Part 8 (1/2)
'Aye, you've no done bad', said Gavin casting an appraisij glance at a floor cleaned of even the smallest grain.
I looked at them with new-found respect for having to three times a week a task that had resulted in blistered hand clothes wringing with sweat, and which had pushed John, and myself as close to blows as we were ever likely to cor 'That's why', Gavin began with a gleam in his eye, 'we us yon machine over there. It makes it a lot easier.' He pointe to a s.h.i.+ny-looking mechanical beast in the corner. It was on the intervention of John and Nick that prevented me from creating Bannockburn on the malting floor with a large malt.i.t shovel and Gavin's head as props.
Over the period of the week we turned up diligently every morning to be given our tasks, but we were pleased to find out that the afternoons were going to be free, giving us time to explore the rest of Islay. One afternoon Nick suggested we visit the Islay Oyster Company, a farm whose bivalves are sought after throughout Europe as being some of the very best on offer. Which brings me back to the opening of the chapter.
Oysters and I have had a troubled relations.h.i.+p. We used to he madly in love, and I could and would devour dozens of the things at a sitting. Then we had a falling out, a major row caused hy a dodgy one at a meal with a client during a trade fair. I did not heed the lesson and have occasionally tried to sneak oysters back into my diet, with the inevitable results. On one occasion, dining with TGS at J. Sheekey, London's most famous seafood restaurant, I gave in to a request to share the a.s.siette de Fruits de Mer and ate oysters primarily because he made loud chicken noises. A barb that no brother can leave unchallenged, even if you are both well into your forties. The result was inevitable, and I had two days off work to reconsider my position vis a vis the oyster. Nick used an altogether more subtle approach: yummy noises, and lots of them. As he downed half a dozen in less than five minutes, he made noises that suggested he was close to either death or o.r.g.a.s.m.
'Go on,' he cajoled, 'you are never going to find one as fresh as this. Ever.'
He was right. These were as good as oysters are going to get. Just looking at them made me forget all that had gone before. Lady Oyster sucked me back in one more time, and it was lovely: a beautifully plump specimen that was taken from the water in front of me, cut open and sliced free from its sh.e.l.l. It was meaty and delicious, tasting slightly of the sea. It went down with a single pleasing gulp. d.a.m.n me, I had forgotten how good they were and, to top it off, I felt fine. Hallelujah, I was cured. A new, oyster-filled world opened up in front of me. Raw oysters, deep-fried oysters, oyster po-boys, oysters Rockerfeller. It was a miracle.
Cue mad rush, in the wee small hours of the next morning, to the little building the Islay folk like to call their local hospital and my less than friendly response to John's genuine expression of concern. After listening to the doctor tell me to drink lots of liquid and follow that up with the redundant suggestion that 'I probably would keep away from oysters from now on', I was driven home and sheepishly headed back to bed to spend the d
sleeping fitfully and dreaming of salty vomit. ^
While I slept, John and Nick had spent the afternoon visif some of the other famous distilleries on the island: Laphroai Lagavulin and Ardbeg. Because of John's reputation in tj^g industry, they were treated royally and sampled tastes from some exceptional barrels, which they drank in as heartily as they did the astonis.h.i.+ng scenery amid which the distilleries sit.
Being good sorts, however, the next day, our last, when I was feeling a little better and had managed to have a light breakfast of cereal, eggs (two), bacon, sausages, black pudding, tomatoes mushrooms and toast, they suggested we go and revisit them so I could see them too. First, we had to head back and say our farewells to the good people of Kilchoman and to take a small multiple-choice test to see if we had taken in any of the information we had been given during the week. It ill behoves me to say who came out with top marks, particularly as John, in an act of incredible but unsurprising generosity, picked up the tab for the whole trip. So, all I will say is that the industry professionals did not fare well and I, well, I rock.
