Autumn Festivals in Portugal’s Algarve Mountains The seasons tend to have their quintessential moments or occasions - winter, of course, has Christmas while summer has village fetes and other outdoor festivals. Apart from the Harvest Festival celebrated by some religions and the overly commercial Halloween, autumn doesn’t have that much to offer when it comes to stand-out celebrations. So imagine my delight when I came across a small, but unique event in the mountains of sout

A Special Sunday Lunchtime in Southwest France Sunday lunchtime can be special. I don’t know why exactly, maybe it’s the way I’ve been brought up but I still regard this special time of the week as a moment to celebrate in some way. Which is why I was more than delighted to find myself heading towards one of the most beautiful villages in France one Sunday morning recently. Monpazier: A Perfectly Preserved Medieval Bastide Monpazier is considered one of the finest “bastides”

Visiting an Olive Oil Producer in Monchique, Algarve We were recently pondering a press trip to the Algarve and as part of the itinerary we visited the amazing Lagar dos Pardieiros olive oil producing business up in the high hills near the lovely little town of Monchique. I was so taken by the amazingly hard-working and interesting Miguel Gonçalo Oliveira Santos Bigodinho , who now runs the family business, that I thought we’d produce a special article here based on our visit

Apple Glut? 3 Delicious Ways to Preserve Your Bumper Harvest (Plus a Secret Tip for Better Flavour!) The autumn air signals more than just changing leaves; it brings the annual apple glut ! If my own trees are any indication, it’s been a great year for the harvest. But the sudden bonanza of ripe fruit—especially after a weekend of gales—brings a classic problem for the proud apple tree owner: how do you deal with a mountain of fruit before rot sets in? Forget eating ten a da

Six Guinness World Records Smashed at Malvern The CANNA UK National Giant Vegetables Championship Six Guinness World Records were broken the Three Counties Autumn Show last weekend, with 132 growers battling it out for medals, including the longest sweet pepper and heaviest celeriac. Other world records included the world’s tallest runner bean plant (26 feet, two inches) and the world’s longest radish (25 feet, seven inches - there’s a lot of long thin root involved). Weird a

There Ought to Be More of Them… There ought to be more of them… is what my friends and I were agreeing while driving home from the Three Counties Autumn Show at Malvern last weekend. We were talking about large-scale country shows that take place at this time of the year because we hugely enjoyed our visit to the show, which is billed as the “UK’s biggest harvest season celebration”. It offers the ultimate demonstration of something this nation can do very well indeed… We are

Timing Is Everything in Mushroom Foraging Timing. So much of life is about timing. Last week we promised to dedicate this Hesp Out West feature to the wonderful fungi explosion that has been occurring here in the South West of England of late. I’d already found more edible field mushrooms than I could possibly eat, but I was hoping to find some delicious ceps before I had to file this article. And, hey-presto. Monday and Tuesday’s bright sunshine brought the blighters out.

The Wonders of Rain and West Country Fields And talking of produce from our fields, what wonders the rain has done… To the region’s fungi, I mean. After the wet stuff started falling from the skies ten days ago, field mushrooms have been popping up like… Well, mushrooms. Two days into the new rainy season there wasn’t a field mushroom in sight. I know because I went out every day looking in my favourite field where mushrooms never fail to grow. Then, on third day, there was o

Delivery Vans, Local Produce, and the Rise of Beacon Farms The White Van Nation – and a Thought for British Produce Delivery vans… The world is filled with them. Drive through the rural West Country today and you will see far more white vans than any other vehicle. On a journey to the Blackdown Hills this week I counted more than 20 on a 40-mile round-trip. And I thought: wouldn’t it be wonderful if those vans were filled with British products and produce rather than stuff ma

End of Summer - Autumn in the Air Most years since the turn of the century, my newspaper column has found itself tumbling into that mellow period which marks the end of summer, and declaring: “Autumn is in the air!” as if it’s been some totally new and unexpected sensation. Which is odd… I hardly ever write newspaper articles which herald the arrival of winter or summer. Once or twice I have written about the first hints and glories of spring, but there’s something about the

