I ought to apologise for the recent dearth of entries in this blog. I could claim that it's pressure of work but I'd be lying. The truth is that I just haven't had anything very much worth saying. I shouldn't let that stop me though,should I? After all I know that the more I post the better the chances that someone may stumble on the blog and like it.
So, I'll try to post more this week. If I can think of anything to post.
Over on my photoblog, I've started a series of entries that just illustrate, without comment but in order, the places that I visited during the year and a half I spent travelling around the world. So far I've posted pictures from New York to Niagara, a tiny fraction of what is to come. You might disagree but I think it's worth a look.
Anyway, I shall begin with recourse to the old trick of reposting something I wrote years ago but which I don't think I've ever posted in this blog. Here then is an old essay about food.
A few years ago I had a week in Catalonia.
It wasn't one of my more adventurous trips, just a humble package tour but as package tours go it was a pretty good one. I visited the Picasso Museum - which by sheer good luck had, in addition to its regular collection, a splendid exhibition of Picasso caricatures. I pottered around Barcelona looking at the weird and wonderful architecture of Anton Gaudi, a man whom many consider to be a true architectural genius but others regard as a raving lunatic. I went to the house of another barking mad genius, Salvador Dali, in Figueras and spent half a day studying the great man's work. I went hiking around Olot, taking in some incredible views and relaxing on the terrace of a marvellous little bar in the picturesque village of Besalu. In short I had a terrific time. I don't want to talk about any of that though. What really stood out though, what was remarked on more than anything else was the Catalonian attitude to food. It's not that the food is bad - far from it, I had uniformly excellent meals - it's just that the menus tend to an obsessive literal-mindedness that is quite startlingly unexpected.
As package groups do we ate together most of the time in a variety of restaurants from the plain but adequate dining room of our hotel in Olot to the hole-in-the-corner cosiness of one of the many restaurants in Girona's old Jewish Quarter to the baroque chic of a restaurant a little way off Las Ramblas in Barcelona. All of them exhibited one trait in common - to steal a phrase, "it does exactly what it says on the label".
That first restaurant in Barcelona had been quite an upmarket place, the sort of place where you can easily imagine celebrities might just drop in, if any of them ever visit the city. While I waited for my meal I scrutinised my fellow diners very carefully in the hope of seeing someone famous but to no avail. I had ordered duck with apple more or less at random from the extensive choice available. And duck with apple is what I got. I'd expected to get a few slices of pinkish meat in some kind of apple sauce with some side helpings of vegetables, perhaps a few potatoes, perhaps a little salad. What I got though was half a roast duck and an apple, unpeeled and cut into quarters. There were no side dishes, no salad, no chips just the duck and the apple. I got quite a good deal out of it though by comparison to others. Those sampling the peas and ham got a ten inch plate of peas with bits of sliced ham scattered throughout, as for the spinach eaters... well two pounds of unaccompanied spinach would probably be more than Popeye could polish off comfortably.
It rapidly became a theme for mealtimes. In Girona my roast lamb was a piece of meat that represented a fair percentage of the animal's total body weight. It was of course served entirely untainted by contact with vegetables. Steak was steak - admittedly in a rather nice Roquefort sauce but otherwise rather lost and lonely on its oversize plate. Turbot was turbot. The crowning glory of this obsessiveness came for those who ordered the "fruit salad" in Olot. It was an apple, an orange and a banana - whole, unpeeled, virgin fruit.
But if there is one lesson I have learned when travelling it's that it doesn't do to be too picky when eating abroad. With the exception of scrutinising absolutely everything for mushrooms which make me violently ill I have one simple rule which has served me well around the world even when the waiters haven't.
"Eat what comes when it comes."
It doesn't matter if it's what you ordered, it doesn't matter if it's what you expected, it doesn't matter if the dessert comes before the starter or everything arrives on your table simultaneously. Just keep quiet and eat.
