Why eat local food on holiday

In the Algarve region of Portugal, Cheryl and Graham Smith of our partner Figs on the Funcho run cookery holidays. One of them traces Portugal’s seafaring heritage, bringing together several spicy traditional dishes from places like Mozambique and South Africa that were visited by explorers including Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama. “We have a lady who used to come to paint and now just comes for the food,” says Graham. “A lot of people say they come to us as a guest and leave as a friend.”

Eating local foods can be a window into the culture of the place you’re visiting. Clotted cream from Devon and Cornwall, a favourite of visiting tourists, is a staple of that English classic, the cream tea. But a version also crops up in one of the great English works of fiction, The Hobbit, and it is just as integral to the heritage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament as all the English players going out early.

Mansaf, a Jordanian dish of lamb, yoghurt and rice, was typically eaten to mark the resolution of conflicts between Bedouin tribes. In Haiti, the pumpkin soup known as joumou has great cultural significance. During French colonial times, enslaved people were forced to grow pumpkins for export but forbidden from eating it themselves. A bowl of joumou today represents freedom, resilience and independence. On our Mongolia food holidays you will help make dishes such as mutton pancakes that exemplify the nomadic diet, self-sufficient by necessity, and reflecting life in remote parts of the steppe.

And the way that the meal is prepared and presented can also offer cultural insights. New Zealand’s Maori people will often cook feasts of meat and vegetables on hot stones underground. These hangi are representative of the belief in the land ‘giving food’, and the importance of community. The ancient Japanese tea ceremony that many tourists like to partake in has intricate stages that have their roots in both spirituality and politics.

When you visit a country or a city that has a very multicultural society, it does raise the question of what exactly constitutes local food. In London would it be jellied eels? Chicken dumplings in Chinatown? A Brick Lane curry? As people migrate, they take with them beliefs, cultural practises and recipes that keep them connected with their former homes, which in turn add depth and texture to the cuisines of the places to which they move.

“My friend, one of our guest chefs, has this 100-year-old wood burning oven made from thousands of tiles,” says Fiona Hall of our partner Maverick Chefs. “It’s a thing of beauty, but we've burned as many things as we've had successes! I think we've got it under control now but the first time we ever used it, we assumed her dad would know what to do. He had to go into the village to use Google, in other words to ask the old guys at the cafe. We were baking bread and he brought some back with him so that we could switch it if it got burned!”

Some food traditions are at risk of fading away. In Sweden, August surströmming parties, where tins of foul-smelling fermented herring are cracked open accompanied by strong alcohol, are becoming a rarity. Practises like fish smoking, handmade butter churning and harvesting seaweed are done by very few people nowadays, as the processes have become more industrialised.

Our holidays help to showcase and preserve historic cooking techniques and rituals. Walking in Albania’s Valbona National Park, for instance, you can visit shepherding families and learn about their cheese-making practises, which handily also provides them with an extra income.

“The Greeks are mad into their rituals,” says Fiona. “Everything must be cooked in very precise ways and that's why there are so many incredible vegan dishes, why people can go home from our food and cooking holidays with a massive repertoire of recipes for leafy greens and legumes – because the Greeks don't muck about with things. ‘You do it this way. You do it right. You don't mess around with recipes.’ That simplicity and rigidity keep these dishes intact.”

All that being said, there are some traditional delicacies such as whale meat and kopi luwak (civet coffee) that are deeply problematic due to the animal cruelty involved and largely propped up by tourism. It would be no bad thing if they were to die out.

Local produce, and getting to know the people who produced it, is integral to our food and cooking trips. When you’re in the kitchen creating a dish with the rest of your group, you know exactly where the main ingredient has come from because you’ve just met the farmer. And while you may not be making big purchases, they all add up for independent producers, especially in rural areas, who may be doing this as a sideline to their main jobs.

“Dionysus has his market garden close to us, he’s an organic producer who also works as a hospital porter in Kalamata,” says Fiona Hall. “Then there is Spiros and his mum Chrysa who cure their olives in olive oil and vinegar – the most delicious you’ll ever have. We send our guests out to find ingredients, and we always tell them, forget recipes, just be led by your senses.”

Market visits are also a highlight of our cookery trips in the Algarve, where Graham and Cheryl Smith host guests at their riverside villa. “We have our guests look for an ingredient to cook later, so they can engage with the Portuguese stallholders,” says Cheryl. “Often, we’ll seek out these large cheeses from Alentejo, very soft on the inside and buttery, and big rosa tomatoes that are good for salads and Alentejo gazpacho soup, which has chunks of cucumber in it. Then we walk back to the villa along the river on a stretch of a famous route called the Via Algarviana.”

Supporting small growers is also vital as many of them are increasingly struggling with the effects of climate change. Across Greece vast swathes of forest has been lost to fires, areas where wild herbs and greens would normally grow. Droughts are horrendous; olives shrivel on the trees, and some growers lose their entire harvests. Fruit trees are damaged by freak hailstorms and hot, high winds, and the trees are so stressed that they become vulnerable to fungal diseases.

Fiona Hall is well aware of the problems climate change is causing in the Peloponnese region. Her friend, the proud owner of the old bread oven, is also the resident fire chief. “We do a cooking day at her place and it's like a respite from her job. But we always know those days are cursed. She’ll get a phone call and have to send out a couple of vehicles to deal with it. Once our group was having coffee and someone said, ‘Isn't that a fire over there right now on the balcony?’ One of her neighbours had left a pan of fat out that was burning so she had to run over with a fire extinguisher to put it out!”

Spending money locally can help many independent businesses of course, not just producers. In Greece, restaurants are still feeling the pain of an economic crash and subsequent austerity measures – tourism can be a lifeline for many struggling small establishments.