Sophisticated dining – including some wurst

Delicate couscous and feta

If Germany provided plenty of hearty, down-to-earth dining experiences, it also provided two really top-notch fine-dining experiences.

But while the food was excellent, perhaps the most interesting aspect of those meals was that they illustrated that German culinary tradition, far from being something to sniff at, is well worth looking at.

For the first couple of days, adjusting to later starts, larger-than-usual breakfasts and then larger-than-usual lunches meant that we were not in the mood to try either of the hotel’s two restaurants.

Belle Epoque is the flashiest of the two, with Michelin-starred food that, as the name implies, has its roots in what Michel Roux Jr would call “The Classics” – or a certain type of French cuisine and approach – and which is open to non-residents.

There's no escaping Thomas Mann

Downstairs, and also used for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, is Holstein, the hotel restaurant for residents. And as that name suggests, it has a rather more local ethos.

During last year’s solo trip to Lübeck, one of the highlights – one of the core things I’d set out to do, indeed – was dinner at Schiffergesellschaft.

The centuries-old seaman’s guild is housed in a 1553 building that still serves as a restaurant.

There, I’d tried the iconic labskaus, a seaman’s dish of pickled or corned beef, the meat mixed with onion and beetroot, and traditionally served with a fried egg on top and a plate of good old matjes herrings on the side.

A superb spargel soup

Schiffergesellschaft gets a mention in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, and I was delighted to find that the Holstein has a large, black and white photograph on the wall of the man himself, taken outside the hotel in 1953.

But then the author considered Travemünde as something close to a paradise.

It too features in Mann’s first great novel, and even if worthy Lübeckers were mightly offended by his 1901 literary debut, there is plenty to suggest that their modern-day descendants appreciate the added value it lends the area – there is even a Buddenbrooks restaurant in a hotel just a couple of hundred metres from where we stayed.

But back to the pickled beef.

The first thing on the Holstein menu that caught my eye – a couple of days before we were first ready to dine there – was a labskaus.

How would an essentially modern and smart restaurant tackle such a dish?

Labskaus, deconstructed

I kept that question in mind until the first evening on which we’d actually left enough space for a three-course meal.

Before we get to that, let’s start by saying that, we waited, we were served with a selection of very nice breads, plus quark (a sort of German yogurt) and a lightly spiced relish, plus butter, and then with a small plate that was less an amuse bouche and more an hors d’oeuvres, involving very delicately prepared couscous and crumbled feta that was, if not very Germanic, then certainly very pleasant.

And of course, since The Other Half doesn't like cheese, I got his feta too.

But as a first course proper, both of us opted for the spargel soup.

The asparagus season enjoys cult status in Germany.

Known by a variety of nicknames, from ‘Königsgemüse’ (king’s vegetable) to ‘Frühlingswonne’ (springtime delight) and ‘Zartes Elfenbein’ (soft ivory), restaurants across the country add special asparagus menus, while little stalls set up on the streets to sell this seasonal glory.

While Germans prefer the white asparagus, the green that we’re more familiar with is not neglected.

Matjes herring on onion

Back in 2009, when we were in Berlin in early June, we ordered spargel soup at the iconic Lutter & Wegner, but were disappointed with the overly salty result, which suggested that it had been hanging around for some time.

This time around, the result was quite simply superb, with a creamy base, slivers of perfectly cooked white asparagus, drops of delightful tarragon oil and a few croutons for added texture.

Next up for me at least was the labskaus – which turned out to be deconstructed.

There’s always a danger with this approach that it can look good but not actually achieve anything much for the palate.

Here, it proved a very enjoyable exercise in appreciating the tastes and textures of a mixed dish – I bet those sailors never thought their dish would assume the level of haute cuisine.

Wonderful blutwurst

The meat, combined with some beetroot, came in quenelles, with the fried egg replaced by a breaded quail’s egg atop onion and herbs, a roasted beet purée, homemade potato crisps, matjes and shredded gherkin.

I opted for the almost inevitable ice cream after – but was too stuffed to make much headway with that.

The Other Half, having opted for a rhubarb crumble after a beef dish, reported himself more than satisfied.

Our final night saw us decamp to Holstein yet again and this time, the hors d’oeuvres was an incredibly delicate matjes herring on top a sweet and gentle onion, very finely chopped, a hint of bitter herbs and a little tomato.

Zander, with beetroot and potatoes

Lovely – and ensured The Other Half didn’t leave the country without at least a taste of herring.

