Where to stay

Prices quoted are for a double room based on two people sharing with breakfast, unless otherwise stated.

Bellapais Gardens Hotel (see also Where to Eat) Friendly, family-owned hotel in the shadow of Bellapais Abbey, set in well-tended gardens. Plenty of helpful information is available on local activities, including walks. Rooms have attractive furnishings, a terrace or balcony, and some, a sea view. Doubles from £56. Crusader Road, Bellapais; 00 90 392 815 6066, http://bellapaisgardens.com

Hotel Nostalgia Pension-style hotel located in the old quarter, just a few minutes from the harbour, serving its own organically grown vegetables and eggs. Doubles from £34. 22 Cafer Pasa Sok, Girne, Kyrenia; 00 90 392 815 3079, http://nostalgiaboutiquehotel....

Dome Hotel On the seafront close to the harbour, with some attractive ‘retro’ fittings and a slightly old-fashioned air. Mentioned in Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons. Double rooms from £110. Old Town, Kyrenia; 00 90 392 815 2454, http://dome-cyprus.com

Korineum Golf Resort Spacious, with good facilities, including a spa. Its well-maintained golf course is set against the stunning backdrop of the Kyrenia Mountains’ ‘Five Fingers’. Double rooms from £55. Esentepe, Girne, Kyrenia; 00 90 392 600 1500, http://korineumgolf.com

The Savoy, Ottoman Palace & Casino Centrally located, with friendly service and comfortable rooms. Double rooms from £130. Sehit Fehmi Ercan Sk. No.5, Girne; 00 90 392 444 3000, http://savoyhotel.com.tr

Travel Information

Currency is the Turkish lira. (£1 = £2.83). North Cyprus is 2 hours ahead of GMT. It enjoys a typical Mediterranean climate, with long, hot and dry summers from mid-May to mid-October, and mild and wet winters from December to February. Autumn and spring are short. The average temperature in July and August is 36°C, rising to 40°C; in the winter months, the lowest temperature is around 15°C.

GETTING THERE
Atlas Jet (http://atlasjet.com) flies direct from London Stansted to Ercan in four hours and 10 minutes.

RESOURCES
The North Cyprus Tourism Centre (http://simplynorthcyprus.com) has plenty of information to help you plan your trip.

FURTHER READING
Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell (Axios Press, £4.79). A vivid description of three years spent in Cyprus. Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus by Tabitha Morgan (I B Tauris & Co Ltd, £19.50). A detailed portrait of colonial life.

Where to eat

Prices are per person for three courses with half a bottle of wine, unless otherwise stated.

Bellapais Gardens Hotel Chef Selim Abit is a member of Slow Food and sources his ingredients locally when he doesn’t produce them himself. Very good traditional food, including vegetarian dishes, in an elegant setting. The wine list includes interesting own-label blends produced in the region. A reservation is recommended in summer. From £35. Crusader Road, Bellapais; 00 90 392 815 7668, http://bellapaisgardens.com

Calamari Well-prepared seafood and good mezze in a beautiful setting at the water’s edge – a good spot to view the sunset and dramatic coastline. From £30. Marasal Fevzi Cakmak, cad. Lapta; 00 90 542 850 2662

Efendi Chef Mehmet Tezumen and owner Andy Radford met in London, where Mehmet was a chef of high standing. Fine cooking and an interesting wine list, including Anatolian wines, in a 400-year-old Ottoman house with a summer courtyard and live music on Saturdays. Reservations essential in summer. From £25. 11 Kamil Pasa Sokak, Kyrenia; 00 90 542 884 7417

Kibris Evi Friendly and unfussy, with views across the harbour. Fresh foods and traditional tastes prepared with care. From £12. Kalesi Yani, Kale Sol, Kyrenia; 00 90 533 830 3333

Kybele Light meals or drinks in a peaceful setting next door to the abbey. From £10. Bellapais Abbey, Bellapais; 00 90 392 815 7531;http://kybele.biz

Niazi A large and efficient restaurant known for its kebabs and other meat grills. Mezze include cabbage salad in yoghurt dressing, cacik and beetroot; if you like desserts, leave room for the syrupy ekmek kateyif. From £18. Opposite the Dome Hotel, Kyrenia; 00 90 392 815 2160, http://niazis.com

Sevener Home-made mezze, pickles, pide and pirohu (cheese-stuffed pasta). From £13. Alsancak, Kyrenia; 00 90 392 821 2606, http://sevener-group.com

Food Glossary

Börek

Small pies with a cheese, vegetable or meat filling.

