Lamb

The best meal I ever ate was in the Romanesque town of Sepulveda, north of Madrid, about 20 years ago. My girlfriend and I were taking a short holiday in Spain and we had been advised by a friend to head for this place carved out of the vast limestone plateau around Valladolid, just to eat the lamb in one of the many restaurants dedicated to the consumption of this beast. He said it was worth making an effort to get there. He was right.

Sepulveda

We were on a miniscule budget and our only means of reaching Sepulveda was by bus from Madrid, where we had found a cheap hotel from which to explore the city. The bus departed once a day, early in the morning and was scheduled to arrive at Sepulveda at about 1pm. Perfect. Except, of course, the one we caught left late and got later as the journey wore on. We'd skipped breakfast and were hungry.

When the bus pulled into the main square of Sepulveda at 2.30pm we flung on our rucksacks and rushed down the steps to the old town, hoping to find a restaurant still open. Alas, most seemed dark and deserted but we pushed on the door of one that showed signs of life and put on our most winning smiles. We realised that we were very late, we explained ingratiatingly, but we had come a long way to eat lunch in Sepulveda and was there any chance...? The proprietor seemed a little nonplussed but welcomed us in and said that, of course, we were welcome, please come in. Let me take your luggage. He showed us to a table - the best in the room - by a window in the empty dining room and left us alone. Charlotte and I smiled at one another in silent triumph.

A few minutes later, other diners started to trickle in to the restaurant and it dawned on us that we had arrived early, not late. This was our first visit to Spain. There was no menu. We placed no order. After a while a waitress appeared at our table with a board on which sat a quarter of a lamb, its kidneys still attached to the ribcage. She returned moments later with a large bowl of salad, oil and vinegar, a loaf of bread, a jug of red wine and another of water. Using two spoons, she tore the lamb into pieces and departed.

By now the restaurant was full and humming with conversation. The smell of roasted lamb pervaded the room. In the kitchens were huge, wood-fired clay ovens, in which whole lambs had been cooking since dawn. Their fat had melted through the flesh until all that was left was meltingly tender, aromatic meat, falling in strips off the bones, and sheets of crispy skin. The limestone around Sepulveda supports the thinnest of vegetation, all of it adapted to resist grazing. It is therefore full of the most fantastically aromatic oils, which seemed to have been concentrated in the flesh of the lamb. We ate. No, we feasted. Fat dribbled from the corners of our mouths and we washed it down with wine. We mopped up the juices that had spilled from the lamb's collapsing corpse with bread. We drank more wine. Truly, I have never put anything more delicious in my mouth.

We had been the first to arrive and I believe we were the last to leave. For the final hour or so we picked in a desultory way at the remains of the quartered carcass, its fat now congealing on the board. Eventually we had to leave and we staggered out into the still bright sunlight of a Spanish summer evening. We could not afford a hotel. The bus for Madrid had long since departed and the next one would not leave until the morning. We had a tent and sleeping bags and we decided to find somewhere to camp.

As we left the town, heading east, we soon found ourselves walking along the banks of a small river running through woodland. We were young. We were in love. There was no-one else in sight. Quite soon we found a meadow beside the stream and made love, lying naked in the long, damp grass. I have never been a fan of al fresco sex. As with picnics on the beach, sand gets in the sandwich(es) and the execution of the act is rarely as enjoyable as the fantasy. Of this particular experience, however, I remember nothing but bliss and afterwards a feeling of mellow fulfillment.

That was a long time ago. Charlotte and I got married and later got divorced. Roast lamb remains one of my favourite things to eat. I have tried often to reproduce the flavour of those Sepulveda lambs. It can't be done. I shall have to go back, which would be a terrible mistake. While I debate the merits of returning to Sepulveda I occasionally slow roast a shoulder of lamb, sourced from the best butcher I can find. It's not the same but, damn, it still tastes very fine. Tonight I am alone and, even if I weren't, I'd be beyond incapable, after eating, of putting on a rucksack, walking five miles and fucking in a field.

Tonight's supper