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Archive for the 'Food' Category

Carcassonne, Languedoc, France. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 2nd February 2010

Carcassonne looks like the sort of fortified town that I used to think only existed in children’s fairy tale books.

The old part of the town is like a vast sprawling medieval version of Gormenghast. Like most places that have castles in Europe, Carcassonne has been settled and fortified from pre-roman times. In it’s latest incarnation it’s a mix of a 12th century Cathar castle and later 19th century additions in a romantic vein.

Castles interest me far more than palaces because of their functional and defensive purposes as opposed to the later which are nothing more than vulgar displays of selfish cluelessness and naked greed.

Carcassonne was one of the last Carthar strongholds to fall during the Albigensian Crusade.

The Cathars were a religious Christians sect that was similar in belief to the Bogomils of Bulgaria. They believed that all matter was corrupt and the incorporeal human spirit was trapped in corrupt matter. The Cathars accepted that Jesus held the spirit of god but was not god itself because he was material and god was incorporeal. Basically all matter was created by a lesser corrupt deity (like satan) and the Cathar’s aim was to transcend the material much like the Buddhists.

As I’ve been writing this I found myself thinking about how Buddhists see the human body as a basically a sack of puss and guts to trot the spirit around in while we try and attain enlightenment, and we shouldn’t be too attached to pleasures of the fleshy vehicle we travel in. These thoughts about these old French ideas of the corrupt nature of material life, remind me of a hilarious rabidly anti-French rant (life iz shit; get to know dis!) by Robin Williams.

Needless to say, killing off a pesky papal legate by Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse (a cultured guy who was sympathetic to the Cathars) after he’d been excommunicated, was all the excuse that Pope Innocent III (the Americans didn’t invent irony, the Catholics did) needed to call for a crusade against the Cathars.

Crusade is medieval code for “church sanctioned land grab”, peppered with a liberal dose of rape, plunder and extreme violence. Needless to say, such opportunities attract the worst kind of murderous people, that we nowadays call aristocrats. Probably the most infamous of these, outside of the holy lands (that distinction goes to Raynald of Châtillon), was Simon de Montfort and it was he that finally took Carcassonne after he participated in the massacre at Beziers where 20,000 Cathars were slaughtered. Thousands of people hoping for sanctuary in churches were locked inside and burnt to death. The infamous old quote by the papal legate Arnaud-Amaury, “Kill them all, God will recognize his own” is from the massacre at Beziers.

Knowing something of the crimes committed by Simon de Montfort, I found it surprising that his tombstone with his likeness on it is on display on one of the walls in the Basilica of Saint Nazaire in the old part of the town.

It strikes me as extremely odd that such a darkly evil person who had so many of the local’s ancestors brutally murdered, is accorded any kind of respect in a place that is supposed to be the house of a loving god. I think that tombstone should be laid flat, have the face removed and be used as a toilet set.

Naturally such a picturesque old town like Carcassonne attracts a lot of tourists, but we found that in the early autumn when we were there, the crowds weren’t so bad and we spent a whole day just wandering around the cobbled streets.

Of course cute touristy places like Carcassonne will be derided by those who see themselves as “travellers” (code for backpackers who think they are doing something original…… not!) but I’d say it has a lot to offer those with an interest in history and architecture.

As for those who consider themselves “travellers”, all I have to say to them is that, “if you want an authentic medieval experience for all your senses, check out the public toilets in Carcassonne”.

Because Carcassonne is an actual town, most of it is accessible at night so I’d also recommend having dinner there and wandering around at night.

A word of warning though, make sure if you are wanting to eat the local dish, cassoulet de canard (duck and bean stew), you don’t do what we did and eat at a place run by Moroccans.

