Viva España

I want to try to remember something.

Spain. I was fifteen, on exchange in Valencia, halfway up the east coast. My host family were from Madrid, but they summered at the beach near their cousins. Their father would come down on weekends, and the mother, three children and I were there, looking out on, sunbathing beside, and swimming in the Mediterranean, the whole time. From where I'm sitting here it sounds unbearably exotic, but at the time it was just the sea beside them, as the Irish Sea was the sea beside us. Only warmer.

One evening we drove up into the mountains for dinner with the extended family. The place was a low, whitewashed building on the top of a hill; dark brown wooden benches inside, little in the way of plush or decor. There were no menus: Isabel's uncle had a conversation with the owner, and after a little while a huge platter came out to our table. On it was a roast of succulent garlicky, rosemary-y lamb surrounded by slivers of potato that had been fried in the meat's fat. I don't remember liking lamb particularly before then, but ever since I've been a committed fan.

I ate other amazing things that summer: tiny fish deep fried in the lightest of batters probably minutes after they'd been caught - a mouthful of salty crunch and essence of Mediterranean summer. Snails, even, sizzled in garlic, chewy and good so long as you didn't dwell too long on the fact of what you were eating. Sweet dripping galia melon; watermelon like a pink iceberg; big, firm, white-fleshed peaches; fuzzy-cheeked apricots - I'd never been a big fruit-lover, because it turned out the versions I'd had in Ireland were black-and-white snow to the technicolour clarity of these ones. We were an apples and bananas household at home; rhubarb and gooseberries when our friends down the road with a big garden had more than they could use, but not much else beyond tinned peaches and the odd honeydew loaded with brown sugar to make it palatable. Ireland is not the place to learn to love fruit the way I did in Spain.

I still look for peaches like those. I don't think I've had snails since. But in New York last weekend I had lamb that rivalled the lamb I remember from that night in the mountains - a personal roast of my very own, the meat falling off the bone and delicious; though the lemon potatoes couldn't hold a candle to the crispy discs of the earlier meal.

Some years later in Spain I learned to like olives - the pits spit on sawdusty floors - and strong beer; and a pincho of tortilla with a glass of red wine, preferably at 11am on a Saturday. On the way to Lisbon, I discovered what real tomatoes tasted like. I threw strands of spaghetti at the kitchen wall to see if it was done (when it sticks, it's ready); I found that a fried egg sits perfectly on top of tomatoey rice; and that I could cook dinner for myself and enjoy it. I even roasted a leg of lamb, studded with plenty of garlic, for Christmas dinner.

Come to think of it, I have Spain to thank for a lot more than just my degree in Spanish.