We moved from the still-room to the warehouse and tasted the new spirit. It is an odd experience, like looking at the photograph of someone you know well when a child. All the elements that make up their character are there, but in undeveloped form. The new spirit is clear for a start, the colour coming from time spent in the barrel and, in many cases, from the legal addition of spirit caramel. The hint of flavours to come are present too, but overpowered by the alcohol, which will reduce over the period of ageing.
After saying our 'goodbyes', we headed back out to visit the other distilleries. They were solid white structures stunningly situated between the rolling hills and the edges of the roaring sea. That night we sat in front of the flickering fire in our guesthouse and cracked open a few bottles from the distilleries we visited. As I sipped, Nick and John talked shop about the subtle differences between the distilleries we had visited and the scotches we were trying voice, For once, instead of being desperate to hear my own I took the rare opportunity to listen to two of the most ^espected men in the industry sharing their knowledge. I learned a lot-In fact, I learned a lot that whole week. I learned how my favourite whisky is made, and, because of that, it will never taste the same again. But, most of all, I learned I should probably keep away from oysters.
Immer Essen in Miinchen Over the last few years TGS and I had begun a new tradition of January road trips to Germany, a country I had come to very well over the years and had grown to love - both for i people and, perhaps more surprisingly, for the food. This time we chose Munich, and the first week of the new year we arrived at the city's impressive airport ready to hit a few beer halls.
Going on a short break is never an easy task for TGS. He is the organizer supreme and extreme. Even the shortest trip takes months of planning, and it was no great surprise, one day, to return to the apartment and to see him seated at the dining-room table surrounded by maps and guidebooks. His computer was already buzzing, and it was clear that he had begun seriou investigation into the best Miinchen had to offer. That did alarm me; nor did the fact that that he had already begun fas.h.i.+on his own rudimentary guidebook by slicing appropriate pages from all the others and sticking them together with pages' he had printed from the internet.
I was used to that level of dedication and, to be honest, qui^ grateful. I had plenty to organize of my own, so to leave Munich in the hands of an expert was more than a pleasure. What didj alarm me this time was the fact that he was also gleefully loc ing at a clip on YouTube, which showed the plane in which would be flying to Germany. At this point I had to leave room.
There is a method to his madness, however, and the momenta arrived at Munich airport TGS's notes pointed us straight in the fon of its own dedicated beer hall and our first impressive-d brew, served with a local speciality of Grammelschmalz, ”^delicious dish of fat laced with chunks of ham and fried ^nions Cardiologist-unfriendly it may have been, but it worked ncredibly well with our first beer of the day.
The people of Munich - Bavarians, not Germans, as they are keen to remind you - do things with considerable gusto, and it is not hard to see why. Munich has the highest standard of living in the whole of Germany, and there are opportunities to enjoy oneself everywhere, from the cafes, bars and restaurants to the galleries, museums and parks. It is a truly lovely city, thanks mainly to its forefathers, who had the good sense to preserve the original plans for every building, which meant it could be rebuilt exactly as before after the destruction of the Second World War.
We were not there just to sightsee, however. TGS had drawn up a schedule and a map with, in big letters 'BEER' and 'MEAT' written at the top. He had drawn lines from these words to various places on a map of the city. I began to s.h.i.+ver, and not just from the cold. In Bavaria they take meat very seriously. The sausage is a religion, from the WeiBwurst, on which the light of the noonday sun must never be allowed to s.h.i.+ne, to the Schweinswurst, which slips down all to well with a dark Dunkelbier.
They take their beer just as seriously. It is strong stuff, but because of the Reinheitsgebot, a series of ancient purity laws governing the brewing of beer, it is not as p.r.o.ne to give you a hangover. That is, of course, not unless you drink a tin bathtub full of it, as we planned to do.
In Munich the joys of beer and meat come together in perfect harmony in that greatest of all Bavarian inst.i.tutions, the beer hall. Perhaps the most famous is the Hofbrauhaus, where drinkers from many nations flock to be served tall gla.s.ses of dark brew alongside frightening portions of food served by women dressed in dirndls, all the while being serenaded by scary-looking men in leather shorts pumping out oompah music on battered bra.s.s instruments.