Cacik

Mezze salad of shredded cucumber, garlic, mint and yoghurt.

Cakistes

Cracked green olives with coriander seeds, garlic and olive oil.

Dolma

Courgette flowers or vine leaves stuffed with hellim, or rice and herbs.

Kadeyif

Small pastries of shredded filo dough filled with almonds, walnuts or pistachio and cinnamon, and soaked in rosewater syrup. Ekmek kadeyif replaces filo with bread. Both are served with kaimak (thick cream).

Kofte

Grilled or fried rissoles of minced meat, bulgar and spices.

Limonata

Lemonade made with fresh lemon juice and sugar.

Locoum

Turkish delight.

Manti

Meat-filled pasta squares in a light meat broth. Pirohu are cheese-filled.

Mezze

Small sharing plates of pickles, olives, vegetables and sometimes meat or fish, served preceding a meal.

Pasteli

Sesame-seed and honey candy bar, also made with pekmez (carob syrup).

Pasturma

Highly seasoned, air-dried cured beef.

Raki

Aniseed liquor that turns cloudy when poured over ice or water is added.

Seftali kebab

Minced pork or lamb sausage flavoured with parsley and onion, wrapped in caul fat, and served with pitta bread.

Stefado

A method of cooking that uses equal quantities of meat and onions, which are slow-baked with red wine, spices and red wine vinegar.

Tanar

Cheese. Cascaval is a farmhouse variety, dried in the sun; it’s eaten with olives or used to make flaounes (sweet cheese rolls). Hellim is a semi-hard halloumi that is made from goat’s or ewe’s milk and especially good grilled and sprinkled with fresh lemon juice. Nor is a ricotta-like whey cheese that is sometimes aged, used sprinkled on pasta or in bread.

Turkish coffee

Made to order in a small, lipped pot with a long handle (cezve). Ask for sekerli (sweet), orta (medium sweet) or sade (no sugar). In Ottoman days, it was normal to request a little water to be added to the coffee on serving – if it bubbled, it contained poison.

Food and Travel Review

Cemaliye Abit’s large table groans under the weight of her family’s own-cured black olives and mezze pickles: tiny peppers, slender stalks of wild asparagus and celery rib, along with mangallo (sea holly), young almonds and caper shoots – colourful, highly flavoured appetite teasers to be slowly savoured.

And that’s just the start. More substantial dishes follow: eggs with fresh wild asparagus (in season for only a few weeks), stefado (meat stew), and homemade pasta (ev makarnasi) with aged hellim (halloumi cheese) and garden mint (nane). There’s slow-cooked beef sautéed with onions, garlic and tomato sauce; purslane salad (semiz otu); and a magnificent lamb sausage (bumbar) coiled in a shallow pan. ‘Because of the skill and work it requires, it’s rarely made now,’ explains her son, Evran, the manager of Bellapais Gardens Hotel.

Her generosity is both extraordinary and yet for her region, totally typical. On hearing of our visit, Cemaliye – whose other son, Selim, is the hotel chef – insisted we come to her house for lunch. In her inimitable fashion, she was demonstrating the Turkish expression tanri misafiri. Loosely translated as ‘God’s guest’, it sums up the way a visitor to a family home in North Cyprus is received. Regardless of who you are, the door is always open and your needs will be met.