To be honest, most of the time, I couldn’t care less where the cook’s ancestors came from, but what I didn’t realise was, that cassoulet de canard has pork in it and that being Moslems, the Moroccans don’t taste it as they make it, so of course it tasted awful. My wife has been permanently scarred by the experience and now refers to cassoulet de canard as lard stew and will never eat it again. Another thing about eating in a place run by Moslems is that they don’t drink wine and therefore can’t really make suggestions about what wine to drink with the same knowledge that a wine drinker can.

Until this experience, I’d never really thought about taking a person’s religious background into account before eating in their restaurant. It just goes to show how secular the little world I live in, is. I guess the lesson here is, that just because a restaurant looks like a traditional French restaurant and has traditional French food and wine on the menu doesn’t mean that their food is going to be automatically authentic.

All I can say, is that I wish I had a movie camera going when I called over our waitress to send back a bottle of wine that was very sour (yep, sour, not corked), and I suggested she have a taste for herself (as is customary in such cases). The look of disgust on her face was priceless but much to her credit the bottle was replaced by a different brand of equally nasty wine. Obviously the restaurant management don’t taste the wine before they buy it and their wine supplier is probably taking advantage of them. It was such a pity because the staff at the restaurant were very nice people trying to make a living with products they had no idea about.

A catch 22 situation if I’ve ever seen one.

Posted in Architecture, Food, Panoramas, People, Phenomena, Photography, Rant, Travel | 9 Comments »

Australia Day dessert. 2010

Posted by razzbuffnik on 26th January 2010

I had a bunch of friends over for a dinner on the eve of Australia Day, which is 26th of January for all you non-Aussies.

The idea behind Australia Day is that it commemorates the landing of the first fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788. Needless to say, one man’s meat is another’s poison and some Aboriginals call the 26th, “Invasion Day”. Fair enough, but to be honest the average Aussie takes the opportunity to have the day off to drink and feast without much thought or reflection on the matter.

Like all young nations, Australia is still struggling with it’s sense of identity. For instance there isn’t what could be called an Australian cuisine in the sense of how the Italians can claim to have a national food culture that is recognisably theirs.

So it was with these nebulous feelings of being culturally adrift that I started to think about what I was going to serve for dinner. It is generally accepted by many people here in Oz that lamb will be eaten on Australia Day, so the main course was a no-brainer. Trouble was, lamb is eaten by lots of other cultures and it’s not exclusively Australian. How was I going to put an intrinsically Australian stamp on my dinner?

When I studied design we were told to always research a theme before we put pen to paper, and it was with that advice that I approached making my interpretation of an Aussie dessert.

My first thought was about what foods are uniquely Australian or at least grew here before colonisation. As everyone knows, Australia was inhabited by Aboriginals before European settlement and about the only uniquely native food that they collected, that has gained international acceptance is the macadamia nut. Coconuts also occur naturally up north in the tropical areas, so I thought they and the macadamia nuts would be a good start.

I also thought about some of the incidents in Australian history that have shaped our collective sense of who we are.

The early history of Australia as an English penal settlement is peppered with stories of convict misery and the corruption of the NSW Corps (the low quality semi-criminal soldiers sent from England to manage the prisoners), which became known as the “Rum Corps” and who were involved in the “Rum Rebellion”. So rum had to be in the list of ingredients as well.

For the first 100 years of white history in Australia, most Australians saw themselves as de facto English and were only too happy to jump into whatever wars England was participating in. One of the biggest military blunders of the First World War was Churchill’s decision to send Australian and New Zealand troops (known as ANZACS which is an acronym for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) with the British Army to Attack the Turks. Thanks to criminal ineptitude on the behalf of the British navy, the ANZACS were landed on the wrong beach at the base of some fairly steep cliffs. This tactical blunder was further compounded by the incredibly poor British army leadership that delayed movement of the soldiers off the beach for so long that the Turks were able to send reinforcements and pin the ANZACS and the British soldiers down on the beach at Gallipoli for almost a year. The disaster at Gallipoli is seen by many Australians and New Zealanders as the watershed moment of our respective senses of nationhood.

Being the willing cannon fodder for the British had lost it’s appeal.

