Living in the back of beyond in rural France means that you have a Michelin 3-star restaurant within 30 minutes’ drive. But not along broad, straight roads. Nope, get ready to thread your way along narrow, winding roads through classic Corbières scenery: gorges with streaks of pale rock interspersed with the deep green of holm oak, Aleppo pines and broom. Lower down, the gnarled fingers of pruned vines grasp at empty air. Be ready to pull over at the narrow bridges if you see something coming the other way. As you get nearer the restaurant, the reassuring signs are more numerous: yes, it really is up this hill, round this bend, through this gorge. You imagine the Japanese tourists who have vowed to point-score every 3-star restaurant in France thinking, “But it can’t be up here!” Later I laughed at a Trip Advisor review claiming that you need to be a rally driver to get there. No, these are normal back-country roads that locals drive along every day to get to work.

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You arrive in the village and find the gates, decorated with giant metal fish skeletons and tongue-in-cheek sardine-can lids rolled back around their keys. Hmm, somehow the style of this metalwork looks familiar, and inside we recognise the work of Robert Cros, a sculptor from a neighbouring village: giant bent nails, catapults, light-switches with correspondingly giant price tags. The restaurant has got bigger since we were last there 10 years ago, gobbling up the eponymous well that used to stand in the courtyard, now under glass in the bar area. Another TripAdvisor laugh: a Parisian, after slagging off the food, appears to claim that “quelconque” villages in the Aude populated only by peasants and with inadequate car parks shouldn’t be allowed to have smart restaurants; they should be in a place that is more “historique et exceptionnel”. Paris, presumably.

At the table, we are served tiny mises en bouche, on the inevitable piece of slate. We can’t remember the detailed descriptions reeled off by the waiter, but we taste them all in the order he suggests. I particularly love the two crispy bite-size spheres that explode in your mouth, one filled with gazpacho, the other with some warm, intensely flavoured liquid I can’t identify. There’s a home-made potato crisp with a tiny cone of potato puree balanced on top. Sounds boring, but it’s divine. A strange pink sphere on a stick with something crunchy inside it didn’t go down so well, but I liked the verrine of pork terrine with a sharp, acidic sauce gribiche cutting the fat.

I have a little fit of irritation over the menu: S’s has prices, mine doesn’t. Perhaps you have to do this to keep your three stars. If so: hellooooo, Michelin, we’re in the 21st century! Women earn their living just like men!

From the massive wine list, we choose a bottle of “Jules 7 ans” — not a reference to the age of the wine, but to the age of the vigneron’s grandson, whom we have met. Indeed we once spent 2 hours in M. Mazard’s tasting room while he showed us slides of every variety of orchid in the Corbières (there are quite a few) with a number of truffles, mushrooms, and other native species thrown in. Even as we left he pursued us across the yard to thrust an extra complimentary bottle of wine and a postcard into our hands. Anyway, his petit Jules is very good. I’m imagining a future cuvée called “Jules, 31 ans”.

Note: unfortunately, the markup on the wines is massive: this local bottle was 50 euros, and I suspect it’s no more than 10 if you buy it direct from M Mazard. But what do you expect? It’s a 3-star restaurant with a massive staff (10 in the dining room alone), and foodwise the cheapest of its category (for the record, our set lunch menu was 65 euros per person). Oh, and the water at 6 euros a bottle: “It’s from the spring in Fontjoncouse,” said our waitress; “we add the gas back in.” The bread is from a baker in Mayronnes, a place the Parisian and the reluctant rally driver would not wish to visit since it is certainly remote and probably quelconque as well if you are from Paris. The pain blanc is almost as dark as the pain complet; both have a yeasty, sourdough flavour and crackling crust.

The first real course was fabulous. I can barely describe it: a paper-thin translucent globe of sucre soufflé in the shape of a squash, balanced over a creamy white mousse and some fragments of truffle. At the table, the waitress poured over a pale gold, creamy butternut squash soup which magically made the dome collapse. The result was still beautiful, and the combination of flavours was unbelievable. This was the star of the meal for me — just sublime in both appearance and flavour.

Next, a truffle-stuffed courgette flower: pretty, but less memorable than the previous course — even though it was the first truffle dish I’ve had that contained enough truffle that you could actually taste it. At this point, something rather odd happened — for a 3-star restaurant anyway. The waitress removed the plates and placed new cutlery for the next course. Then we had time for quite a long conversation about what we plan to do when we retire, while we watched the people at the next table eat two further courses, one of which required the presence of M Goujon to slice it up. A purely nominal requirement, I’m sure, since it looked pretty straightforward to me. Anyway, he stopped to talk to everyone in the room, so obviously there was no pressure in the kitchen. I wasn’t particularly keeping track since we were relaxed and not that bothered about speed, but it must have been at least 20 minutes, possibly more, before our main course appeared. I concluded that they must have dropped something on the floor, or the apprentice didn’t do it to the required standard and had to do it again.