Again, we both opted for the same main course – blutwurst (black pudding).

Gloriously moist and tasty, it was complimented by a bitter salad and quince two ways – as small triangles of jelly and as a rather larger wedge of mousse.

A real joy, this.

For a main course, the Other Half opted for zander, a German fish that is often translated, rather meaninglessly, as ‘pike-perch’, which are two altogether different fishes.

But then there is no British alternative, although it was introduced to the Fens some time ago and is considered a pest – can I try to get rid of it by culinary methods, then?

While he enjoyed that, I dined on lachs (salmon), with new potatoes and white and green spargel, which was very nice if not earth-shattering.

For dessert, however, I picked apple three ways – a slice of feather-light strudel, a sorbet and calvados-infused brunoise on a crisp, all made with Holstein cox. Absolutely gorgeous.

Apple, three ways

On the matter of wines, we drank a German red with the first meal at Holstein: that was a first, and very nice it was too.

For the second meal, we opted for a white – a Grauburgunder: a 2012 Kabinet, trocken, Weingut Bimmerle from Baden, which was also extremely nice.

We left thinking that that was food we’d be more than happy to eat again.

What Holstein perfectly illustrates is that German cuisine is very far from being sausage and pickled cabbage.

It can be hearty and simple and comforting, but done like this, it can also be as sophisticated as anything that most of us are likely to eat anywhere.

Lighter food for lighter, brighter days

Fresh and light and satisfying

With the improving weather – thank goodness we’re actually having a spring this year! – comes the desire to eat differently; lighter.

And it’s also the perfect time to try a few new things.

There have even been days, with real sun streaming down, when it was the perfect opportunity to pull out the salad spinner and rinse off some organic lettuce and winter purslane, and serve a huge plate of both, drizzled with virgin oil and a thinner balsamico, and topped with cheese.

Blue cheese suits such a dish perfectly, but in La Bouche earlier recently, I’d tried one that was new to me.

Beenliegh is an unpressed, soft blue from Devon, made from organic, unpasturised ewe’s milk. It’s creamy and moist, and beautifully fresh and subtle.

Get the right ingredients sourced and food doesn’t have to be complex to be very good.

A number of evenings recently have seen a dinner that was, if not a direct recreation, then was certainly inspired by a Jamie Oliver salmon dish that I’ve recently discovered.

He takes halved waxy potatoes and quartered fennel bulbs and boils them for six minutes, before draining and drying over the steam.

Salmon with fennel, sweet potato and herbs

Then they go in an oven-proof dish with olive oil, parsley, mint and garlic for something like half an hour, before the salmon – with more of the herby-garlicky mix on it – is placed on top and it goes back in the oven for a further 15 minutes.

It’s a lovely, easy dish, but I think a couple of tweaks help.

Set your oven to 180˚C (fan) and prep the fennel as above, not cutting off the base so that the pieces hold together. Retain the fronds.

Finely chop your mint, flat leaf parsley and garlic, and mix with plenty of olive oil.

Jamie’s version sprinkles the herbs and garlic over everything and then tops with oil, but I think that my way does two things: allows you to coat the ingredients more thoroughly and also reduces the chances of the garlic getting a tad burned.

So, pop in your fennel pieces and mix, and then add some sweet potato that has been peeled and cut into large chunks, instead of potato.

Gently stir around to coat everything. Season with good quality celery salt (my addition) and pop in the oven.

Lovely wild garlic

After 30 minutes, place your salmon fillets on top of the vegetables, scooping some of the oily, herby, garlicky mix on to the top.

And back it all goes for another 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.

Serve with a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some black pepper, and topped with the chopped fennel fronds.

The advantage of swapping the potato for sweet potato is that the latter is a vegetable rather than a starchy carb, so it makes the dish a two-portion one rather than having just a single portion.

Mind, if you use lashing of garlic and herbs, those add up too.

Anyway, it’s easy. And tasty – and healthy.

A couple of stalls on Broadway Market also had wild garlic last week, so I grabbed a good handful of that while the opportunity was there.

The English asparagus is here

Later, the leaves were shredded and blitzed together with some spring onions, chives, garlic, pine nuts, a little salt and a teaspoon of sugar, with enough olive oil to give you a good pesto consistency.

You could add parmesan, but I don’t, since The Other Half doesn’t like cheese.

And an ideal way to use some of this lovely stuff – which keeps well in the fridge in a jar – is to cook some pasta, drain and return to the pan, adding some of the pesto with a little double cream and re-warming gently.