Barbecues in the UK: From Heatwaves to Grilled Feasts The other day someone I know was talking about the weather and he said: “I’ll tell you how hot it is… We rolled out the barbecue for the first time this week and we’ve been grilling sausages and steaks and goodness knows what else.” This simple statement reminded me that not every UK household likes the idea of cooking over a live flame. It took this chap and his family a UK record of four officially designated heatwaves b

Northern Denmark, particularly around Skagen, offers a straightforward approach to food. It's a region where the proximity to the sea heavily influences what's on the plate, with fresh catches forming the backbone of many meals. The Skagen harbour area itself is a hub for seafood. Restaurants here often occupy the old, red-painted fish warehouses, maintaining a connection to the town's fishing heritage. You can expect to find establishments where the daily catch is the star,

Learning the Art of Fish Cookery with Annie Seabourne How many of us home-cooks think we know our way around a fish? Really know it, I mean, so that we can clean, gut and fillet any kind of swimming creature that is about to bless our dinner tables? My guess is there’ll be a smallish number who’ll feel confident when confronted with any kind of raw seafood, but also a majority who will look at different kinds of fish and wish they were at the chip shop buying something deep f

Dimos Balopoulos is a chef based in eastern Crete, and I remember him telling me how each winter his bosses send him around the world to work for short spells in top kitchens so that he could expand his kitchen’s repertoire. And if it’s good enough for a leading light like Dimos, it’s good enough for an amateur like me. Indeed, one reason I was in Crete was to learn a bit more about how the Greeks in general — and the Cretans in particular — centre all their culinary practice

Learning to Cook Cornish Fish with Annie Seabourne of My Fish Kitchen This week we were in Cornwall for a few days so that I could attend some fish cookery classes led by my new pal, Annie Seabourne, of My Fish Kitchen . In short, she is a walking encyclopaedia of anything and everything to do with British seafood . The excellent instruction focused on basic seafood preparation techniques and I will be writing all about the experience in my Hesp Out West feature in the West

Discover the Rich and Diverse Flavours of Sri Lankan Cuisine Of course, no trip to Sri Lanka can avoid a mention of the amazing food on offer. It is as tasty as it is healthy, as exotic as it is diverse. Why Sri Lankan Food Is Healthier Than You Might Expect The food is often characterised as being more healthy than the cuisine to be found across the breadth of its giant neighbour India, mainly because they do not use anywhere near so much in the way of clarified butter. The

A Quintessential British Food Dispute: The Cream Tea Conundrum Over the years I have written a great many articles about the classic Engish cream tea - mainly based on the big row that goes on between Devon and Cornwall concerning whether it’s cream or jam first? It’s all a bit silly really - something made up by journalists like me who needed good stories and head-lines during the slack period of high summer. In my Hesp Out West series in the Western Morning News and Western

Why Don't We Have a Strong Foraging Tradition in Britain? There’s a deep-seated mystery hiding in the landscapes of this country that I’d love to have explained one day. It’s this: why don’t we have an ancient rural tradition that sees ordinary citizens gleaning food for free in the countryside? We nibble at the edges, yes, but we don’t really go anywhere near the idea that, if necessary, rural-dwellers could sustain life and soul by foraging among the woodlands and hedgerows

Rushy Porth: One of the Whitest Beaches In South West UK One of the whitest, most beautiful beaches to be found anywhere is Rushy Porth on the eastern shore of the island of Tresco. On a bright day you need ski goggles just to walk across it, the sand is so white – but here and there the whiteness is punctuated by that natural treasure trove of all beaches, a scattering of shells. The Irresistible Beauty of Seashells on the Isles of Scilly Why do we like shells so much? After

Indulging in Indulgence Catering : A Culinary Gem in West Cornwall Private Chef Experiences in Cornwall That Feel Like Home In another article ( https://www.martinhespfoodandtravel.com/hespfoodandtravelhome/the-fallen-angel-a-luxury-hideaway-above-mousehole-cornwall) we describe a stay at the Fallen Angel, an amazing architect-designed holiday villa in Mousehole, West Cornwall - and in it we mention that while there we enjoyed a fabulous dinner delivered and cooked on the sp