We're on the cusp between summer and autumn here in Puglia.  I love this time of year - it's still warm, but the storms that mark the end of summer have made the country green and lush and the leaves are turning gold.  The air is full of rich smells - bonfires and fermenting fruit.  The market is overflowing with ripe produce such as melons, peaches and prickly pears and the vendemmia or grape harvest is just round the corner. This photo is of stuff I picked from our land during ten minutes of wandering around.  The colours reflect the season so well.  There's a lot to do on the land at the moment.  Right now I'm pruning the fig trees, which haven't been touched for four or five years and are tangled and overgrown.  Whenever I prune trees I have Erminia's dead husband Paolo invisibly at my shoulder whispering advice - "you prune olive trees to look like a wine glass, but figs like an umbrella".  At the time he told me this I had no idea why,...

  As a paid up carnivore there is no flesh I love more than wild boar.  It's pork with all the flavours turned up, fantastic in rich sauces, sausages or straight off the barbecue, dribbling in fat so good you could drink it by the cupful.  It's a staple meat for the villagers of Pa Lungan and as luck would have it they had killed two the day I arrived and I got an invite to the barbecue the next day. So on Sunday afternoon I joined Stephen and his family and friends around the fire.  The combination of woodsmoke, fatty meat and thin crispy crackling was divine.  The hunter-gatherer ambiance was completed by the salivating dogs circling around the group, waiting for tossed scraps, a reward and an incentive to do their job on future hunts. The following day Stephen's brother Matteo, the village Headman, took me out for a day trekking in the jungle, accompanied by Supang's young dog Baddei. We ate lunch by a stream.  Mine was fried rice and wild boar...

Bario is in the heart of Borneo.  The best way to get there is by the twice daily MAS Wings service from Miri, which uses robust old 14-seater Twin Otter light planes.  You can also go by four-wheel drive using a network of logging roads, but it's a muddy, bumpy 12-hour ride.  The flight is a visceral experience during which you can watch the pilots wrestle the controls and flip the switches as they dodge the clouds then swoop through a clear gap down towards the tiny strip of grey tarmac which is Bario Airport. I had made no plans, which is just as well because the Lonely Planet Guide to the area is uselessly out of date.  As I left the arrivals shed there were several locals milling about, looking for clients.  I spoke to one who invited me to his Homestay (Malaysia's word for "bed and breakfast"). "What's your name?" I asked. "Douglas". "Guess what my name is?" So I joined Douglas in his four-wheel drive truck along with thre...

Before we left the UK in 2002 we used to do our shopping at a big new Sainsburys supermarket near the Millennium Dome by the Thames in Greenwich.  I remember walking round the aisles and thinking that it was a cornucopia of foods from all over the world and how lucky we were to have such quality and choice.  Had I seen Saratok market then it would have appeared to me a hot, confusing and fly-blown place, smelling of open drains and rotting fish.  But it's been a long journey since then and that Sainsburys seems to me now like a tomb for dead food, shrunk-wrapped, frozen, labelled and bullied into uniform ranks.  A place where words have taken over from taste, where we are endlessly told how good things are and the same head of broccoli can be badge-engineered as "basic" or of "taste the difference" quality. My education began in the food markets of Italy, especially our weekly market in Locorotondo.  It took me two years to begin weaning myself off regular...

Every Friday morning when I am home I go to Locorotondo market. Usually I go on my old motorbike with a plastic crate bungeed to the pillion behind my big topbox. This means I can park close to the action while having lots of space to carry my shopping. At the core of the market are the fruit and vegetable stalls, which are fringed with refrigerated vans selling fresh meat, fish, cheese and charcuterie. There are also a few specialists offering rice, pulses, flour, olives and spices. On a couple of streets which run from the market to the town centre there are vendors of clothes, shoes and general tat. One area is devoted to second hand clothes where you have to jostle with big-boned local women to find a bargain. About half the female population of our area go to market, plus a few blokes and a few tourists. I guess that, like me, most of the tourists were brought up in a supermarket culture and that many find the market a frustrating experience – few of the stallholders spe...

It's getting towards the end of August and our land is looking parched and tired. When I walk around to inspect the olive trees, dry and brittle weeds snap under my feet and a fine brown dust works its way into my sandals, making my feet itchy. But while everything else wilts under the flaring August sun, our fig trees turn into fruit producing machines. Had I the energy I could drag a bucket of figs back to the house every morning. Six years ago I don't think I'd ever eaten a fresh fig. Now we have ten trees of different varieties and they are like old friends. Some produce an early crop in June, some don't. Most bear green figs but some have a rich dark purple fruit. Some make fat moist figs and others smaller intensely sweet ones. I usually wander around the trees in the morning picking and eating the sun-warmed fruit for breakfast. I break open the fig with my fingers and inspect how moist it is before popping it into my mouth and chewing slowly on the sw...

It's that time of year when all self-respecting Italian peasants must make tomato sauce. Not the thick acidic stuff that people squeeze onto hamburgers, but the simple tomato pulp or "passata" that is the basis for so many Italian pasta sauces and stews. In the photo Erminia is preparing her boiler, which is sited about ten meters from my bedroom window. In late July and early August there is a fire burning in this thing from about six in the morning, filling our house with the smell of woodsmoke. Erminia is not too fussy about the fuel she uses and this year happily broke up and consigned to the flames an old melamine chest of drawers, which made a thick black sooty mark up the side of her whitewashed kitchen wall and left our house reeking for days of burned plastic. When I went round to investigate, Erminia was crouched over the boiler as black and sweaty as the Chief Stoker on a steamship. "Is it making a smell?" She asked, innocently. "No, it...

One morning we were minding our own business on our terrace when Erminia’s daughter in law Palma bowled up the drive with her daughter, also called Erminia. They were carrying a plastic bag. Palma’s husband Domenico and her son Paolo (our builder) had been out shooting and guess what they’d brought for us? I peered nervously into the bag, six lovely dead Thrushes for the table … mmmm. “Er, what do you do with them?” I asked. Immediately, Palma thrust her hand into the bag and plucked and gutted the little fellahs. “Cook them for ten minutes in a little tomato sauce with some pancetta (bacon) and they’re lovely.” As a fully paid up carnivore I felt obliged to cook them, though I did chop the heads off, said to be really tasty, as I couldn’t bear looking at their accusatory little eyes staring out of the pot from their tiny grey lizzard like bodies. Actually they tasted OK, a bit like a cross between chicken and liver, though Sue couldn’t bring herself to sample them. Overall...