During WWI, the wives, mothers and sisters of the colonial expeditionary forces would send packages which often contained food, to their loved ones overseas in the war. A common food in those boxes of love from home were sweet, buttery oatmeal and coconut biscuits (probably based on traditional Scottish oatmeal biscuits) called ANZAC biscuits.

By the way, when I use the word biscuit, it should be interpreted as “cookie” by North Americans. What North Americans call biscuits, we English speakers call scones.

As I thought about the ANZAC biscuits I remembered when I was a child, a friend of my grandmother, Phyllis Budd, used to make a variation of an old Victorian era dessert out of ginger-snap biscuits and whipped cream. The biscuits were coated on either side with whipped cream and put together to make a log. The biscuits and cream were left over night and the moisture from the cream moved from the cream to biscuits to soften them and as a result, the cream thickened to a ricotta cheese consistancy.

I used to love visiting Phyllis.

Here’s the recipe for what I came up with.

Serves 8

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup plain flour
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cup desiccated coconut (I use McKenzie’s “Moist flakes” for better flavour and texture)
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
190g (almost 7oz) butter
6 tbs golden syrup (you can substitute 2 tbs of treacle)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 cups of fresh cream
1 cup of coconut cream
2 cups of roughly broken up unsalted macadamia nuts (if you can’t get unsalted nuts; wash salted ones)
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup Rum (I use Bundaberg Rum because it’s so quintessentially Australian, in a bad way!)
1 block of dark chocolate (I use Gold’s organic, fair trade 70% coca chocolate)
Baking paper
Several A4 or foolscap sheets of heavy card or paper (about 200 gsm or so)
Sticky tape.

Method

Start this recipe two days before you serve.

Soak the raisins in the rum, over night in the fridge, on the day before you start this recipe.

The day before you serve.

Preheat your oven to 160C (320F).

Melt the chocolate in a bain marie and pipe it out in 10 abstract grids onto a flat portable surface covered in baking paper that will fit into your freezer. Place them in your freezer while you deal with the rest of the ingredients.

Combine the oats, desiccated coconut and brown sugar in a large mixing bowl. Melt the butter and mix in 3 tablespoons of golden syrup or 1 tablespoon of treacle at low heat. When the butter is completely melted add the bicarbonate of soda. The bicarbonate of soda will cause the butter to froth up so mix it in quickly and pour the combined ingredients onto the dry ingredients in your bowl to combine.

On a large baking tray (I used 300mm x 450mm or about 12″ x 18″) lined with baking paper, evenly roll out the biscuit dough until it covers the whole tray. This operation will be easier to perform if you cover the dough with another layer of baking paper. Remove the top layer of baking paper and place the tray with the dough in the oven for 13 minutes or until the biscuit just begins to turn a light brown. DO NOT cook the biscuits for too long as they will become too crisp.

The sheet of biscuit will still be quite soft after cooking but don’t worry as it will firm up as they cool down. While the sheet of cooked biscuit is still warm use a 6cm or 2 1/2″ biscuit/cookie cutter to cut out 24 ANZAC biscuits.

While the biscuits are cooling down, make a tube of baking paper 9cm or 3 1/2″ high by wrapping it around your biscuit cutter and then wrap the same size of heavy paper around the baking paper to reinforce it. Make a total 8 of these tubes.

Place the Macadamia nuts in a folded tea towel (dish drying cloth) and break them up into large pieces with a rolling pin. Place the nuts under a grill until they begin to go brown. Keep an eye on the nuts as they brown quickly and can burn in a surprisingly short time.

Whip up the cream and slowly add 3 tablespoons of golden syrup or 1 tablespoon of treacle as you go. As the cream starts to thicken, add the coconut cream until until it is well mixed in.

In a large airtight container with a sheet of baking paper in the bottom, place your paper tubes on their ends and sprinkle a some macadamia nuts into them. Then place about 2 tablespoons of the whipped cream mixture into each of the tubes on top of the nuts. The next step is to drop a biscuit into each tube and push it down until a little cream comes out of the bottom of the tubes (just so you know there aren’t any big air pockets).

