Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Greece

Mezze, moussaka & myths

Chicken with lemons and raisins

Fricassée of spring Lamb

Mezze (Greek hors d'oeuvre)

Postcards from Greece

Sauté of spring lamb with apricots

Octopus

Ragout of octopus

Beef with green olives

Grilled fish with lemon sauce

Pasta rice with spinach

France

Toujours le garlic

Aubergine caviar

Fish soup

Provençal omelette cake

Postcards from France

Gratin of mussels

Sauté of new potatoes

Red mullet

Stuffed vegetables

Blanquette of vegetables

Turkey

Turkish delight?

Stuffed fish baked in filo pastry

Floyds turkish barbecue

Sauté of chicken

Minced beef and spinach

Spain

Lunch in the afternoon

Catalan broad bean salad

Red peppers stuffed wih salt cod purée

Partridges cooked in vinegar

Moorish Andalusian endive salad

Black pudding and sausages with almonds

Casserole of vegetables

Lobster in chocolate sauce

Grilled sardines

Tinto verano

Iced gazpacho

Paella

Fish baked in salt

Postcard from Spain

Muscle beach mango delice

Morocco & Tunisia

Of camels and couscous

Lamb couscous with vegetables

Brik

Sauté of beef

Mechouia

Preserved lemons

Lamb tagine with prunes

Egypt

Mummies, molokhia & monuments

Egyptian fish tagine

Braised okra

Rice with prawns and chickpeas

Egyptian green soup

Tahini sauce

Baked fish

Tabbouleu

Sauté of chicken

Egypt, a Postscript

Index

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

The primary flavours of the Mediterranean are olive oil, thyme, rosemary, basil, garlic and saffron. The main vegetables are aubergines, peppers, tomatoes and courgettes. All these are overlaid with a mist of lemon, nuts and spices from the East – nutmeg, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, turmeric, chilli flakes, sea salt, black pepper, caraway and others. Rice, pasta, pulses and grains are preferred to the potato. Artichokes, spinach, celery leaves and mint are mixed with crunchy greens for salads.

But the Mediterranean, which laps the shores of Europe, Asia and Africa, is populated by Christians, Arabs and Jews, by Latins and Moors, some meat eaters, some vegetarians, some pork lovers, and some nut lovers. Some of the countries are highly developed and have refrigerators and microwaves; others have simple clay pots with a few glowing embers of charcoal. Irrespective of creed, culture and cash, everyone shares a common love of food, whether it be fish, goat, lamb, pigeons and all manner of fowl, or fruit.

The recipes in this book are authentic, although I have modified some. Many of them come from cooks who have never seen a television cookery show or read a cookery book. Indeed, many of them cannot read. They have never weighed or measured an ingredient in their lives, and may well time the cooking from the cockerel’s early-morning alarm call to the moment the shadow falls over the pigsty. As a consequence, these recipes require the reader to apply simple common sense to the quantities, the sizes of pots, the volume of liquid and the length of time things take to cook. Remember, this is not a workshop manual. Cooking is not a science. Cooking is a way of demonstrating your appreciation of nature and making a gift of kindness and love to those whose company you enjoy. And the love of good food, generosity and hospitality is central to the Mediterranean people’s way of life which, like olive oil, that indispensable liquid that flavours, cooks and heals, is as old as time and civilization, whether you are squatting on a rush mat in a hut on the banks of the River Nile or dining in the ornate splendour of Monte Carlo.

Note on the recipes

In most of the recipes in this book, quantities and timings are approximate. The style of cooking in the countries around the Mediterranean is completely different from that of northern Europe. People tend to live in extended families, and so they cook for eight to ten people. There is not a cook in the Mediterranean area who would give you a recipe for, let’s say, moussaka, or beef stifado, for four people. They simply make up a pot of the stuff, with enough ingredients to go round. Any left over would be reheated and served the next day.