This course was duck done two ways: a boudin and a rosy piece of magret. It was fine, but it seemed to me that almost any self-respecting restaurant in the area could have produced exactly the same flavours and textures without breaking a sweat; heck, even I could in my own kitchen. The presentation was pretty of course, but there was nothing original about it.

The dessert was another handsome plate, if not as amazing as the butternut dish: a sphere of crackling clementine encasing praline ice cream, a thin slice of dried clementine, crisp and intensely flavoured, and a very classic clementine sorbet in a clementine shell. S thought the praline was boring, but I thought it was a good foil in taste and texture to the sharpness of the clementine. To our surprise, the waiter presented the box of mignardises while we were still eating dessert. Shades of Spanish restaurants; I almost expected him to snatch my unfinished dessert plate away. But it was certainly intentional, since everything is in a restaurant of this standard. We ate them with our coffee in the lounge area; they were extremely good, especially the chocolate filled with salted caramel. Oh, and being in a 3-star restaurant means you get sugar shaped like seahorses.

Total damage: 223 euros for two. It’s by no means the most expensive meal I’ve ever had, and much cheaper than the only other 3-star restaurant I’ve been to (Michel Bras in Laguiole). Of course, we did choose the cheapest menu (available at lunch only) — the next menu up is double what we paid, so you could easily spend a lot more here. Unlike other restaurants of this calibre, the atmosphere is relaxed given the inevitable constraints of 3-star service, sans chichi. We left feeling satisfied, and with half a bottle of Jules 7 ans to drink at home — since we had the rally-driving still to do.

In conclusion, here the three stars are all about the food and the service, not the village, the building, the décor or the place settings, which are understated, letting the meal you came for take centre stage. Not all of the food we ate was what I would call three-star standard, but in this class, you can’t beat the price. Bravo to Gilles Goujon for staying close to his roots, working with local producers he’s known for years, and not flitting off to Paris or Lyon as soon as he gets well-known. He is a true ambassador for all that is good in the Corbières.

This book is based on a deep knowledge of everyday life in Spain, which shines through most notably in the chapters on rural life (the author lives on a smallholding in Extremadura). He does a good job of explaining the differences between regions; and Spain is above all a country of very diverse regions. I liked the organisation too, starting on the coast, then going inland to rural Spain, and finally visiting cities. Some chapters were very evocative — the one about Asturias immediately made me want to visit — though it’s clear that the author knows some regions of Spain much better than others. I was a little disappointed in its thin coverage of the Basque country, basically dwelling on San Sebastian and haute cuisine.

In fact, there’s a little too much emphasis on haute cuisine and meticulous accounts of meals in Michelin-starred restaurants, where the chef just happens to be on hand to present him with his very own menú degustación and a friendly chat. Not that these aren’t important — you can hardly write a book about food culture in Spain and not mention Ferran Adria and Martin Beresategui – but they don’t reflect the food world of most Spaniards. His views are at times a little rosy — or else stretching the truth. On several occasions he arrives in a strange town, selects a restaurant apparently at random, and has a wonderful lunch. In real life, this Would Not Happen. At least, it would occasionally, but you would be bound to stumble into one of the majority of indifferent Spanish restaurants and have a terrible, if cheap, meal. It’s obvious he’d done research beforehand — he’s a food journalist for heaven’s sake — so why not say so?

Ferran Adria has it right: “People accuse me of lowering standards: ‘It’s your fault there are so many young kids trying to do modern food, and doing it badly.’ Maybe, but isn’t it much worse that there are millions of tortillas and paellas all over the country that are cooked so badly? Ordinary food in Spain is in a much worse state than haute cuisine, and that’s a fact.”

For me the key feature of Spanish food is that Spain was virtually a third-world country in terms of living standards until about the 1970s. So it’s hardly surprising that food was cheap and filling, the stuff of poverty. There was no Spanish tradition of haute cuisine as there was in France — which is why the Basque chefs looked to France for their inspiration:

More than anything, the cooking of rural Spain is a collective response to the realities of climate, weather, organised religion … and, above all, the need to provide the body with the calories needed for hard physical work. (p 97)

I was surprised that Richardson didn’t mention the culture of the menú del día in Spain. I’m sure I read somewhere that Franco instituted it to ensure that manual workers had a large, nutritious meal at lunchtime, and it must have played a large part in maintaining the dead hands of tradition and cheap stodge that still weigh heavily on Spanish restaurant food outside the rarefied temples of gastronomy. But it was interesting to read about the revolution that started in San Sebastian on the death of Franco, asserting Basque identity through modern riffs on traditional food, and then spread through the country. He makes it clear too that it’s no accident that the most creative and adventurous chefs are from the rich provinces of the Basque country and Catalonia, both with easy access to mountains and sea, and with richer culinary heritages because of their voyaging past.

