LETTER 05 · MEMORY & FOOD

I miss Greek tomatoes

There are things you don't realise belong to home until you live somewhere else.

There are things you don't realise belong to home until you live somewhere else.

For me, one of them is a tomato.

That sounds ridiculous.

It is only a tomato.

But if you grew up in Greece, you know exactly what I mean.

A Greek tomato in summer doesn't behave like a polite little ingredient.

You cut it and the juice runs everywhere.

It smells before you taste it.

It is warm from the sun.

It needs salt.

Maybe some oregano.

Olive oil.

And bread, because leaving what is at the bottom of the plate would be completely unacceptable.

That can be lunch.

I don't need anything cleverer.

Living in London has made me understand how much memory is connected to taste.

You can buy tomatoes here.

Of course you can.

Some are very good.

But sometimes I don't want a good tomato.

I want that tomato.

The one my memory has apparently spent years improving.

And there is no point arguing with memory.

Memory always wins.

When I think of Greek summer food, I don't think first about complicated cooking.

I think about ingredients that don't require you to do very much to them.

A tomato.

A fig.

Watermelon after lunch.

Bread.

Olive oil.

A little salt.

Things that taste as though the sun has already cooked them for you.

Perhaps that is why Mediterranean cooking has travelled with me so strongly into motherhood.

Food is one of the ways I keep Greece inside our home.

It is one of the ways I give Greece to my children.

I want them to understand that feeding somebody is never just feeding somebody.

A table is where people stay.

It is where conversations become longer.

Where another plate appears even though everybody said they were full.

Where somebody cuts something in half and gives you the better half without mentioning it.

That is part of home too.

And perhaps that is why a tomato can make you terribly homesick.

Because you're not actually missing the tomato.

You're missing the table.

The heat.

The people.

The sound outside.

The afternoon that came with it.

You are missing an entire place disguised as something you can hold in your hand.

So if you are in Greece and somebody puts a tomato in front of you that is still warm from the sun, please don't take it for granted.

Cut it.

Salt it.

Put some olive oil over it.

Get some bread.

And eat one for me.

I'll be in London trying not to be jealous.

— From London, with Greece in mind.