From the line where the celestial and rippling blues meet, a yearning to explore beyond the horizon; amidst its saline aromas and splashing whispers, a craving of its mineral-nourished flavours; atop manmade piers and natural cliffside alike, a pondering of structures sculpted and built by man and nature in tribute to the bodies of fluid that bind us all. Azure: our ever-flowing beliefs, dependencies on and relationships with the waters around us.

Not that it’s always an agreeable sentiment; occasionally it can be unforgiving, in times when I find my life and visceral leanings getting snuffed out by its asphyxiating currents and gusts. But at this moment, overlooking the marina of Parque das Nações in the northeastern edge of Lisbon, its calmness and clarity were evoking in me all the entanglements of ‘azure’ I’ve ever felt.

In turn, whether for my emotive devotion or mere shred of care, the water seemingly offered me its blessings: upon the beginning of a journey, with its hopes and appetites intact, entirely dedicated to seeking and savouring the best of seafood and fish Portugal has reserved for us.

Rota da Peixe, literally the route of fish in Portuguese, isn’t as much a singular, locative entity as it is an advocacy movement: spearheaded by APTECE, the tourism organisation endeavouring to promote Portugal’s gastronomic heritage and entice people to come experience its often elusive culinary side, the routes may be interpreted as the designated trails for fish-finding visitors as relevantly as the ways Portuguese fishery is spirited away from coasts to mouths, towards inland Portugal or other countries, as physical ingredients or as concepts and techniques of Portuguese fish cooking.

It is the kind of route unbound by the need of chronological order; it might well be best traversed in reverse, originating in a destination which has piqued enough curiosity so that only by retracing it back to its source can it be a truly fitting end.

Perhaps, way before I’d skirted the waterways of Lisbon, my own Rota da Peixe began in London. It was in the corner of Old Spitalfields Market, at a restaurant by the name of Taberna do Mercado, where I was first introduced to Portugal’s fishery: in the dishes transported and conceived by chef Nuno Mendes – himself a transplant from Portugal – and in the stories of José Borralho. As I sat next to the president of APTECE and chatted with him throughout the dinner, about everything from sustainability in food to food travelling, I could detect knowledge and fervour for Portuguese cuisine and specifically seafood interlaced with his dialogues; yet, almost coyly, he would hold back a bit of information here and a description there – as though throughout the night he was whispering into my curious ear: “you would know once you’ve experienced it yourself.”

My curiosity was piqued.

Suspending my connection with water in Lisbon, we drove up the vein and into the heartlands. Évora, as we inched towards its town centre, was already glistening with the golden hues of dusk by the time we landed back on our feet.Anointed capital of the Alentejo region, the south-centre part of Portugal and arguably the very soul of Portuguese cuisine, Évora has withstood five millennia of strife and attrition as a guardian of civilisations – and, as populations upon populations flocked to the settlement, it must have had a fair share of mouths to feed.

And there I was thinking about food again. Sure, my mind does have a preexisting tendency of wandering off and gravitating towards everything edible – only because the culinary upbringing and acuteness are so imbued in the fabrics of my identity. Call it one of my core memory islands, to quote an Inside Out reference. You should visit it some time.

Yet, even in hindsight, my curiosity was led astray in Évora. For a short while, painted most conspicuously gold by the dwindling sun, it had to be the aged buildings that arrested my attention – not particularly for the visual spectacle but my own obsession of history. Medieval churches, remnants of the Ancient Roman temples; cobbled steps, Corinthian pillars, circular rose windows – what’s there not to marvel and envisage the bygone ages? After all, Évora is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right: one such is where persons come to revel in the past.

What is the past, or history on that matter? Its bookmarked chapters are most often affiliated with grandeur: tales of the most brutal battles, living proofs of human innovation and monuments of their daring, spectacular edifices surviving through abrasion and the wealthiest among men to have, or more likely claimed to have, built them; inevitably, to navigate through this vastness of time and space within recorded history, we would look to the brightest events to be mesmerised.

What we overlook, then, among the decades and centuries, are the everyday lives – at least, as I ambled while deep in reflection, that I do. I rarely zoom in on the timescale as I did, in Évora, wonder how the Celts, Romans, Moors and Portuguese existed and fed themselves: what they plucked from the waters and cultivated from the soil; which methods they cooked their harvests and preserved them for times of hardship; how they laboured daily to stave off hunger and famine, not only for preservations of selves but to delay the death knell of whole societies.

And, ultimately, where fragments of these edible histories have perforated through recipes and gastronomic artistries, passed down from generation to generation – and reveal themselves to me. Upon me dawned the purpose of my journey: for the sake of curiosity, to investigate and learn from the relationship of this region’s people with what they eat – and their negotiating with their environment in lifelong quests for sustenance.

I walked past a banner hoisted outside the Museu de Évora, whose words would echo:

“What’s past is prologue.”

It is said that there’s hardship when there’s need to eat dogfish.

In truth I might have made up that statement, but it doesn’t mean I fabricated a reality: as a family of petite sharks, dogfish may only be edible once their skin is removed – the very same outer layer once exploited for wood polishing. While not particularly palatable in flavour and requiring slow, long cooking to tenderise their flesh, they are at least notoriously abundant and, as scavengers, will feed on any bait; though gripping their sandpaper-coarse bodies with bare hands as they wrangle and grate is no smooth operation. Dogfish don’t exactly inspire the desire to be captured and eaten.

Thus, desperation – even if it’s a tradition practised in plentiful today that was contrived in poorer ago’s.

The setting of where dogfish was to be served resonated the same ‘charm of the meagrer past’, with its terracotta-walled, exposed-stone rusticity deliberately preserved and elevated. It appeared that my first meal in Portugal, at Café Alentejo, was to be a humble one. With dogfish on the menu.

And with all the probing on the meaning of food history at sunset, it’s finally my turn on the binoculars pointed backwards in time. And besides, how on earth would dogfish have tasted like?

A prelude to which, the plates of plentifulness: a rich spread of entradas, or the Portuguese way of overachieving at shared starters. Pastries, cheeses, beans, octopus – bites of reminding that, after a long day of travelling, just how famished we were. I didn’t spare much thought while I joined the ravaging, as though I was my overwintered self happening upon the first spring harvest.

In stark contrast, when it did come, the dogfish stew presented little overjoying qualities. Perhaps it was José Manuel, our driver guide and resident source of knowledge in Portuguese cuisine, explaining to us its significance of subsistence that cast a shade of inexcitable austerity over it; or it may have been that dull visually, with that overcooked-fish greyish-white hunkering down on an earthly pedestal of toasted bread. The fluid part, reserved for the photographers among us, trickled out of a teapot like molten, limescale-tainted porcelain with specks of discoloured greens.

For the eye, the dogfish stew was no dish designed for the sake of opulence; yet, while it conjured up the mantra of “it is what it is” – quite feasibly followed by a deep and mournful sigh – how it looked was still far from being quintessentially hideous or unattractive.

Never one to pass the judgment with sight alone, I dug in with a spoon – the dogfish had long given up resistance and broke apart easily. It didn’t taste of much, like its relatives I’ve previously sampled, though the lengthy braising did lend some marine flavouring of its to the broth, which was mostly eclipsed by vinegary acidity – most likely there to mask any unpleasant tangs of the dogfish – and fragranced with coriander leaves.

Its appearance did deceive me into expecting a far more unsavoury encounter, but it was ‘not bad’: British speak for decent enough to finish off, but probably never ordering the same again. Consider, at the very least, an interest satiated.

Towards the end of the meal, I felt none the wiser.

Is this it? As a gastronomic, cultural cross section of a region, the dogfish stew fell short of painting the whole picture; maybe I was expecting too many answers from one lone dish. What’s folded within it could be the generations-long effort of refining an undesirable ingredient, could be the acquisition of an acquired taste over time – could be the dogma in the virtue of making the most out of what nature can and will provide – but it was barely a representation to the understanding I sought. What I hadn’t yet discovered was the distilled version of Alentejo’s culinary soul; after all, it is often amongst rurality and poverty that the rich, royal and gastronomically acute, historically and presently, ultimately find their inspirations – “find what’s eaten from the dirt and transcend them to be worthy even for the gods of men.”

What was transparent is this necessity of conserving those palatal traces of bitterer times, of supplying nostalgia to those who lived through it and those deserving its stern teachings of frugality. Yet there must be more than just the products of mere survival encapsulated in history, in even the most ordinary of past lives; there has to be, in what modernity has inherited, the aspects of food that accompanies and cherishes festivities, togetherness and joy. Vivacity and abundance of flora and fauna. Celebrations of life. Tastes of having truly been alive.

But then again, it was easy for me to forget that, voyaging the route in reverse, being inland was really the starting point. The Rota da Peixe had yet to decipher its complexities for me; I had yet to give it time to begin. My curiosity for the culture of fish in Portugal had yet to receive its education.

As it was, the prologue was already written; the story had yet to be lived. And tasted.

The post The Portuguese Fish Route: Part I appeared first on The Travelling Editor.

To most, its main function is to partition for whatever purposes behind the wall: to isolate, to privatise; to barricade, to separate and expel. Still, for the space they do enclose, walls also serve as the canvas – and define the character of a cavity, for both the people inhabiting it and those tasked with decorated it.

What if it goes one step further? What if walls can provide a portal – a glimpse into environments, whole cultures and individual ideologies, outside and beyond the capsular refuge or confinement?

But then that might become too imposing, invasive even.

Especially for a place set out to be hospitable – a hotel, for instance – designing the space and striking a balance is a delicate matter: you wouldn’t want its projection so overstimulating that it’s tattooing on retinas, nor should it be so inconspicuous and unprovoking that it doesn’t even get a shrug.

I reckon I encountered that somewhere in between during my stay at Hotel Adriatic in Rovinj, Croatia.

What walls invoke may be the need of seclusion or escape. Function or aesthetics. Backdrop or spotlight. Spaces may be contemplated presently or in retrospect. Whole rooms and buildings may be merely dwelled in, or poised to challenge and enhance one’s thinking. And none of that is imposed upon the beholder, only echoing and complementing the current state of mind – one that’s seeking sanctuary within the walls it’s interacting with.

After all, that’s precisely where the soul of great design lies.

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What we can relate to is the first taste, because we inevitably tasted something smoked for the first time in our own lives. It probably began with a stiff sniff and twisted nose – am I supposed to eat this? – before the silver of fish, meat or vegetable made contact with your palate, and the grace notes of wood-smoked and cured flavours trilled above the ingredient’s originality.

For some of us, there may not be instant affection; but we must all admit that there’s something ethereal about it, as though smoked food is just ordinary food – except smothered by every hand of every mythological deity of every ancient civilisation.

For me, my gastronomic peripherals have always been drawn to techniques that elevate ingredients beyond conventional, instant stovetop cooking; and tasting smoked salmon as a child was what sowed the fishbone that miraculously sprouted a tree of curiosity.

Which is shameful, on my part, that I didn’t look into the art of smoking until recently. Nowadays, armed with a cold smoke generator, an IKEA box and an acute desire not to burn my balcony down, I keep a nano operation in my London flat producing this and that, primarily as offerings at EATS Club. Nothing fanciful or boastful.

Or, at least, it’s crushingly dwarfed by an actual, purpose-built smokehouse – and my knowledge and experience in smoking hopelessly outmatched by a professional smoker.

Not that I came to Ummera Smokehouse to capitulate under a higher authority: I was there to play the diligent student.

Even as we rolled up the gravelled driveway after an hour drive from Cork did I feel my arrogance shrivel; the scenery alone was making my ‘factory’ feel amateur: Irish lush, with the brook gargling softly behind the tree line. If the gods wanted to stroke the meat in exquisite seclusion, this is where they would be instead of my unsightly balcony.

Metaphors aside, Ummera Smokehouse is where Anthony Creswell breathes a second life to his smoked creations. A second-generation business inherited from his father, it’s under his ownership that the wooden structure storing, smoking and distributing Ummera’s products was built in 2000 and operates today.

Before inviting us into his workshop and, as breathless as I was to see, the smoker, Anthony began his introduction to the production cycle with a glimpse of the storage: an icy cabinet, trolleys stacked full with plastic-wrapped frozen salmon fillets. Not quite the romanticism of backyard-plucked fish as I’d imagined.

And there’s a reason behind it, Anthony explained.

Irish wild salmon stock had plummeted so drastically in the past several decades, that the government acted by imposing limits on the fishery. Farmed salmon, the immediate alternative, had yet to get a foothold in Ireland – or establish the standard of quality and sustainability – to rival the industries of the likes of Scotland and Norway, where many smokehouses opted to source their key ingredient from instead.

“Irish” smoked salmon was losing its integral identity, from an Irish birth to an Irish smoking production.

Eventually, however, the farmed salmon industry in Ireland did catch up; and when it did, when the salmon’s living condition yielded no less than satisfactory standards – no less than passing Anthony’s verdict to bring the Irish back to Ummera’s farmed salmon supplies.

The journey then forks: water or powder.

For the salmon, after it’s thawed, deboned and cleaned, a bath: in a salty-sweet brine infused with a host of “ingredients”. Not that Anthony was going to divulge the concoction’s secret; but he did emphasise that this curing incubates the subliminal flavours of the fish married to the smokiness – not to mention preserving it. Note taken and zealously underlined.

Slabs of pork belly, squatting behind the brine-filled tubs in the walk-in fridge, underwent a different process of the same significance: spices and dried herbs rubbed onto their surfaces, along with the salt drawing out moisture and concentrating the meat’s flavours.

Then unseen but mentioned, the poultry gets the equivalent treatment – except with some diversification in the rub’s recipes.

After a day or two of nurturing, the meats were extracted from their respective cures and cleansed before the headline act. Either placed on racks or hung on meat hooks, they enter the steel cabinet striated with amber streaks; the inside of the cavity was pulsing with burnt-wood aromas, circulated by in-built fans.

This is where the magic really happens: the nativity scene for a Promethean rebirth.

Seeing the functioning contraption also lends understanding to anyone novice to the principles of hot- and cold-smoking.

Whole logs aflame and asphyxiating whole furnace-like rooms, scorching heat-aromatised fumes onto smoked goods and fully cooking them in the process; that’s hot-smoking. What we had in front of us in Ummera’s workshop was a cold-smoker, just like my own: kept to ambient temperature (20-30°C), the meats are smeared with caramelised smoke particles generated by cindering wood dust – more compact and starved of oxygen, therefore burning more gently; the intensity of smoky flavours are controlled by the amount of time meats are exposed to this constant airbrushing, often lasting hours to even overnight.

Demystified, the art of smoking isn’t a difficult process overall – and easily replicable even on my London balcony – yet the craft and attention instill a whole dimension of complexity; there’s no getting it right other than creating the conditions for chemical reactions to occur, but even those are simply compositions of ingredients that give flavour profiles unique to each smoker’s imagination and practices.

The way smoked meats are produced – nay, birthed – at Ummera Smokehouse by Anthony Creswell, even when wood smoke has smothered our fingers and palates for tens of thousands of years, is uniqueness of its own. Its secret recipes, much like the invention of smoking itself, may not be entrusted to many living memories; but as long as the techniques and appreciation live on, smoked foods will continue to coexist alongside humanity.

I finally tried some of Anthony’s smoked salmon and duck breasts on the way out. They were, quite simply, beautiful. But, on a subliminal context, they reminded me of just how holistic food is.

Even if smoked salmon may appear to be a singular produce, countless other components all played a part in piecing it together: from the brine and spices and wood smoke, to the Irish water and feeds the salmon dwelled in.

The post Smoked meats, Ummera Smokehouse appeared first on The Travelling Editor.

The first one I sank my teeth into came suffocating in clingfilm. At the conference centre cafetería, I must have taken pity on it as I rescued it amidst its fellow inmates in the display fridge. By the time I deconstricted it from its straitjacket, I could only declare it lifeless: the cold and neglect had it desiccated and shrivelled; the flavours of its two sole components, eggs and potatoes, simply left – like ghosts ejected from the recently deceased.

It was, by all accounts, edible – if only you forget that the Tortilla Española is one of defining elements of the Spanish cuisine, and if you don’t have a praising opinion of Spain’s gastronomy. That or, as in my case, if you’re hungry enough to blindfold your taste buds.

I shared my lament with Erin; she would sympathise with the sentiment – after all, she’s written a piece about her personal favourite tortillas in Madrid and where to find them. Her advice was prompt:

“Go to Bodega La Ardosa.”

Who was I to turn down this authoritative suggestion, coming from the food-loving expat firmly settled in the capital city with her Spanish husband and newborn son?

Days after the ‘first encounter’, I tracked down Erin’s favourite tortilla joint in the neighbourhood of Malasaña – even though the setting for this promised phenomenon was hardly what I anticipated:

A craft beer pilgrim would have a more suitable sense of belonging in La Ardosa than me there on an omelette quest: barely lit with hanging lamps, the tiny area was a square encasement of old bottles adjourning shelves rising seemingly beyond the ceiling; the beer taps, fitted admirably with cask ale draughts as well, could well be better equipped than some British pubs I find back home in London.

There were several plaques on the wall commemorating the champions of Guinness drinking contests dating back decades ago, which perhaps said more about the function of La Ardosa than the age of the establishment.

At least there’s a chalkboard tapas menu with “tortilla” written on it.

My purpose intact, I waited a while for my order – with a pint, naturally – until the cooked-on-demand quarter grail arrived without even a hint of indignation: lightly browned on the surface, crammed with softened but not pulverised potato, and, as a wet kiss to someone who likes his fried egg yolk runny, oozing in molten yellow.

As I’ve always insisted: great food doesn’t just taste great; it makes you think. I did ponder, in between bites of my search’s reward, about what ultimately gives Madrid the entitlement of culinary capital of Spain – or, twisting its wording, a centre stage of the Spanish cuisine.

I was obliged to take inspiration from the tortilla: surely an egg, however expertly cooked, is only as good as the quality of the egg?

Ingredients, then. Especially for a cuisine so heavily dependent on its produce, whereupon its regional gastronomic identities are defined by what they specialise in producing, the Spanish cuisine excels in minimal preparation and allowing ingredients to sing for themselves – like eggs and potatoes.

And, one might notice on a map of Spain, all its major roads and therefore ingredient trails converge – and the convergence point is none other than Madrid.

The next time I ate out with Erin confirmed my theory.

Sala de Despiece is unique – a word I never use liberally – in many ways. Its bone-white decor with an open kitchen and likeness to a market counter, though seemingly aesthetic, actually mirrors the restaurant’s concept; its menu, more like a handwritten stocklist, stated what’s on offer quite simply: name of ingredient, its place of origin, delivery notes, and a mere word or two about how it’s being prepared.

As we were seated before the worktop, the gastronomic activity unfolded inches away from our peripheries – even with dishes ordered by someone else and not destined for our palates.

And, true to the simplicity suggested by the menu, they were only finite yet delicate touches applied to ingredients: a tomato, big as two hands clasped together, was merely trimmed at the top and drizzled with olive oil; long strips of raw beef received a scattering of shaved truffle and oil on the silver tray whereon it’s served; whole razor clams – from Palamós, to my delight – grilled only for seconds before dusted with sea salt and pimentón, the Spanish paprika.

But the one item that summed up Sala de Despiece’s philosophy was what Erin most eagerly pointed her finger.

Calçot, a type of green onion the shape of baby leeks, is harvested only from Spain’s Catalonia region in late autumn and winter, and consumed then with limited availability. On that late January afternoon, we were fortunate to score even a pair of these barbecued sprouts, augmented by a pistachio and pepper Romesco sauce – and its own flame-intensified juices.

They were, quite simply, a marvel in its purest, most natural form.

Not only did it unravel an emphasis on the quality of ingredients, and ingredients alone leading the flavours and character of dishes, Sala de Despiece and its uber-seasonal approach in sourcing only the best only at their best is a revelation of just how the Spanish cuisine is determined by its produces’ excellence.

More so when, as though it’s grander than the restaurant alone, the menu listed what the entirety of Spain has to offer.

Though I had an inkling that the gastronomic destiny of Madrid isn’t determined by only the present. Sure, the Spanish cuisines’ reputation in the worldwide arena is an accolade of recent years, but its traditions and renowned dishes have origins stretching way into the past. Just like, as I marvelled them every time I visited, the royal capital’s architecture goes back to the 9th century.

Not to mention that, at the height of Spain’s colonial discoveries, it has brought back indigenous ingredients and flavours from the Americas and absorbed them into its larder. Think tomatoes, potatoes, and capsicums, which is dried and powdered into the iconic pimentón.

But then, if I was to start getting under the skin of Madrid’s culinary dominance and the history leading up to it, I needed an expert opinion. Thank goodness, then, for Devour Spain.

Established by Lauren Aloise of Spanish Sabores as Madrid Food Tours, who has since expanded her business and gastronomic compass to Barcelona, Seville and Malaga, their Ultimate Spanish Cuisine Tour was the one I joined – and had high hopes of getting some answers from.

I met Luke, my guide, in the morning at Plaza Mayor, and around the corner of this landmark was one of our first pitstop: Mercado de San Miguel. The venue has stood since 1916 and left derelict, until it was renovated and reopened in 2009 – and became a triumphant showcase of epicurism.

That is until tourism has overrun the place a bit and jumpstarted the price hike.

Nonetheless, an institution is such for its worth, and it’s still rather enjoyable ordering a glass of wine or small beer – caña – while people-watching and admiring the building’s interior design.

What I hadn’t tried, not till Luke brought me there for that pre-noon beverage, was vermouth or vermut in Spanish. La Hora de Vermut, which I shall colloquially translate to “Vermouth o’clock”, is a stall in Mercado de San Miguel that specialises in this fortified bittersweet wine by serving them from taps, dolloped with ice cube and a slice of lemon.

Like gin, vermouth is fast becoming a fashionable drink in Spain; I must admit it’s an acquired taste, but anyone – myself included – who fancies slurping a bold sherry or dry spiced wine can revel in this change of scenery.

As Luke and I chatted, he reminded me of an integral component of the Madrileño social dynamics: with the average home limited in space, the city’s residents prefer to socialise in public spaces such as La Hora de Vermut. It’s the true function of the now world-famous tapas culture: a tipple or two to go with friends catching up on an ordinary day basis, in turn accompanied by nibbles to soften the effects of alcohol.

And sometimes, when designed for the connoisseur, food serving to pair with drinks – like the vermouth duetted with olives and a skewer of quail egg, sweet pepper, brined chili and anchovy.

Combined with this innate lifestyle, Mercado de San Miguel sowed the seeds of a 2010s hype of market dwelling; the likes of Mercado de San Antón and Mercado de Antón Martín are modernising to cater for grocery shoppers as well as an eat-drink-chat clientele, while the newly-erected Mercado de San Ildefonso in the hip Malasaña district mimics the street market concept of London and New York – boasts its website – inside a multi-storey industrially-stylised building.

And with popularised market eating comes an advancement: diners are no longer isolated but brought face-to-face with the conception of what they eat – raw ingredients, cooking techniques, and a closer look and know-hows of food standards.

The pickier the consumers, the higher the quality demand – and more room yet for Madrid’s gastronomy to aspire to and excel.

But all this glitz is recent history.

The urban redevelopment, as well as culinary innovations, only began to take hold upon the dawn of this millennium – a skin graft on an more antiquated organism. Especially when it is to heal the third-degree burns from the Spanish Civil War and Francoist dictatorship between 1936-75.

For decades after a conflict that decimated its working class, businesses and economy, Spain was plunged into deadly famine – not helped by Franco’s initial ban of international trade. In order to restore conservative nationalism, what his authoritarian regime also culled were numerous civil freedoms, liberalism, cultural diversity and any hint of regional identity.

If you’ve ever wondered why the Spanish cuisine may sometimes appear so homogenous, that’s one reason.

The recession and, in compensation, heavy industrialisation of Madrid saw its common lives driven frugal; convenience was placed above the fanciful and elaborate. Even the cocido madrileño, or Madrid stew, receded in popularity when labouring folks favoured the quick and easy as bread and oil.

Restaurants found themselves out of customers and out of business – even centuries of existence or royal warrants didn’t matter.

Though some did survive to this date.

La Bola‘s kitchen is still simmering terracotta jugs of chorizo, chickpeas, potatoes and morcilla – pork blood sausage – the practice of cocido madrileño that would’ve faced extinction in the austere years along with the historic restaurant.

Perhaps what saved it from closure was, paradoxically, nationalism: because cocido was deemed significant in the Spanish culture and preserved – amongst the many fateful establishments that still occupy their original location, and are commemorated for their longevity on bronze plaques outside their shops.

The gem that’s a gem’s throw away from Mercado de San Miguel, and a stopover on the food tour flight path, was Bar Cerveriz.

Inconspicuous under the iron-and-glass shadow of the famous market, this drinking hole’s appearance could surely be described as utilitarian: varnished wooden top nested the glass encasements of dishes; epileptic jingles and coins clinking sporadically interrupted constant hums of the fruit machines. The odd stool-occupying punter consumed in silence, either buried in newspaper or gazed seemingly distanceless into the TV.

Yet, as I discovered with every visit to Spain, sparsity is often a perfect disguise for something extraordinary.

After Luke greeted the owner’s wife, she plonked an empty tumbler on the bar; then, high as her arm could hoist it, the green bottle trickled its content into the glass below. Aerated, the cascade’s aromas followed: alcoholic and appley.

This is cider not as us Brits know it. Sidra, as it is named in Spanish, is a heritage brewed almost exclusively in Northern Spain; once again, this considered regional practice dwindled under the oppression of Franco’s nationalistic regime, yet flourished again under the cultural resurgence of Basque Country and Asturias – as well as Galicia, where Cerveriz’s proprietors hail from.

It isn’t only a proven method of oxidising the liquid and therefore enhancing its flavours; with every pour, it looks and feels like an exertion of regional identity – and pride.

What had been praised as highly as the cider flowed was the owner’s tortilla.

Before we got to the joint, I was telling Luke about my own quest of tracking down the best tortilla Madrid has to offer, and having might well sought it in Bodega La Ardosa. His smirk was a counterproposal.

“Wait till you try the one at Bar Cerveriz.”

While we slurped sidra and pecked slices of Manchego cheese, Carlos was busy whipping up the competition in his fluorescent back kitchen. As my fork sank into the contender, its contents oozing as my tongue caressed it, the verdict was clear: the tortilla de La Ardosa had found its match.

The egg, while browned on the exterior, was gooey in the centre; cutting through it, the caramelised onions whispered the sweetness and umami La Ardosa’s tortilla lacked. But what ultimately impressed me were the mini fingers of potatoes: surely blessed by the patron saint of spuds, they retained an ideal texture whilst uncompromisingly concentrated in their own earthy flavour.

No wonder Carlos’s was one of the most famed tortillas in Madrid: it was the tortilla tortillas want to become when they grow up.

Considering all these variables, it’s difficult for me to pin down which contributes the greatest to the Spanish cuisine.

While quality ingredients constitute its building blocks, and the regional specialisations lending diversity and composing its overall character, it is the people like Carlos and the gastronomic masterminds behind the likes of Sala de Despiece and Bodega La Ardosa as well as the produce makers who make magic happen daily in the name of Spanish food.

They, in turn, influence each other: ingredients inspire regionality, which in turn propels individuals who take inspiration from ingredients and regional ways as well as create them. And this creative cycle is what drives the cuisine – and it has never spun faster in the boundless modern day.

By the time I got to the fourth tortilla, I could reach my own conclusion of Madrid’s culinary identity.

Inside the narrow eatery tucked away in Mercado de la Paz, in turn hidden within the Salamanca neighbourhood, Erin and I met for a final meal before my return flight. It was lunchtime; the upheaval of workers from offices, construction sites and vendors alike piled the bar top with empty plates and litter.

This is food at its most frivolous – yet, as the most recent tortilla suggested, by-no-means a negligent and poorly-conceived affair. Its clientele demand it: a snapshot of the nationwide obsession of culinary greatness, from the home kitchen to gourmet eateries – and Madrid, as the capital city and convergence point, gets that from a population absorbed from the whole of Spain.

Madrid may lack Costa Brava’s world-class avant-garde, Basque Country’s regional profile, Andalucía’s Moorish heritage and abundance; yet what it possesses is the best of all worlds, a cross section of everything that is attractive, exquisite, flavoursome and experiential about the Spanish cuisines.

Like any performance, elements may be flawed – an odd wrinkled and frigid tortilla here, an apathetic tapas bar there – but those that sing, loudly and proudly, only do so spectacularly because of an appreciative crowd; with every bit of exposure to food conception and innovation, the people want more – thus the gastronomy of Spain refines and evolves.

And Madrid can truly claim to be a centre stage of it all: a convergence of the Spanish cuisine like blood always rushes back to the heart.

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Only because, my sight deemed, they looked characteristically like samosas.

Try one, Claude insisted. Happily obliging, I pinched one parcel and took a bite. The wrapping succumbed to dental pressure and fractured spectacularly; then, out of nowhere, irony spinach – swimming in a flavour solution of smokey fishiness and nutty notes.

My presumptuous self, bruised and shamed.

I shared my assumption with my host; Claude simply smirked. “And the kids think like that too – and it’s how we get them to eat their vegetables here!”

By “here”, Claude could mean anywhere we were sitting on. The Philippines, say – and it is an inventiveness about her cuisine that I’d learned throughout my days there, that I was now engrossed in conversation about how every Filipino dish are created for a purpose, or function. Or, perhaps, the province of Pampanga, where Claude hails from, dubbed the food capital of The Philippines.

Though I suppose he specifically meant Downtown Cafe, his recently-opened eatery on Nepo Quad, Angeles City’s new food strip and extension of its shopping mall.

Even the establishment was like the triangulos, the samosa-like crispy parcels I just ate: on its outside, Downtown Cafe was masked nostalgically with 60s chic; a lone jukebox faced the pin-pushed couch booths opposite, surrounded by the vintage posters and advertisements adjourning the walls. Battered metallic Coca-Cola signs triangulated with an old-school soft-drink dispenser. Two ceiling fans swirled overhead, as reminiscent of colonial designs as the Mexican-esque mirror menu.

But what I’d taste was anything but American diner grub or lacking the contemporary flair. The menu, printed on stapled-together paper as well as illustrated and captioned on framed photographs hung all over one wall, was Claude’s artisan interpretation of the traditional Filipino cuisine.

Or his take on international dishes, kissed with a Filipino touch.

“Do you have Peking duck or crispy aromatic duck in London?” asked Claude’s sister, who joined me, Claude, his wife and Julius, my Pampanga tour guide, for the luncheon at Downtown Cafe. Yes, we indeed do, thinking the question was merely a continuation of our conversation about my home city – until the second plate showed up on our table.

“This is Claude’s version.”

After all, Claude Tayag is an artist and furniture designer raised in a creative household; as the ninth child, his parents aptly called him Claude Nine – so you know the preferred pronunciation of his name.

If he was married to art, then cooking was his childhood sweetheart cum lifelong mistress. From his family home kitchen originated his earliest fascination with food and gastronomy, which he crafted and experimented on throughout his life; even without formal training, he has guest-starred in professional kitchens hosting one-off showcases of his culinary inventions.

After establishing a reservation-only dining experience at his residence, Bale Dutung, Claude finally decided to set up his own restaurant – and from what my palate was gathering, Downtown Cafe was well on the path of becoming a mecca for the Pampangan food pilgrimage.

“It’s considered normal here,” Claude shrugged off his apparent culinary talent; “Pampangans, men and female, are expected to be great cooks – from the moment they can walk into the kitchen. And that’s how Pampanga keeps its status as culinary capital of The Philippines.”

But why is it considered so? The explanation came along with the third dish.

Young, curling fern stalks: ones I’ve always considered as New Zealand’s iconic flora, not so much an edible entity. But there they were, accompanied by red onions and quail eggs, to be garnished with a mango vinaigrette.

And it wasn’t just me who found it alien: the fiddlehead fern was widely forgotten as an ingredient in Pampanga, where it’s commonly found in the wild – and it’s Claude’s personal mission to reintroduce it to the public, in the form of ensaladang pako.

“What makes Pampanga a culinary capital: its biodiversity.” Surely no random conjecture – Claude has written a book about it. “Everything that grows from the fertile lands here – plants, animals – many of them aren’t found anywhere else in The Philippines, especially in the South where the soil quality is poorer. When the Spaniards came, they brought some of their best chefs to Pampanga and made its cuisine famous – but it’s because of Pampanga’s variety and availability of ingredients that they came, instead of anywhere else.”

So an agrarian reason then, I remarked. Yes, came the reply, but more than cultivation: it’s what they also hunt, what they also forage – like the fiddlehead fern crackling under my molars.

Then the fourth, fifth and sixth ‘courses’ landed in our midst, along with Claude’s commentaries of each’s constitutions, origin stories, representations.

The kare-kare, prepared with braised oxtails in peanut-y coconut sauce, is a designated national dish of The Philippines; as the Tagalog-Filipino language has a tendency to use a repeated word to imply imitation, kare-times-two is a lookalike of the kari introduced by Indian labourers – though it tasted anything but alike, especially when garnished with a shrimp paste.

The tilapia, a freshwater fish considered as another epitome of Pampanga’s river bio-abundance, was served with burong hipon, the fermented rice, once again a local produce – a highlight of the Filipinos’ penchant and expertise in food preservation techniques. The two paired splendidly, with a rice vinegar-like acidity cutting through the crusty crisp of the fish, awakening its freshwater-sweet flavours.

The baby crab, shell tenderised after the hot oil bath, perched on the pinnacle of a talangka rice mount; another feat of his, it was the crab fat he distilled and bottled that lent utter crab-ness to the fried rice – yet another prolongation of ingredient that ends up augmenting its flavours in longevity.

Before the food ever appeared, before I had gotten acquainted with the names and meanings of the dishes I’d later savour, they were but spells Claude had cast and beguiled to materialise on the table.

But then, his gaze turned away from the waitress to me, he asked if I wanted to try anything.

There was, actually: the “pork belly adobo confit”, appearing on the menu and in a picture frame, had captured my curiosity. From what I understood, adobo, the Filipino dish of meats slow-cooked in a vinegar-based broth, and confit, a French long-simmering process under low temperature in animal fat, were both invented as a food preservation technique; wouldn’t an adobo-confit end up…double-preserving?

That was one last cunning he saved till the seventh and final delicacy.

The adobo confit was a matrimony of gastronomic wits, derived from two distant families of culinary conventions: first, the pork belly was left to soak up the adobo marinade; then, saturated in the brine’s flavour, it was slow-cooked in fat and oil to mouth-melting tenderness.

“Then I return the meat to the pan with a little adobo marinade, sauté it until the exterior caramelises. I also call it the wet-dry pork – you’ll see why.”

I cut into the piece; it hardly resisted the knife. It was truly tender, juicy; but not before breaching an outer crunch, where the meat had browned and crusted. And the crackling, its bone-dry crisp with an added ascension of sugar-burnt sauce – my sort of delight.

And it summarised how Claude’s innovation was what kept Pampangan cuisine and its identity alive, just as Filipino food is battling for its rightful place on the arena of international gastronomy. It can evolve, but with constant glances behind the shoulder; it can appeal, domestically and worldwide, but only if the chefs understand its preparations as well as its components, where they come from, what purpose they serve.

I couldn’t have been under a better tutelage in the Filipino cuisine than an afternoon with Claude Tayag and his delectable creations.

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They batted like eyelids, catching my attention as I entered the Culture Pavilion with their flickering movements, balanced delicately on fingertips; they swirled, dipped and soared, in fluid synchrony with their dancing wielders, looking as though they were an extension of their bodies than a separate entity.

A lone figure, standing above them all, orchestrated the choreography. Its appearance baffled me: while they were unmistakably masculine, the facial features were masked by makeup; as womanish as the attire, how this dancer manoeuvred had a distinctive feminine grace.

His name is Didik Nini Thowok, I was told. Florine remarked how privileged they, the event organisers, were that the Javanese performer, famed in his native Indonesia for his mastery in cross-gender dance forms, had agreed to perform at Tong Tong Fair – the very Eurasian festival in The Hague, Holland, where I encountered the celebrity in the flesh.

Didik Nini Thowok would take his art to the festival’s main stage the next day, but in the meantime, he was hosting a lesson on fan dancing for a lucky few.

Star-struck aside, the other intriguing aspect I’d picked out rested with Didik’s students: amidst the array, a blonde-haired dabbled in the intricate dance form alongside the non-caucasian façades – some noticeably Far Eastern, Caribbean, others ambiguities of racial blending.

And yet, there they waltzed together, harmoniously and in rhythm – as if they represented the social dynamics of The Hague, the demographics inhabiting it, who Tong Tong Fair was here to pleasure.

But for me, an outsider, I needed a little more than a snapshot of the present to understand the phenomena –  the multiethnic community and the festival’s connection to Asia – I had to glimpse into Holland’s past as a colonial superpower.

Through the Dutch East India Company, Holland wielded near absolute monopoly in the Asian regions now known as Indonesia and Borneo, having established their trading strongholds in Java and Jayakarta ­– later Batavia before it was renamed Jakarta – by 1610s.

For over three centuries, the wealth brought in under Dutch colonial rule, including spice merchandising and sugar plantation, was transplanted to Europe and swelled the Old World coffers, funding civil engineering projects and evolving the face of The Netherlands.

The Hague, in particular, flourished; after all, the headquarters of the former Ministry of Colonies was based in the administrative heart of the Dutch domain.

Even today, the city’s architecture alludes connections with this colonial past, from commemorations down to sculptures of fruits reminding which trade funded the construction.

And along with the merchandise came the indigenous people Dutch Colonialism came into contact with. For various reasons, willingly or coerced, some journeyed from their homelands to arrive in Holland; a few even opted to stay.

What I saw in The Hague today were the offspring of ethnically intertwined fates – even though its colonial control was dismantled shortly after the Second World War, the visual legacy remains.

Stepping into the Grand Pasar – bazaar or market in Indonesian – under the vast midnight blue of the marquee ceiling, I could’ve been fooled into thinking I’d been transported to a night market. In Southeast Asia.

Aromas of incense loitered ever close to my nostrils, and exotic fruits and occasional wafts of pungent durian, as I moved nearer to juice bars and produce merchants. My eyesight hopped between stalls, from spiky berries I hadn’t seen outside Asia to bronze and porcelain effigies, mythic deities, depictions in Buddhism and Hinduism; the garbs and fabrics, either on hangers and price-tagged or worn on servers and shopkeepers, only emanated a flavour synonymous with the Asian identity.

Even when it was appearance that began breaking this character and left me confused about my ‘displacement’.

Above the wares, spelt in alphabet, the signs were unmistakably in Dutch; the Euro was a ubiquitous figure accompanying numbers. Juxtaposed, the entropy of Asian and Caucasian features was so balanced it was difficult to place numerical superiority on either group, or have it decisively indicate where I was at the time: in the Far East or the West.

Perhaps I’d go with the festival organisers’ definition of “Eurasian”. Even if I interpreted it as a surrounding so compound with its dual identities, it was entirely one of a kind.

Perhaps food might help me decipher Tong Tong Fair.

Following the arrows leading us out of the Grand Pasar, the horseshoe corridor of the Food Pavilion unfolded in the form of fast food stalls, lined along a constant flow of ambling visitors. It was buzzing, energised, even when there was only a mild cacophony of touting calls, crockery clattering and general chatter – instead, they were the electrifying vibrances of ingredients, on display counters and sieved out of deep fryers and griddles, accompanied by the scents they give out in all directions.

Peter and I narrowed them down to one booth and seated before the indoor open barbecue, where the chef pinched half a dozen skewers of raw meat and slapped them on the tempered flame, letting them hiss as the protein and marinade browned while tending to them with glazes of sweet, savoury peanut sauce.

Enough of teasing – even while I was entertained by a beer while we waited, all I could was crave for the satay.

The crowd swelled whilst we observed it from our rest stop – it was approaching lunchtime.

Curiously, the local Dutch people seemed so comfortable in an atmosphere so far removed from Europe – as though they all had grown up in Asia, emerged in its cuisines riddled with their jargons.

Or perhaps Holland’s former colonies, and their native cultures and gastronomies, were that emulsified with Dutch society for so long, that being raised acclimatised with this diet was the norm.

The food affair at Tong Tong Fair was there to educate, as much as the visitors were hunting the best of Indonesian and Eurasian flairs served in The Hague.

Back in the Grand Pasar, on the main stage, performers were enchanting their audiences with sounds and sights from the farther corner of Asia.

A singer took to the podium and sang beautifully, all whilst accompanied by an ensemble of instruments exotic to the European eye. Didik Nini Thowok, the celebrated Javanese performer I’d encountered, also captured the performing arts of his native land and opened the bottle – to the delight of viewers, awed by either a familiar or unfamiliar display.

But there were those closer to home, like a cover band composed of teenagers with mixed heritage.

Much like other certain parts of the fair, Tong Tong strived to raise awareness about the cultural significances of a multiracial society – by giving its youth a voice, and by showing them they weren’t alone.

Inside the Culture Pavilion, on board a carriage converted into an information centre, adults and children alike learned from interactive exhibits the issues of being a person with blended backgrounds: the prejudice they may face, alienation by their peers because of their skin colour – how the modern-day Dutch of various ethnicities have managed to coexist harmoniously, and what responsibility new generations must carry to sustain it.

To the naked eye, Tong Tong Fair may appear objectified by the hustle of merchandise and culinary offerings, plus with some singing and dancing thrown in; but look a little closer – witness the interaction between the visitors, exhibitors and the items on display.

With every box of incense sticks they bought, with younglings rubbing bellies of Buddha statues and probing their parents and grandparents about their significance, foreign attires taken off the shelves and worn, these were people establishing and reestablishing their connection with Asia through the objects that symbolise it, whether they had Asia in their blood or merely deeply influenced by it.

Tong Tong Fair flaunted that if its visitors couldn’t go to Asia, then allow the festival to bring Asia to them.

What did I find instead? Asia was already living amongst The Hague.

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There was no such aroma in the coconut workshop at The Farm.

The “oil of life”, as it was dubbed at the wellbeing retreat near Lipa City, The Philippines, was harvested from organic coconut fruits grown within the jungle enclosure. Yet theirs was a cold-press technique – barring the motor oil fuelling automated machinery, and the tropical temperatures keeping the glass box shed stifled, there wasn’t a hint of heat source facilitating the manufacture.

There weren’t many pairs of hands on the job either.

One lone producer guided me through the entire process.

Hacking open their hard shell crudely with a machete – wouldn’t you fret about his fingers? – he drained the coconuts of their translucent juice, or coconut water, which was sieved and reserved.

“Can you see the difference?”

But then, I cheated; my tenure in the South Pacific had taught me much about the maturity of coconuts: the riper fruits sprout from within, which deplete the nutrition content and render it inferior in quality. It was then that the production underwent its craft selection: the stemming, lesser-deemed fruits made the bulk of basic, ordinary-graded coconut oil, while the younger, purer variety would be further refined to premium virgin coconut oil.

Either way, the coconut needed mincing – the only motorised machine-aided step.

Pressed against the rotating blades inside an open barrel, the flesh was rapidly shredded off the coconuts’ interior. I found myself gritting my teeth again; even though he manoeuvred as skilfully as to match the speediness, the finger worry was back.

He stopped short of a dozen halves to continue with the demonstration – batches of 20 to 25 coconuts at a time is the norm, which yields one litre of the end product. The meat garnered, he enveloped them in a parcel of muslin cloth and placed it under the hydraulic press.

As pressure multiplied, white trickles streamed out of the compression point and down the tray, cascading into the collection bucket below.

The craftsman filled a half shell with the fluid; try, he insisted. It’s indeed one thing I’d missed: tasting coconut cream from where it fell off the tree, beside where it was juiced.

Once the last droplets oozed out and were captured, he mixed the squashed flesh with the reserved coconut water – roughly three kilograms of meat to two litres of water – and returned it to the contraption for a second compression – until he harnessed every bit of moisture.

And there terminated the heavy manual labour – the rest was entrusted to the device of gravity. And time.

He brought me to the next chamber, a cooler cavity dotted with the same buckets he used to capture the coconut contents; except, unlike the emulsified, monochromic fluid straight out of the press, the containers showed the separation in progress.

Inside the more ‘juvenile’ buckets, the room-temperature liquids detaches from the lighter solid particles, which floated above; under the more prolonged fermentation period, lasting up to 16 hours, the heavier fluid was almost completely dislodged from the surface precipitation and sank to the bottom. Between the two layers lied the intermedium: a considerably thin strata of coconut oil, to be extracted with a pipette.

To refine this oil and reach ‘virgin’-grade purity, it underwent five further filtrations through muslin cloth to sieve out remaining impurities.

And on the seventh day, as numeric as the biblical genesis, the final product was conceived and ready for packaging.

The Farm at San Benito, at the time of my visit, manufactured coconut oil mostly for its internal consumption: at its spa facility for massage treatments; to be processed into soap infusions in the same workshop; for cooking in the resort’s vegan kitchen; as part of its bathroom amenities, for anything from oil pulling to hair conditioning – it was effective enough when I applied it to my legs to ease the itch from mosquito bites. It was also sold in The Farm’s boutique and selected outlets in Manila.

But, naturally, I was more curious about its ingestion – and how beneficial it could potentially be.

Flavour-wise, it is its own distinctive taste I’d welcome wherever coconut fits in the orchestra of ingredients. And I could obtain it – flavour and oil, albeit in small dosages – as easily in coconut cream.

Whatever advantage, personally, must arise from consuming concentrated coconut oil.

It contains large proportions of lauric acid, which is speculated to increase ‘good’ blood cholesterols – but it’s yet to be confirmed by scientific studies. It has a relatively low smoke point, which doesn’t exactly make it an ideal cooking oil – and if not considering the prison break of belligerent free-radicals, then the pleasurable coconut-y note being eclipsed and vilified by burnt rancidity. It’s not convincing me to actively include it in my lipidic repertoire, but I may fancy a bit of culinary fun with it once in a while, if it’s there.

Though I must admire the cold-press production at The Farm; there was a certain grace about it. Unlike the abrasive and pyrexial brute of coercing oils out of their hosts, turning out end products with industrial efficiency, how the craftsmen in the workshop rendered coconut oil was, comparatively, to whisper to each kernel and plead for it offerings.

Other than some artificial facilitation by the shaver, the oil was extracted purely through the engines of nature: gravity its force, microorganisms its agents, time its currency.

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Two bites into the main course and the all-too-familiar sensation punched my stomach. Like how we rehearsed it, I commanded my muscles to tense and suppress the abdominal simmer. No use. The fizzling was violent like seismic activity inside me; the invisible fist, now an unclenched paw, was scraping against my gut inner lining. The containment strategy was failing fast.

Wishing not to cause a scene – even though I was the lone patron in the hotel restaurant, with the Romanian wait staff watching Mexican telenovela in the backdrop – I stood up and crept away to the toilet.

Just another “episode”, as I’d come to call the bowel incidents un-fondly.

This latest series premiered without much warning or even the slightest indication. I was hiking up a less-than-strenuous gradient of Bicaz Gorge, on my press trip to the Neamt County of Romania; every body part felt normal enough.

Then, my steps halting as I reached the top of the slope, at the parked car, the very instance I transitioned from motion to stationary: it ambushed me from within. Huddling my tummy and clambering into the front seat, I lasted ten-ish minutes – before declaring it a bowel emergency. The following routine enacted like the same script set in different time periods: the frantic toilet hunt – and the rest, unsavoury details.

And a day later, the agony still hadn’t loosen its grip.

As I slouched on the epitomic throne of my existence, a dialogue resonated in my dizzied mind; it came from Dr Lim, the health consultant at the wellness and rehabilitation retreat in The Philippines that I visited a few weeks prior, to whom I divulged my chronic suffering:

“You can’t keep having diarrhea for the rest of your life – it’s no way to live.”

Much of my earliest living memories were scenes of toilets.

Growing up, my imaginary nemesis was also my tummy.

As an adult, I’m still terrorised by its sensitivity. Unpredictability, too, since there’s little knowing when it’d strike: I’ve learned that any odd combination of lactose, gluten, acidity, protein, stress, movement, exercise, irregular mealtime would trigger a landslide – thus, considerably, I have learned nothing at all.

And in the aftermath of each sporadic calamity, I plunge into the rabbit hole of mishap. The episodes leave me with a devoid belly, my gastric organs and bowel shrivelled like a scrunched lemon; energy levels drain faster than I can replenish it, which isn’t helped by a distressed appetite wanting to starve out the discomfort before eating again. I feel depressed, antisocial, entitled to every disgruntlement, fatigued and demotivated – dysfunctional.

I’m camera-shy; not because of a narcissistic displeasure of my appearance or unkemptness, but because of the unhealthy radiance I tend to imprint on photographs.

No matter how much I try to regulate my body mass, I may well remain perpetually underweight: partly due to subpar absorption capabilities of my digestive system, partly my shedding sustenance on my rear end, but mostly the fluctuations of my volatile appetite that’s, frankly, beyond my control.

Worse yet, I had no idea what I was dealing with – until I finally had it medically examined last year.

I couldn’t have known they are all connected.

Irritable bowel. Joint aches on nippier days. Finger-twisting party tricks. Heartburn. Shortsighted. Feeling faint standing up. Fatigue. Dislike of exercise. Flat-ish feet. Bouts of depression. These are all symptoms of joint hypermobility.

Is that really a thing? I questioned my doctor: certainly according to the blood test and how I yanked my thumb to touch the arm – not even the slightest tensile resistance – which pretty much backed her verdict.

And it isn’t a disease or sickness, but a condition.

It may be more colloquially known as double-jointedness, but while its common occurrence can only bring advantageous stretchiness, in numbered cases – mine certainly – where it is considered a syndrome, the elasticity of tissues affects and hampers bodily functions beyond locomotion. It is this very laxity – medical term for easily-moved tissues – that leaves me with a string of physical and mental issues, but none has corroded my wellbeing more so than my sorry-ass digestive system.

So could I begin treatment now?

There aren’t many. And no cure. I may attend physiotherapy. My diet may be more restricted, more regulated, to relief irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Heck, the IBS Network can even give me a “Can’t Wait” card in multiple languages (I just found out about this while researching for this article – even I’m mildly amused).

But what more can I do? It’s as though my flesh and bones were a construction site, whereupon only had it been completed and occupied for 26 years that faults in its foundations were discovered – just so I would shrug off and patch up the leaky bits, massage the crooked pillars back to shape only momentarily? It would take routines; a recurring, patterned, predictable lifestyle.

Which my life as a constantly-travelling writer is anything but.

The greatest irony yet isn’t wasted on me, either. The utmost passion of my life, the all-things-culinary, the very things I ingest and nourish my body and food-crazed spirit, is and will remain to be my most likely cause of pain.

At least what I eat I make sure is spot-on delectable, especially with this strict palate of mine – why wouldn’t I, when the roulette spins every meal and there’s a likelihood I could go dashing to the loo?

But, on the road, my meal times can be unpredictable, sometimes missed; I can’t dictate what “resistant starch”, “insoluble fibre” or bowel-irritating substances I must eliminate, not when I’m exposed to new and unfamiliar foods and curious enough to gobble it all. It’s impractical, it’s irresistible, and – my mangled food-related philosophy is kind of paradoxical isn’t it?

And the rest is in the mind: trying to be at peace with the beast inside me, between my palatal desires and fears of IBS, coping with the overflux of adrenaline and congestion of words and sentiments, all happening inside my head, wears me down.

Back in Romania, the conversation with brain-me was getting stoic. Funny what one can get up to while relinquishing half of one’s body mass.

The first thoughts that occurred were flashbacks. Some past “episodes”. One stood out: how, hitchhiking in Canada, I made the driver pull up beside the Ontario wilderness only minutes after I persuaded him to take me, then to take comfort in the bush and a roll of toilet paper salvaged from the car boot. Others, similarly graphic.

Then, another quote:

“Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

Not that I felt a particular entitlement to others’ kindness. But if spending hours scouring the internet for reading material about my condition and the its pitfalls for a habitual traveller, would then not lead me to empathise with those travelling with their respective sufferings, I should perhaps question my own morality.

I have encountered people and fellow world-seekers confessing their disabilities. Some, vocal about their anxiety and mental affliction; some, sensory hindrances like hearing loss. Others, like myself but altogether more acutely, digestive problems such as coeliac disease and peanut allergy. Many more, internal or extrinsic feature, keep theirs to themselves. But there’s little denial: there are infinite ways to inflict agony on our fragile, mortal shells – and the psychological selves that dwell within, and we’ll all afflicted somehow.

We may never truly understand suffering on someone else’s behalf, since one may never live another’s life. But we can appreciate that under every laminated porcelain is a surface fracturing: where the crack originated we may not know, but we must acknowledge the imperfection; everyone’s vases won’t eventually break, but are in the process of breaking, from the moment they were sculpted.

So just keep putting flowers in yours. Keep travelling, exploring – as long as you know your limits. Meet people, because they teach you about life more than you can learn by yourself. Restricting your movement may it be, but don’t let illness stop your curiosity from wandering off.

Have empathy for others, because while the pains can’t the same, pain is categorically what you have in common.

And while you’re at it, understand this: you’re not alone in your suffering, short-term or chronic – because all of us are trying to fill our broken jars.

The post On travelling with chronic suffering appeared first on The Travelling Editor.

The August sunlight, reflecting on the limestones and alabaster, glazed a mist-like filter over my eyes; in this hallucinogenic translucence, Giorgio and I happened upon a cafe and brought our deckchairs under an umbrella – even in its shade, the heat was overpowering, senses-dulling.

What we ordered – Aperol Spritz and rustico, a puff pastry parcel filled with tomato paste, bechamél and mozzarella – were the last things I had during my previous visit to the Salento region of Italy; it felt less a meal at present than it was a flashback.

We talked about riposo, the Southern Italy’s equivalent to the Spanish siesta, the bracket of summer afternoons where it’s too hot to venture outdoors – whoever I glimpsed strolling by appeared like spectres in the scorching haze, or as though they jaunted outside still in their sleep and oblivious of the heat.

And there, arrayed on the façade beside Aldo Moro Square, the unlit neons were only vague outlines of a circular emblem, and the logo of Mercatino del Gusto. That being the annual food festival I was about to attend, the cable-marked calligraphy was my first hint of this culinary congregation – before the town had snapped out of its dream.

Soon enough, though. Because the night was falling, the air cooling – and it’s almost time to wake up.

I reemerged from my cocoon, a quaintly book-themed guesthouse, just in time to watch Maglie light up.

Pacing around as I waited for Giorgio back at the Square, I would stop to wonder how I hadn’t noticed the signs hovering overhead, every time one’s bulbs flickered into illumination. It was like seeing for the first time in the morning: only when my eyesight awakens and sharpens does the clarity return. Except, in this instance, day was night – and sharpness lied with glimmers contrasting with deepening blue.

And now that I could see clearly what the arrows pointed towards, the letters alone were premeditating my lust.

I mean, I know you’re waiting for Giorgio…but look at me: “Piazza del Gelato”. As in, you guessed it, an actual square dedicated to gelato!

Two scoops or one?

Good that I was a little early, because that afforded me time to do some independent exploration – while the denizens and visitors of Maglie were only still stirring.

Question was, where to begin? I weaned off the lure of sweet, frosty things – saving that for later – and sauntered towards Roma Street. Only hours ago, Giorgio and I drove past this corridor and resting vehicles; at this hour, barely after the sun had diminished, only market stalls and transport vans parked along the pavement.

Pedestrians, far from just starting to surface as I’d wrongly thought, were already flocking the street: huddling in front of vendors, poking their heads over shoulders of those huddling, wading in the entropy of crowd flow. There was finger-pointing, money-handling, plates riddled with nuggets of all sizes and colours passing over counters.

And what a transformation: that sweltering, lulled town with a rarefied population had now morphed into a breeze-kissed open-air market animating the whole of Maglie. Or as far as my eyes could see.

Then, once I eased into the congregation and fretted less about stepping on someone’s toes, I took notice of the merchandise.

Rods of cured meats; cheeses in carved barrels, in bulbs; jars brimming in different hues and forms: puréed, brined, conserved. My eyeballs toothpicked the apéritif while the tongue wetted.

At least there were samples; the more bite-sizes I pinched, the more I wanted to prolong the enjoyment – only to then curse at the baggage allowance on my return flight. Bigger bag next time, perhaps.

So I extracted my yielding senses away from the temptations of Roma Street; wandering through several similar alleyways, feeling the palates swell only to then suppress the arousal, I was getting close to graduating from the school of gastro-cognitive resistance.

Then, blitzing past Via dei Dulce with steadfast “dessert last” dogma, I simply had to follow curiosity’s lead and investigate this people trail filling under an archway, and into the courtyard of a palace.

I clambered up the lithic staircase in Palazzo de Marco and found vantage point on its balcony; quiet, peopleless Maglie was now but a distant memory, figment even. It was now packed in every sense: the bodies pressed into the communal space; the sights, sounds and smells – all the sensory bombardment of the street food quarter.

If, standing over the very heart of Mercatino del Gusto, I wouldn’t rip up my inhibitions and let my palates have their pleasures, then I may as well as not have come to a food festival at all.

Even though they were my nostrils that took the bait first, when I forayed below.

Each stand flaunted their own visual appeals, from vibrant signs and ingredients to spirited cooking processes, pasta freshly rolled and cut, pans on open stoves flung and swirled, trays whizzing in and out of ovens; but none conveyed as far from their white cubic tents and across the square as the billows carrying the smoke, and its aromas: meat, herbs and cheeses, over fire.