Further interesting facts: I knew that the Reyes Católicos were responsible for the Spanish obsession with pork, promoting it because it was a good way of winkling out closet Jews and Moors. But I hadn’t heard that in the 1950s, as part of a deal with the Americans over military bases, the Spanish government imported millions of litres of American rapeseed oil. Spaniards weren’t going to let go of their aceite de oliva without a fight, so in order to shift the imported oil a publicity campaign was started to convince them that olive oil was thoroughly unhealthy. Consumption plummeted until the scandal of the contaminated vegetable oil in the early 1980s that killed over a thousand people and persuaded the Spanish to switch back to the home-produced stuff.

Anyway, I enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it — it’s a great read for foodies planning to travel to Spain and wanting to understand more about the country and its culture. He even has a list of recommended restaurants, if your wallet will stretch to them.

“But you already know how to cook,” said friends when I told them I was going on a 5-day cooking course, “and you already live in France. So why go to Cook in France?” Well, I’d been following Jim on Twitter for ages because of his sense of humour and lovely pictures of food. So when he tweeted a late availability discount for his first course of the year, my fingers zinged towards the mouse and fired off an email. A week later, I was there.

One thing Jim’s otherwise informative website doesn’t prepare you for is what a beautiful place Bombel is — romantic honey-coloured stone buildings on top of a hill reached up a winding country lane, surrounded by acres of lawn and with fabulous views over the rolling Dordogne countryside. Guest accommodation is on the ground floor of two converted barns facing each other across a courtyard. Cooking is done in an airy, well-equipped kitchen on the first floor of one of the barns: there was ample space here for our group of nine. We were a mixed bunch, including a chocolatier, two majors, a tank procurer, a psychotherapist, and a custom lift manufacturer. But what we did have in common was an ability to get excited over things like perfect poached eggs, basil ice cream, fancy kitchen gadgets, and playing with pans of boiling sugar. On the first evening there was a babble of conversation over the welcome meal cooked and served by Jim and his wife Lucy. We didn’t even flag when Jim told us we’d have to reproduce this splendid meal on Friday, we just poured ourselves some more wine.

The next morning we found ourselves around the large kitchen work surface, faced with 9 spankingly fresh sea bass and 9 very sharp knives. Jim expertly filleted one to show us how it is done, demonstrating every stage from the initial cut to pulling out the pin bones with tweezers, then literally hand-held those of us who were a bit wobbly when we tackled our own. Thanks to him we ended up with eighteen perfect fillets, and in my case at least enough confidence to try it at home.

Each day basically revolves around cooking the evening’s two-course dinner (plus lunch on a couple of days). One of the things that most impressed me was how well-planned the menus were, each designed to include several transferable skills, such as the aforementioned fish filleting, which can be applied to any round fish. With the sea bass we had sauce gribiche — “tartare with knobs on” in Jim’s words. This gave us an opportunity to make mayonnaise three different ways (food processor, electric whisk, by hand) and compare the results, and to do some “cheffy chopping” of the other ingredients.

Even dishes I’d done many times before, such as Tarte Tatin, demonstrated by Jim’s assistant Liz, could be eye-opening. I think my rustic tatin is pretty good, but I was bowled over by the elegance of hers: a perfect, glossy, mahogany coloured disc met my eyes when I turned mine out. I’ll definitely be incorporating her techniques in future; the extra work is worth it. And Jim’s instant method of making custard (used as an ice cream base) is a surefire winner.

Jim’s also a goldmine of professional cheffy tips, things you never find explained properly in cookbooks. Perfect poached eggs, cooked in advance and reheated when needed, are now within my grasp, along with real fish stock, fantastically concentrated duck gravy, membrane-free orange segments, nifty tricks for making perfect pastry discs, and much more. I think everyone learnt something; one of my favourite moments was Tony’s “Wow!” as he beat egg whites for the first time ever, producing a silky smooth Italian meringue. And it was fun too, especially the afternoon we spent messing about with hot sugar, producing golden domes, tuiles, and springs. So 80s, but fun to do once in a while.

Most of these techniques were used to produce dishes that showcase classic French flavours presented in a stylish modern way, with Jim giving lots of tips on presentation. Everything here is within the reach of a keen home cook: no fancy equipment needed, but you can if you want turn out dishes that wouldn’t look out of place in a fancy restaurant. Some things were ridiculously simple: we all loved the baked camembert with rustic croutons, which is literally 10 minutes’ hands-on work. Likewise the fougasse, which made me ask myself why I always think it’s too much bother to do.