It is important to note that the recipes in this book are not ‘dinner-party dishes’. Although they are all prepared with love and the freshest ingredients, they are a casual, everyday part of Mediterranean life. Family or guests invited to a birthday or a Sunday family reunion will not be expecting a formal four-course meal followed by coffee and mints. Right, having said all that, I will repeat myself, just to be on the safe side: common sense must be applied to the quantities, cooking times and serving of these dishes. Finally, every time a recipe requires olive oil, this means olive oil. There is no substitute for it if you wish the dish to taste authentic – except where I suggest peanut, sesame or walnut oil!

Greece
Mezze, moussaka & myths

There is much more to Greek cooking than moussaka, stuffed vine leaves, greasy kebabs stuffed into pitta bread pockets with chips, salad and mayonnaise, and the ubiquitous Greek salad with a slab of feta cheese sprinkled with dried oregano. This may be what most of us encounter on our Greek holidays but if you search around a bit you will discover some very fine dishes indeed. Take the aubergine, for example. It’s essential in a moussaka but there’s much more to it than that. You could write a whole book about cooking aubergines the Greek way. They can be made into a wonderfully refreshing salad, or stuffed with minced mutton or lamb and roasted in the oven, or deep-fried in batter, or fried in olive oil and served cold with a marinade of lemon juice, finely chopped garlic and parsley, coriander, fennel or dill. Courgettes can be given the same agreeable treatment as aubergines, and vegetables à la grecque (cooked in a lemon and olive oil marinade) are really most enjoyable. Baby vegetables such as leeks, onions and artichoke hearts can all be cooked in the same way as mushrooms à la grecque.

In Greece they love to cook with fresh herbs, such as coriander, dill, parsley, mint and spring onions, combined with lemon juice (I swear that Greek lemons produce some of the finest juice I have ever encountered). They like to use coriander seeds and cinnamon to flavour their dishes, and occasionally cumin. At its best, Greek cooking is light, refreshing, tasty and tangy – for example, lamb stewed with Cos lettuce or green peas, flavoured with a wonderful lemon sauce, is an exquisite dish. Stuffed vine leaves don’t have to be briny, vinegary things with congealed rice inside. Like cabbage leaves, they can be stuffed delightfully with a mixture of rice, fish or meat, maybe pine nuts, sultanas or currants.

chicken with lemons and raisins

In this dish, which is really a simple chicken cooked in tomato sauce, we can see the influence that the Moors have had on Mediterranean cooking by the use of fruits and spices.

1 | free range chicken (how heavy? I hear you cry! Well, I don’t know. If there are 2-4 of you, get a small one; more of you, get a great big one or two small ones! If the chicken has its liver and heart, so much the better)
| olive oil
2 | onions, finely diced
4 | fat cloves of garlic, very finely crushed
about ½ bottle | white wine
about 500ml/18fl oz | tomato sauce (buy this in a carton)
4 | juicy lemons, cut in half, pips removed, then very, very, very finely sliced
1 | cinnamon stick
about 225g/8oz | raisins, currants or sultanas
1 | sprig of thyme
4-5 | clovessea salt and black pepper

Joint the chicken, bones and all, into manageable morsels. In a large, shallow sauté pan or a deep frying pan, heat up some olive oil. The pan needs to be big enough to hold all the pieces of chicken in a single layer. Fry them on both sides until golden brown, then add the onions and garlic and brown them very lightly. At this stage, if you have the giblets from the chicken, add them and fry them too. Now pour in the wine so that it half covers the chicken and boil furiously until it has reduced, then add enough tomato sauce just to cover the chicken. Keep on cooking for a few minutes, then add the lemons, cinnamon, raisins, thyme and cloves. By now, since the chicken went into the pan, it will have been cooking for about 25 minutes. Stir the whole lot together and let it simmer gently until the chicken is tender and you have a fragrant, spicy, lemon-tanged tomato sauce.

I am not the kind of cook who offers (quote) serving suggestions (unquote!). It is up to you, but I think pasta, rice, vermicelli or salad would be good with this. Because, you see, this kind of dish, which is cooked with vegetables and fruit, just doesn’t need a plate of carrots, green beans or similar, next to it. A few chips and olive oil might be quite nice, however!