Next you add the same amount of cream again. On top of the cream drop 3 or 4 rum soaked raisins. Don’t go overboard with the raisins as rum will be the only thing you will taste.

The idea of the raisins it that they are a little hidden surprise and not the main event.

On top of the raisins and cream drop another ANZAC biscuit and push it down to flatten out the cream underneath. More cream and raisins are added again on top of the ANZAC biscuit. Again this layer of cream and raisins is topped with what will be the last ANZAC biscuit (3 ANZAC biscuits are used for each dessert).

Spoon some more cream on the top ANZAC biscuit and then sprinkle some more macadamia nuts on very top of everything. Push the nuts down a little into the cream to level it all off (I used the tamper from my espresso machine).

Push the lid onto the airtight container with all the desserts in it, and put it into your fridge overnight.

Just before you serve your desserts take them out of the airtight container with a spatular so you don’t squash or loose your desserts through the bottom of the tubes.

Place the tubes onto the plates that you will serve them on and carefully cut off the paper tubes with a sharp knife. I used an exacto knife to cut through the sticky tape holding the tubes together.

The last step is to carefully and quickly (so they don’t melt in your fingers) push the chocolate grids into the top of the desserts. If you like, you can put some passionfruit pulp around the dessert as a tasty garnish.

Here’s an amusing video by the talented American comic Rich Hall in the guise of his much convicted uncle Otis Lee Crenshaw, about Bundaberg Rum.

Posted in Design, Food, Recipes | 8 Comments »

A different sense of what’s an appropriate present. Brugge, Belgium. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 8th January 2010

One of the first things we did in Brugge was to buy decent sized box of handmade Belgian chocolates. We found a cute little stone bridge over one of the canals and quickly scoffed down the lot until we felt sick.

There’s nothing like stuffing oneself with chocolate to put yourself off the stuff. Afterwards, over the next couple of days, it made us nauseous to even look at the elaborate displays in the numerous chocolatier’s shops in the old town .

I don’t think we ate any more chocolate for about two months after our pig out.

Having said how we had turned ourselves off even looking at chocolate, the display in the photo below caught my eye.

What can I say? Other than it sure was very different to all the other chocolate stores in Brugge. Talk about, “don’t compete, be unique”!

The writing, in three languages, on the white cards (which can’t be seen very well in size of image that I’ve put up here) says;

“KAMASUTRA

also ladies surprise.”

Ladies surprise……. gee I wonder (not really) what that is?

“A nice present for your father or friend.”

A nice present for your father? I bet that would make your mother happy.

Then again, am I missing something here?

Posted in Design, Food, Phenomena, Travel | 10 Comments »

An Epic lunch for my 500th post. Paris, France. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 18th November 2009

Yesterday was the last full day we were in Paris and it was the day that fellow blogger, Epicurienne caught the Eurostar over from London for the day to meet up with us before we left.

As a happy coincidence, I’ve been able to make sure that my landmark 500th post could be about my wife and I meeting up with Epicurienne, who like us comes from the southern hemisphere, likes to travel, eat good food (who doesn’t!) and of course is also a blogger.

The plan was that Epicurienne was going to show us around Paris a bit, but it was a little cool and drizzling rain.

The great indoors looked far more appealing so I piped up with, “why don’t we find a really nice little restaurant and have a fabulous meal with some lovely wine and blow heaps of money doing it!”

Epic ruminated upon the question with great deliberation for about a nanosecond and replied, “sounds like a plan!”

So off the three of us went to wander around Ile St Louis on our quest, where we stumbled across an absolute gem of a restaurant called “Sorza”.

The Sorza provided the perfect setting for a day with Epic who often writes about restaurants and the cusine she has had around the world. The food was excellent and the wine that Epic picked was perfect (I know nothing about French wines).

