IF Rick Stein is a typical senior citizen, it's no wonder we're thinking of raising the age of retirement.

At 64-years-old, the ‘Padstein’ chef and presenter is still going strong, and more likely to be found searching out Spanish cheese in a mountain cave for his latest TV show than pondering his pension.

“I’ve been going to Spain all my life, but for many years the word tapas in Britain didn’t refer to anything remotely Spanish,” he explains, as we chat about his latest series and book, Rick Stein’s Spain.

“In this country you’ll be in for a wait, whereas in Spain, the prep’s done beforehand and the actual service is like lightning. But proper tapas is appearing in Britain at long last,” he sighs happily.

To make his new four-part series, Stein left his famous Cornish seafood restaurants behind and travelled across Spain, from Galicia round to the Basque Country, and on to Catalonia and Andalusia, to find the heart of Spain’s rustic, ingredient-led cuisine – fuelled by plenty of white Ribeiro wine, of course.

“The food relies on very fresh fish or excellent meat, and in that way it’s similar to British food, which is far too much maligned,” says Stein.

“When you get fish, like a piece of John Dory cooked with a parsley sauce, it’s as good as anywhere.

“The way to spot a great tapas bar is to check out the menu. It’s got to have Iberico ham. When I was in Seville, in allegedly the oldest tapas bar there, El Rinconcillo, I met a Welsh guy who made me eat jamon iberico de bellota [acorn ham].

“For the last five months of their life, the pigs this comes from are fed exclusively on acorns, and you drink it with a cold glass of Fino sherry.

“That’s absolutely the centre of any tapas, you’ve got to have good ham.”

Also on his list are seafood (“maybe mussels in the shell”), breaded deep-fried squid, a prawn dish, deep-fried peppers and croquettes.

Stein grasps at the air passionately as he talks, like he’s trying to grab these foods and start cooking.

“And you’ve got to have sausage – chorizo. Possibly Morcilla. It’s blood sausage, but you’d hardly know because it’s so spicy with pimenton [Spanish paprika] and often smoked.”

Thankfully these days, such exotic ingredients aren’t hard to source. Companies such as Unearthed (discoverunearthed.com) sell specialist produce to mainstream supermarkets.

Stein also insists that you shouldn’t be afraid to try out new recipes.

“While cooking in Spain, the locals let me get on with it. I found that liberating. Much as I love the way people, like Italians, insist on doing things a certain way, I quite like to work these things out by myself.”

Over the week we'll be giving you three recipes from Rick Stein’s book to get your teeth into...