© Myrisa Luke

Pistachios have a soft, yellow protective skin with a deep pink blush when freshly picked.  Inside, the nuts are soft and tender.  Walking in the September sunshine with a group of friends towards the Lions Square, in Heraklion (www.heraklion.gr/en), we stop at a fruit stall.  Also on display, here on market street, are fresh green walnuts, ripe peaches, prickly pears and different varieties of grapes.

© Myrisa Luke

Fresh, good quality local produce is the secret of delicious Cretan food.  Translucent amber honey drizzled over the thickest, creamiest yoghurt.  Pillar box red tomatoes, popping with colour and full of flavour.  With extensive fruit and vegetable cultivation and over 30 million olive trees, Crete is justly called the garden of Greece.  Olive oil, from towns like Kolymbari and Sitia, is famous.

For 40 centuries, olives, cereals, pulses, fruit and wild vegetables or horta have been the main foods eaten on the island, with small portions of lamb, milk, game and fish.  In Chania (www.chania.gr/en), Dr Kostas Oikonomakis, formerly at the National Agricultural Research Foundation, talks in depth about Cretan food, the ingenuity of its cooks and tells us, “We eat everything presented by the gods.”

In restaurants and tavernas, dishes of mezedes (appetisers) appear, toasted with raki and accompanied by Cretan wine.  Plates of dolmades, graviera cheese, and kalitsounia pasties filled with cheese or greens are followed by boureki, (courgette, cheese and potato pie), grilled lamb, pork and chicken, fish and shellfish, served with Cretan salads and greens like stamnagathi anointed with olive oil.

© Myrisa Luke

If elsewhere the words octopus and tender don’t often go together, they do at a seafood restaurant in lively Chania harbour, where we also have delicacies of stuffed courgette flowers and sea urchin eggs.  On the seafront, pork and chicken gyros kebabs are sampled appreciatively, with thick, soft-centred, crisp-skinned Cretan potato chips.

From the main building at the Aquila Rithymna Beach Hotel, near Rethymnon

( www.aquilahotels.com ), we look down at the beach where a Loggerhead Turtle’s nesting site is carefully protected.  As dhakos (cheese and tomatoes on crusty bread) is served during lunch in the restaurant, Giorgos Barelier explains that this is one of Crete’s contributions to Greek cuisine.

© Myrisa Luke

Preceded by the largest king prawn I have ever eaten, the main fish course is a whopper of a sea bream.  It’s grilled whole and brought to the table to be admired before being returned to the kitchen to be taken off the bone.
Crete evokes memories of many enjoyable meals.  According to legend, the god Zeus was born in the island’s Dikteon Cave; clearly, gods deserve the best of everything.

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