Spanish food is deliciously obsessed with death

The moral absolutist in me believes that in every city, with its limited number of restaurants, there is something called the best of all possible lunches. I don’t have to find it, but I have to get close. Mediocre is not enough. In fact, when I’m on vacation, the idea of ​​wasting a meal on mere “mediocrity” fills me with crippling guilt for wasting not only money but time. What if I die before I see Paris again? I would be ashamed that I wasted my precious mortality eating that tuna niçoise salad from Pret.

The price of this neurosis is that I tend to travel alone to save others the trouble of putting up with me, and never have anyone to share an adventure or a meal with. I decided that if I signed up for a “cooking retreat” with ten strangers in a remote village in southern Spain, I would save myself the stress of finding a restaurant, and if I still proved to be a difficult travel companion, it would not affect my friendships.

I arrived at Las Chimeneas in Mairena, a village far enough south and high enough in the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountains that on a clear day you could see the coast of Africa across a short strip of sea. I was the youngest in our group, whose average age was about 60; the oldest was a cheerful itinerant New Zealander who had made the journey with his wife at 84.

Our first lesson began with the artichoke. Following Chef Henry’s instructions, we spent a good 20 minutes preparing it, peeling its scales, pulling fiber threads, and carving its stems until only the tender core of the heart remained. Then we cut it in half and used a teaspoon to scoop out the bristly core, the stem. Looking at the vegetable and judging which parts are actually edible, you might think it’s a hardy northern plant that evolved to protect itself from wind and cold. In fact, it blooms with purple flowers like a giant Scottish thistle. Making a meal of it feels desperate, like leaving the table hungrier than you came.

But the Spanish name of the artichoke – Subscribe to – has the Arabic prefix al-, which many things in Las Alpujarras, including the name of the region itself, bear as a relic from the years of Moorish rule. There are Subscribe to (capers), Subscribe to (apricot) and Subscribe to (basil). Even alcohol. We served the naked hearts with white ajo – a cold almond-based soup with garlic, olive oil, apples and cucumber that was so creamy I regretted the almonds had been wasted on fake, watery milk – and strips of very un-Moorish jamón.

Jamón was often used during the Catholic Reconquista as a means of exterminating Jews and Muslims, whose faith forbade the consumption of pork. I began to understand their aversion. It is a delicious but grotesque food. We took a trip to local producer Jamón Muñoz, where thousands of ham shanks are cured and tied together in rows to hang from the ceiling of a hangar – a cross between a morgue and a gallows. A coating of lard and olive oil gave the tennis racket-sized shanks a pale color and an almost translucent sheen. The air smelled sweet, slightly meaty, not unlike the smell of a wet dog.

I was reminded of stories of undertakers who, after hours of inhaling formaldehyde fumes, get cravings for hamburgers. The salty air had obviously stimulated our appetites. At the end of the tour, we ate Iberian ham and crispy bread, accompanied by a light, peppery red wine poured from a plastic jug into plastic cups.

When we returned to Mairena, we started straight away with a demonstration: how to debone a chicken, which is then marinated and cooked with almonds, wine and grapes. There was hardly any time for anything other than cooking, eating or walking. It was easy to forget what life is about beyond these things, which is what I fill my free time in London with.

In the mornings, David, our host at Las Chimeneas, led the group on walks to the orchard below the village. Along the way, I collected almonds, still in their green shells, covered with a soft fluff, like the peaches to which they are related, but impossible to open. More useful were the ripe oranges we brought with us. These were chopped with dates for dessert and made into a cold soup called porrain dough filling for filo pastry-like warka and pickled in a brine for escapea marinated mackerel dish.

One evening, David took us to the neighboring village of Júbar, whose whitewashed church was once a Roman temple, then a synagogue, a mosque, and now a church, although it is rarely used. The civil war is still felt, he explained, and going to church is associated with Franco’s fascist regime. There are no regular Sunday services, but at the Fiesta de San Marcos, people still go down on their knees and weep in religious fervor.

Laurie Lee described Spain as a place of “exhausted appetites: chivalry, bloodshed, poetry and religious mortification.” But what about the most literal appetite, the food and drink that people crave? I suppose Spanish cuisine is all of those things – passionate, rich, mysterious, fascinated by death. It is not a food you eat disinterestedly or alone.

Favorita is a London-based catering company run by husband and wife team Laura and Henry. Their cooking holidays start from £1,350 per person and can be found on their website..