There is one thing almost nobody from northern Europe understands at first: cooking here is not complicated. There are no twenty steps and nothing has to simmer for an hour. Fish, oil, salt, fire. A tomato that tastes of tomato. That is the whole of it.
The difference is not in what you do with it but in what you get to start from. And we happen to live where it grows.
Start at the market
Every town along this coast has its mercadillo one day a week: stalls of vegetables, fruit, fish, cheese, nuts and herbs, with somebody selling socks next to them. You walk over with a basket and come home with a week of food at a price that makes the supermarket look silly.
| Day | Where |
|---|---|
| Monday | Marbella (Las Albarizas fairground) |
| Tuesday | Fuengirola (fairground), Nerja |
| Wednesday | Estepona, Benalmádena (Arroyo de la Miel), La Cala de Mijas |
| Thursday | Torremolinos, San Pedro de Alcántara, Alhaurín el Grande, Frigiliana |
| Friday | Coín, Puerto Banús (antiques) |
| Saturday | La Cala de Mijas |
| Sunday | The rastros: Fuengirola (Parque Doña Sofía), Torremolinos, Coín |
La Cala de Mijas has one twice a week: Wednesday and Saturday. Market days move around public holidays, so check the week of a feria.
And if you are driving into Málaga: the Mercado Central de las Atarazanas is open Monday to Saturday from nine to two, closed on Sundays. The building stands on the site of the old Islamic shipyards, and the gate you walk through is the original fourteenth-century one. Inside, the fish stalls run in a row and the prawns lie on ice still smelling of the sea.
One habit that makes everything easier: do not buy what you planned to buy. Buy what looks good, and work out afterwards what to do with it. That is how it is cooked here.
What grows here and almost nowhere else
Behind Vélez-Málaga and Torrox the terraces climb into the hills, and the Axarquía up there is full of trees that would not survive anywhere else in Europe. This is not folklore but a serious growing region: more than ninety per cent of all mangoes harvested in Europe come out of those few valleys, and the Mango de Málaga brand closed its third season at over fifteen thousand tonnes.
- Mango — Osteen and Keitt are the two you will see. Late summer into autumn, and at the market they cost a fraction of what an air-freighted mango does up north.
- Avocado — the season opens at the end of October with Bacon and Fuerte; Hass is at its best from mid-November. Buy them hard and let them ripen on the kitchen table.
- Cherimoya — the strangest and the best. Protected designation of origin, the Fino de Jete variety only, picked by hand and packed within a day. From Nerja, Frigiliana, Torrox, Algarrobo and Vélez-Málaga.
A cherimoya does take some nerve. It looks like a green hand grenade and feels like an old tennis ball, but cut it in half, take a teaspoon, and you understand why it has a regulating council of its own. At least seventeen degrees Brix of sweetness, with a sharp note behind it.
Three things that always work
If you are new here and have to feed eight people without losing your nerve, these three will carry you. None of them needs a recipe.
- Fish over fire. Ask at the market what came in that morning, have it cleaned, and put it on the barbecue with coarse salt and lemon. Nothing else. A sardine needs five minutes and you eat it with your hands.
- Something cold out of the blender. Tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, bread, oil, vinegar, salt — and in summer that is half the evening meal. You make it in the morning and it chills while you are at the beach.
- A pan of rice with whatever you have. Not the paella from the book, just rice with what the market left you. This is the dish everybody at the table has an opinion about, which is exactly the point.
Why cooking together is easier than going out together
Going out to eat with people you do not know yet is a three-hour conversation you have to keep going. Cooking together is not. There is always something to do: somebody chops, somebody lays the table, somebody stands at the fire pretending to know what they are doing. Silences do not register when there is a pan on.
And it costs almost nothing. Everyone brings something — a bottle, a pudding, a kilo of fish from the market — and the whole business of being the host disappears. Nobody has to pay for an evening for eight.
The best part is what comes with it unasked: at the table you learn which fishmonger to use, which stall does not charge you the newcomer price, and how to get a gas bottle delivered. None of that is written down anywhere.
How to put it on the noticeboard
You do not have to sell anything on the noticeboard. It is where people who want to do something go looking for others to do it with. One thing: do not put a date on it. First see who is interested, then settle on an evening together once you know how many you are. The other way round you end up with a date that happens to suit nobody.
- “Anyone fancy cooking together? I was thinking fish from the market on the barbecue, in my garden. I am no chef, so expect nothing. Everyone brings something. Let me know, and once there are a few of us we will find an evening that suits everybody.”
- “I would love to learn to cook Spanish food from somebody who actually can. I live in Fuengirola and have a big kitchen. If a few people want the same, I will simply make it a regular evening.”
- “Looking for people to do the Coín market with me and then cook at my place with whatever we found. I have room in the car.”
That is all of it. No price, no advert, nothing for sale. Whoever reads it and feels like it sends a message back — and then the date takes care of itself. That was never the hard part.
What we would most like to be is the village square of this coast, and a village square is not only for trading. It is also where you arrange who is coming to dinner on Friday.