Our last day was dedicated to reproducing the three-course meal Jim had cooked for our welcome dinner on Monday: chilled tomato and fennel soup, duck confit with peas and pommes dauphinoises, and an elaborate dessert of deconstructed lemon meringue pie with ice cream, red fruit jelly, and the spun sugar tuiles we’d had a riotous time making on Wednesday afternoon.

I’ve never made duck confit from scratch before and probably never will again, since I live in a land of easily available duck confit, but it was a learning experience. And making the pommes dauphinoises gave me an “I want one of those” moment when I used a mandoline for the first time — what a lovely bit of kit! The soup we’d so enjoyed on the first evening turns out to be a doddle to make: prepare a herb-infused ragout of roasted tomato, fennel, onion and orange, which is a great dish in its own right, then liquidise, mouli, and finally sieve to get the perfect smooth texture.

For dessert, perfect cylinders of trembling lemon curd perched on crisp pastry disks and finished with a blowtorch, served with the lemon and black pepper ice cream we’d invented a few days earlier, were just superb: total silence descended as we ate them. Although with due respect to Jim, I’ll make conventional crunchy meringues, not Italian ones, the next time I do it.

We weren’t tied to the kitchen sink all the time; there were always a couple of hours free during the day to chill by the pool (or in it, very chilly indeed!), go for walks, or just sit on the lawn and read. On Wednesday Jim and Lucy took us to the market in the beautiful medieval town of Sarlat, a 20-minute drive away. I might be blasé about French markets, but this is quite different from our cheap and cheerful local market: I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a concentration of foie gras and truffles in one place, and the array of locally produced spring vegetables was inspiring.

Before I went, I wasn’t sure how I’d take to doing nothing but cook for a week. But having nothing else to do makes it a lot easier than rushing around cooking a meal after a day’s work, and then there was the thrill of cooking a perfect poached egg, or grinding up boiled sweets in the Magimix and feeding them into the candy floss machine (verdict: revolting). We were on our feet most of the time, but there were plenty of breaks, and of course you’re on holiday; you’re free to drop out of a session if you want. Given that I normally spend days alone with my computer, I found spending so much time with other people quite intense, so it was nice to have some space to wander off alone and recharge. And the fact that the only Internet access was via dialup was very effective at removing the temptation to check up on work.

I must have been inspired, because when I got back the first thing we did was invite 8 people round for lunch on Easter Monday. Menu: Jim’s lovely spring vegetable salad with poached eggs and orange and walnut oil vinaigrette; roast leg of lamb with pommes dauphinoises and tomato and fennel ragout; and strawberries and cream.

Jim’s tips for preparing things in advance so that you need only assemble them at the last minute proved invaluable, especially for the eggs. And the roast lamb, cooked using Jim’s half-hour cooking method, was fabulous — I have no doubt I’ll always do it like that from now on. I’ve never had a guest take photos of the food at my table before, and lunch ended up lasting till 8:30 pm; testimony to its success!

Update: and apparently this cake is good enough to feature at the Royal Wedding!

You can tweak the recipe to your taste. I found most recipes much too sweet — even the one that appeared to be the original my mother used — and mine reflects my preference for a strong chocolate flavour with plenty of fruit. Any kind of cheap, plain biscuit will do. Some people use digestives, but I prefer to use the Petit-Beurre type. You can use plain chocolate, milk chocolate, or a mixture. I used half milk, half plain. And the fruit is your choice; I always like to use glacé cherries because that’s something I particularly remember from my mother’s version, but nowadays I like dried cranberries and apricots in it too. I also add a few chopped almonds just because I like them. Other nuts would go nicely too.

Melting the chocolate: I do it in the microwave on low power. If you don’t have one, do it over a very low heat, or use a double boiler. Overheat it and it will seize and turn into a bitter, grainy mess — the only solution to this is to bin it and start again.

150 g butter
2 tbsp golden syrup
180 g plain biscuits
50 g blanched almonds, roughly chopped
about 150 g mixed dried fruit: sultanas, cranberries, glacé cherries, chopped dried apricots …
200 g chocolate (dark, milk, or both)

Icing:
100 g dark chocolate
20 g butter
20 g icing sugar

Line a square cake tin (about 23 cm) with parchment paper. Break up the chocolate for the base, and put it in a heatproof bowl with the butter and golden syrup. Heat gently, stirring occasionally until everything is melted.

Put the biscuits in a bag and crush roughly with a rolling pin or bottle. Don’t turn them into dust. Stir them into the chocolate mixture with the fruit and chopped almonds. It may seem there’s not enough chocolate to cover them, but just keep stirring till everything is coated.