Bellapais (Beylerbeyi), Cemaliye’s village – a short drive from Kyrenia (Girne) – is one of the many settlements dotted throughout the foothills of the mountain range running west to east in an unbroken ridge along the north coast. Its name is derived from its lovely 12th-century Augustinian monastery, Abbaye de la Paix, which was founded by monks fleeing Palestine after the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin. They weren’t the only outsiders. Cyprus, the Mediterranean’s third-largest island, has attracted invaders for thousands of years. In antiquity, its most persistent enemies were from Anatolia, then the Crusaders used it as a base for forays into the Holy Land, while Venetian traders, appreciating its strategic importance, happily exploited its abundant supply of fruit.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Ottomans, who had occupied Cyprus since 1571, lost the island to the British, until, in the early Sixties, the Cypriots claimed independence. This lasted until 1974, when Turkey invaded and the island was partitioned. Greek-speaking Cyprus (part of the European Union) had long been the more developed, but the north is catching up. Thanks to this eventful history, the roots of the Cypriot kitchen lie in Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Armenia, Italy and France. Over the centuries, its cooks have developed a unique cuisine that, in its methods and ingredients, is shared by all islanders, Greek- or Turkish-speaking, or Maronite. Any differences lie in cultural mores and religious festivals.

At the heart of North Cyprus is the lovely old port town of Kyrenia. Behind its small, natural harbour and imposing Byzantine-Venetian castle is a labyrinth of narrow, Ottoman-built streets. Here, in a building that once housed camels, chef Mehmet Tezumen combines his London-learned cooking skills with the wonderful, fresh produce of his birthplace. Efendi, his charming restaurant, serves finely prepared traditional dishes – slow-cooked lamb, calamari – alongside ones he loved to make during his British career. Now, years later, his menu makes good use of his much-loved hobby, tuna fishing: an elegant and pretty tuna fillet in a spiced coriander and ginger crust, enhanced by a red-onion confit, was melt-in-the-mouth delicious.

Although undoubtedly changed over the past 30 years – most of the waterfront buildings are now restaurants or cafés, or small-scale tour operators – the harbour is still a jewel, and a picturesque place to pause and contemplate life (though possibly not on a Saturday night). Mehmet Gurdeniz, bartender in To Limani (‘The Port’), one of the older bars, has been serving the favourite local tipple, brandy sour, for 35 years: ‘First, I put ice in the glass and dip the rim in sugar,’ explains Mehmet, demonstrating a well-practised art with a flick of his wrist. ‘Then I give four shakes of Angostura bitters, add three fingers of local brandy and one of homemade limonata, top up with soda water and decorate with a slice of orange or lemon.’

Delicious. Apparently, Egypt’s King Farouk thought so, too: it is said the drink was invented for him when he visited Cyprus in the Fifties for a conference. Known for his love of a tipple or two, he couldn’t indulge when other Arab leaders were present, so would ask an aide to fix him a drink that looked like fruit juice.

Kyrenia also has plenty of small, friendly cafés where the food tastes fresh and is made with great care. In Bereket Firini you’ll find traditional breads: pilavuna (with cheese and raisins), tahinli (with tahini), gorek (handsome and huge), gulluri (hard, or double-baked, bread) and simit (an attractive ring), and snacks, pide (bread topped with pastirma – air-dried cured beef – and hellim) and kofte. Alternatively, you could stop for mezze in Kibris Evi, just above the harbour: green salad with mint, kofte with sumac-coated onion and parsley, celery pickle, almonds, olives, hummus, cheese-filled börek (pastries), cacik (tzatziki) and lady’s thighs (chicken legs) with raki or wine.

Not far away, in Kyrenia’s fruit-and-vegetable market, local cooks are very happy to see the first of the season’s molohiya (mallow) stacked high. Similar to nettles in appearance and used fresh or dried, it grows semi-wild in much of the eastern Mediterranean, but the velvety quality it imparts when slow-cooked in stews or pies is particularly favoured in Cyprus. It’s strawberry time, too, and a stallholder, noticing our admiration, offers us generous samples: ‘They are from my village, Yesilirmak,’ he explains, ‘near a river that flows into the sea. In spring, my strawberries perfume our air.’

