Stomachs on legs are proud to present

These lucky swine look a bit envious of their marzipan snowman counterpart. People like him better lately.
Note how they are all wearing lucky chimney sweep hats.

By the way, German marzipan is delicious. My favourite is the marzipan kartoffeln (like small potatoes dusted with dirt).

(spotted at Rewe supermarket on Brusselerstrasse, Cologne)

I wish one of us had had a proper camera that night at Brauhaus Putz. I love how my colleague Wulf looks like a weather-beaten politico who just spent 23 hours in the war room, and is now enjoying a well deserved fag with some raw mince.

Maybe some Republicans think Germany is full of people like this: who wear Obama t-shirts and smoke Players P&S while eating raw mince & onion on crisp white buns.

On the subject of smoking & eating, I was just reading an article from February last year about the latent smoking ban in Germany. It quotes Claudia Picht, whose organic café Metzgerei Schmitz was an extreme anomaly last year with its self-imposed smoking ban. She was quoted as saying "I don't see the non-smoking principle of my café as a prohibition, but as a special offer to those people who want some fresh air." Aw.
"They keep telling the barkeepers that a smoking ban would decrease their rates. I think people have to be very courageous to say: 'I will do it anyway! I will turn my bar into a non-smoking place.' And then they find out that drinking coffee can also be wonderful without a cigarette!'"

Meanwhile the old guard of non-organic sausage-loving Germans is represented by Meinolf Saure, the owner of the monolithic Brauhaus Früh. He is quoted as saying "I cannot support a general ban, for a bar without smoke would be nothing." But he admits that he is also happy about the non-smoking areas. "We have established them on every level of our bar and they are a huge success."

The jury is still out on whether eating a raw mince mettwurst brötchen without a cigarette can also be wonderful.

Ironically, my workmate Wulf took up smoking again when he was in North America. The smoking ban in Toronto meant that people would go outside for a chat and a fag, and since he is so tall he found this an easier way to converse than trying to shout down at people in the noisy club.

As New Years approached last year, I was less excited about clinking glasses of 'sekt' bubbly than I was about the promised moratorium on smoking, about to be introduced in clubs. Most eating and drinking venues in Germany are not air-conditioned. The ban felt long overdue - other European countries with a strong penchant for smoking had banned it in public spaces, what felt like ages ago (Italy, Ireland, England, even France). Not without protest. A Parisian cafe-owner, Olivier Colombe, was quoted in the Independant last December as saying "Long dinners with several bottles of wine and lots of discussion are going to be difficult".
It sounds like he needs to sit down for a delicious cup of coffee with the über-upbeat Claudia Picht.

Just before New Years, the governors of North Rhein Westphalia decided that they would push the start of the ban back so that the fine Kölle folk could smoke it up during the traditional carnival season. Then, when I thought the ban would finally trudge into effect on July 1st, a loop-hole was discovered to allow smaller venues who don't have room for a 'non-smoking' area to become members' smoking clubs.

The Federal Constitutional Court ruled on July 30th in favour of plaintiffs who said the constitutional rights to property and to exercise one’s profession were at stake, easing smoking bans for at least 60,000 one-room establishments. It's a convenient loop hole that has been jumped on enthusiastically by all the local discotheques (which are, by the way, not necessarily all that small).

The Economist wrote on the 24th of July that "The German Hotel and Restaurant Association says smoking bans have cost small bars and restaurants 30% of their revenues. That shakes a pillar of social life: the Stammtisch, a regulars’ table at the corner bar where fellowship is forged. If people cannot smoke at Köpi, says its bartender, “we would lose our regulars”.

Anti-smoking campaigners have long found Germany a hard case. Last year the Swiss Cancer League ranked the tobacco-fighting zeal of 30 European countries, and placed Germany 27th. The new smoking bans might improve its ranking, but they are riddled with 130 exemptions, complains Martina Pötschke-Langer, of the German Cancer Research Centre."

