Ostensibly, I’m hopping on a ferry to Sicily’s remote Aeolian islands for a holiday: four days of sea swims, lazy pennichelle (naps) and endless coupes of mulberry granita. This is how I pitch it to Layla, my long-suffering summer holiday companion and necessary translator when southern dialects get too thick.

Secretly though, I’ve half-written an escapade into caper territory in my mind already. I have long been obsessed with the flavour of these salty, savoury, wild little seed pods, and I’ve decided I’m going to spend long, happy afternoons scrambling through the hills picking them with local farmers in the name of research.