Producers such as Mustafa Yalyali of Famagusta – rightly proud of the variety and quality of his tomatoes – and food artisans such as sweet-maker Faiz Kanli, come from all over North Cyprus to this large and busy Wednesday market. Faiz follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, and his classic sweets – grape mash with walnuts, almonds or pistachios; walnuts soaked in zivania (a distillate from the remnants of the grape harvest) and pasteli, made with pekmez (carob syrup) – are very popular. On another stall, two types of olive oil are on sale – green (yesil zeytinyagi), made with young olives, and dark (siyah zeytinyagi), made in November from those just about to fall that are then dried in the sun, allowing them to mellow and shrivel. Dark olive oil – green-black, with an aroma reminiscent of sesame – isn’t to everyone’s taste, but those who love it crave it. Further along the rows, handsome, yellow-gold Cyprus potatoes, cauliflowers, apricots and other early-summer vegetables and fruits, share table space with late-season oranges and lemons, between suppliers of cheeses and island breads.

It’s an inspiration for the senses. But to really unlock the heart of North Cyprus, you have to escape Kyrenia and travel out to the surrounding villages. Back at the Bellapais Gardens Hotel, Selim Abit – who could easily be mistaken for a younger version of Omar Sharif – is delighted to have found kolokas at that morning’s market. The root vegetable, native to Southeast Asia, is reputed to have been served at the 12th-century engagement party of Richard the Lionheart in the island’s St Hilarion castle. Selim peels the tubers with dry hands (moisture turns them sticky), stands them on end and cuts them as if chipping wood. After frying in olive oil with similarsized pieces of chicken breast, and simmered in tomato sauce, they’re finished with fresh celery leaves before joining other delicious traditional dishes on the menu: kup kebab (lamb or goat with potatoes and herbs, slow-cooked in a clay oven), stifado, and an omelette made with hellim and mint he had picked that morning.

The villages’ cooks and food producers are adept at taking advantage of the seasons’ bounties. In Karaagaç (‘black tree’), the rocky, herb-covered hills provide a rich food supply for goats and, in spring, before temperatures start to soar, many households produce cheese. Sidika Meseli gently heats the milk provided by her husband, shepherd Akin Meseli, in a large pan. As it turns into curds (solids) and whey (the remaining liquid), she kneads the curds with her hand until they form a stringy mass. ‘I have to work quickly,’ she explains, filling a dozen moulds, ‘otherwise they’ll spoil.’ The pace slackens a little as she leaves some of the moulds to drain for 15 minutes, before transferring the cheeses to containers and covering them with whey – a mildly acidic preservative – and a little dried mint, to aromatise and flavour. The remaining hellim is drained for an hour longer, after which she liberally scatters sea salt over them, splits each one and fills it with more mint. These are stored for up to three years. Five litres of milk are needed to make one litre of hellim, so a large amount of whey is produced. But it’s not wasted – it becomes the raw material for nor: a ricotta-like cheese made by adding yeast to hot whey and scooping up the billowing curds as they form.

Close by, Asaf Meseli and his wife, Saval, make rich, dark-brown pekmez from the dried pods of their carob trees. Known as ‘black gold’, the carob is the second most important cash crop on Cyprus after the olive. It was valued by the British as an easily transported source of iron for their troops. Just as the trees require TLC (otherwise they turn male and bear no seeds), making carob syrup requires work: Saval grates the hard, dried pods and Asaf boils the mash with water for at least ten hours before straining it.

Saval is also preparing a large pile of young green walnuts for a sweetmeat or macun. ‘I only pick them when I can pierce them right through with a needle,’ she explains, ‘otherwise the nut is starting to form and it’s too late.’ Soon, too, her tiny green figs will be ready to turn into syrup-drenched macun; any remaining are left to ripen – the white ones large and luscious, the black ones smaller and firmer – and eaten straight from the tree. Beneath a John the Baptist tree in bloom, we drink homemade limonata and linger over a delectable, orange-gold pumpkin macun made the previous summer.