130 exemptions is quite an achievement in my opinion. That's something worth bragging about. I'm amazed at the number of loopholes that the normally fastidious Germans have allowed to permeate this veritable legislative sieve. And 'strict' is clearly a matter of interpretation.

Five days ago, bloomberg.com published the following confusing news item. The court begins by upholding the law with no members' club exceptions in straight-laced Bavaria, but then sidles around it by claiming that smoking in beer tents (which also serve a number of Bavarian food delicacies) can be allowed until the end of the year because it is of a temporary nature.

"The Bavarian law is in line with a July 30 ruling that permits smoking bans as long as they don't allow for exceptions, the Karlsruhe-based Constitutional Court said today. Allowing smoking in beer tents until the end of this year doesn't breach rules because the exemption is of a temporary nature, it said. The Bavarian state law, one of the strictest in Germany, doesn't apply to clubs with a restricted membership because they aren't open to the public."

Say whut? Isn't saying something is allowed simply because it's temporary, the very definition of an exception?

Bavaria, sorry mate, I don't think you are as strict as you are cracked up to be.

Most people I've asked still don't think the tobacco lobby is especially strong here: they think all this poking loop-holes in the fabric of the law is down to the strength of the German Hotel and Restaurant Association (DEHOGA). The DEHOGA insists that as long as the consumption of tobacco is not generally forbidden it should remain a personal decision whether or not to smoke in a bar.

But some, like Claudia Picht, are pretty sure the tobacco lobby is meeting up with the DEHOGA in some war rooms of their own.

The Economist commented that it is hard to prove, although cigarette ladies are a fixture at political parties’ conventions. "Germany has conducted no large-scale campaign on the dangers of passive smoking, says Dr Pötschke-Langer. Despite boosting taxes recently, cigarettes are still cheaper than in Britain and Ireland. The share of the adult population that smokes has dropped from more than half in 1950 to around a third, but smoking rates remain among the highest in Europe."

Spotted in Dusseldorf this afternoon (at Takumi
ramen shop): Paikumen. Fried breaded pork cutlet on top of ramen soup? That has got to be good. And surely the Germans are gonna love that schnitzel-with-a-twist.
"Surprise..... it's soggy!"

We spent last night in Dusseldorf because it was my birthday. Since we stayed over, we were able to fit in 2 & 1/2 eating opportunities.
So we munched through:
- matcha-white-chocolate mousse
-black vinegar sour cocktail
-cha-shu kimchi salad
-goya champuru with pig's ears
- small Iberico spare ribs cooked on the yakitori grill and served with lemon and baby wipes
- yaki-onigiri
- sasami salad with renkon chips
-pork bibimba with nori flakes and rocket/rucola/arugula.
- ramen

Who let the pigs outs, huh?

We also bought some more Japanese cookbooks (including one with Japanese renditions of healthy indian food, and one with Japanese interpretations of Vietnamese and Korean dishes), Japanese/Korean groceries (just some rice, shiso, kimchi etc), went disco dancing, and went to an exhibition.

It's nice to have a feeling of being somewhere different - just a 25 minute train ride from Cologne. Germany in general does not have so many big enclaves of other nationalities, except Turkish. The Turkish street in Mulheim is our other nearby option for a quick and cheap 'escape from Germany'.

My lunch today was the Orochon Ramen (see below).



This was really delicious.

I tried to look up 'orochon': apparently it is the name of a Northern Manchurian swamp-dwelling people who live entirely off reindeer.

"The greater part of northern and central Siberia is swamp taiga. The largest marshy area in the world, it stretches for hundreds of miles and consists of stagnant lakes and boggy pools of glistening green water interspersed with myriad tufts of grass. The whole culture of the Orochi, everything they own or do, stems from or refers to the reindeer."
(Lissner - Man, God and Magic)







One website claims that 'orochon' is also Ainu (native Hokkaido people) for 'bravery'. A little more digging reveals that there is a 'fire festival' called Orochon, in a town called Abashiri, famous for its prison that housed Meji-era political prisoners. The Orochon fire festival consists of a memorial service and fertility rituals that commemorate the Moyoros (predecessors) of the Ainu people.