A NOTE ON HERBS

As a general rule, branches of dried herbs such as thyme and rosemary work best when barbecuing and grilling because they are cooked into the overall flavour; they are also very good in casseroles and stews that require long cooking. However, when the herb is used as an edible garnish (i.e. not cooked) or only cooked very lightly, fresh herbs are essential.

fricassée of spring lamb with green peas and egg and lemon sauce

Egg and lemon sauce, known as avgolemono, is served with vegetables, meat, chicken and fish throughout Greece. Since this is a spring dish it is essential that the lamb is young and fresh, not frozen. Throughout the Mediterranean, this fricassée would be prepared with milk-fed lamb at best and, at worst, meat from a very, very young sheep.

SERVES 6
about 1.5-2kg/3¼-4½lb | leg of spring lamb (you might have to buy 1½ legs)
175g/6oz | unsalted butter
500g/1lb 2oz | baby leeks (the thickness of your average fountain pen), the white and green parts cut into 4cm/1½ inch batons
½ | hearty, dark-green Cos (romaine) lettuce, ripped into rough pieces
1.5kg/3¼lb | small frozen peas (yes, frozen, because unless you have access to the tenderest of fresh garden peas, this dish will be ruined by those tough old things the size of golf balls, so-called fresh garden peas from the average greengrocer; also, frozen peas contain their own moisture)
1 | bunch of fresh dill or coriander, or parsley or even chives, chopped
| sea salt and black pepper
FOR THE SAUCE:
1 heaped tbsp | butter
1 tbsp | plain flour
juice of 5 or 6 | lemons (possibly less if you are making this on holiday where lemons grow; possibly more if you are using the slightly less juicy ones at home)
2 | eggs and
4 | egg yolks

Cut the lamb off the bone into nice bite-sized pieces. Melt half the butter in a cast-iron, copper or other heavy-based wide casserole and fry the lamb pieces until they are browned on all sides. Because it is spring lamb it will not take very long to cook, so just brown it lightly. Then stir in the leeks and cook for a few minutes to soften them a little. Throw in the roughly torn up lettuce, then the frozen (yes, still frozen) peas and fresh herbs. Add one or two cups of water and the remaining butter, then season with salt and pepper. Stir the whole lot round so everything is combined, put the lid on and simmer gently for about 30-45 minutes. Inspect and taste the dish from time to time to make sure that the peas are defrosting, the lamb is cooking and all the juices are amalgamating.

When you think the lamb is almost cooked, strain off about a cupful of the cooking liquid, leaving only a small amount in the pan. Now, in a separate heavy-based pan, make the sauce. Melt the butter, add the flour and whisk well, so that you have a golden, but not burnt, roux. Whisk in the cooking liquid you have taken from the lamb and peas until you have a thick, smooth sauce. Now, over a low heat whisk in some lemon juice until it has almost the consistency of custard. In a jug, lightly whisk together the eggs and egg yolks. With the heat switched off, gradually add the beaten eggs to the sauce, whisking furiously, until you have what does, in fact, look like custard. If the pan is too hot or you whisk too slowly, you will curdle the whole thing, so do be careful.

Put the lamb and peas on to a serving platter and pour over the egg and lemon sauce.

mezze (Greek hors d’oeuvre)

In the South of France salads of dandelion leaves are common but in Greece dandelions are more likely to be stir-fried with wonderful olive oil, lemon juice, cinnamon and salt and pepper. The bitterness of the leaves is mellowed by the sweetness of the oil and spiked with the cinnamon and lemon juice.