I recall sitting in a restaurant in a small town in Mexico. At another table was an elderly man, also clearly a tourist, who had ordered whitebait for a starter followed by fajitas for his main course. The sequence of events was really quite comical to watch.
The fajitas arrived. He sent them back as the starter hadn't come.
Fifteen minutes passed.
The whitebait arrived. He took one small forkful, spat it out, said they were overcooked and sent it back.
The fajitas were bought out.
He sent them back and demanded properly cooked whitebait.
The same whitebait arrived. He sent it back and said he would do without a starter.
The fajitas - by now stone cold - arrived. He sent them back because they were cold.
The manager arrived and demanded payment. He refused.
The manager threatened to fetch the police.
Almost apoplectic with rage the man paid up and left.
Meanwhile by simply being prepared to eat my main course before my starter I had not only had a very nice meal but also forty five minutes of priceless entertainment.
Back in Catalonia though there is another quirk of the cuisine. In a word, "pig". Basically, every part of the pig seems to appear somewhere on the menu from the commonplace cuts of pork and pork sausage through to pigs' trotters, pigs' snouts and pigs' cheeks. This combined with the lack of vegetables means that if you are a Moslem or a Vegetarian it probably shouldn't be top of your holiday destinations list unless you are really determined to lose weight. Even for a dedicated carnivore like me the preponderance of meat - especially pork, which I rarely eat at home - gets a little much. By the time I was ready to leave I estimated that if I had kept the food uneaten I'd have had almost enough to assemble a Frankenstein porker, possibly with enough left over for a couple of BLT sandwiches.
There was a short coda to this anti-vegetarian dietary experience. When I got home I called my father from the airport. He promised to have something waiting for me when I reached home. I'd have settled happily for a nice bit of cheddar but he'd cooked me a fry up of sausage and bacon. It would have seemed churlish not to eat it after he'd cooked it but the next day in the supermarket when he placed a shoulder of pork in the basket I waited until he wasn't looking I put it back on the shelf and replaced it with a chicken.
There's only so much that a man can take.
So, I'll try to post more this week. If I can think of anything to post.
Over on my photoblog, I've started a series of entries that just illustrate, without comment but in order, the places that I visited during the year and a half I spent travelling around the world. So far I've posted pictures from New York to Niagara, a tiny fraction of what is to come. You might disagree but I think it's worth a look.
Anyway, I shall begin with recourse to the old trick of reposting something I wrote years ago but which I don't think I've ever posted in this blog. Here then is an old essay about food.
A few years ago I had a week in Catalonia.
It wasn't one of my more adventurous trips, just a humble package tour but as package tours go it was a pretty good one. I visited the Picasso Museum - which by sheer good luck had, in addition to its regular collection, a splendid exhibition of Picasso caricatures. I pottered around Barcelona looking at the weird and wonderful architecture of Anton Gaudi, a man whom many consider to be a true architectural genius but others regard as a raving lunatic. I went to the house of another barking mad genius, Salvador Dali, in Figueras and spent half a day studying the great man's work. I went hiking around Olot, taking in some incredible views and relaxing on the terrace of a marvellous little bar in the picturesque village of Besalu. In short I had a terrific time. I don't want to talk about any of that though. What really stood out though, what was remarked on more than anything else was the Catalonian attitude to food. It's not that the food is bad - far from it, I had uniformly excellent meals - it's just that the menus tend to an obsessive literal-mindedness that is quite startlingly unexpected.
As package groups do we ate together most of the time in a variety of restaurants from the plain but adequate dining room of our hotel in Olot to the hole-in-the-corner cosiness of one of the many restaurants in Girona's old Jewish Quarter to the baroque chic of a restaurant a little way off Las Ramblas in Barcelona. All of them exhibited one trait in common - to steal a phrase, "it does exactly what it says on the label".