I'm still not sure what the connection between Manchurian swamp-dwellers, the Ainu people and chilli ramen is.

In any case, the ramen wasn't so spicy it required bravery. Nicely hot and swimming in beautiful orange oil, topped with some hand made prawn wontons. Could be good combined with soggy schnitzel too.

Now...........................Does anyone know where the word 'paiku' comes from?

For the last few months, I've been semi-hitched to my 'verlobte' (fiancee) Erik. Last week I finally became a 'Braut', which is not, as it sounds, a type of white salad vegetable grown in the dark, but indeed a bride.

When my dear ex-room mate from Tokyo arrived in Cologne last week she said with a look of concern on her face "I didn't know you were self-catering," and I hastily reassured her that we weren't – which was mostly true.

Most well-meaning friends were nervous that I might repeat certain entertaining follies of my early twenties. Such as my 22nd birthday, where I installed low trestle tables around the edges of my bedroom, with cushions, for a kind of cross-legged banquet. There was a long piece of sirloin sitting in the bath-tub. There were also fish & vegetarian options. But I was very ill-prepared and although an event-management friend saved the night with military-style command in the kitchen, the guests ended up eating at midnight . I should add that everyone got really drunk and it was a damn good party.

A good friend who was present for such debacles, wrote that she was haunted by the idea of me roasting vegetables in my wedding dress. So she offered to contribute towards catering and became quite taken with the idea of providing cheese for the party as a wedding gift. This reached a summit of inspiration when it turned out that Neal's Yard Dairy in London does cheese wheels stacked and decorated like a wedding cake. A cheese 'cake' was not meant to be, though. Mad Cow Disease reappeared in the UK.

In the end we weren't too over the top with our wedding plans. We had a deal where we could use the secret modernist disco basement of our favourite local cafe for free, including a friendly bartender named Bisrat, (of course we had to pay the bar tab). We ordered six quiches and 2 salads (one with puy lentils, the other beet & carrot) from an organic cafe called Metzgerei Schmitz. Paying 60 euros for a bowl of grated root vegetables made me feel a bit sick, but when guests are coming from out of town, ......you can't serve them oranges with pieces of cheese on toothpicks.......or can you?

We ordered vegan sushi from a place called Bento Box: 60 inari, 100 cucumber maki, 100 avocado&rocket/arugula maki, 78 inside-out sesame-coated capsicum, avocado & cucumber maki.

Erik's sister kindly offered to make several platters of vitello tonnato (a classic Italian dish of thin sliced veal with a tuna sauce), and a potato salad, and Erik's aunt, who lives in the village Rinnen, made platters of pumpkin-seed topped sourdough bread.

Then there was the desserts and wedding cake, the type of thing I generally prefer when they are made with raw sugar, whole grain spelt flour, fruit, tofu or all of the above.

Despite the continued protests, I really felt like the food - as much as the clothes, the eBay shoes, or the simple rings - had to reflect something of us and our tastes even more than our budget. So that meant I needed to make some of the food offered at our party myself (with the help of my brother, and a friend Ruth). Somehow I wanted the food to have at least a few drops of our own toil & effort poured into it (I was sure the saltiness would add to the flavour). The fact of wanting to provide vegan/vegetarian options was a convenient excuse. And it turned out to be a saving grace.



The days and nights leading to the wedding were hectic. We drove to Ikea and bought salad bowls, napkins, and cheap glasses en masse for the 2 hours post wedding and pre-afterparty, when we planned to serve champagne, and 'Bombay crushed' kumquat cocktails, at our house. We drive to the villages of Urft and Rinnen to borrow linen, platters and salad servers.
I bought new chopping boards from Habitat. We went to work by day. I felt quite panicked about the idea of making sure everyone had a good time at the party, and the idea of fulfilling the role of 'bride' well enough that everyone got their money's worth of proper wedding vibes. People asked if I had cold feet. But this question confused me - the weather was very warm and sunny. If anything, my feet were sweaty.

