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Meze is the keynote of Cypriot cooking – not a single dish, but a massive medley of little samples including delicious dips; tasty prawns, whitebait, squid and other fish; sausages; grilled cheese; and fruit or vegetables that are in season. It’s all accompanied by local wine, beer or ouzo .

This hearty dish is lamb baked in the oven in its own juices until it is so tender that it falls off the bone. Often served with chunky potato chips, it is a good choice for cooler weather.

The simplest and most delicious of Cypriot dishes, souvla is made with chunks of lamb, skewered and grilled over charcoal, then served with French fries and a salad of lettuce or cabbage, tomatoes, onions and pickled hot peppers.

Lean cubes of tender pork, marinated overnight in red wine and flavoured with cumin, cinnamon, coriander and pepper are the mainstay of this quintessentially Greek Cypriot casserole dish.

These tasty mini-burgers made with minced pork and aromatic herbs often appear as part of a meze array or as an appetizer, but are equally good as a main course, when they are usually served with salad and the inevitable French fries.

Cypriots and Greeks both claim to have invented this filling, oven-cooked casserole. Moussaka is often the home-cooked main dish at family occasions such as weddings, christenings and saint’s days, and every Cypriot cook has his or her own recipe. The basic ingredients are minced beef or lamb cooked with herbs, red wine and spices between slices of aubergine (eggplant), then covered with a creamy egg and cheese sauce.

Like souvla , only smaller, souvlaki is the native fast-food of the island. It’s the ideal snack to fend off hunger pangs when exploring on foot. There are simple, friendly grill-cafés in every town and village where you can pick up a handful of these skewer-grilled cubes of lamb in a pocket of pitta bread, with salad and pickled peppers, to eat on the move.

This bean salad is a hearty, meat-free option for vegetarians, made with cold black-eye beans mixed with plenty of green vegetables – the exact mix depends on the time of year – olive oil and plenty of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Cypriots say this dish, made with vine leaves stuffed with minced pork or lamb and rice, is at its best in spring when the young leaves are at their freshest and most tender. In winter, cabbage leaves are sometimes used as a substitute for this reason.

On the Turkish side of the “Green Line”, this mélange of aubergines (eggplant) baked in oil with a delicious sauce of garlic and fresh tomatoes is called imam bayildi . In either language, it is one of the tastiest vegetarian options that Cyprus has to offer.