As ever when we arrive in a new town on our travels became a bit over-excited and managed to work our way arouQ^ about five of the best halls before early evening and found oi selves walking through the streets of Munich swaying e' slightly in the rapidly chilling evening air. But our evening not ended. If the daytime had been about beer, the evening was about spirits as a local friend, Stefan Berg, took us to bar after bar until everything became a blur. Being a good German boy, Stefan made sure that we stopped off at the Ratskeller for some food to soak it all up and deftly ordered plates of bread topped with thick spicy pates, mounds of mashed potatoes and, of course, lots more wurst. Despite that very necessary break between drinks, by two in the morning both TGS and I werC: reeling, and we said our goodbyes, heading off on uncertain feet towards our hotel.
I woke up five or so hours later to the sound of TGS drinking a bottle of water and having a quiet moan to himself It took mc. a good fifteen minutes before I could persuade myself to op( my eyes and, when I did, I regretted it immediately as shards sunlight pierced my brain like needles. I squealed like a si child and dived back under the covers, making my all too regular-pledge never to drink again.
And we didn't - well, not that day anyway. Instead we spei our time walking around one of the most beautiful cities ii Europe and watching the people of Munich enjoy their weekend. Like so much the Bavarians do, the weekend's activity centre around food, and much of that activity involves bustling Viktualienmarkt, where the locals come to buy the weekly groceries and to enjoy a plate of WeiBwurst.
The WeiBwurst is sacred to the people of Munich and oi meant as a snack between breakfast and lunchtime because, fresh rather than a smoked sausage, it should not be kept m( than a day. It is a glorious thing, made from veal, bacon and sonings of lemon, mace and parsley in a clear porkskin casii The locals like to eat their special sausage in a special way, deftl splitting the skin and sucking out the insides, which they eat vith another of their other pa.s.sions, Breze, a pretzel-like bread, jt is not as easy as it sounds, and our attempts to prise the flesh delicately from the skins, accompanied by loud slurping noises, received cold looks from the neighbouring tables in one of the small market cafes.
We hurried through our meal and headed out to explore some more. TGS had a route figured out which took us around half the city and back to the hotel in time for a short, restorative nap to be fully rested for that evening's meal. He had also selected another beer hall, the legendary Altes Hackerhaus. Here, as in all beer houses, the menu is predicated on one thing, pork. There are other items on the menu, but you come here for pig in many forms: in my case, a plate of Spanferkel, suckling pig with creamy, slow-cooked flesh hiding its light under a bushel of crackly skin. For TGS it was perhaps the most challenging dish of all, the Schweinshaxen, pork knuckle with the same crackly skin but tougher meat, coming, as it does, from an older animal.
As though hunks of meat the size of a basketball were not alarming enough, alongside them sat both potatoes, which Germans eat by the sackload, and, more worryingly, a baseball-sized dumpling made - oh, what a surprise! - from potatoes as well. It was an impossible task. We both polished off” our meat down to the bones, but the dumplings remained untouched, sitting there wobbling and viewing us with contempt for having such paltry appet.i.tes. They were right: we didn't even have room for strudel, when every other man, woman and child in the place was tucking into pudding and ladling extra cream on top. What kind of girly men were we? Shamefacedly, we paid our bill and slunk back to the hotel, where we spent the night comparing stomach gurgles and mainlining Zantac until the early hours.
For at least ten years my friend Isabelle Fuchs had had the considerable misfortune to sit opposite me at trade fairs as I tried to sell her gift books. She was surprisingly affable about the whole thing and over the years even bought a few from me. When she heard about Eat My Globe and about my trip to Mur offered to spend an afternoon showing us her home town^ Although originally from across the border in Austria, Isabella loved Munich, and it showed as she strolled with us throug
j the Englischer Garten, the beautiful green lung of the city one of the biggest parks in Europe. It showed as she took us her favourite beer hall and introduced us to a Schnitt, a double, strength shot of beer served in small measures with an enormous head of foam. It showed as she sat across from us at supper and ladled spoonfuls of Saures Liingerl, a stew made from calf's lung, onto our plates and smiled as we nodded in delicious agreement that the addition of vinegar to the sauce cut through the fatty meat perfectly. And it showed when she looked at us with an equal measure of disappointment as we pushed our plates away at the end of the meal and said, 'But you have not touched your bread dumplings'.