In the end the only thing that calmed me down in the nights leading to the wedding was to focus on baking, wrapping and freezing. When I exited the kitchen and went to bed my heart would start pounding and I'd be back to making mental lists and feeling nervous about looking ridiculous. And there were only going to be 50 people there, who'd all been warned there would be no speeches, waltz or lace veils. It's not like we were planning the Kentucky derby.

Wednesday night, we drove out to the wholesale supermarket Metro, then I made vegan chocolate cookies with a gallon ofagave syrup, and Dutch cocoa, and we ate some of them while playing mah jong.
Thursday night, Erik's friend Danny Breaks arrived from England, and I drank red wine and baked vegan strawberry-lavendar muffins while the guys played the card game 'Shithead' in the living room and drank Hennesy.



Friday night, my brother Tim helped me to make sweet potato money bags with spring roll wrappers, most of which we froze, ready to bake in the oven on the wedding day. Tim let me issue instructions in making a peanut-butter-chocolate-almond pie, which was also frozen without harm for a couple of nights. Both these dishes were vegan.



Saturday, I baked one layer of the chocolate-orange wedding cake, we drove out to Metro wholesalers again, and bought trays of fine apricots, fennel, edible flowers, blueberries, stachelberries, Johannisberries, more sweet potatoes (to roast), quark, a crate of orange& ginger-flavoured 'Bionade' softdrinks for the non-drinkers, and some pre-sliced chorizo and mortadella and small hazelnut-studded salamis to snack over the next day or two. (We'd been warned that we would forget to eat in the days leading to the wedding, which against all odds and my unfailing appetite, turned out to be true).



That afternoon, overseas visitors arrived, and we decided it would be more relaxing to hang out at our house. We had thin sliced fennel & orange salad with poppy seeds, then fresh quark with berries, lavendar stems and mint leaves in parfait glasses, and drank Verve Cliquot, and watched a bad wedding movie with Owen Wilson (after trying unsuccessfully to find John Hughes or The Way We Were) during which everybody fell asleep. The Will Ferrell cameos were really good though.

The next morning me & Ruth staked out the kitchen once more.



I made a dipping sauce from garlic, raw sugar, lemon grass and hot sauce, then another from fresh tomato, olive oil, sun dried tomatoes and a couple of dates. This one rocks. Try it at home. Ruth made 2 more layers of the cake, and a tofu 'cream' with shitloads of Agave syrup and vanilla and a little soy milk. We made a creamy dressing from wasabi, more tofu, mustard, vinegar etc for the green salad the next day.

Then we went for dinner with seven of our overseas guests at this great restaurant called Bagutta, had the 3-course menu including a perfectly cooked pink-fleshed fish that the waitress swore was not salmon or trout but didn't know the english name, and a nice white wine made from red grapes. Then we stopped by a beer-garden in the park strung with coloured lights, and caught the end of the Champion's League football final (Germany lost).

When we got home Erik chopped up the sweet potatoes, fennel and tomato and laid them on trays ready to be roasted (by him) the next day. It had been a beautiful warm evening and the kitchen was full of the fresh smell of cut fennel. I felt that domesticity should always be as simple as the smell of fennel, a summer evening, and someone beside you who's good at chopping things.



The morning of the wedding, I was busy having my hair done (very basic) while simultaneously painting my own toe nails. So Ruth (took care of decorating the wedding cake (with melted dark chocolate, lavendar, johannis berries, blueberries and a blue ribbon) and it looked so perfect. We bought the flowers (thistles, wisteria, and greenish roses) and she also assembled the bouquets beautifully. Tim roasted the money-bags. Alice (the other bridesmaid), John and Mayuko laid out a beautiful selection of cheese which they had bought from Brot & Butter at Manufactum.