You won’t need to use a lot of the pesto – it packs a serious punch.

Serve with fresh asparagus and peas and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper, and if you want, more parmesan.

A perfect, fresh and seasonal dish for a midweek supper.

And on a final note – and a slightly different one: this is worth reading about the cost of asparagus from Peru.

Ignore the slightly puritanical tone of  “lust for this luxury vegetable” etc, but the point remains that there are severe environmental issues created by a global market for a cheap, seasonal vegetable, sent half way around the world to fill – or create – consumer demand outside our own season.

Easy options on the food front

Bacon and new spuds and asparagus

One of the most surprising things about the last week has been that, after arriving home from Liverpool last Friday, I didn’t leap straight into a Pot Noodle phase.

Utterly knackered, it was tempting. But when I'd crawled up the platform at Euston, I opted instead for the easiest ‘quality’ option: M&S.

I had been contemplating lamb chops, but since the only available ones were from New Zealand, I opted for something a little more local – British bacon.

And to go with that, new potatoes and asparagus.

It was a simple matter to boil the spuds and the asparagus (20 and three minutes respectively) and then pop the bacon into a hot pan and let it sizzle gently for a while, curling and browning; moved around occasionally with tongs.

Frankly, I didn’t even feel like arranging it on a plate, but tossed it all together, added butter, seasoning and the bacon juices.

Even after a week that had seen a couple of decent restaurant meals, there was something heavenly about the result. And it had all been ridiculously easy top cook.

The cats were delighted to see me home, but an absence means that one is told in no uncertain terms, that they are owed.

In Otti’s case, she was determined that, despite never having eaten it before, she was going to try bacon. Allowed to have a little piece (after I’d finished – I do try to teach them some patience) she then decided that it was very nice indeed and why hadn’t I shared more with her?

Saturday allowed a return to Broadway Market and the great what-shall-we-eat-for-the-coming-week challenge.

In this case, I started from a fishy perspective – sea bass, filleted.

Potatoes were par boiled and then slightly crushed before being drizzled with olive oil, seasoned and then popped into the oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

The bass – slashed carefully on the skin, seasoned and lightly oiled – were placed on top and given a further 15 minutes.

Bass with potatoes and seasonal veg.

This was served with fine beans and asparagus, a drizzle or two of my balsamic glaze and a wedge of lemon. And jolly nice it was too.

An experiment with tuna didn’t quite go as planned, though.

Unusually, Vicki had a big slab, so I decided to buy a slice (it’s enough for the two of us).

It was intended for Monday – Vicki said it should be okay for that, but to watch out for the ‘rainbow’ effect in case it did start to go.

To be on the safe side, I decided to try something a bit different, and salt it. The Spanish – mojama – and although I couldn’t find a specific recipe, how hard could it be?

I used a mix of ordinary salt together with some fleur de sel that The Other Half had picked up for me on his recent trip to Perpignan: one that was infused with banyuls, the sweet wine from that area.

On Sunday evening, I rinsed it off and left it to soak ion fresh water. That was changed again on Monday morning and one last time when I got home that afternoon.

Pods growing fat

The plan was then to use Bruno Loubet’s guidelines and confit it – approximately 30 minutes in olive oil heated to approximately 50-55˚C.

All that went okay, but unfortunately it still came out as incredibly salty.

Still, failures are part of the process of learning.

In the meantime, the potager is going a bit bonkers after struggling to show real signs of life for so long.

I will shortly have peas – and the broad bean pods are just appearing. One of the runner beans is already taller than me – okay, I know this doesn’t mean much.

There will be a small crop of blackcurrants – but this is year one.

The salad leaves are doing well, as are the radishes, the spring onions and the gem lettuces, while the chard is coming on decently, as are the carrots and turnips.

The vine is growing well, the lemon has produced a plethora of buds, the nasturtiums are finally producing leaves in something approaching abundance and the four tomato plants that we were given by a friend look to have settled in comfortably.

Who knows – the weather might even allow for cropping a few leaves this weekend. But it’s enormously exciting to see crops developing in such a way.

Rites of spring

It has been a rite of spring for some years: the moment when the grapevine relates the news that – whisper it with reverence – the first Jersey Royals and the first English asparagus of the season are available.

The pilgrimage is then undertaken to Borough Market, which is guaranteed to be the first place where I’ll be able to find these reminders of the joys of seasonality.

Admittedly they won’t be cheap, these first specimens, but they go beyond simply being food and into something special: they are the first concrete statement that spring is with us and there is no turning back.