Pour this mixture into the tin, and press it down well with the back of a spoon, levelling the top and eliminating air pockets. Put it in the fridge for an hour or two to set.

To make the icing, melt the butter and chocolate as before. Beat in the icing sugar, using a whisk if necessary to eliminate lumps. Pour a thin, even layer over the top of the cake, using a palette knife to spread it if necessary. The icing just makes the whole thing look neater. Return to the fridge to set.

Serve cut into small slices or squares. It’s very rich, you don’t need much!

Sorry about the slight hiatus in this series. Somehow, while I was living in rural Spain, I had no desire to cook meals from elderly English cookbooks. Tapas and very simple food were the order of the day.

This book is another tattered old favourite from my student days, with a really unappetising stew of some sort on the cover. Several pages fell out when I took it off the shelf. Georgina Horley is another no-nonsense type in the Delia mould, except she doesn’t spell things out in such detail. It was first published in 1969, and the recipes are very traditional English food, with a few foreign touches due to the author’s background as a Cordon Bleu instructor.

I found it invaluable when I was learning to cook, because it’s organised by month and focuses on fresh ingredients that are good and cheap (in the UK) in that month. It really helped me learn what to buy when, and how best to use cheap cuts of meat. It also has a section of “foundation recipes” at the front. This is where I learned to make bechamel sauce, pancake batter, pastry, scones, marmalade … other sections cover basic skills like filleting fish and sharpening knives, growing vegetables and herbs, making jam, and planning a kitchen. It really is a compendium of useful culinary information even if many of the actual recipes are dated.

As for the recipes, the most food-splattered page is Gertie Goslin’s Brown Stew. We used to eat this a lot; a dark, spicy beef stew enriched with pickled walnuts that tasted better as it aged, so was made in large quantities. I also fondly remember Madam Rigot’s Burgundian Potatoes, a dish of potatoes slowly simmered in milk until it was thick and creamy.

So, on to the menu. I cheated a little bit and transformed her sweet and sour tomato salad (simply sliced tomatoes, salt, and sugar) into tomato tartare. I followed it up with her classic chicken fricassee. This was good, although not as good as the blanquette I normally make; it lacked the all-important kick of a smidgin of curry powder. It might look a bit naff, but I rather liked the border of creamy mashed potato as a change from the plain boiled rice I normally serve with fricassee or blanquette. She also suggested using a border of puff pastry, which I think would be nice too, making a much more elegant dish.

And now dessert. Oh dear. Having some melon in the fridge that needed using up, I decided it would be a good idea to try her melon cooler: ginger-flavoured jelly with bits of melon suspended in it. Some conversion was required, from powdered gelatine to sheets. And ginger ale in “split-sized bottles” was a non-starter. In a perhaps misguided moment of inspiration, I decided to use some of my home-made vin d’orange instead. After all, melon and orange are a good combination.

At first I thought I’d got the gelatine conversion wrong, because it just wouldn’t set. “As jelly starts to set, push melon down evenly through mould,” says Aunty Georgina. Well, I tried, but my melon balls resolutely popped up to the top again. In the end I put the dishes in the fridge, where of course they set before I had a chance to arrange the melon nicely. It looked a fright when I turned it out, and could only exacerbate French people’s phobia of jelly. I quietly ate it myself, without showing it to anyone else. It had tasted dire when I first made it, really sharp and alcoholic, but a night in the fridge seemed to tone it down a bit. So it was edible, but I wouldn’t make it again.

Replacement improvised dessert: affogato. Put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a glass, pour over a freshly made cup of espresso. Yum! No danger of slipping up here.

As I was planning this post, I happened across Pueblo Girl’s recent post about Spanish food. After quite a few 9- or 10-euros menus del dia in local restaurants, I can really relate to a lot of what she says there. Until recently Spain was not a country that was renowned for its good food. If it is now, it’s for many-starred, bank account-busting “creative” restaurants like El Bulli (now closed down) or, closer to here, Arzak and Beresategui. But these are hardly representative. All too often, Spanish restaurant food is ensalata mixta, deep-fried everything, stodgy rice, or stringy, overcooked meat in a claggy sauce with a few mushy green beans.

However, as Pueblo Girl says, it’s not all bad. With persistence and much sampling, we have found a handful of reasonably priced restaurants in the area of Pamplona and San Sebastian that are well worth a visit, serving food that would be recognised as good in other countries, not just Spain. So here’s my list of recommendations: three country restaurants, and two city ones.

1. Dona Maria. The first time we ate here was two years ago; we were on a Spanish language holiday, and didn’t know the area at all. At the time we though it was OK, but nothing special. Since spending three months here though, we have realised that it is in fact exceptional. The charming, friendly team here serve carefully prepared, interesting and attractive food at a reasonable price. OK, it’s expensive by local standards and in fact we’ve seen few locals eating here; almost all the clients seem to be British!

