This bechamel recipe is my prize Cretan souvenir

 Farmers looking for ways to diversify their revenue streams should take a look at the Cretan Olive Oil farm. I have rarely seen a better example of milking a property for all it's worth.

This relatively compact grove of trees between the main coastal road and the water just outside of Agios Nikolaos offers tourists a number of distractions. You can wander through their gardens to learn about Cretan herbs and their affect on health. You can sign up for a traditional Cretan pottery making workshop. In the shade of an old, open-sided barn, you can learn all about olive oil production, even helping to turn the original 19th-century olive press or raking olive pulp before the advance of the crushing millstone. If you're like us, of course, you'll be heading for the cooking class.

This is a homespun, informal session with a local who demonstrates the classics of the Greek home kitchen, There's no "chefiness", no written instructions and not a great deal of organisation. The instruction reminded me of Italian relatives handing down their techniques: nothing is measured, there are no specific recipes. There's only a general framework of a dish, which may change based on the availability of ingredients or your mood. Those who like to follow recipes line by line may find themselves a bit discombobulated, but the instructor is always at your elbow to assist. It's a great journey through the basics, you'll end up eating a massive lunch and for any like us whose resort package includes dining, it may be the closest you get to culinary authenticity on your whole trip. At 48.00€ per person it's also great value for money.

We took the meat course, which runs every Wednesday at 11:30. (There's a fish option on Mondays.) The centrepiece of the Wednesday class is traditional Cretan Moussaka, a Cretan salad with smoked pork, tzatziki, and sausage and onions. The web site also listed a cheese  pie with honey which we didn't do, thank heavens, because the waste was already epic. Each individual will be cooking a dish that serves four, and the salad and sausage dishes are as worthy of being a main course as the moussaka. When you sit down to eat at the end of the course you can hardly make a dent in what you've prepared, and they have no take-away containers. (If you're staying in the area and not on a dining package, bring materials to take away what you've cooked and you'll have at least three additional meals.)

The crazy abundance, as well as the recipe-free coaching, took me back to the Italian-American kitchens of my youth.

Our most valuable lesson of the day turned out to be an unusual, and promised to be foolproof, approach to bechamel. The difference is starting with something like a batter before engaging with any heat.

• Start by whisking together a half litre of milk and a whole egg
• Add 3/4 of a cup of butter, a good glug of olive oil and a cup and a half of strong white flour. Continue to whisk until reaching batter consistency
• Season to taste with salt, pepper and plenty of nutmeg
• Only now do you put it on the heat. Whisk while cooking until it thickens to something like stiff porridge
• Add about two cups of grated cheese. In Crete we used kefalotiri, a semi-dry goat’s cheese. Back home I used a mix of shredded mozzarella and pecorino

The other essential tip of the day: grate (rather than slicing) the cucumber for you tzatziki. Then salt it and let it sit for a while. Once the seasoning has had its water-extracting effect, squeeze the heck out of the veg, one handful at a time, before putting it into the yogurt. The drier you can get the cucumber, the thicker and more unctuous the sauce will be. I was interested to see her finish it off with a glug of balsamic vinegar and well as one of olive oil. This dish, and the sausage and peppers, shared a love of the agrodolce technique common in Sicilian cuisine.

One of the joys of cooking classes is often the company with whom you are dining at the end. People interested enough in food to spend part of their holiday on it tend to share other interests, and our conversation flowed merrily down diverse paths. The group was split between Germans and Brits, from young backpackers to mature travellers. 

I tried several of the recipes after returning home and they were just as good, and easy to produce, in my kitchen as in a balmy Cretan olive grove. While holiday is now a memory, the food can bring some of the atmosphere back at will.