I’ll leave a more detailed description of our meal to Epic, as she is much better than me at writing about food.

Just like before when I met up with fellow bloggers Cashmere Cafe, Grasswire and Robert in Slovenia, it was remarkable how easy and pleasant it was to talk to Epic. We came to the conclusion that we felt we’d know each other for ages through our blogs which made the conversation so comfortable and fluid.

Also, just like in Slovenia I felt I had met another person that I wish I lived closer to. I would love to cook for Epic some time. I can’t even really begin to describe what a nice day Engogirl and I have had.

To be in Paris on our last day and to spend it with such a delightful and lovely person such as Epic would have been more than good enough, but the icing on the cake was our meal together.

Meeting up with fellow bloggers has been so pleasant that it is something that I’m going to have to do more often. It’s just a pity that Australia is so far away from where the bloggers I read, come from.

Posted in Food, Friends, People, Trains, Travel | 10 Comments »

Endless olive trees in Andalusia. Spain. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 2nd November 2009

Just before we left Valencia to head southwest into Andalusia, Engogirl was looking up old train routes that have been converted into bicycle and walking trails known as “via verde”. One review mentioned that the via verde in Andalusia passed through endless olive trees.

We thought that it would be better to head to Burunchel which is close to a few national parks to do some hiking instead cycling.

The person who said that there were endless olive tree in Andalusia wasn’t kidding. About an hour before we reached our destination we started to see scenes like the one below.

There are hills after hills planted with nothing else but olive trees. It’s almost hypnotic passing kilometre after kilometre of evenly spaced trees. As the afternoon rakes through the trees it’s like driving past a stroboscope.

Our hotel in Burunchel has been fantastic with great food and excellent staff. On our first night I asked the waitress (a really lovely person) to suggest a local wine to go with the venison we were having for dinner. Our waitress looked at me with the sort of compassionate countenance that seemed to convey, you poor clueless thing, you don’t have any idea do you? Then she said to me, “we don’t grow grapes around here, only olives”, and then she went on to suggest, what turned out to be, an excellent wine from another region.

Yep they only grow olives around Burunchel, and as a matter of fact when we went up into the nearby mountains in the national parks, it looks like there is nothing but olive trees as far as the eye can see.

The sight of such mass plantings right up to the park boundaries reinforced in my mind the theory that I have, that national parks, just about anywhere, only exist in areas that can’t be farmed.

Even when we drove about 100 kms (about 62 miles) north up to Segura de La Sierra there was nothing being farmed but olive trees.

Interestingly many of the little villages we passed were on hill tops and nearly all of them have some kind of defensive fortifications, be it a little tower or a full blown castle. This brings to mind how turbulent Spanish history has been.

Back home in Australia towns tend to be built on some economic nexus point, like the availability of fresh water, a resource and a harbour for instance. In Spain the need for security seems have come first and then people have tried to make a living where they could more easily defend themselves, even though to do so would’ve made life very difficult. Just walking up the hills in these little towns unencumbered is bad enough, never mind having to lug produce around and do manual work in such terrain.

A difficult life is way better than death or enslavement.

Back in the early 1980s I spent three months in Morocco and a large part of that time was spent in a small village in the south. Each day I had to go to the well and stand in line with crowds of women and wait my turn to haul some water out of the deep well. It was such hard work and a real drag.

A huge amount of time is used pulling water up from wells and when I looked at all those hill top towns here in Andalusia I was reminded how life would’ve been for the inhabitants back in the old days. A hill top is not a good place to get water and I bet their wells would’ve been so deep.

In our modern lives we take so much for granted.

Spain has been an amazing place so far and Andalusia seems to be the icing on the cake.

By the way, the olives and the olive oil I’ve had over the last couple of days have been the best I’ve ever eaten. The locals are so proud of what they produce and seem genuinely pleased to be sharing something special when I’ve commented on how delicious their olives are. I had some green olives stuffed with anchovies the other night as tapas that were to die for.