It is quite hard to find these dishes properly cooked. Although the Greeks have all these wonderful recipes there don’t appear to be many people interested in producing them. The basic taverna idea is a good one: a dozen or so stews, soups or ragouts, plus a selection of vegetable dishes, are cooked in the morning and kept warm all day in a bain marie. This means quick eating, plus you can see what you’re getting, but by the evening the dishes tend to be a little stale and overcooked. A good tip is to eat in tavernas at lunchtime but in the evenings go to places that cook to order on the barbecue. In this way you can enjoy barbecued octopus or a variety of fresh fish or shellfish or excellent – sometimes – lamb souvlakia (kebabs), or offal kebabs, or freshly cooked minced meat balls and delicate, tiny lamb chops simply grilled and eaten with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Of course, one of the great joys of eating in Greece is when you come across a restaurant or bar that takes trouble over its mezze. These are the Greek hors d’oeuvre, or the Greek tapas if you wish. The ancient Greeks claimed to have invented mezze, although visitors to Athens thought it was just an excuse for the Athenians’ miserliness. The ancient Greek writer Lyceus reckoned an Athenian dinner was an insult. He felt affronted to be offered five or six small plates, one with garlic, another with some sea urchins or a little piece of marinated fish or a few cockles, possibly a few olives. But it was the beginning. Today, of course, mezze can be truly pleasing. At its simplest it might be a bowl of pickled vegetables such as carrots, chillies or cauliflower and a dish of nutty, delicious olives, or it might be a mini feast of vegetables à la grecque or little filo pastry pockets filled with cream cheese and spinach, or tzatziki – a wonderfully refreshing yoghurt dip – or stuffed vine leaves, or the oddly named aubergine salad, which is in fact a beautiful purée of baked aubergines, or taramosalata which, sadly, throughout Greece is pretty insipid, artificially coloured goo. You’ll find my recipe much better than anything you will eat in Greece – ha! Or raw fish marinated with lemon juice and olive oil, or just little pieces of marinated grilled octopus. Much of Greek cooking is done by rule of thumb and experience rather than by careful measuring. Greeks (like most Mediterranean people) don’t cook dinner parties for two, or four, or six, like people in northern Europe do. They cook as much as the dish will hold for as many people as they think can eat it. So you must, I warn you, when you attempt any of these recipes bear in mind that all measurements, times and weights are approximate. Please use common sense.

Olives are indispensable to the Mediterranean table.

mushrooms à la grecque

750g/1lb 10oz | very small mushrooms (the size of an average olive)
juice of 4 | lemons olive oil
1 | large onion, very finely diced
750g/1lb 10oz | tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and finely diced
1 level tbsp | of equal quantities of crushed peppercorns and coriander seeds
2 or 3 | bay leaves
1 | sprig of thyme
1 tbsp | tomato purée
1 | bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
1 | sea salt

First, clean the mushrooms if necessary – if you decide to wash them, make sure you dry them very carefully – then marinate them in the lemon juice for 10-15 minutes.

Secondly, heat some olive oil in a shallow sauté pan or a large, deep frying pan, add the onion and tomatoes and fry swiftly for a minute or two. Then add the peppercorns and coriander seeds, bay leaves, thyme, tomato puree and possibly a dash of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes until you have a nice tangy sauce. Now add the mushrooms and lemon juice and cook for 5-6 minutes more or until the mushrooms are cooked and the sauce has reduced a little. Add salt to taste. Tip into a serving dish. When cool, chill in the refrigerator. Serve with chopped coriander leaves sprinkled over.

The mushrooms will be even better tomorrow than today.

cream cheese and spinach in filo pastry

The Greeks love these little triangular, puffed, savoury pastries. They are very easy to make and you can use any kind of filling you like. For example, spicy minced lamb in a thick tomato sauce with coriander and chillies; purée of salt cod; or cooked, chopped courgettes instead of spinach. The minced lamb filling would be good with a bowl of that much-loved Greek yoghurt dish, tzatziki (see opposite).

900g/2lb | fresh spinach
| a large knob of butter
| grated nutmeg
225g/8oz | top-quality cream cheese
3 | eggs
3 tbsp | chopped fresh mint
1 packet | filo pastry
| melted butter for brushing
| a little beaten egg to glaze
| sesame seeds
| sea salt and black pepper

Cook the spinach with the butter and no water whatsoever in a pan with a lid. Leave to cool, then strain off the liquid and chop the spinach finely. Season with salt and pepper and a little nutmeg. Beat together the cream cheese and eggs, then mix this with the spinach and mint.