Then we headed to the old town hall for the ceremony (the building below), most of which I did not understand, but the tears in the eyes of Erik's aunts and everyone kitted out so nicely made the whole thing feel very special and serious.



The weather was gorgeous, and it was so lovely to see everybody - from Mina von Sneakerberg and Danny from den Haag, to Gerd Janson and Max Cole and Yannick 'Monkey Sausage', to Marco Passarani from Rome, Vladimir & Marcus from Düsseldorf, Mark de Clive Lowe, my brother, our colleagues all looking very smart in suits like the cast of the Sopranos, and the surprise karaoke set that was rolled out later on in the evening alongside a round of Jaegermeister. (Big respekt to Lars Dorsch for being the perfect wedding DJ and playing all the Lover's Hits from Minnie Riperton to Steely Dan and some classic Chicago house)

Somehow the food stretched - it was actually more than enough - and the cake was very yummy and moist, packed with orange zest and dark chocolate chips and layered with the tofu 'cream'. (Wulf's girlfriend Dagmar did comment that this 'NZ-style' cake was a lot heavier than German cake - and a piece took her half an hour to eat! But I loved it). I drank a lot of vodka with cloudy apple juice and sang 'These Boots Are Made for Walking' with Mayuko, although I wasn't sure how appropriate a choice it was as a new bride.





It feels very good to have joined the wedding cult ...... and I'll never forget how smart Erik looked that day, with his new suit and bright white sneakers.

Yiddish has some excellent sounding words. Some of the coolest sounding words from the German language surface in Yiddish, in slightly unfamiliar shapes since they're descended from old or regional forms and sometimes given new meanings entirely. Schmalz, schmuck, schlep. 'Knish' is one of the awesomest sounding Yiddish words (but it probably doesn't come from German). A shame, though, to order a sweet potato knish at the renowned Katz' Deli and for them to microwave it front of one's eyes. That's just knot very knice.

It didn't taste too bad, though.



We liked how a sign at Katz' advertised "A Piece of Stukel" ("Stuck" in German means a piece).



I am aware that many people revere Katz' as the best pastrami ever, but I'm afraid I preferred the taste of the kosher pastrami at the (currently closed) 2nd Ave Deli. Katz' is not kosher, and to add to the microwaved vibe, it's packed with tourists.



The pastrami was buttery and fell apart in the mouth, but in my stubborn & ill-informed opinion, 2nd Ave Deli sandwiches tasted better. And they were so big there was no way you could finish a whole one.

Also, at 2nd Ave Deli you could get sweet peppers in your sandwich. Katz' doesn't have them. The 2nd Ave Deli matzo ball soup was a revelation, a work of art (I have the recipe in a NYC recipe compendium back in Germany, will post when I get back); whereas Katz' matzo ball soup looks very pedestrian.

My final complaint is that Katz gives you ONE measly half-sour pickle split in half. The 2nd Ave Deli would give you a whole bowl full.

Sorry for kvetching ("kvetch" means to complain chronically in Yiddish; "quetsch" means to crush something in German. We don't know if there is any etymological connection; it would be nice if there was, though).

The great news is, as the NY Times recently reported, Jack Lebewohl, whose family owned the Second Avenue Deli for decades, said his son Jeremy would reopen the deli in Murray Hill — on East 33rd Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues — “sometime in the fall.”

Mr. Lebewohl expects a fair few tourists to come to the new 2nd Ave Deli too, recalling a man who once entered the deli and exclaimed, “I smell Judaism.”



The hot dog at Katz' was fine: a hot dog, in a soft bun gobbled up in about 5 seconds since half the digestion is done ahead of time, ya know.

The best thing I had at Katz' was a sample of the strong, tasty Knoblewurst (garlic sausage; 'knoblauch' is garlic in German), which one of the servers shaved off for the lady ordering her sandwich ahead of me. If I ever go back, I'll take a Knoblewurst-on-rye. But hopefully the 2nd Ave Deli will have reopened by then.

