Long neglected, the art of cooking with what's at hand is new again. Adam Platt laps up the best of the rural cuisine in England, France, and Spain, where the views are also star-worthy

In accordance with ancient British culinary custom, a proper country luncheon at the Sharrow Bay Country House Hotel, in England's Lake District, isn't quite a religious occasion, but it comes close. "You'll want the pork, sir," murmured the restaurant manager, Alan Farkins, bending discreetly from the waist. I had been seated by Farkins at a table overlooking the lake. On the table was a single place setting of Sheffield silver and the hotel's own fine bone china, lightly patterned with pink roses. The big-city guests were off tramping in the hills, so the snug little dining room was filled with county burghers and their wives, in for lunch from the surrounding villages. On Sunday afternoons, Farkins said, they dined on country chicken, served with creamy bread sauce and rashers of local Cumberland bacon, and haunches of crispy-skinned roast beef gently scoured, according to old Victorian tradition, with a dusting of curry powder.

And then there was the pork, procured for the past 40 years from Clark's butcher shop in nearby Penrith. It's roasted off the bone and glazed with brown sugar, mild local mustard, and a mixture of herbs from the hotel's garden. It's then cut into hearty slices, doused in a simple roux of flour and its own drippings, and served with sage and onion stuffing, applesauce made from English Cox's apples, and two decorous, cookie-sized squares of salty pork crackling. All are individually delicious, and mingled they create a kind of gourmet dissertation on the comforts of old-fashioned English country cooking. Seeing my clean plate and look of beatific fat-man's satisfaction, Farkins gave another courtly little bow. "Pork's always best," he said. "But don't forget to save room for another big dinner tonight, sir."

After a decade or so in the shadows, the traditional pleasures of what used to be called "provincial" European cuisine are back in vogue. Terroir (although not literally translatable, it means a combination of soil, climate, and place) is the high-flown French word for cooking highlighting local ingredients, and for some time now, in sophisticated gastronomic circles, it's been on everyone's lips. Weary of fanciful foams, arcane fusion techniques, and the sameness of the French-influenced "international" style, chefs of the highest distinction (and diners too) have been fleeing back to their culinary roots. At gourmet country hotels like Sharrow Bay, this means lake trout served at breakfast during the summer months, fresh-churned ice cream flavored with marmalade or nutmeg for dessert, and roast grouse with grilled bacon and port sauce for lunch or dinner in the fall. It means strange, hungry-man confections such as terrine of venison with pistachio nuts, and melting slabs of seared foie gras paired with that great north country delicacy, black pudding (which, in case you didn't know, is a mixture of finely ground pork, oats, currants, and pig's blood).