To make each pastry, take a sheet of filo pastry and cut a strip about 10 x 20cm/4 x 8 inches. Lay it on a work surface and brush with melted butter. Before you add the filling, turn the top left-hand edge of the pastry over to meet the right-hand straight side (this forms the triangular shape), then unfold it. The mark left will show you where to put the filling. Place a tablespoon of the filling to the right side, refold the corner and seal the edges. Repeat the triangular folding until you have a complete packet. Brush with beaten egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds, place on a buttered baking tray and bake for about 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6. Serve hot or cold.

tzatziki

This wonderfully refreshing sauce, dip, starter, call it what you will, is very versatile. It can be used as an accompaniment to simple lamb souvlakia (kebabs), spread on little squares of bread as a snack with your apéritif, or served as a dip to go with mixed, raw vegetables (crudités) such as crisp batons of carrot, celery, spring onion etc.

1 | cucumber, unpeeled
500g/1lb 2oz | best-quality Greek yoghurt
6 | garlic cloves, very finely chopped, then crushed into a paste
| olive oil
| wine vinegar
| sea salt

Cut the cucumber lengthways in half, remove the seeds with a teaspoon and discard. Grate the cucumber on a cheese grater, put into a colander and sprinkle with sea salt. Leave to drain for 30 minutes-1 hour. Give it a good shake to make it as dry as possible.

Put the yoghurt into a bowl, whisk in the garlic paste and add the cucumber. Stir in well, then stir in a dash of olive oil and a dash of vinegar. Taste it and add a little more olive oil and vinegar if necessary (it must not be too runny). Refrigerate until required.

taramosalata

It is hard to find good taramosalata even in Greece. It is invariably made with anonymous fish roe, potatoes, ordinary oil and pink colouring and is, quite frankly, revolting! My version is expensive, excellent and simple. As with all the preceding mezze, this goes well with nicely charred, grilled pitta bread. It will taste even better if you can toast it over a charcoal grill.

2 | fat cloves of garlic, peeled
100g/4oz | smoked cod’s roe – the best has the skin still attached, which needs to be painstakingly peeled off
| finest-quality olive oil
| lemon juice
| some fine, fresh white breadcrumbs

First purée the garlic in a food processor, then add the cod’s roe little by little until they are combined. As the food processor goes whizzing around, slowly and evenly pour in a thin stream of olive oil until you have a smooth paste. Next add some lemon juice to taste. Switch off the machine; you may find some olive oil has floated to the top. Switch on the machine again and add some breadcrumbs, a few at a time, until the excess oil has been absorbed.

stuffed vine leaves

Because these are fiddly to prepare, and because they are best eaten cold, it is wise to make them the day before you plan to eat them.

You could add finely minced lamb or beef to the filling, cooked with a little tomato sauce like a dry bolognese sauce.

50-60 | vine leaves (available in vacuum packs or, if you are lucky, loose in brine from a good specialist food shop)
2 | large onions, finely chopped
1 | bunch of peppery spring onions, very finely chopped.
1 | good bunch of fresh dill, very finely chopped
1 | bunch of fresh mint, finely chopped
1½ cups | rice, well rinsed, drained and dried olive oil
juice of 4 | lemons
500ml/18fl oz | tomato passata
| sea salt and black pepper
| lemon wedges, to serve

Blanch the vine leaves a few at a time in lightly salted boiling water, then cool them in a bowl of cold water. Drain and lay out flat on a work surface.

Mix together all the remaining ingredients except the lemon juice and tomato passata, adding a dash of olive oil. Place a small amount of the mixture on each leaf, turn in the sides and then roll them into little sausage shapes. Next, coat the base of a large saucepan with olive oil and cover the bottom with spare vine leaves, unfolded. Then arrange the stuffed vine leaves in circles to cover the bottom of the pan and build up layers until you have used them all up. Add the lemon juice and enough water just to cover the vine rolls. Find a plate or bowl that fits exactly inside the saucepan. Put this on top of the vine rolls to stop them floating up during the cooking process.