Last Thursday I had some very dear kiwi-accented people visiting me here in Cologne, friends & family, so off to the brauhaus we went.

Brauhaus Putz is our local place to veg out and meat with friends. It's different to the big establishments in town like Fruh (and cheaper). It is all cosy, gemutlich wood floors and benches and smoky corners and odd but nicely mismatched collection of artwork on the exposed brick walls.

Above you see Tui with a giant Bockwurst (boiled sausage) and delicious fried German potatoes (Bratkartoffeln).

Below is the nice Mühlen Kölsch beer which they pour into slim glasses straight from one of the barrels stacked up the back. The theory behind the slim 0.2l glasses (1/3 of a pint) glasses is that each glass is very cool and fresh because you drink it up quicker. Take that as a warning. As at other brauhauser here, they carry glasses around on metal trays and will slap a new one on your coaster as fast as you can say "hangover." The trick is to put that coaster on top of your glass when you wish to have a break from top ups.

Inside Germany, beer is brewed to a beer purity law called Reinheitsgebot. There are only allowed to be four (or five?) ingredients - so no nasty chemicals. Just barley, water, hope, yeast and love. Did I write hope? I meant hops.

Kölsch beer means Cologne beer (Kölsch is also the word for the local dialect). The best way to describe a Kölsch beer is like a light lager. As one website commented, most global lagers are light and bland. But Kölsch, always very fresh, has usually a distinctive flavour - very light but with a yeasty taste that cuts into the palate, sometimes very raw and unprocessed tasting, served in most cases straight from the barrel without any pressure.



Nothing like Brauhaus fare to line the stomach and comfort the soul. In the below picture clockwise from bottom left:
-Argentinian steak with bratkartoffeln (fried potatoes) and bratwurst (small tasty pan fried sausages which are not too oily), and sauerkraut which is very tasty and not very sour.
- 'Himmel und Ärd' ('Heaven and Earth'). My favourite. Blood pudding with mashed potatoes, caramelised onions and apple sauce....truly divine! And very down to earth.
- um... more steak, then Tui's Bockwurst, then more steak, and more bratwurst.

I prefer the boiled Bockwurst sausages to bratwurst, they are nice and 'knackig' (make a satisfying snap when you bite them) and taste great served simply with potato salad.



Brauhaus Putz,

Engelbertstr 67, Cologne 50674

Rudolfplatz U station

Sometimes, the cream sinks to the bottom.

Munich is sort of fancy. It's very clean. It's just a little bit Marie Claire, and a lot BMW. It wasn't bombed beyond recognition in the war. It has the strongest economy of any city in Germany.

Still, from strolling in the Englischer Garten
, to touring the delicatessans, it's not somewhere you need a bulging wallet to have a memorable time. Especially when it's summer and the sun is blazing. Cheap AND nicely-presented: that's my kind of food.



The Viktualienmarkt
is the spot for wooden vats of fat pickled gherkins, jars of Kürbis-zimt (pumpkin-cinnamon) jam, and a sharp fresh smell in the air from the juicing stalls, where you can get a ginger-beet-celery-apple-carrot juice for a couple euro. The Viktualienmarkt is the perfect cure for a hangover.

The Münchner Suppenküche
is a highlight of the market, Many & Anne introduced me to these soups on my first 24 hr trip to Munich. Check them out. The carrot-coconut-ginger soup is delicious, light, not too creamy, drizzled with a little pesto and chopped garlic and bright blue borage petals. It was about 3 euro 30 cents.



The leberknoedel (liver dumpling) soup was sooo good: it's a speciality of Munich. A substantial bread dumpling seasoned with pork liver (the effect is of a nicely-textured savoury meat, there is none of the usual glutinous dumpling vibe) in a really tasty broth with fresh parsley, only 2 euro 80 cents.





If you're feeling really game(y) at the market, you could try a horsemeat sausage, like this fellow. (A sign on the window said "Fresh foal meat in today!"). And what a mighty table cloth.



