Artichokes truly embody the essence of the Mediterranean: sentimental and sensual but at the same time hardy and a model of perseverance. They totally dry out in the summer, only to bud miraculously from the earth with the very first rains, their lush leaves emerging like artesian wells from the soil.

They grow very easily, or so you might be told.  Artichokes don’t need much water, Greeks will tell you, neither do they require extra care; they simply take root, never to leave your garden.  Unfortunately, not in our garden! We have been trying to grow them for years, and we actually managed to get a glorious crop of the luscious large and meaty globe artichokes that thrive in the Peloponnese.

I rarely roast chicken, since here on the island we get the worst and cheapest kind from the mainland, or the old-fashioned, tough local roosters that need to cook slowly in a broth…

Costas picked me up at the airport when I returned from my US trip, last week, and while we waited for the ferry we got this free-range chicken at the well-stocked Lavrion supermarket, near the port.

I haven’t roasted a bird since Christmas, I realized. Looking around in the kitchen I decided to make my basic flavoring paste using preserved lemons—I have lots from last year and I am ready to make more—garlic of course, and also oranges. Costas has filled our large wooden trough with delicious fruits from our neighbor Maria’s garden. Our overgrown rosemary bushes need trimming, so I used some of the fragrant sprigs in my roast.

As a kid cauliflower was one of my least favorite winter vegetables. The stench, as it cooked in a large pot of water for considerable time—my father liked it well-cooked, almost mushy--lingered for hours, if not days in the kitchen of our Athens apartment. Of course my mother didn’t know that the longer you cook the cauliflower and its cousins-- the cabbage, the Brussels spouts etc.--the worse they smell. My father, who knew nothing about cooking, insisted that she should add celery leaves in the water; but we often didn’t have any to add, or my mother knew that it wouldn’t eliminate the smell, so this became the cause for a shouting match. No wonder neither I nor my sister looked forward to cauliflower salad.

When I started to cook in my kitchen I tried to learn more about each of the vegetables, especially about the ones that I remember as challenging. There was no instant internet search then. I had to look up books and ask my scientist friends. I found that steaming the cauliflower florets—something not common in traditional Greek kitchens--was a big improvement; very little smell. But roasting it in the oven was a revelation! Practically no smell, especially if I added a few branches of thyme or oregano; and the roasted cauliflower was delicious, even without dressing!

White beans, similar to Italian cannellini – a New World legume – along with lentils and chickpeas were a staple of the impoverished Greek diet until the '70s. In my first grade school book, published right after the Second World War, there was a description of fassolàda (bean soup), often referred to as 'the Greek national dish,' surprisingly without tomato. I was shocked, as fassolàda is always made with tomatoes, or 'golden apples' as they were initially called, from the Italian word pomodoro. Tomatoes became a common household ingredient all over the country at the beginning of the 20th century, but they were slow to penetrate fassolàda, apparently. The fact that a tomato-less recipe for fassolàda endured for half a century after the introduction of tomatoes to the Greek kitchen shows the age and strong traditions behind the dish.

But times do change, and in this case for the better. Fassolàda means tomatoes, which 'make everything taste better,' as my grandmother used to say. My addition to the family recipe is the inclusion of turmeric, which deepens the flavor of all legumes. My mother added orange peel, when available, to most dishes with tomatoes, inspired by the days she had spent in Sparta in the southern Peloponnese, an area filled with orange and olive groves. She later started to add mustard to her fassolàda, claiming that it made the beans easier to digest. I have my doubts about the apothecary’s claim, but mustard certainly enhances the soup's flavor. I sometimes add chopped preserved lemon instead of the orange, omitting of reducing the amount of salt.