The set menu changes frequently and is 25-30 euros for three or five courses, excluding wine — which is not expensive, ranging from 8 to around 30 euros a bottle. There are normally three or four choices for each course. We’ve now eaten there half a dozen times; the best meal we had was a special “all pig” menu. It started with a selection of salami, followed by fresh asparagus with melted cheese. Then some pork tenderloin with grilled peppers. Then what was for us the true pièce de résistance, gorgeous slow-roasted spare ribs served on a thin slick of mashed potato so creamy it was more like a sauce, with a dab of reduced balsamic vinegar on the side. Very simple, but the flavours complemented each other perfectly. Finally, a moist, coffee-flavoured cake served with the Basque national dessert, cuajada (fresh cream cheese made from sheep’s milk).

2. The Posada at Oitz. I’m sure this village bar/restaurant must have been inspired by Dona Maria; the food is in a very similar style, if slightly less refined and a little cheaper. I had some delicious bacalao here, and the platter of lightly stir-fried green vegetables with crisply fried jamon was memorable too; it’s really rare to get good veg in Spanish restaurants! The setting is less attractive than at Dona Maria, in a rather dark upstairs room. But the food is really lovely.

3. La Trastienda del Colmado in Pamplona. We have a tip for people searching for good restaurants in Pamplona. Get to know the nice lady who works in the Muga outdoor sport and bookshop. We made several visits there choosing and ordering a satnav for walking, and then sorting out various problems with it. Not only was she very helpful, but every time we went, we asked her to recommend a restaurant for lunch. Every one was excellent value. The best by far was La Trastienda del Colmado, which we’d never have found on our own.

We were slightly worried when we walked in at 2 o’clock on a weekday and the large, modern dining room — very stylish and obviously recently renovated — was completely empty. But lunch was superb. We started with little shot glasses of a divine asparagus cream that we’ve been trying unsuccessfully to recreate ever since. Then I had one of the best bowls of gazpacho ever, served with a scoop of celery sorbet instead of the usual chopped vegetable and crouton garnish. Perfectly cooked sea bass, home-made mint and lemon sorbet, and petits fours with coffee. I would certainly go there again. There’s a bar there too, and judging by the quality of the restaurant food, it would be a very good place to go for pintxos.

4. El Bodegón de Alejandro in San Sebastian. We’d have liked to visit Arzak or Beresategui, but the prices meant it was out of the question. 155 euros for a tasting menu? I think not. I believe the Bodegón is part of the Beresategui empire, and it was very good value. The setting, in the basement, is unpretentious, the staff friendly, the food very elegant. The 6-course tasting menu was 33 euros. All of it was lovely, except that we weren’t at all impressed with the beef cooked at low temperature; soggy and tasteless.

Our favourite parts were utterly perfect slices of roast merluza (hake) on crushed potato, with mussel juice poured over at the table, and the first dessert course of torrija (basically French toast/pain perdu) which had a lovely thin crispy caramel layer on top and was served with a scoop of cream cheese ice cream. Oh, and another perfect asparagus cream served as an amuse-bouche with incredibly wafer-thin slices of crisply fried bread. Out of these five restaurants I think the Bodegón and the Colmado tie for the top spot.

5. A late and surprising entry to this list is the Bar/Restaurant Ameztia in that gastronomic hub, Sant Esteban. We tried all the menus del dia in Sant Esteban in the first few weeks we were here, and quickly settled on this one as our “canteen”. Same price as all the others (10 euros for three courses, wine, and coffee), but showing just a touch of extra care in selection of ingredients and preparation. And the staff were friendly and patient with our halting Spanish.

In our last week, we decided to push the boat out and try their menu especial de la temporada at 25 euros, including a bottle of wine (which turned out to be our favourite Navarran red, Castillo de Eneriz). What a revelation! By virtue of our choice of menu we were seated in the “smart” half of the restaurant, with linen tablecloths and proper wineglasses (paper cloths and tumblers for the menu del dia). From here we could see the lone chef in the vast and otherwise deserted kitchen. He was preparing lunch for the 15 or so people having the menu del dia, and the seven people, including us, who’d chosen the menu especial, with no sign of hurry or stress. Service was a bit slower than usual, but that was absolutely fine by us. It just meant it was French speed instead of Spanish.