Last year, that pilgrimage came at the very end of March.

In 2011, it was in mid April. The year before? Within a few days of that. In 2009 – 10 April.

Last weekend – in the very dying embers of April – some asparagus was available on Broadway Market, but it was poor.

So when The Other Half took the day off yesterday, since he was contemplating a braai for this weekend, I gently hinted that he should make the journey to London Bridge, where he could obtain boerewors from the South African speciality shop underneath the station – and then head into Borough Market itself to track down these seasonal joys in these unseasonal days.

That’s more than a month later than the earliest occasion in the last five years, and a good three weeks later than the latest. Which tells you a great deal about just how bad this spring has been – or perhaps more accurately, how long winter was.

Last night’s meal, of simply grilled lamb chops, with homemade mint sauce (a bundle of mint, leaves picked and blitzed briefly, with a pinch of salt, a good pinch of sugar and red wine vinegar to bring together), boiled Jerseys, and fine beans with English asparagus, butter and good salt, was more of a real celebration than anything that Easter could offer.

It had, instead, real, serious pleasure in the seasonal meaning that came with it: tastes and textures and colours that are utterly those of the spring.

This early in the season, you pay a premium, but by Odin, it’s worth it.

Today, on Broadway Market, the asparagus was much improved and Mark had organic Jerseys. The young lad serving me took my rather full bag and pointed out, slightly nervously, that it was not cheap.

Oh, I knew that. But sometimes you just have to do such things – and my soul has been crying out for this for weeks.

This is my rite of spring, no less. And such things have importance.

Not that it’s the only rite of spring I’ve been paying attention to recently.

For the last week I’ve been doing a job that requires concentration and patience, yet does not occupy the mind fully.

There are times when sticking headphones on and listening to music aids concentration anyway, but with this, it’s done that – and yet there has still been enough brain space left over to actually appreciate the music.

Since I’ve also been reading Bryan Magee’s excellent short book, Aspects of Wagner, old Dickie has featured rather heavily: various bits and orchestral pieces, a disc of tenor Jonas Kaufmann singing various arias – and the whole of Das Rheingold (Solti and the Vienna Phil).

But this also made me want to go back and revisit other composers – first, Berlioz, because I recalled a similar gut reaction to part of his Symphone Fantastique as I get with Wagner; and second, Stravinsky, because I wanted to see whether The Rite of Spring in particular produced a similar, primal response.

Well, I was essentially correct in what I remembered of the Berlioz (who was obviously influenced by Wagner). At least it was the certainly the case in the fifth and final movement, Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath.

In the case of Stravinsky, Magee says that he was one of the very few post-Wagner composers who was not influenced by him (although he notes that Stravinsky’s teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, had a picture of Wagner in his study).

But if one key aspect of Wagner’s music – and one of the things that disquiets some people – is that it gets you in the gut, as well as being cerebral, then the same can most certainly be argued of Stravinsky’s ballet.

A century old this year, its Paris premiere caused a riot. We Brits, of course, merely got a bit noisy, but it still upset the first London audience a few weeks later.

Now it’s entirely feasible that the prime cause of outrage was the choreography of Ballets Russe director, Sergei Diaghilev.

It is an idea of spring that is far from a European pastoral one: indeed, its subtitle, Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts, leaves no doubt that this is far from any Christianised vision.

Let’s face it – a young woman is chosen as a sacrifice and dances herself to death.

But the score itself must have been equally as startling for the first audiences – and even today it has a power that goes beyond concert hall politeness. It too aims for the gut; for the primal, for instinct within us.

In that sense, Stravinsky was following in Wagner’s footsteps, taking music yet further away from the church and from established religious conventions – and shocking audiences in the process.

I’ve been listening to two versions, trying to compare and hear the differences: first up is Kent Nagano and the London Symphony Orchestra, and then Simon Rattle’s centenary recording with the Berlin Philharmoniker.

So much of the piece suggests the angular and sharp that it’s easy to forget that there are passages of lushness that suggest a debt to Debussy, even though this is a long step beyond the sensuality of the French composer's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

I can hear differences between the two recordings, right from the greater vibrato on the opening bassoon passage in the Rattle. And there are other moments where this new version seems to have layers to the sound.

It’s a good listening exercise.

And after that, it’s back to my own little culinary rite – which is probably every bit as pagan in its adoration of seasonality: more Jersey Royals, scraped gently to leave them in all their ivory glory.