Rotten Shark, Rotten Weather If possible, Iceland has an even worse reputation for food than Britain, and it would not have been in my plans but for an intervention by my friend Magaret 'Magga' Kristiansdottir. Magga managed of one of my favourite bars, which she ran with ruthless Nordic efficiency. At the end of an evening I often found myself chatting to her over a well-made c.o.c.ktail. The day I handed in my notice, I dropped in to tell her my news. She turned and gave me one of her ice-blue stares and said, 'Come to Iceland. You can eat sheep's head.'
Now, if anyone else had made that suggestion, I would have made it very clear that I would rather put my John Thomas in a vice. But as it came from Magga and after a Martini, I found myself thinking it might just be a good idea. Which is how I found myself at Reykjavik airport in January wondering whether my t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es would descend from my torso ever again.
The cold obviously did not bother Magga; nor indeed did it bother her best friend, Erla GuSriin, who was busy rummaging around for cigarettes in the glove compartment of her battered old Nissan as 1 sat there hoping my nose would be the first thing to fall off. When we finally got going, they pointed the car not towards Reykjavik but in the opposite direction, towards a supper that I was told was going to be in the tiny town of Stokkseyri. Magga promised me the restaurant there was one of her favourites in Iceland.
The ride proved to be a hair-raising slalom up hills and down slopes in increasingly thick snow until we finally pulled up in front of a picturebook-pretty restaurant called Pjorul^lHRR Magga explained that it was famous for serving one thing- bo of crayfish called 'village lobster', dressed only in melted but^ and served with sweet new potatoes.
If the cold had nearly caused me to have a heart attack, then >!- igOugH prices of the drinks almost finished me off. I realized the snd^l beer I had ordered was going to cost ^lo and a bottle of wij^^ that I would turn my nose up at the local supermarket was to come in at ^40. I would have snorted beer through my in disgust, but it was too expensive to waste.
Magga explained to me that the high prices of alcohol in Iceland came about for two reasons. The first is obvious. It is a tiny country, with a population of only about 300,000, so ju: about everything has to be imported. The other reason was prohibitive policies of successive Icelandic governments, had only allowed the overturn of prohibition laws within ti last twenty years. Whatever the reasons, I stopped chugging carefully nursed the remaining precious liquid until our arrived. When it came, the smell on its own was enough to us fall on our plates, and we were soon ripping the sh.e.l.ls of si incredibly sweet seafood and giggling happily as the b.u.t.ter the dressing ran down our chins. When Erla declared that si could not possibly finish her bowl, I dived in before anyone could say 'locals hold back'.
Erla had decided to decamp for three days to her boyfriend's place and leave her entire flat back in Reykjavik to me. OH; arrival, I fell asleep almost immediately, and I awoke the next morning to find a thick layer of snow across the city. Pleased that I had brought a thick hat to cover my wing-nut ears and non-slip walking shoes with me, I ducked out to meet Ma Reykjavik is a small but buzzing town. Prosperous and as hospital corners, the people too seemed very smart and o tent with their lot as they wandered around designer shops the myriad coffee bars on a Sat.u.r.day morning. Magga, however, wanted to take me for 'a taste of real Iceland', which, she ested intriguingly, could be found at the bus station. I fol-ed along behind her, trudging through the ever thicker snow drifts until we came, as promised, to the local bus stop, where the corner was a brightly lit cafe with a larger than life-size cture on the outside wall of the owner proudly holding a plate of food. Inside, as we shook the snow from our boots, I was instructed to sit down as Magga went off to order.
