Cyprus.

Start with the fat and the acid, because almost everything on a Cypriot table passes through them. Olive oil is used with a generosity that surprises visitors — poured over boiled pulses until they gleam, brushed on grilling meat, spooned into a bowl of greens as the dressing rather than an ingredient in one. Lemon does the balancing: squeezed over souvla straight off the skewer, whisked into avgolemono for soups, cut into wedges that arrive with practically every plate. Vinegar takes over where lemon would be too soft, most famously in the caper and pickle culture of the villages.

The spice signature is where Cyprus separates from mainland Greece. Coriander seed, crushed rather than ground so it keeps its citrus pop, is the island spice — it defines afelia, seasons olives, goes into sausage. Cinnamon appears in savoury contexts constantly: in the mince for makaronia tou fournou, in a kleftiko parcel, in tomato sauces where a Greek cook might use it more shyly. Cumin, mahlepi (ground cherry-stone kernels) and mastic resin from nearby Chios carry the baking traditions, and dried mint outranks fresh mint in most kitchens.

Halloumi deserves its own paragraph. It is a brined sheep-and-goat cheese folded around dried mint, and its unusually high melting point means it can be grilled, fried or dropped into soup and still hold its shape while turning soft and squeaky inside. Cypriots eat it at breakfast with watermelon, grill it as a meze, grate the matured version over pasta the way Italians use pecorino, and stir cubes of it into trahanas. Anari, the ricotta-like whey cheese made alongside it, fills pastries and gets drizzled with carob syrup.

Grains and pulses hold the middle of the table. Pourgouri — cracked wheat cooked pilaf-style with vermicelli and tomato — is the default starch in villages where rice was once a luxury. Black-eyed peas, chickpeas, lentils and broad beans are boiled plainly and finished with oil and lemon, a habit reinforced by the Orthodox fasting calendar, which removes meat and dairy from roughly half the year and gave the island a deep, unforced vegan repertoire long before anyone marketed it as one.

Meat cooking is overwhelmingly about fire and time. Charcoal is the default: the foukou, a long horizontal rotisserie, turns fist-sized lamb or pork chunks for hours; sheftalia rolls baste themselves in melting caul fat over the same coals. The clay kleftiko oven, sealed shut with mud, is the opposite discipline — no smoke, no attention, just eight hours of trapped steam. Fish plays a smaller role than the coastline suggests, usually fried whole or grilled simply, with the meze table doing most of the entertaining.