Posted in Architecture, Food, Gardening, Phenomena, Travel | 6 Comments »

The boys bag a boar. Compludo, North Western Castile and León, Spain. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 18th October 2009

Engogirl and I went to a medieval iron works, Herrería de Compludo, yesterday. The road was so narrow, that we couldn’t turn the car around to go back to Ponferrada, so we drove on down the dirt road to the tiny village of Compludo. As we entered the village we had to come to a halt because the road was blocked by a large group of men, dogs and 4WDs.

We stopped the car and got out to see what was going on and this is part of what we saw.

A group of hunters had killed a wild boar and were weighing it (94kg2 or 207lbs) while the villagers appeared from all directions to take photos, admire and congratulate.

Posted in Animals, Food, People, Phenomena, Photography, Travel | 9 Comments »

Slot car tourism. Siena, Italy. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 11th October 2009

After a testing day driving the very narrow and winding back roads of Tuscany, plunging into Siena during the afternoon peak hour is akin to sticking one’s hand into a blender while it is on. The locals and tourists are all trying to escape the city at the same time and in a word, it’s chaos.

I had been warned about driving in Italy, but I came up with a coping mechanism that enabled me to get around like a local. When driving in Italy and faced with a choice, all one has to do is ask oneself the question, “what would a selfish person do?” and then go ahead and do it as though you had all the right in the world and owned the road. Any display of driving courtesy or consideration will only throw the locals into confusion and probably cause an accident. Don’t indicate, don’t give way, don’t stop at pedestrian crossings, just drive like a selfish bastard and you’ll be okay. This might sound like hyperbole but I’m not kidding, and it pays to assume that everyone else will drive that way, because it makes things much more predictable and therefore safer.

Feeling like a salmon swimming upstream as I circuited the city a few times looking for parking prepared me for when we finally left the car and started walking into the old part of the city. It was as though the driving was merely the first gauntlet through which we had to pass. The second was heading in the opposite direction to the streaming crowds leaving the city before nightfall. We saw large (probably the size that would fit into a tour bus) flocks of sunbaked and footsore tour groups, either bedecked with matching green scarves or being herded along by their flag-wielding shepherds.

On we swam upstream until we finally reached the world-famous Campo and I have to admit, I was blown away while feeling an uncontrollable urge to spawn. It really is beautiful, and no wonder all those people wanted to have a look at it. Without trying to be disingenuous, I suppose it is the height of chutzpah to expect that I would have such an amazing place just for us two.

The Piazza Del Campo=

The first thing that struck me about the Campo in Siena, was that it wasn’t flat, which might not sound like too great a concern until one realises that the locals race horses around the circumference of the piazza during the Palio. I have to be honest, the Palio is something I would love to see, even though it would cost a small fortune for decent accommodation at that time and to secure a good vantage point. Why I’d even brave the insane crowds that would go to such an event!

As with most famous tourist attractions, the Campo in Siena is surrounded by numerous eateries and in Italy this unfortunately means a plethora of pizza parlours. I am so over pizzas, and like I’m talkin’ 35 years over them. I spent a summer making them and even though I consider myself a pizza connisseur I wouldn’t care if I never ate another one.

By the time we arrived at the Campo, both our nerves were quite frazzled and poor old Engogirl was looking a bit down-spirited. So when I asked her what she wanted to eat and she replied ‘pizza’, there was no way I could deny her such a small thing. So we sat at the first pizza place we came to and she ordered a Montanga pizza and I ordered a tuna salad. Sitting at a nearby table was a cool-looking elderly couple drinking some bright orange drinks with ice in large wine glasses. The ice-cold bright orange drinks seemed to know my name and they called to me, so I gestured to the waiter to come over, and asked him what they were. He replied “spritzers”. Now I always thought that a spritzer was just some generic term for a wine cocktail with something fizzy in it, but apparently in northern Italy it is a combination of Aperol (a milder-flavoured version of the very nasty Campari) and Prosecco. I have to say that considering my mental state at the time, the delivered “spritzers” were the perfect antidote.