I started with roast vegetables with Romesco sauce. Beautifully cooked and presented, simple and delicious. Steve oohed and aahed over his warm salad with pan-fried foie gras. We’d both ordered roast sucking pig for the main course. This was amazing! Juicy and tender with perfect crackling that almost made us swoon, since pork crackling does not exist in France. Served with chips for Steve and a perfectly dressed green salad for me. Then sorbete de cuajada for Steve, and for me a lovely light cheesecake topped with a deep red berry sauce. We left a giant tip and an abrazo for the waitress, and waddled out feeling utterly replete and contented, in fact we were incapable of doing anything for the rest of the day. It really was remarkable that this unassuming “canteen” could turn out such high-quality food. It made us wonder what else we’d been missing by not eating à la carte very often. Hmm. A research project for our next trip.

After almost two months in Spain, I think I’m beginning to understand what Spanish food is all about. Our initial impressions were not good. With one honourable exception, restaurant cooking here seems to be bland, stodgy, and unadventurous. And revolves around meat. Lots of it (not so surprising given that it’s a livestock-raising area). The menus at all the local restaurants have many, many things in common: ensalada mixta, ensalada russa, arroz con leche, flan, natillas, and cuajada (sheep’s-milk junket) feature on all of them. Main courses are usually massive platefuls of roast or grilled meat. Low points were the albondigas (meat balls) served in thick, Bisto-flavoured gravy, and bechamel-coated deep-fried lamb chops. There seems to be little concern with freshness and flavour.

Meanwhile, shops and supermarkets in our local small town were poorly stocked and uninspiring. The spice rack in the supermarket was a particularly sorry sight. Black pepper. Two kinds of pimentón (dulce and picante). Cinnamon (sticks and ground). Nutmeg. Herbes de Provence. Yellow food colouring (cheaper than saffron). Lots and lots of packets of “paella spice”, of which a major ingredient is the aforesaid colouring. “But where’s the ginger? And what about cumin? Or coriander?” Nowhere to be seen – I ended up bringing some back from France.

But then we hit the covered market in Irún. Revelation! Of course, living in France we are used to markets, even blasé about them. Superficially a Spanish market looks much like a French one, but this was different enough that we wandered spellbound around the stalls, oohing and aahing over the produce, and left laden with a week’s supply of food.

First, the preserved food stall. Bottled and tinned food is considered a worthy genre in its own right in Spain, and this is not surprising when you consider: thick chunks of bonito del norte (tuna) in brine, nothing like the flaky scraps in tins; whole, roasted piquillo peppers in oil, lusciously juicy and ready to eat straight from the jar; olives, of course, in their many forms; anchovies and boquerones; cans and bottles of olive oil. Half a dozen varieties of dried beans, dried fruit and nuts are piled in bins. And of course, since this is the Basque country, strings of dried peppers hang from the ceiling.

Then the preserved meat stall. The stallholder sharpens his menacing-looking knives, ready to serve you. Jamón, of course, in multiple varieties, ranging from garnet-red to purple, edged with frills of white fat, at prices ranging from maybe 10 euros a kilo for standard serrano ham to an astonishing 80 for the best bellota. The extra you pay for jamón ibérico is worth it, for bellota I can’t yet say. Multiple varieties of salami, sausage, and lomo ahumado are also on offer. The most notable sight at the butcher next door is tiny legs of lamb, weighing barely a kilo each; it seems Spaniards are fond of milk-fed lamb. We bought one of these, marinated it briefly in a paste of olives, capers, anchovies, olive oil, and pimentón, grilled it on the barbecue, and ate the whole thing between the two of us.

The cheese stalls might not rival French ones (OK, they definitely don’t). But there are a few varieties of hard cheese, from Manchego to Ossau-Iraty, dozens of local sheep’s cheeses, and bags of raw sheep’s milk (I snapped up one of these to make my own cuajada).

Then whole stalls are devoted to that Basque staple, bacalao, again with major divergences in price, from thin, scrappy pieces stiff as a board with salt, to thick chunks of boneless cod steak at 25 euros a kilo, waiting for a long soak to be reconstituted as white, flaky fish, gorgeous when simply cooked and served with a lively salsa verde or tomato and pepper sauce. Next door, the fish stalls were piled with glossy fresh fish, with ugly but delicious hake (merluza) playing a starring role alongside beautiful sea bass (lubina), red mullet (salmonete), crabs, lobsters, langoustines, squid, and octopus.

The major “aha” from all this is that Spanish markets lend themselves to simple food that can be nibbled with drinks – that would be tapas then (or pintxos, since we are in the Basque country). Getting home, we simply laid out platters of ham, piquillo peppers, thinly sliced cheese, olives, nuts, cut some bread, opened a bottle of wine, and a lifestyle was born. If you feel the need of something sweet afterwards, a little clay pot of cuajada drizzled with mountain honey hits the spot. Or the Spanish version of lemon sherbet: buy some lemon sorbet and a bottle of cava, combine in a blender, pour into champagne flutes, serve with straws. Who needs to cook?

