My first taste of Spain was as a teenager in a small village in the Pyrenees. After a few wretched days working as an au pair for a particularly vicious woman, I was rescued by friends who ran a popular bar in town and kindly gave me a summer job. I had a ball, helping them to prepare pan con tomate and other simple, delicious tapas to feed the hordes.

Last autumn I went back to Spain to shoot a cookery series with the outdoorsman Guy Grieve. We had already done a similar thing in Britain for the Channel 4 show Wild Gourmets, but this time, as the emphasis was more firmly on food and less about the challenge of finding it, we camped and foraged our way across Spain. We met people and gathered produce wherever we went, whether it was saffron, beans, Manchego cheese or delicious local ham. I cooked with locals or on my own, picking up local recipes and techniques.

Getting back to Britain, I realised how much of Spain's produce is available to us. Manchego cheese is as easy to buy as Parmesan. Saffron can be got at most supermarkets and cannellini, borlotti and butter beans can easily replace the Spanish varieties of beans. I discovered that even the upmarket Iberico ham is sold in most Waitrose branches. In my travels, I discovered that the fundamental building blocks in Spanish cooking are good-quality olive oil, wine and garlic, all easy to get hold of here. With a small investment in these three ingredients, I found that could bring all those delicious recipes I had out in Spain back to my kitchen.

Ham is the jewel in Huelva's crown

We started in the south, in Andalusia, and that region was to provide food by the bucket. Huelva, close to Seville, was rich in mushrooms: ceps, saffron milkcaps and gurumelo, the local favourite. The cantinas cook them every which way - in scrambled eggs, in croquettes, deep-fried in batter, spiked with pimenton (a mild red pepper), and with ham.

Ham is the jewel in Huelva's crown and it attracts food lovers from far and wide. The Iberico pig is an ancient breed that feasts on a diet of acorns in its last months of fattening up before slaughter. The holm oaks that produce the acorns carpet the hills throughout the region, each looking like different gnarled characters in a foreign play. The acorns give the Iberico ham a fatty, grainy texture that literally melts in the mouth. The fat is so full of flavour that the ham is often eaten fried - it knocks spots off both Serrano and Parma ham.

Eastern Andalusia was just as rewarding. The region has more hours of sunshine than any other part of Spain so varieties of olives, almonds and ripe, juicy tomatoes abound.

Spaniards eat in an irresistible way: food is cooked with relish and everything is shared with all around; family, friends and neighbours. This is a country where food is not just for refuelling, it is for bringing pleasure to life.

Central Spain reaffirmed this attitude towards food. In Castille-La Mancha, land of Don Quixote, we met Gregorio, who tended a flock of 600 Manchego sheep. The rest of his family, young and old, worked together to make magnificent Manchego cheese from the sheeps' milk - I swear it was the most delicious cheese I had tasted.

Local cooks would shave the cheese over olive oil-doused broad beans, eat it in simple sandwiches to have on the road or with migas, a traditional dish that uses old breadcrumbs sautéed in olive oil.

Families would gather together for the saffron harvest in the same unit as the Manchego cheese is produced. Saffron-picking, like cheese-making, is back-breaking work but an essential part of their livelihood. Despite the obvious poverty in some of the places we visited, the work and cooking seemed just an excuse for people to gather and gossip, from toddlers to great-grandparents.

In Castille-Leon, October's dappled orchards are painted in shades of pink, orange, green and yellow by the scores of apple varieties, hanging from the trees - an unforgettable sight.

Here, like everywhere else we went, every spare scrap of land was being used to grow vegetables, fruit and nuts. In October, after the harvest, the beans are dried, sausages are made, hams are hung and vegetables are preserved so that there is enough food for the winter.

We found the same attitude towards farming in the north, in Asturias and in the Picos de Europa mountain range. Here the ancient tunnel systems in the rocks have been used with the same practicality as the land - the cool, dark caves have been made into ideal curing rooms for Picos Blue cheese, another of Spain's well-known exports.

People here also produce a local cider that is dry and full of flavour. It is used to cook local dishes such as hake in cider and the more-ish chorizo braised in cider. Or it is just consumed as a drink before dinner.

Harvest of the bountiful seas

In Galicia, the northwestern tip of Spain, the larder contents come from the sea as well as the land. It is the Galicians who largely provide men for the fleets of Spanish fishermen, who globetrot to find their catch, often to much controversy. This is a poor region but the ingredients that are harvested - octopus, clams, hake, gooseneck barnacles and, from the land, several varieties of potato - are cooked without any fuss. With high-quality produce, ingredients are left to sing for themselves with just a simple garlic mayonaise or a scattering of parsley to flavour the food.

Spain is a country where common sense and practicality rule in the kitchen: the countryside is treated as an integral part of the whole land, whether feeding the local population, sending produce to the nearby cities or contributing to a valuable export industry.

Spain's rural population is much bigger than ours, although shrinking, but I get the impression that food production is given much greater importance than in the UK. Life there seems to be distilled to a core goal, a common pursuit: the pleasure of cooking and eating. Now that I am back in England I have been scouring bookshops for Spanish cookbooks so that I can make uncomplicated recipes, full of flavour but without any fuss. Just like the Spaniards, I am loath to deny myself such simple pleasures in life.

A Cook's Tour of Spain is broadcast on Channel 4, March 20, 8pm

Explore Food & Drink

• Gordon Ramsay

• Heston Blumenthal

• Recipes

• Wine

• Real Food

• Eating Out

• Anjum Anand

• Video Recipes

Times Recommends

• How to season a wok
• Chicago Rib Shack hits back at its critics
• Gordon Ramsay: Indian barbecue