She came back beaming broadly, as she placed a tray on the table containing a bottle of lurid orange drink, a can of malt tonic and half a sheep's head on a plate. 'It's called a swidd', she announced matter-of-factly, blissfully unaware that I was engaged in a staring contest with the one remaining eye in the sheep's head and that I was losing.
'You drink Christmas ale with it', she added as she opened the botde of orange pop, mixed it with half of the can of malt drink and handed me a gla.s.s of the murky result.
I took one sip and pushed it to one side, turning my attention to the sheep's head in front of me. With an encouraging nod from Magga, I tore a chunk off from the jowl. It was nowhere near as bad as I expected: fatty and with a slightly charred taste from where, I was told, the fur is singed off before boiling. I didn't even balk when Magga suggested that I eat the eye, which popped pleasingly in my mouth like meaty s.p.a.ce Dust. Magga was in her element. After we had removed most of the flesh from the skull, she picked the whole thing up, prised open the jaw-bone and began to chomp on the tongue.
'It's the best bit', she mumbled, globs of fatty lamb splattering her face. All this and she could mix a Martini too. She munched happily for half an hour until the bones were picked clean and then wiped her chin on a napkin, before telling me she had something more important to do and heading off into the snow, leaving me alone with the fleshless grinning skull of our lunch.
Even with one of the highest standards of living in the world, the weather makes Iceland a hard place to be in the twenty-first century. G.o.d only knows what it was like in times past, when.
Of for huge chunks of the year, it was isolated from the rest humanity. It is for this reason that Icelanders developed a food culture that is considered to be one of the most challengin anywhere.
I learned all about this on my last evening as Erla took over the reins, showing me around on a short driving tour around the cit - including a visit to the presidential residence. Erla announced proudly that in Iceland everyone has the const.i.tutional right to make an appointment to see the president if they have something they wish to discuss. I was delighted to see that the only security was a small sign saying 'Please Don't Pa.s.s This Point If You Don't Have An Appointment'. Just try that at Downing Street.
Erla's main task, however, was to explain to me all about the Thorrablot, which she translated as 'Thor's Feast'. She explained that, during the harsh winters, fresh food was almost impossible to fmd and people lived off the fish and meat they had caught during the warmer months and preserved by smoking and pickling. At the end of January, in the depths of midwinter, a sacrificial feast was held in honour of Thor, and people came together to eat, drink and sing. When the Vikings were converted to Christianity, the festival was banned, but it had experienced a revival during the last couple of centuries as Iceland struggled for independence and clung to emblems of its past.
Now it is a regular part of the calendar, and shops are filled with traditional foods for the feast. I wanted to take some back for TGS, so Erla pulled into the lot of a large market and took me inside, where a section had been set aside for Thorrablot goodies. It's challenging stuff all right. Sour ram's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, roast puffin and seal flipper obviously caught my attention, as did blodmor, the local version of blood sausage. But there was one item in particular I was looking for: hakarl, rotten shark meat.
With its strong ammonia stench I can understand now why many tourists, including me, believed the folk tale that the curing process involved people peeing over it. Quite how the Icelanders came up with the notion of burying shark meat for
three.
months to extract from the flesh the poisonous uremic acid, ”sed for flotation, I am not sure. But the end-result is chunks of dried horribly pungent white flesh, to be downed in one go with shot of brenivin, the local sesame-based hooch. It was undoubtedly the single most unpleasant thing I have ever put in my mouth, worse than rat or dog and much worse than cod sperm sus.h.i.+. I bought a small tub to take home, along with a bottle of the brenivin and some blood sausage, and presented them proudly to TGS. Six months later they all remain untouched and unopened, sitting threateningly at the back of the fridge. Come back in a few years time, and they will still be there.
Sawadee Ka Three days after my return from Iceland I was off again, th time on one of the longest legs of the journey: three mont in South-East Asia and India on a trip that would take in siji countries and nearly twenty cities. But after a few weeks back it Europe, I was itching to be off again and ready to discover mc amazing food.