Cyprus Meat and Fish

Meat dishes tend to predominate, both on and off resort menus. Kleftigo (Gr} or kup kebap/firin kebap (Trk) is arguably the national dish, a greasy, sometimes gristly slab of lamb or goat roasted with vegetables until tender in an outside domed oven with a small opening -you see these next to virtually every farmhouse. However, it has begun to go out of fashion, with Cypriots in the South preferring the less fatty souvla, large chunks of lamb or goat on a rotisserie spit. Lamb chops -payidhakia (Gr) or pirzola (Trk) -are small by British or North American standards but tasty. Souvlaki or sis is pork or lamb arrayed in chunks on a skewer and grilled; you'll be asked how many smiles (skewers) you want. In the North, you will frequently encounter the set-price full kebab, where succulent grilled titbits - sausage chunks, lambs' kidneys, baby lamb chops -are relayed to your table piping hot.

The Venetians introduced domesticated pigeons to the island, and they're much tastier than you'd imagine; quail (ortichia) is the gamier alternative, and both seem much more common than chicken. Afelia -pork chunks in red wine and coriander seed sauce -is, unsurprisingly, found only in the non-Muslim Greek community; sheftalia/seftalya, seftali kebap -small rissoles of mince, onion and spices wrapped in gut casing -are found all over the island.

Moussakas/musaka, aubergine and potato slabs overlaid with mince and White sauce in its truest form, is better on the Greek side; kamlyank is a meatier Turkish aubergine dish without the potato or sauce.

Fish is not as plentiful as you'd think around the island, nor as cheap. The best places to get it are around Polis in the South and on the Karpaz (Karpas) peninsula, or at Bogaz, in the North; otherwise you can safely assume, even at the most expensive restau- rants, that all seafood has been flash-frozen and shipped in from elsewhere. Squid and cod, for instance, come from the North Sea, king prawns from fanns in Thailand or Bang- ladesh; the fraudulent passing off of shark as swordfish is not unknown, and farmed pass and gilt-head bream are indistinguishable from those on offer in British supermarkets. If you want to be sure of having fresh, local fare, best stick to the humbler species such as sargoz or woppa. Maridhes, the least expensive fish in the South, are traditionally sprinkled with lempn slices, rolled in salt and then eaten whole, head and all. Barracuda and sokan are best grilled, and either full-sized grouper or its smaller cousin lagosllahoz, usually batter-fried, must be well done to be appetizing. In North Cyprus, sokan, mercan, karagoz and barbun are the best-value species. Across the island, squid and octopus are also standard budget seafood options.