Tonight, they accompanied some fillets of brill, which had been dredged in plain flour and paprika, before being pan fried in butter.

Keep them warm and deglaze with sherry vinegar or dry sherry, before adding orange juice and boiling quickly to reduce.

Serve with chopped chives and, optionally, toasted slivered almonds.

You can easily do much the same with any whole fish, including cod or pollock, simply adjusting the cooking time.

These are the tastes we’ve been hankering for for what feels like an eternity.

And on a day that has encompassed sun, wind, rain and even hail – as though this were March and April rammed into a single 24-hour timeframe – they are tastes that remind you that spring really has arrived and that there is no turning back.

Who's bringing home the bacon?

It's midweek and the great question, just as at the weekend, is what to eat. But at this wearying time of the year, it's always more difficult.

There are things in the cupboard – peas and broad beans and a few new potatoes – but as I don't like to buy meat or fish for an entire week on a Saturday, it meant a trip to the shop after work.

How about some bacon? Good bacon – not the stuff the shrivels to half its size in the pan, spewing white gunk and maintaining a bloody-minded refusal to let the fat get crisp.

No, not that. The real deal, though, is a thing of great pleasure.

And instead of relegating it to the breakfast table, this time of the year offers the perfect chance to place it at the centre of a really easy supper.

Frankly, the only other things you need are new potatoes and fresh peas.

Soak the former briefly in hot water and then crape the skins away to leave them like ivory orbs.

Shell the latter – a load of them.

And that's your prep done.

Peas are one of those rare veg that really are worth eating from the freezer. They have a good taste, they cook quickly, and they offer a welcome bit of variety during the winter.

But good though they undoubtedly are, they're as nothing when compared to fresh ones.

Get some. Pick up a pod. Press the seam so that it cracks apart; spread open and flick the peas out and into a pan or a dish.

Sniff. Go on: have a really good smell of that pod and those peas. It's a wonderfully grassy aroma.

If they're really, really young, the peas are wonderful eaten raw. Pop a few in a salad.

Frozen peas might be pleasingly sweet, but take the time and relish – really relish – the infinitely more complex taste of the fresh version.

There is absolutely nothing that you need to do with them except cook them in boiling, salted water – add a pinch of sugar too – for three to four minutes, depending on how soft you want them.

Drain and serve with good butter.

I found some late-season English asparagus too, so some of that went alongside the peas. And the bacon was cooked for about two and a half minutes a side under a grill that had been set to around 201˚C on my fan oven-grill combination.

The bacon was far from the cheapest available. I could, indeed, get a pack of six Danish rashers from any little shop for around £1.99. But they'll behave just as the ones mentioned earlier – and they'll shrink massively. So in effect, I'd be paying £1.99 for three rashers.

Frankly, it seems far better to pay double that and actually get six rashers that then don't shrink. The so-called cheap version is a false economy. And that's without mentioning the taste.

And then yesterday, I was working from home.

Lunch was just as quick as the previous night's dinner – no: quicker.

A few broad beans were podded and cooked with the remaining asparagus from the previous evening.

The cooking takes all of about four minutes in boiling water – unsalted, because you don't want to harden the beans.

I'd picked up a thin piece of calf's liver (80g in weight) the night before too. That simply went into a pan with some olive oil and was cooked for two minutes on each side.

Removed to the plate, a knob of butter and a good squeeze of lemon juice were added to the pan, swirled into the meat juices, and then poured over meat and vegetables.

The smell was divine – and the taste wasn't bad either.

If you wanted to make it more substantial, then good bread on the side would be perfect – and excellent for mopping up any juices.

Given that it was a lunch of liver and some fava beans, the only thing that was missing was a nice chianti. But since I had some economics to concentrate on in the afternoon, it really was too early in the day!

It's not just about the chips

Flemish food is perhaps not one of the world’s great cuisines, but that’s not to say that there isn’t much to enjoy and appreciate.

Setting aside chocolate – and don’t worry, we’ll discuss that at length in a coming post – there’s plenty left. For instance, there are waffles – indeed, and you can even get a waffle on a stick in Brugge.

But for somewhat more substantial food, there’s nowhere better to start than Vlaamse Stoverij – or Flamande carbonade as it’s perhaps better known (which does also tie in with the language issue). For the sake of this blog, though, let’s stick with the Flemish where possible.

But whatever you call it, this hearty stew of beef, slow, slow cooked in beer, is a classic – even if many people think of it as a northern French dish.