That first restaurant in Barcelona had been quite an upmarket place, the sort of place where you can easily imagine celebrities might just drop in, if any of them ever visit the city. While I waited for my meal I scrutinised my fellow diners very carefully in the hope of seeing someone famous but to no avail. I had ordered duck with apple more or less at random from the extensive choice available. And duck with apple is what I got. I'd expected to get a few slices of pinkish meat in some kind of apple sauce with some side helpings of vegetables, perhaps a few potatoes, perhaps a little salad. What I got though was half a roast duck and an apple, unpeeled and cut into quarters. There were no side dishes, no salad, no chips just the duck and the apple. I got quite a good deal out of it though by comparison to others. Those sampling the peas and ham got a ten inch plate of peas with bits of sliced ham scattered throughout, as for the spinach eaters... well two pounds of unaccompanied spinach would probably be more than Popeye could polish off comfortably.
It rapidly became a theme for mealtimes. In Girona my roast lamb was a piece of meat that represented a fair percentage of the animal's total body weight. It was of course served entirely untainted by contact with vegetables. Steak was steak - admittedly in a rather nice Roquefort sauce but otherwise rather lost and lonely on its oversize plate. Turbot was turbot. The crowning glory of this obsessiveness came for those who ordered the "fruit salad" in Olot. It was an apple, an orange and a banana - whole, unpeeled, virgin fruit.
But if there is one lesson I have learned when travelling it's that it doesn't do to be too picky when eating abroad. With the exception of scrutinising absolutely everything for mushrooms which make me violently ill I have one simple rule which has served me well around the world even when the waiters haven't.
"Eat what comes when it comes."
It doesn't matter if it's what you ordered, it doesn't matter if it's what you expected, it doesn't matter if the dessert comes before the starter or everything arrives on your table simultaneously. Just keep quiet and eat.
I recall sitting in a restaurant in a small town in Mexico. At another table was an elderly man, also clearly a tourist, who had ordered whitebait for a starter followed by fajitas for his main course. The sequence of events was really quite comical to watch.
The fajitas arrived. He sent them back as the starter hadn't come.
Fifteen minutes passed.
The whitebait arrived. He took one small forkful, spat it out, said they were overcooked and sent it back.
The fajitas were bought out.
He sent them back and demanded properly cooked whitebait.
The same whitebait arrived. He sent it back and said he would do without a starter.
The fajitas - by now stone cold - arrived. He sent them back because they were cold.
The manager arrived and demanded payment. He refused.
The manager threatened to fetch the police.
Almost apoplectic with rage the man paid up and left.
Meanwhile by simply being prepared to eat my main course before my starter I had not only had a very nice meal but also forty five minutes of priceless entertainment.
Back in Catalonia though there is another quirk of the cuisine. In a word, "pig". Basically, every part of the pig seems to appear somewhere on the menu from the commonplace cuts of pork and pork sausage through to pigs' trotters, pigs' snouts and pigs' cheeks. This combined with the lack of vegetables means that if you are a Moslem or a Vegetarian it probably shouldn't be top of your holiday destinations list unless you are really determined to lose weight. Even for a dedicated carnivore like me the preponderance of meat - especially pork, which I rarely eat at home - gets a little much. By the time I was ready to leave I estimated that if I had kept the food uneaten I'd have had almost enough to assemble a Frankenstein porker, possibly with enough left over for a couple of BLT sandwiches.
There was a short coda to this anti-vegetarian dietary experience. When I got home I called my father from the airport. He promised to have something waiting for me when I reached home. I'd have settled happily for a nice bit of cheddar but he'd cooked me a fry up of sausage and bacon. It would have seemed churlish not to eat it after he'd cooked it but the next day in the supermarket when he placed a shoulder of pork in the basket I waited until he wasn't looking I put it back on the shelf and replaced it with a chicken.
There's only so much that a man can take.
1 comment:
I worked as a fisherman north of Barcelona many years ago - thanks for returning the nice memories.
A wonderful weekend for you
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