It is strange that in the absence of travel, I’ve spent more time time than ever dreaming about it. What particularly snares me is the memories of those dishes that you never knew existed until you travelled… and then fell hopelessly in love with.

Now I’m not talking about legendary culinary attractions that delivered like Naples’ pizza, La Tour d’Argent pressed duck, sushi or ramen in Tokyo, Hainanese chicken rice in Malaysia and chilli crab in Singapore. I’m also not talking about obvious ones that didn’t deliver, such as Istanbul’s famous fish sandwich (made with imported Norwegian fish), or overcooked steaks in Buenos Aires.

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No, we are talking about the devastating deliciousness of frijoles negros for breakfast in Mexico City, with smooth, comforting black beans and bright fresh lime, green serrano chilli and coriander; the simple joy of Madrid’s tradie lunch of a white roll stuffed with fried calamari; or even the Buenos Aires choripán, a chorizo roll loaded with a sharp salsa and eaten outdoors with a bottle of Malbec in a brown paper bag, which erased the memory of those steaks.

So often, these culinary highlights are not the ones you need a booking to enjoy. More likely, it’s kebabs wrapped in tissue-thin bread cooked over savage propane heat in a Mumbai alley, or grilled mackerel – skin crispy, flesh oily – paired with a teapot of local cloudy, sour makgeolli rice wine in a dingy Seoul nightclub.

The shock of the location is often part of the joy. Like the faded Louisiana town straight out of True Detective where a bearded man-mountain in overalls cooked a huge, bubbling pot of crawfish. I couldn’t understand much of his Deep South patois, other than his happiness at my sigh upon tasting my first sweet “crawdad”.

It was the same sigh I let out in Hong Kong trying steamed buns glazed with sugar and pork fat from a chaotic Mong Kok hole-in-the-wall, and that greeted a plate of Istanbul’s short, plump local anchovies in an old fishing village outside the city walls.

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I’d never thought of dunking ice-cold mango slices into chilli until that riot greeted me after the 1,270 steps up Sri Lanka’s Sigiriya Rock, or expected that petai (the aptly named stink bean) braised with sambal and prawns could smell so bad but taste so good in Kuala Lumpur. Then there was the kanom krok (coconut griddle cakes) in Bangkok that left a longing to rival any vacation love affair.

My teenage daughter experienced the phenomenon before a recent Paris trip. The most vivid memory she longed to recreate was not macarons, croissants or a meal in some gastro temple. It was the neat, crust-free croque monsieur – like a toastie that spent five years in a Swiss finishing school – from a salon near the Louvre.

Is it worth acknowledging that food tastes better when you are happy? Take a magical meal in Lombok with the woman I love, of snapper cooked over coconut husks on a palm-fringed beach at dusk, with icy beers from an Esky. The simplicity was everything. 

My trip to Portugal was also full of surprising deliciousness, and no town more so than Beja. We’d gone there on a whim and discovered a culinary wonderland – from slices of pork neck salted and seared on a barbecue to braises of pork, potatoes and clams. It is very Iberian, this mountain-and-sea combination, and is at the heart of this recipe, where tender cubes of pork are finished with clams that open to cascade their salty juices over the meat – seasoning it with just the right umami hit.

Find Matt’s recipe for the pork and clam stew pictured above, here.