I had some on night two (pictured above), when we’d discovered that all of the restaurants we’d been considering were closed for the May Day holiday, and had had to resort to the same place as the night before.

The pieces of beef seemed huge and, personally, it hadn’t been cooked as long as I’d have liked. But while the meat didn’t flake at the merest hint of a touch, the sauce was enjoyably sweet.

Away from such meatiness, seafood holds a strong position in Flemish food – certainly in Brugge, anyway.

The stone fish market – a 19th-century creation, so a newcomer in Brugge terms – still hosts three fish stalls for several days every week.

There are vast, square trays of crayfish and shrimps cooking as people wait to be served from a pleasingly wide variety of fish. Spider crab is popular too, along with skate.

It’s a selection of fish that is familiar to British diners – and after all, the Belgians fish in pretty much the same seas. But the selection that seems readily available (and a shop a few doors from our hotel also bore witness to this) is larger than what we are generally able to buy in supermarkets.

Setting aside the obviously touristy ‘moules et frites’ on restaurant menus, it’s clear that shrimps and small sole – ‘sliptong’ in Flemish – are massively popular.

If ‘sliptong’ was a fun new word, it had nothing on my favourite linguistic discovery of the week.

‘Slagroom’ has nothing to do with slags of any variety; it’s the Flemish for whipped cream, which they employ copious amounts of, including in cups of cappuccino – you have to order an ‘Italian-style’ one if you don’t want the cream.

But for someone who enjoys the odd Carry On film, such words are irresistible.

We both tried eel (‘paling’ in Flemish, if you’re interested).

It was roasted simply in the lunch I had while sitting outside the Café Jan van Eyck in Jan van Eyckplein, and served with a spinach purée as a sauce in The Other Half’s while lunching near the brewery.

The eel has a mild flavour and firm flesh – I can’t understand why Brits have managed to make it into a rather slimy dish with jellied eel. It’s at its best, in my opinion, when smoked, but this was well worth a try.

The meal on our third night was the best. While my duck was good and my Belgian cheese platter interesting, the best course of all was the starter.

It arrived as a mound of salad: grated carrot, green asparagus, leaves and other strings of root veg that I couldn’t make out – it couldn’t have been celeriac, surely, as that would have discoloured too quickly?

But buried beneath were two rolls of very gently smoked salmon, filled with flaked crab, shrimps and a little dill. And all topped with only a minimal, light dressing.


It sounds so simple – and was so light and refreshing. And as I ate, it was with a feeling of spring greenness.


Indeed, there was a pervasive sense of seasonality.


The Belgians – like the Germans – celebrate the arrival of asparagus, using both green and white. And most menus that we saw listed at least a couple of dishes built around spargel.

In the more touristy cafes, the Flemish seem particularly fond of serving a sort of mustard cress, piled high as a substantial garnish; crisp little leaves and a big, peppery taste. Even these were always fresh and always enjoyable.

One of the other things that Belgium is famous for is chips – or fritjes. Much thinner than our chips and served with a variety of dressings – most traditionally, mayonnaise – they’re available everywhere and come with everything.

Our first chance to sample came late on Monday afternoon as we took our first amble around the streets, and realised that we had eaten little that day. So we bought a tray each of fritjes.

They were, unfortunately, very crisp – which was far from easy for me.

The bowl served with our meals that evening was far better. But by the end of our second day I was, frankly, all chipped out.

On our final evening, we ended up in a French-influenced fish restaurant, where I picked the turbot on the basis that it’s not something I’ve tried often.

A light vegetable broth preceded started our meal – and delightful and refreshing it was – and then came the fish.

It arrived as two pieces of fillet, surrounded by generous portions of a lobster bisque and hollandaise, with a panade of crab, plus spinach purée, deep-fried leek and goodness knows what else.

The sauces worked well together – a big, hefty dose of rich, savoury sweetness. But then you sit back and you think: ‘what’s the point of having turbot if the subtly of the taste is swamped?’

It was a very old style of French cooking: if not quite after Escoffier himself, then certainly predating the creation of nouvelle cuisine – and absolute evidence of what the likes of Paul Bocuse were turning their backs on when they launched that culinary movement.

It was a dish that showed just how much tastes have evolved: I found myself longing for the salmon rolls of the previous night, piled high with salad and with only the barest amount of dressing.

And as one always brings someone home from any trip, I came away wanting to eat more salad and most certainly more leaves.

And to taste again that sense of the green, of the pastoral, that has hung around in my mind since the first forkful.