Bring to the boil and then simmer gently until the liquid has disappeared and the rice is practically cooked. If there is any liquid left at this stage, carefully strain it off. Now add the tomato sauce and continue to simmer until the rice is fully cooked. Leave to cool and then refrigerate overnight in the saucepan (do not attempt to turn them out while they are warm as they will break up into a shambolic mess!).

Next day, arrange the stuffed vine leaves on a serving dish in a single layer and pour the sauce over. Grind some coarse black pepper over the lot and serve with wedges of lemon.

marinated fish

Here’s one for those of you who happen to like a spot of fishing. If you catch a couple of fish, it doesn’t matter what sort they are at all (of course, you can buy fish from the fishmonger, ho, ho, ho!). But remember that the fish must be very fresh, since it isn’t cooked.

Fillet and skin the fish. Cut the fillets into bite-sized pieces, wash them and dry very carefully. Put them into a shallow earthenware or similar dish, squeeze over some lemon juice and add a dash of white wine vinegar so that the fish is half covered. Chuck in some finely chopped garlic, a couple of crushed peppercorns, a couple of very finely chopped chillies and a dash of olive oil, plus a bit of salt and pepper. Leave in the fridge for one hour and then turn the fish over to marinate the other side. Leave it in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours (preferably overnight). Serve with fresh bread. The fish is raw but ‘cooked’ by the marinade.

aubergine salad

Another dish that benefits from being prepared the day before as it needs to be chilled and, anyway, the flavours mature nicely this way. Serve spread on cubes of country bread as part of a mezze.

6 | aubergines
2-3 tbsp | tahini (sesame paste)
| lemon juice to taste (at least 2 lemons)
about 4 tbsp | olive oil
6 | tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and finely diced (to skin them, drop them into rapidly boiling water for a few seconds; the skins will break and they will be easy to peel)
2 | spicy spring onions, very finely diced
1 | bunch of fresh coriander, very finely chopped
| sea salt and black pepper

Dry-roast the aubergines in a very hot oven until the skins are blackened and charred. Leave to cool. Cut them in half, scrape out the pulp and drain through a fine sieve to extract any remaining moisture. Put the strained aubergine pulp and the tahini into a food processor and whizz to a coarse purée. Tip into a bowl and whisk in some lemon juice and olive oil (it should not be too runny). Then stir in the tomatoes, spring onions and coriander and season to taste. Chill overnight.

POSTCARDS FROM GREECE
Corfu, April

The journey to Corfu, our first destination in Greece, was miserable. We got to Malaga airport at about 7am with two huge tin trunks full of all my cooking equipment, only to find we had to pay about £700 in excess baggage. Then we discovered that the trunks could not be booked through to Corfu because we had to fly from Malaga to Madrid, Madrid to Athens and Athens to Corfu, and there were no porters in Malaga or Madrid. If we had had to unload the trunks we could not possibly have shifted them. It took four of us to get them on the plane in the first place. However, we finally made it to Corfu at about 1 o’clock the next morning, the Greek Orthodox Easter Saturday, only to find that it was absolutely freezing. We had expected weather similar to Spain and had packed accordingly. To make matters worse we were checked into the most appalling excuse for a hotel I have ever seen in my life. It had no bar, no lift, no lights, the lavatory ran incessantly, the taps dripped and the beds were slatted wooden affairs with thin sponge mattresses. There were no power points, no services or facilities of any kind, except for a breakfast of stale bread and jam plus dreadful coffee made from ground roasted acorns. I can tell you we were feeling very sorry for ourselves, and to make matters worse everybody in the pub before we left had said, ‘Oh, you don’t want to go to Corfu, it’s full of lager louts!’ I was very much in mind of Bob Dylan’s song, ‘You’re lost in worries, it’s raining and it’s Eastertime too.’

I had a cooking sketch to do that afternoon but because a huge Easter procession was planned, all the shops were shut. Acquiring food was really quite difficult, and trying to buy pullovers and waterproof jackets was a problem, which luckily my wife,Tess, overcame.

It never rains but it pours.

