Cypriot cuisine

Baking börek is not rocket science. Any idiot can do it. It is a trap for girls. Have you ever seen a man say he will learn how to make börek so his marriage can last? Börek is a Turkish pastry. We even have a song for it: ?Börekler açar?m sana,? (I will make böreks for you) by Nazan Öncel. I was going to give the link to the song but I listened to it and decided not to.

The Greek crisis has ignited a taste for feta cheese and olives, says London-based Greek businessman Panos Manuelides. His company, North London-based Odysea, offers cheese like sheep and goats’ cheese Kefalotyri that is growing in popularity in the UK day by day.

In 1999, you could buy:

Cigarettes – 400 drachmas
Cheese pie – 100 drachmas
Frappe coffee – 500 drachmas

Basic wage was 170,000 drachmas (498 euros)

In 2015, you can buy:

Cigarettes 3.70 – 4.70 euros
Cheese pie – 1.5 euros
Freddo or frappe – 304 euros

It was not so much a straw in the wind as a cheese in the wind. It's a chewy, salty cheese that is delicious grilled: halloumi, as they call it in the Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus, or hellim, as it is known in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.

The European Commission published on Tuesday the application to register the names ‘Χαλλουμι’ (Halloumi)/‘Hellim’, in Greek and Turkish, as Protected Designations of Origin for a cheese produced in all the territory of the island of Cyprus.

In the protracted negotiations to bring together the Turkish and Greek communities of Cyprus, few would imagine that a rubbery cheese would make its mark.

But on July 17, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced the sides had reached a ?common understanding? on registering halloumi cheese as a ?protected designation of origin? (PDO) product under EU law.

Bulgarian Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova has opened a three-day tourist fair in the French capital Paris. The official slogan of the event is ''Bulgaria - Culture and Traditions''.

Leave it to an expatriate Greek, especially a restaurateur, to come up with a unique way to trump up business. For Dimitris Kotsalas, 62, Monday’s crucial Euro summit was the inspiration for dishes named after some of the protagonists in the current “Greek issue” drama — Greek PM Alexis Tsipras, Dutch FinMin and Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem and even Greek FinMin Yanis Varoufakis.

The national food of Greece, souvlaki, is not as Greek as people believe. Greece’s daily To Vima noted that 190,000 tones of the 300,000 tons of meat used annually to create souvlaki is imported. The cost amounts to half a billion euros.

As peace talks resume in Cyprus and hellish arguments in Turkey are fired up over the Cypriot issue, it was the right time to revisit the island.