo and eaten within hours of landing. The Gulf of Kalloni on Lesvos produces the best known sardines in the country, protected under their own name, and they are treated there in a specific way: salted for a few hours only, then served raw with olive oil and lemon.

Everywhere else they are grilled whole over charcoal, scaled and gutted first, or baked in a tray with sliced tomato, onion and a good deal of oregano. Some cooks leave small sardines ungutted on the grill on the grounds that it keeps the flesh moist, which is a matter of taste rather than technique and easy enough to try both ways once.

Oily fish deteriorate faster than white fish, so sardines are worth buying on the day they will be cooked rather than keeping overnight in a fridge. Stiff bodies, bright unclouded eyes and scales that still cling are the signs to look for, and any sardine with a slack belly or a strong smell is already past the point of being worth cooking.