A Market Morning in the Village

Wednesday is market day in the village, and we go early. By half past seven the best fish is already half sold, the pineapples have been argued over, and the coffee stall has a line of grandmothers who've been coming here since before the road was paved.

You'll want to be there before eight. Take cash, small bills, and a basket with a flat bottom. The local rule is that if you bring your own bag, you get a better price on the tomatoes. I can't prove it, but I've never tested it.

Start with a coffee

The stall next to the church sells it in thick clay cups, black, with a lump of raw sugar if you want one. Stand with it for a minute and watch the market assemble. Trucks back in. Tarps go up. A man arranges green plantains into a pyramid with the concentration of someone defusing a bomb.

The fish

The boats come in before dawn, and the best of the catch goes to a single stall at the far end, run by Don Remigio, who's been selling fish since he was a boy and has a very low tolerance for questions about freshness. Look at the eyes. Look at the gills. Then ask him what he'd cook, because he'll tell you, and he's never wrong. We buy for the villa, but guests with a kitchen in their cottage often leave with a whole snapper wrapped in newspaper and a recipe shouted over the crowd.

The fruit

This is where you slow down. Mangoes in season, sold by the pile. Small, sweet, intensely perfumed pineapples that bear no resemblance to the ones in supermarkets. Soursop, green and spiky and strange. Passion fruit in bags. Someone is always handing out a sample on the end of a knife, and the correct response is to accept it.

Don't buy everything. Buy one thing you can't identify and ask what it is. The stallholders enjoy this more than any sale.

The back row

The last aisle is the one visitors skip. It's cheese, tamales wrapped in banana leaf, pickled vegetables, handmade soap and the plain white corn tortillas that start every breakfast here. A woman in a yellow apron sells a sweet corn cake that disappears by nine. If you're only going to buy one thing to eat in the car on the way home, make it that.

What we do with it all

We drive back up the hill with the truck full and the windows open. Half of it goes straight into the kitchen. The rest is for dinner on the veranda, usually a long affair with too many dishes and a bowl of something we've never made before and may never make again. It's the best kind of cooking: led by whatever the morning gave us.

If you'd like to join a market morning, it's part of the stay guide. Wear sandals you can get muddy.