We took the opportunity of living next to a small sheep farm in the Navarran Pyrenees to find out how our neighbour makes cheese. She has about a hundred sheep and makes cheese in her kitchen every couple of days. It’s a surprisingly simple procedure, requiring little equipment.

You will need:
about 7-8 litres of this morning’s sheep’s milk (I expect cow or goat milk works just as well)
about half a teaspoon of liquid rennet or other coagulant (I’m told nettles work, but I haven’t tried them yet)
A large metal pan or bucket to hold the milk
a thermometer
a large wire whisk
a cheese mould lined with cheesecloth

It goes without saying that all your equipment must be scrupulously clean. First of all, heat the milk to 36 degrees C. Turn off the heat. Add the rennet to a very small amount of water, about a tablespoon (just to make it dissolve better). Pour into the milk and mix thoroughly with the whisk. Leave to stand for 20-30 minutes. Sagrario told us that you could achieve the curdling by dangling a bit of tripe in the milk, but she prefers liquid rennet!

At this point the milk should have thickened to a lumpy, yoghurty consistency. Don’t proceed to the next stage until it does.

Reheat the milk to 39 degrees C, whisking constantly to break up the curds. According to Sagrario, this is important to kill all the bugs and prevent your cheese from ending up full of maggots. Remove from the heat and set aside to settle for 5 minutes.

Plunge your hands into the bucket and grope around the bottom, pulling all the settled solids together. Lift out your large and dazzlingly white lump of cheese, squeezing with your hands to firm it up and get rid of some of the liquid. Press into the lined mould and squish it down as hard as you can.

The cheese is left to drain for 24 hours, then put in a cheese press and squeezed further before being brined and left to mature for two months. The resulting cheese will keep for up to a year.

Update: and here is the proud cheesemaker with his mature cheese!

There was a lot of liquid whey left over in the bucket. “It’s not wasted,” Sagrario assured us. “You can take this liquid and boil it up. Lots of froth will appear on the top. You can scoop this off; it’s called requesón, and it’s delicious.” A check in the dictionary confirmed that this was curd cheese, the word literally meaning “re-cheese”. And later we realised that the word ricotta (re-cooked) in Italian expresses exactly the same principle.

Next lesson: how to make cuajada, a very simple and delicious fresh sheep’s cheese made in clay pots that’s often served as a dessert with honey or sugar. I’m going to gather some nettles to make my own rennet for this.

Wash the lemons and finely grate the zest. Squeeze all the juice — you should end up with about 150 ml. Finely grate or chop the ginger. Put zest, ginger, and juice in a pan with the sugar and 350 ml cold water, bring to the boil, and simmer for a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat. (At this point, Nicky steeps some Earl Grey tea in the syrup for a few minutes, but I usually don’t do this as I think it’s more appealing to children without.)

Pour the syrup through a fine sieve. If you are keeping it, pour into sterilised bottes and seal, otherwise just chill in the fridge for a few hours until needed.

To serve, top up the syrup with chilled sparkling water to taste — I find that 1/3 syrup to 2/3 water is a good balance.

This month’s Taste & Create partner was Rachel of Tangerine’s Kitchen. Not a blog I’m familiar with, so I enjoyed browsing through the wide range of recipes (although the design could use a bit of work, the large un-optimised photos brought my slow connection grinding to a halt!).

As usual there were a few that tempted me: cheesy calzones and spiced apple tart to name but two. In the end though, yet again I went for something quick and simple.

A couple of weeks ago (during a visit to a free-range pig farm as it happens) we were served some delicious non-alcoholic aperitifs before lunch. One of them was made with fresh ginger, and it was excellent. So my eyes lit up when I saw Rachel’s gingery lime punch. This had to be worth a try. And it was.

After making the syrup I refrigerated it and then served it topped up with chilled sparkling water. Lovely, so refreshing; I did add a bit more ginger after tasting it, as it wasn’t quite zingy enough initially. It will make a great non-alcoholic and driver-friendly alternative to the lethally thirst-quenching Marquise that we serve at summer parties.

To make about 500 ml syrup; diluted with about 2 parts water to 1 part syrup, that makes 1 1/2 litres.

250 g sugar
220 ml water
2 limes or lemons (I used one of each)
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, or to taste

Rachel instructs you to liquidise the grated ginger with a little water to make a paste. I just grated it very finely using my wonderful microplane. I dare say you could use the “lazy ginger” paste sold in tubs too. Put the pureed or grated ginger in a pan with the water and sugar, heat till the sugar is dissolved, bring to the boil, and boil for a couple of minutes. Stir in the lemon or lime juice and remove from the heat. Taste and adjust flavour as necessary. When cool, bottle and store in the fridge.

To serve, simply top up with sparkling water (or tap water of course!).