Stories from a Greek table and that food advice

 "Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Simple dish, 2026

It’s the sort of advice that could roll off the tongue of any one of a range of TV cooks or from the pages of those glossy recipe books.

And just for good measure the message is accompanied by heaps of pictures of far away places and the odd real story of authentic farmers in remote villages as yet untouched by the modern world.

Put all of that together and some happy suburban chef will not only offer up the meal to stun friends and family but regale them with tales of cooking over a stove in a rural village.

Always it will be from a friend of a friend  who passed through the place  before the young villagers disappeared off to the towns and cities.

Leaving the old, less adventurous and traditionalist to live amongst the abandoned cottages falling into ruin.

Abandoned in Assos, 2019

And that brings me tonight’s pasta dish. 

It took roughly 15 minutes to make and transported me back to a tiny taverna off the beaten track on an adventure across one of the Greek islands.

Ten minutes out from the Piraeus, bound for the islands,1981

Back then the holidays like the food we ate were simple.  

You flew into Athens on a midnight flight, waited around the Piraeus till the ferries started and by degree island hopped.

After which you caught a local bus or splashed out on a taxi.

On one occasion the bus set us down in a small town square, and that was where we came across the restaurant.  

It was small, the menu limited to what had been brought in from the fields and the local wine came to the table in an old recycled juice bottle.

The place to eat, beyond the square by the sea, 2017

And on that day in that taverna  what was on offer was pasta tossed in tomato sauce with a handful of olives.

Simple quick and perfect.

And this evening because l had some tomatoes and olives I replicated that dish.

Pasta, tomatoes, olives, capers and cauliflower, 2026

The tomatoes made a light sauce to which I added the olives a handful of capers and some peas, and a bit of  cauliflower. 

It was essentially just bits waiting to be used up, and probably the next time because the bits will be different the dish will also go off in a new direction.

And so to the pasta.

Our cupboard is full of different types and while I know each should be used for different dishes  I just please myself, and so on a whim, I used my new favourite, a thick long pasta with a hollow centre, called Bucatini.  It has that added attraction that bits of the sauce end up in the hollow tube.

It wasn’t quite that long past Greek meal, but it delivered that mantra “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; scenes from the Piraeus, some Greek islands, and that pasta dish, 1981-2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson