Bring the holidays home with these French, Spanish and Greek recipes

We’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing, sitting at the kitchen table after supper, like three old crones – even though my sons are just 16 and 22 – recalling holidays.

‘Remember when!’ has become a common exclamation since we’ve replaced going on holiday with recollected fragments from past ones. ‘Remember when we went to Paris, and I could see the Eiffel Tower from our hotel room!’ Yes, and I remember when I sat with my then six-year-old, enchanted as the tower lit up for the evening, and we picnicked on baguette, cheese, rillettes and jus de pommes.

Holiday-food memories make these conversations hunger-inducing. ‘Remember the chicken shack?’ That’s the rickety Portuguese place where we’ve enjoyed platters of piri piri chicken with unsalted bread and bowls of cucumber, tomatoes and sweet raw onion. Some memories had slipped their moorings, such as the evening when we ate pistachio ice cream in Sicily while an elderly woman harangued a drunk old bloke – who was trying to serenade her – from her balcony.

I’ve thought a lot about France, the country I’ve visited more than any other and the one that made me a cook after a French exchange there. Sometimes it’s painful to think about the 18-year-old who lived in Paris for a while, who used to skip up the stairs of the metro and nearly always had a ‘sandwich jambon beurre’ for lunch. Paris is a city you drink in as a teenager, a place of hope, especially about love. Jars of rillettes eaten at home in London haven’t quite eased the longing to be there again.

When you think about travelling, you usually focus on the future. You’re projecting forward to places you want to go, but Covid, for now, has curtailed this. I’m classed as ‘extremely vulnerable’ and travelling is risky.

We didn’t go anywhere this summer, so I’ve returned to the habits of another time in my life. My family didn’t leave Ireland until I was 17 – our infrequent holidays were spent in Dublin – so the only way I could experience foreign countries was through food. I first tasted ratatouille and moussaka by following instructions in cookbooks.

Eating a country’s food doesn’t just provide dinner, it creates connections, even if you haven’t been to that country. I’ve thought about the places – all European because they were the closest and cheapest to get to once I could travel under my own steam – that first made an impression on me through their food, and have cooked their dishes over the past couple of months, taking the family on holiday via the kitchen table.

Spanish food shocked me because it seemed so bold, especially in Catalonia where I first had arroz negro – rice black with squid ink and served with allioli, a mayonnaise so garlicky it burns the back of your throat. Greece made an impression because olives and olive oil were so fundamental. I was mesmerised by the flickering silver-green leaves of the olive trees and began to appreciate the intense flavour of black olives. The ingredients – tomatoes, garlic, lamb, fish, feta – were so simple I realised that food could be uncomplicated.

To visit France, I’ve made pots of mussels and cooked loads of prawns to have with mayonnaise, not just because they remind me of Brittany, but because this is pure holiday food. Once people use their hands to rip off shells, mop up fishy juices with chunks of fluffy baguette and pick up the smell of the sea as shellfish cook, that feeling of holiday freedom becomes palpable.

Holidays will come again. In the meantime, there are recipes to take us wherever we want to go, no passport required. Happy travels.

Try these recipes

Corn bread with leeks and feta

This, an idea from northern Greece, is called a bread though in fact it’s more of a pie or ‘bake’. I have added roasted corn – I like the toasty sweetness – but you can leave it out (they don’t add corn kernels in Greece). It’s lovely with slow-roast tomatoes or roast red peppers and yogurt with chopped dill or mint stirred through it. It’s a very good brunch dish.

Moules poulettes

A richer form of moules marinières, due to the egg yolks (which are mixed with the cream). Be careful not to let the yolks get too hot or you’ll have a scrambled sauce on your hands. You get bacon in this version, too.

Pollo con higos

You find meat cooked with fruit throughout Spain but it’s especially common in Catalonia and Andalusia. It’s a legacy of the Moors. Now is the perfect time to make this, before the figs disappear or become too expensive. Taste as you’re making it – it’s up to you how much of the fig syrup you include, for example. You need to balance a slight sweetness with the savouriness of the dish.