My post about Portuguese wines continues
to be very popular, so I thought I would write something more general about
food and drink.
Having lived in several countries my wife and I
have had the opportunity to discover a variety of dishes that are popular in
certain parts of each country even though they may not be common across the
whole country, and often never heard of or known internationally. This applies
even more so to table and fortified wines.
I will begin with a dish that, to me, was the
worst I have ever eaten. I have been presented with, and failed to eat, tripe
boiled in milk, but I did manage to consume a Buckie Whelk. Now in case you are
not familiar with the term Buckie Whelk, Buckie is a Scottish word for the
common whelk Buccinum undatum. That is only the beginning. Buckie is a
town on the Moray Firth coast of Scotland. So, combining the fact that the town
is named after a whelk, and this particular species of whelk is named after the
town, one can begin to imagine the size of these things. One of my idols, Max
Boyce, talks about a pig coming in three sizes - big, huge and…. Duw! Well,
these Buckie whelks are, as Max would say, Duw, Duw whelks. They were a gift,
along with a lobster and some crabs from a Moray Firth fisherman.
We prefer crabmeat to lobster, but only
just, and there is a lot more on a lobster than a crab so I am quite happy to
eat them, and this one was delicious, but the Whelks (there were two on my
plate) were a different matter, and I only managed to down one, and that with
copious amounts of Chablis. To me Chablis is the wine of choice with all shell
and white fish, and essential with lobster. My wife prefers Champagne. We very
rarely drink either, simply because both are expensive. For more oily fish such
as salmon, trout and mackerel I prefer a red wine – not too powerful otherwise
it will outcompete the flavour of the fish, but there is a very extensive
suitable range in most countries.
Second worst is a particular Portuguese
sausage. It is an anaemic white before and after cooking because it is made
only of pig fat and cornflour. It tastes every bit as bad as it sounds and
looks. I admit to not being a great fan of sausages, but I quite like all the
other of the vast array of Portuguese ones I have tried. As with southern
Europe generally these sausages are mainly eaten raw, but the white one is
cooked. I doubt if there is any wine that would make it acceptable.
Although I failed to eat the tripe on its own,
I do enjoy a dish local to the immediate area where I live and very slightly
further north in Oleiros and Pampilhosa. It is called maranho and uses tripe.
It is similar to haggis, except that goat meat and rice are used instead of
sheep and oatmeal. Presunto (Portuguese dried ham) is also included, along with
the usual onions and some flavourings, with parsley often included. The bag
containing the maranho is made of the goat’s stomach lining (i.e. tripe), replacing
the sheep’s in a haggis. I do not eat the bag. Note: Ready made haggis as
bought in butchers’ shops is bagged in synthetic skins. Recipes for maranho
vary slightly from household to household, but in the immediate locality mint
is included. Several species of mint grow wild here, and there is only one that
is chosen for the maranho. I am no botanist and have been unable to identify it
with certainty.
Just to add a bit to probably most readers’
knowledge, the four different chambers of a ruminant’s stomach – the rumen,
reticulum, omasum and abomasum have different types of lining and this give
rise to different styles of tripe. In many cultures only the linings of the
rumen and reticulum are used for human food, and very few use the abomasum
lining. The river that runs as my boundary and very close to my house is called
the Tripeiro. The origin of the name is said to be because the river is so
clean that people washed their animals’ tripes in it. They still do and it is
still that clean. Some still do their laundry in it too. The people of Oporto
are sometimes known as tripeiros, or tripe eaters, because that was all they
had left to eat after they had supplied Christopher Columbus’ 1492 journey with
meat. It is then possible that the river is so named because the people on its
banks have always been tripe eaters too.
I am aware of a meal that two of my cousins and
their mother were to have but could not. My eldest brother called to visit them
one day and on the way up the garden path was met by their pet, a very old,
very fat, three-legged dog, and my brother said it was running flat out. Now
this dog only moved when it was absolutely necessary, and waddled with
difficulty. He knew there was something not quite right. He entered the house
to find the occupants sitting shocked in the kitchen/living room. The reason
for this was that the old fashioned range – a fireplace and oven, were totally
demolished and there were pieces of food, debris and soot all over the room
walls, floor and ceiling, as well as coating the occupants. Miraculously none
of them were injured. It seemed that they had intended to have a few vegetables
to accompany a pie. Somehow, the instructions on cooking the pie had not been
followed. It was in a tin, and the tin had been put in the oven. The lid of the
tin should first have been removed.
