Cucumber

Cucumber's job in Greek cooking is almost always the same: to cool something else down. It is the second half of tzatziki alongside yogurt, it sits raw in wedges on a Greek salad, and it turns up sliced alongside grilled meat and fried cheese specifically to cut the richness of what it is served with.

The one technical point that matters is water content. Grated cucumber for tzatziki carries far more liquid than it looks like, and salting it and squeezing it dry in a clean tea towel or fine sieve for at least ten minutes before mixing is what keeps the finished dip thick rather than watery. Skipping this step is the single most common reason a homemade tzatziki turns out runny.

Greek and Cypriot cucumbers tend to be a shorter, thinner-skinned variety than the waxed cucumbers common in some other markets, with fewer seeds and a milder flavour, which is worth knowing if a milder, less bitter result is wanted and only a larger, thicker-skinned variety is available.