Along with generous fruit harvests, the local mountains are home to three castles: St Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara. Established by the Romans and strengthened by the Crusaders, Byzantines and Venetians, they were designed to protect the island from invasion by Arabs based in Anatolia and, later, the Ottomans. St Hilarion is home to abundant flora, including mandrake, a powerful painkiller and narcotic. Pink star thistle and wild cabbage would have helped with sickness among its residents, while wild rosemary, oregano, thyme, fennel and capers would have been useful in its four kitchens.

Further west, the Romans took advantage of the many springs in the foothills above their settlement, Lambousa, and built a complex and remarkable system of water channels leading down to a fish farm on the Mediterranean. They’re no longer used by the residents of Lapta, the village perched on natural terraces nearby, but the 170 springs still provide the perfect growing conditions for vegetables, pomegranates, and plum and citrus trees.

In Lapta harbour, Yusuf Akandag is happy with the day’s catch: baby shark, orfos and lagos (both groupers) and stongilos (pickerel). Unless the weather is poor, he or his father take out his small boat every single day – just as his grandfather did. Fish are plentiful in summer and autumn, and he sells his catch directly to a wholesaler who supplies local restaurants. His favourite species is lagos, ‘cooked on charcoal, in the oven – any way at all’. When we enjoy it later, in Calamari restaurant, prepared in a clay pot with mushrooms, onions and a topping of hellim, we understand why. The chef, Sefyi Kose, from Tunceli, a region of Turkey famed for its good cooking, had a sure hand with other fish dishes, too – grilled sinarit (sea bream), levrek (sea bass) and balik sis (fish on skewers), lightas-a-feather fried kalamar as well as a flavourful stuffed version.

The long coastline and herb-covered hills of North Cyprus provide plenty of opportunities for foraging - a long-established source of food everyone takes for granted. In Lapithi, hotel and cookery school owner Fethi Ozbogac speaks passionately about the local environment, conjuring up images of mushrooms that appear like magic on a sunny winter’s day after rainfall. As we forage with him, we discover young shoots of wild beetroot, bladder campion, mallow and thistle, all delicious in pies and omelettes, along with hawthorn bushes (for jam) and trees laden with sour plums. Caper bushes thrive in the sea air and we gather their tender, purple-tinged shoots for Fethi’s mother, Meryem, to turn into a mezze pickle. She shows me how to remove their thorns – ‘Now I’ll leave them for three days in water and two weeks in sea salt and vinegar,’ she explains.

Not far away, in the western village of Akdeniz, Nursel Sadrazam makes heavenly crusty loaves for her family in her outdoor oven. She bakes them in batches of 20, using a starter yeast kept alive since her husband’s grandfather’s time. ‘In the old days, they mixed the starter with sea salt and kept it in an earthenware container,’ recalls her husband, Ahmet, ‘but now I keep it in the freezer.’ He starts the fire with dried clumps of wild thyme, bringing it to the required temperature with olive and carob wood. Bread has been made this way in this ancient landscape – a palaeontologist recently passed by the village to check some mammoth bones – for thousands of years. The first breads would have been made from barley, still grown in the surrounding fields as fodder, but wheat came early to Cyprus and, in antiquity, the island was regarded as the bread basket of the eastern Mediterranean.

North Cyprus still bakes a variety of delicious breads, savoury and sweet, sometimes flavoured with olives, cheese, herbs, raisins, tahini or walnuts. Along with the colourful abundance of foods, enticing aromas and friendly tables, they all contribute to a warm sense of welcome. But the moment when ‘tanri misafiri’ is unmistakably present is during the offering of macun. These lovely treats require care, time and skill on the part of the cook. Among the most exquisite are those made with lemon or bitter-orange blossom, rose petals or young walnuts, or flavoured with tiny green oranges, under-ripe figs, or coils of orange peel. Add a cup of Turkish coffee and a glass of water and the offering to the visitor is complete. You have truly become ‘God’s guest’.