My mother was renowned by friends and relatives
as a superlative cook of “afternoon tea” dishes. Of course I could never
understand the raptures of other people at our always very large Sunday afternoon
gatherings (never less than a dozen people) because I had the same things for
tea every day of the week. Meals at home were breakfast, lunch (the main meal
of the day), tea and supper shortly before bed-time, and supper always just a
snack. Father worked permanent night-shift down the pit so that he could run
the smallholding during the day and needed his main meal when he was at home to
eat it.
Probably mother’s best was her Girdle Scones,
similar things being known as Griddle Cakes in other places. Following my usual
system of giving recipes, I assume that the lady who is to make these already
has some cooking knowledge. Plain flour, butter and currants in the ratio of
4:2:1; baking powder (bought as a propriety product that is a mixture of Bicarbonate
of Soda, Cream of Tartar and some starch), the smallest amount of salt you are
comfortable with, and enough milk to make a crumbly dough. The girdle is a flat
plate of iron that is heated from underneath, either an open fire or modern
means. The Australian style of barbecue that has such plates, and not these
silly grilled bars of metal that others use, would be ideal. Roll out the dough
to three-quarters of an inch (20mm) thick and no thicker! Cut into rounds.
Butter the girdle to stop the scones sticking and cook quickly on each side,
turning only once. How well done you like them is up to you, father liked his
as the outsides were beginning to go black, whilst others seemed to prefer mid
to dark brown. I liked the lot. Some prefer them warm and whole, others split
them and butter the insides of both halves. I liked them cold and split because
I could put more butter on. Strawberry jam is good – on top of the butter of
course.
I have eaten in an enormous number of
restaurants and hotels in quite a few countries of the world. Ownership and
management of these places change through time, and chefs even more quickly,
but places worthy of mention are Canberra International, Australia; Morangie
House Hotel, Scotland and the Buçaco Palace Hotel, Portugal.
The Buçaco is the most recent we have visited,
and I am sure the standard of the hotel will have been maintained, its own aged
wines (although expensive) will still be in top class order, and the
surroundings are magnificent. Napoleon’s troops suffered their first defeat in
the Iberian Peninsula at the Battle of Buçaco. The Canberra International is
remembered for its extensive menu, the quality of the food and the fact that
the Head Waiter and Chef both went out of their way to provide for a seven year
old boy who liked his food, knew what he wanted, and had what the Head Waiter
said were “sophisticated tastes”. In fact it was him who suggested that the boy
try a strawberry flambé and cooked it with great flair at the table. When we
returned six weeks later the waiter said to him “I remember you sir.”
Morangie House is situated in a beautiful part
of Scotland not far from my favourite whisky distillery of Dalmore, and very
close to my second favourite, Glenmorangie. There had recently been a fire in
the kitchens when we were there and rented field kitchens were in use, but the
food was still superb. The thing I remember most was that the hotel offered
several of the better wines from their list as single glasses at the equivalent
of the bottle price. I know most places offer wine by the glass but that is the
only place where I have seen the better ones offered, and nowhere with such a
wide choice. In the room was a bowl of fresh fruit, a carafe of sherry and some
mints. The usual chocolate on the pillow too. Not a lot of extra cost to the
hotel, and undoubtedly that cost is allowed for in the room charge, but just
those little additional touches that all hotels could provide, but fail to do
so.
I sometimes wonder if my wife and I are alone
in enjoying our meals so much. I hear so often about people eating whilst
watching TV or “eating on the go”. What a way to live, or more likely to cease
living at a much younger age than necessary. Proper food is cheap, time for
preparing and cooking it is minimal, enjoying eating it takes a little longer.
It is possible to have a top rate meal on the table in under half an hour from
entering the kitchen. Obviously you need the ingredients in the cupboards
and/or refrigerator, but it really is that quick. Even urbanites would be hard
pushed to pick up their car keys, go to the local takeaway and have the food on
the table in less time.