Hypnotised, I followed it to its source: beside the comic-sans letters spelling “Bombette” in bold, and the lengthy queue in front of it, rows of skewered bombette – little bombs in Italian – browning and caramelising within the flaming kilns. I got up close, behind the safety barrier; near enough to hear the juices and fats wheezing and vaporising, to feel the temperature rising on my skin.

Only my taste was missing out.

I got in line, which moved fairly swiftly; distracted by the grill masters performing what looked like a fire dance with meat-stuck swords, I soon received my share in a paper cone. I spared it a moment to cool, then offered one straight to the palate: molten cheese ricocheted inside my mouth, so did little shrapnels of parsley, while my molars rebounded under the elasticity of pork, until it dissolved and left behind only a lingering of sweet savouriness.

And then I got to detonate another, and another, until I pincered the last little bomb and cherished the final bite.

Next prey. Though there’s so much to choose from, in such concentration of the region’s finest ingredients and the skills put to preparing them.

Circuiting the courtyard I spied foccacia breads, their fragrances outreaching before I caught their golden crusts; croquettes, stuffed meats and sausages on grills, manners of vegetables simply packed into toasted panini; perhaps another rustico, just so I could reminisce a reminiscence.

In one booth, I found another familiar dish I ate on my first trip to Italy’s heel – or the makings of it. Watching and photographing the burly pasta chef work, I couldn’t help but conjure the image of a bearded giant tossing a proportionately-sized skillet, sending the severed ears of Christmas elves tumbling and soaring within it.

Though I was probably still drunk from the bombette fumes.

Orecchiette con cima di rapa, he reminded me of the name of the dish as he handed me a portion.

Inside the cavity ran the pungent oil flavoured with garlic and anchovies; it smothered the “little ear” pasta, the starchy chewiness succumbing under bite alongside the jagged crunch of breadcrumbs. Cutting through it all, the incontrovertible bittersweet of cima di rapa – turnip green tops – the Apulian delicacy that, despite its commonly displeasing harshness, I actually love since the first time I tasted it.

Together, it was the perfect summary of of Puglia’s identity: earthbound, resourceful, underappreciated – as much its cuisine’s penchant for bitter flavours as the region itself. It also felt like the chef had unmasked before me, peeling off the mud skin and iron hide to reveal a gentle heart and finesse.

For the first time, in Maglie and Mercatino del Gusto, I truly tasted being back in Puglia. And how glad was I to be standing on this patch of Italy again.

The choices may have downsized from whole street food stalls to bottles, but making a decision didn’t get any easier – especially with the precious five coupons Giorgio and I were brandished.

Nesting in a chamber inside Palazzo de Marco – dubbed “Wine Passion” – were the spawns of Puglia’s finest wine productions. Luckily for us, they were fostered by the most well-versed sommeliers around, who didn’t rush their explanations before pouring the wine.

It was by now the second and final evening of our visit in Mercatino del Gusto, which also concluded that night. Together we’d prowled throughout the maze ogling and savouring, before we were so intoxicated from the cookery that we fancied a retreat, and onto some actual intoxication.

As we claimed the complimentary platter of cured meats and cheeses, Giorgio proposed that we selected different wines so we could try each others. Crafty. It is one thing the privilege of company gets, aside from not drinking five glasses alone and having to laugh at your own jokes between sips.

And with the alcohol spiking my head, along with the view over the festivaling streets below, I recounted my two-day journey.

My palates could yearn to have tasted every bit – on the streets, the street food pavilions, and certainly that enchantress of a gelato piazzo; mine was only a glimpse of Mercatino del Gusto’s offerings, just as the “voyage” around the produces of Puglia was merely a fleeting impression of the entire region, and its gastronomic identity. No, I’d have to dedicate a lifetime.

But in the end, it wasn’t just my taste buds that relished the experience of a food festival: sight, smelling, hearing, touch, all woke to the sensory cacophony that erupted within this small town. Adding to those, to be amidst the medieval architectures, the earth sprouting the harvests and livestocks that in turn nourished the people who lived off it, who concocted the incredible cuisine: it aroused my sixth sense, my sense of place – terroir, to borrow a term from what I was drinking.

Not that places or events only stimulate my passion for food when the food “is good”; rather, they remind me that the culinary – the palatal – isn’t solely the dominion of one sense, but all five – six, if you can relate to my romantic notion. To be enveloped in the visual appeals, serenaded by its clinks and clatters, spellbound in aromas, brushed by textures and temperatures, synched with the terroir and then finally blessed by its flavours: the combination of them all isn’t just what an extraordinary food festival gives – it’s the way how it’s best savoured.

As for Mercatino del Gusto, it’d quite simply served me a palatal awakening.

The post Maglie: Palatal awakening of Mercatino del Gusto appeared first on The Travelling Editor.

“She’s bought girl’s colouring books to take on the flight to Rome next week.”

As I conspired with my head to tease her – gently, anyway – about her crayons and cartoon outlines, I was reminded about my quirks: I too have recurring habits that keeps me occupied on planes. And, now that my head has turned against me and mocked me instead, they do string together to form an itinerary of sorts, played out like a laughably-patterned druidic ritual.

And the binding agent, common in all thirty-odd flights I’ve flown on this year and many more in prior years: I don’t seem to stop fidgeting and refusing to grow up.

Quit deprecating me, I fought back against my inner voice. Just prove it.

The internal projector began replaying. It did have a point. In fact, the entire duration spells out like a recipe dictating how I cook up my inflight behaviour:

1) Inch down the aisle towards your seat; sprinkle tuts as you wonder why fellow passengers can’t place their belongings in the overhead lockers more efficiently.

2) Extract laptop and means of non-electrical note-keeping, i.e. what you can use during takeoff and landing; so this is how you clog up the boarding process by taking your sweet time.

3) Settle down on your seat, and notice how constricted your 6’3″ gangling mass is in the seatbelted entrapment; optional: person in front of you likely fidgety and knocking your boney knees with the back of his/her chair – console yourself with the remaining gram of optimism, because Step 4-6 should take your mind off the petty discomfort.

4) Take out your phone, embellish every second of dawdling on social media during the safety briefing – though do take note of the locations of nearest emergency exit and life jackets – then slyly switch off just before the inspecting flight attendant approaches.

5) Rummage the seat pocket for the inflight magazine to enthuse yourself during takeoff; flip through the pages, pay closer attention to anything of fleeting interest, but barely digest its literary context; track down the magazine’s contact details, pledge to self to pitch articles to said publication – and always never fulfil your own promise.

Side quest: trickle another drop into the imaginary jar – eventually it’ll be brimming with enough remorse you’ll start complying with your writer’s life goals.

6) Anticipate permission to turn on electronics; retrieve laptop, stir up a pretence that you can ever write in motion on planes – before abandoning the wordless futility and switch to Lightroom; envision spending remainder of flight indulging in photo editing, your inflight activity of choice, your ‘grownup’ equivalent of shading in a colouring book that isn’t really for the blogs or photography assignments, but for personal amusement. But strictly grownup, keep telling yourself.

7) Deplete laptop battery within half an hour by leaving the backlight on full; curse; optional: be envious of neighbouring toddlers with power-independent, actual colouring books.

8) Stare into blankness, for as long as you can bear idleness.

9) Seesaw between drifting to sleep – why did you have that double espresso before boarding? – and scribbling down ideas for articles you’ll probably never pen.

10) Become aware of the seat in front nudging and irking your knees; vilify such individual in your imagination and fabricate your impassioned confrontation speech upon his/her reclining the seat, as part of your plotting a revenge scheme; realise the ‘villain’ sits edgily because of how uncomfortable he/she too feels, and render yourself a stern scolding – you’re such a shit person sometimes, for even harbouring ill will towards someone you barely know.

11) Rejoice privily at the landing announcement; retreat into the mind palace until the plane almost touches ground; count down the seconds before the wheels hit tarmac – get the estimate wrong.

12) Flick off airplane mode on phone and tap away, as though you had squandered a decade in connectionless isolation; unbuckle and stand up to stretch your stiffened legs, only to have to stoop under the overhead lockers; commit hypocrisy yet again by wishing fellow passengers will collect their bags more competently.

13) Freedom – hang on, the customs queue is looking pretty long.

14) Freedom, if only the baggage reclaim carousel will move any faster.

15) FREEDOM! Wait, where do I go from the arrival halls?

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