For the past couple of years the family holidays have been spent in Greece, a country with which, gastronomically, I have a love/hate relationship. At first I love it. Then I hate it. I like a good, creamy non-DayGlo tarama and a basket of fresh hot bread with which to shovel it away.

I think a bright, spiky tzatziki is a thing of beauty, and I barely need to tell you how happy bits of chargrilled animal on sticks make me. The thing is, they only make me happy for about three days. On day four I open the menu and sigh. By day five I am repeating the famous dictum by the American food writer Jeffrey Steingarten: never take advice on matters culinary from a people who 'pickle their cheese and put tree sap in their wine'.