When our meal arrived, the sun had started to go down and the sky turned a beautiful deep blue and the crowds had thinned right out. No longer were there clumps of locals shooting the breeze as tourists took photographs of each other with the Palazzo Pubblico behind.

Twilight at the Piazza Del Campo=

Much to my surprise, the salad that I ordered was fantastic, and Engogirl’s pizza was divine. I’ve never been a fan of thin-crust pizzas, as I feel that they are a failure of technique. Any idiot can make a thin crust pizza by letting ordinary pizza dough dry out during the second rising. Talk about selling a defect as an advantage…sheesh! But I digress, the pizza’s flavours were just amazing. Arugula, wild mushrooms (which are in season at the moment) and proscuitto with a mozzarella that was unlike any that I’d ever tasted before. It all tasted so rich and buttery. It was the best pizza I’d ever tasted.

The Americans may have invented the pizza but I think it’s been perfected in Siena.

By the time we had finished dinner the sky had turned black and the piazza was almost deserted except for a few small groups of back-packers sitting around sharing wine.

The Piazza Del Campo at night=

As I looked at the backpackers I couldn’t help but remember my times in the early eighties when I hitchhiked through Europe. I was glad that I travelled back then, the way how I did, because just about any kind of travel is better than no travel at all. But I have to admit, I’m really loving the way how I’ve been travelling lately.

Back when I was younger I travelled with little or no money and I often felt that I was on the outside looking in, like some hungry dog with its nose pressed up against the glass of a butcher’s shop window. How things have changed, now I’m on the inside and my biggest problem is not to eat and drink too much!

Posted in Architecture, Food, People, Phenomena, Photography, Sky, Travel | 7 Comments »

Shopping for food in Ljubljana is a pleasure. Slovenia. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 2nd October 2009

Engogirl and I have been taking a bit of a break from our travels by staying with some Slovene friends, Robert and Marjeta in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Marjeta told us that now is right in the middle of mushroom season and that porcini mushrooms were available. In Australia, it’s impossible to get fresh porcinis so the idea of getting my hands on some fresh porcinis got me all excited to do some cooking.

Robert had shown us on our first night in Ljubljana where the fresh vegetable and mushroom market was and in the morning Engogirl and I went and did some food shopping. I have to say that I was really impressed with the quality and variety of the produce.

I bought a celeriac to make some soup; the ingredients to make a porcini risotto and arugula, baby spinach, pear, walnut and parmesan salad.

The selection of mushrooms was also much wider than we get at home and there were plenty of mushrooms I’d never seen before.

Everything I bought tasted better than at home and it was really nice to be able to cook something up for our hosts.

I could get used to living in Ljubljana as it’s so lovely. The people are great and the city is so beautiful with such a lively vibe. I find it surprising that I’ve heard so little about Slovenia, considering it’s such a nice place. I guess I should be thankful that I’m here before it is “discovered”.

Posted in Food, Friends, People, Travel | 11 Comments »

A silk purse can’t be made from of a pig’s ear, but flammkuchen makes everything seem better. Lösnich & Wolf, Germany. 2009

Posted by razzbuffnik on 11th September 2009

For our trip to Europe, my wife and I bought two cheap folding bicycles so we could get some exercise and extend our range without using a car all the time.

Before we left, my friend Paul, who knows a fair bit about folding bikes, suggested that we get better tires for our bikes, so I bought some Schwalbe “Marathons”. The Marathons are puncture resistant and can be pumped up harder than the tires that came with our bikes. Hard tires mean less resistance and friction, which in turn means less energy is used whilst cycling.

Being the slack guy that I am, I left off putting the new tires on our bikes until the day before we left for Europe. The new tires were so tight; I couldn’t get them on my wheels so I took them to a local bicycle sales and repair store to have them fitted.

