AS I write I’m up a large mountain in Andalucia on holiday. It’s 45C, I’ve got zero wi-fi or phone reception and there's no air conditioning. My complaints lasted three seconds before I realised this was the perfect excuse to live like a local in the rural village by drinking ice-cold beer and visiting food stalls. The food was as magnetically attractive as the shade. My father-in-law calls me Nosferatu due to my tendency to hug walls and anything which casts a shadow to hide me from the sun.
I’ve spent most of the past week with a couple of very cool young folk from Romania. They caught my eye while butchering a pig for one of the big communal feasts in the village. At home, we usually gut down the belly, but these guys were cutting down the back, keeping the belly intact.
It turns out that one of my new friends is a TV personality back home, regularly featuring on food and drink shows – even, apparently, the Romanian equivalent of MasterChef, a show regular readers of this column will know I am in no way bitter about.
When I asked for a taste of Romanian hospitality, he threw a chunk of pork into the open fire. It was an unusual cut, similar to the tip of the pork loin. It was then duly butterflied, cooked directly on the embers and served with a handful of sea salt and a squeeze of lemon from a nearby tree.
He then handed me an ice-cold glass containing cherry brandy, fresh lemon juice, sugar and soda water. It’s hard to explain how well this went with the simplicity of the meat, but if anything could make me dust off the bottle from the back of my drinks cabinet it would be this. Now all I need is recipes to pair with Drambuie and Harveys Bristol Cream.
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