In between downpours the sun shone brightly, while a very cold wind, which blew in from Albania just a couple of miles across the water, whistled through the narrow back streets of Corfu Old Town. We weren’t due to start filming until about 11 o’clock, so we wandered about the streets and discovered that the Old Town is a charming place: wonderful Venetian architecture, cheerful cafés, bars and restaurants, and an absurd concrete cricket pitch set in the middle of the park for the expats.

As it got closer to 11 o’clock the streets, which at 9 o’clock had been completely empty, began to fill with people – first a few hundred, then a few thousand, then tens of thousands – all lining the route for the grand procession that was to take place to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. In cynical mood, I took my place in the jostling crowds, waiting without any enthusiasm whatsoever for the band to begin to play – some shambolic, out-of-step, scruffy group of people in motley uniforms, banging drums and missing notes on trumpets, I assumed. But to my great delight and excitement I was completely wrong.

The parade was spectacular. The first band came into view and into earshot through a very narrow street, fanning out as the street widened. Its members were dressed immaculately in blue and gold uniforms with polished silver helmets, and playing the most moving music – classical in style but presumably religious. They were succeeded by sombre-looking priests dressed in black with curious stove-pipe hats, flanking a man, berobed but not of the cloth, as it were, who was carrying a huge crucifix draped with a picture of Christ. Then came more processions – of priests, a female choir, scouts, girl guides and children in neat white socks, blue pullovers and blue shorts, and more bands – some dressed in crimson and again playing spectacularly moving music.

Pot throwing during the Easter Parade in Old Corfu.

It took an hour for the entire musical procession to pass where I stood, and as it fanned out into the wider street the crowd moved in behind it, following it round to the cathedral. After the service, the citizens of Corfu celebrated the Christian resurrection with a pagan ritual. In the times of the ancient Greeks, whenever someone died a member of the family would stay behind as the body was taken away and, as the cortege moved off, would throw an earthenware pot from the house so that it smashed on to the street, warding away evil spirits from the dead and bringing good fortune to the bereaved. Today, of course, this is just a piece of folklore but it’s mightily impressive. Many of the houses in the Old Town are three or four storeys high, all with balconies. Everybody gathers on their balconies and hurls huge clay pots on to the road below. I was doing a piece to camera, pretending to be a famous war correspondent explaining this ritual, when I was actually saved by a Greek policeman who rugby-tackled me out of the path of a down-coming missile. It was damned funny! The crew enjoyed it.

For the next 24 hours, virtually every street in Old Corfu was covered in shattered clay pots. It was like walking on a gravel beach and was hugely good fun. And the sun was shining now, and it really was a pretty place. I believe there were 40,000 people in the streets that day, all crossing themselves as the various parts of the procession passed, and virtually all of them were Greek. The celebration was no cheapskate performance put on for tourists; it was done out of deep belief and longheld tradition.

A priest relaxes, while awaiting the Easter parade.

We broke for lunch and I found a little taverna opposite a vegetable shop that had just opened – luckily, so I could buy food for my cooking sketch. It was a curious restaurant, openfronted, very friendly but they didn’t have a kitchen. All the food came from a sort of shed down an alleyway. We had a wonderful plate of grilled octopus, shrimps and sardines and, as it turned out, the only good moussaka that I was to eat on my whole trip. Really delicate, fresh, finely minced lamb topped with a light, cinnamon-flavoured béchamel sauce and served with a crunchy salad of sweet onions, tomatoes, excellent olive oil and good feta cheese. It was delightful and our spirits were high because the procession had been so dramatic – full of pathos yet also a celebration.

That evening there was another Mass, and at 11 o’clock the priests, maybe 120 of them, sort of marched, sort of shambled, sort of glided even, from the church to the bandstand in the park, where all of the bands from the morning were gathered. After a blessing on the tens of thousands of people present, the bands began to play and the music was simply fantastic. Then, as one, they stopped and at that moment a huge red crucifix was switched on, high up on the hill. Simultaneously the night sky erupted in explosions of brilliant fireworks.

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