As it seems to be usual (in Sydney at least), the bike mechanic was a young guy who exuded more confidence in his skills than he could demonstrate. After wrestling with my tires and rims for about an hour he handed them back to me and said, “this is the best I can do with them”.

I looked at the wheels and they didn’t look as they were seated correctly and I said so. The mechanic said not to worry as I should let the tires down for my upcoming flight anyway and that the tires would re-seat themselves when I pumped them up again.

When we got to Bruges in Belgium we pumped up tires up but they didn’t seat properly on the rims but we rode our bikes anyway. By the time we got to the Mosel in Germany we’d already spent a fair bit of time on our bikes and were putting up with the lumpy ride our badly seated tires were giving.

One of the parts of our trip we were both looking forward to the most, was cycling down the Mosel River. We started off on a Suday near the town of Kues and not long after we left, an irritating squeak started to emanate from my wife’s bike.

Eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh.

We tried everything we could think of. We adjusted her brakes, gears and mudguards but nothing seemed to work. We came to the conclusion that the badly seated tire on the rear wheel was causing the problem by making the spokes rub against each other but we kept cycling.

The constant, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh was driving us nuts and totally ruining the whole cycling experience.

After about 10kms we came to the lovely quite town of Erden and I made enquiries as to where the nearest bicycle repair place was. I was told there was a very good one only about 1.5kms away in Lösnich, but because it was Sunday and since the Germans are a civilised bunch who take their day of rest seriously, they were closed.

Both Engogirl and I knew we didn’t want to cycle anymore that day because it was so unaesthetic, so we stayed in Erden overnight.

First thing on Monday morning we rode to Lösnich and had our bikes looked at by Harald Warscheid at his shop and service centre. Harald is a very helpful and nice guy who took us into his immaculate workshop to work on our bikes. I’d never been into such a nice bicycle repair place before. The radio was playing some soft rock and various locals would drop by and shoot the breeze for short periods while Harald worked on seating our tires correctly and adjusting all the various other things that needed to be done.

All very calm, clean, convivial and civilised.

As I watched Harald work, I couldn’t help but think that I was watching a guy who had figured out how to make a living in a very pleasant way.

A bodhisattva of bicycles if you will.

As we chatted with Harald, it became obvious that he wasn’t impressed with the construction of our bikes (we already knew they were cheaply made) and he explained to us that the wheels had been assembled by a machine and machines over tighten the spokes. Our badly seated tires and over tightened spokes had caused our wheels to warp. Engogirl’s squeaky wheel had warped the most. Harald sorted out the tire seating problems and realigned the rims as best as he could, but the damage had already gone too far on the squeaky wheel and it couldn’t be fixed.

I am a mechanic not a magician

A new wheel was needed.

Now I know at this stage, many people might think that a mechanic would say that so they can sell you a new wheel, but Harald didn’t have anything to gain because he didn’t carry such small wheels.

Luckily Germany is the sort place that has bicycle stores in every other town and all the towns are only a few kilometres apart. So we rode up the Mosel a few more kilometres to the town of “Wolf”.

It was about five minutes to noon when we walked into the bicycle store in Wolf to buy a new wheel. We were told it would take an hour and a half to fit the tire onto the rim.

“Why so long”, I asked?

“Vee closs vor vun hour vor luntch” was the answer.

“Gee, I guess that means that we have to find some nice place and have some lunch ourselves?” I thought.

“Fine with me!” was my next thought.

So down the road we walked to a row of lovely little eateries near the river that cater to people cycling down the Mosel and had a delightful lunch of the local seasonal specialty of flammkuchen, washed down with some white wine from the Mosel region.

Thank goodness we needed a new wheel or we might’ve missed having such a nice meal.

Flammkuchen is like a thin crust pizza, topped with onion, crème fraîche and small pieces of bacon. It’s surprisingly tasty and with the cold white wine it was simply divine.

Engogirl in heaven