Next stop on an eating tour of München: fancy delicatessan Alois Dallmayr
. Here you'll find American and Japanese tourists buying the famous grind of drip coffee; and a fountain filled with scuttling freshwater crustaceans. Stuffed stags' heads mounted on the walls cast their glass eyes down over a glittering array of gelatinized amusements, like half tomatoes filled with piped schinkenmousse (ham mousse) then glazed. But what a beautiful array of cheeses and Black Forest hams. See the picture: we got 100 g of that black-crusted Niederbayerische smoked ham for - I thought 5 euros but looking at the photo, I'm not sure! Could have been 2.40? The server peeled back the black crust and sliced very thin, succulent slices of the ham.

I'm a big fan of the black forest ham from our local supermarket, but obviously the fresh stuff is totally different. More complex flavours, and more juicy.


(photo: on the left, Aragon jamón, along with Bavaria's most devilish pig product)

We also got a bottle of really good 2003 Spanish cab-sav at Alois Dallmayr for about 5 euros.

Below you see the resulting dinner: the mozzarella and antipasti from Viktualienmarkt were the lowlight - they didn't seem too fresh despite the stall doing a roaring trade. I would stay away from those. The ham, bread and pumpkin-cinnamon jam and wine were tops.



Speaking of the bread! Wow! That is the best sourdough I've ever had. No dry 'graubrot' (greybread) variation this. Moist open crumb (probably 60% hydration), tangy and crusty on the outside. And to think that we bought it at trendy homeware store Manufactum
. Now that I know their store in Duesseldorf also sells the bread, it's yet another reason on top of short grain rice and disco dancing to catch that train across the Rhein. Half a loaf costs 2 euros.

We ate the whole half loaf and half a jar of the Kürbiszimt jam.



Last delicatessan stop on this tour of Munich was the even more famous Käfer
, a well-stocked but very reasonably-priced deli. I think this place is the grandmomma of all those modern, functional delis in the new world, from Alimentari to the Dixon St Deli.



Big rounds of ciabatta with peperoni for only 1.80:



Japanese tourists checking out the risotto rice with porcini.

photo: DJ & radio coordinator Yannick
offers his monkey sausage to fellow German Sonar-ambulist Dixon

Note: 'monkey sausage' means banana in Frankfurt dialect.

Here's one festival which isn't all about monkey sausages. One of the best things, if not THE best thing, about visiting Sonar in Barcelona in mid June, is the food. If you aren't put off by the hams hanging in La Boqueria market (they hang next to slicing machines with hooves still attached, looking rather like elegant high heels). The bocadillo sandwiches are probably the staple Sonar sustenance: very simple small skinny baguettes smeared with a little smashed tomato & garlic and filled with a couple of pieces of thin sliced jambon (ham), which is very umami-ish and musky.

A lot of people wander down the road to the giant La Boqueria market which is a stone's throw from Sonar. There is a fish restaurant there, and you have to hang around til a seat at the counter is free. Gerd Janson
snuck down there on the first day of Sonar and sat in the very seat where moments before Woody Allen had been snacking on prawns. This was my third time at Sonar and the first one at which I had time to visit the Bar Boqueria
(I did forcibly interview a couple of RBMA people while they chewed on shellfish). The mixed fish plate is supposedly the thing to get, but Erik & I felt that for the price (22 euros ish) it wasn't so amazing. If you are into very simple & fresh preparation - simply covered in oil & garlic - you might love it. But we wished they would at least de-vein the prawns.

We visited a couple of restaurants of very good repute... of course it was the little humble tapas place around the corner which ended up being the most memorable meal. No doubt it was because it was our first night in Barcelona and we just walked down there by ourselves in the warm air and randomly picked out some dishes from the plates behind the bar. (I'll post the address of this place when I find the piece of paper at home).

The best thing of all was the crab salad... probably just surimi, fake crab, but cut up fine in a very light mayo (more like a creme fraiche?) with tiny chopped pieces of cornichon gherkin and chives. And those biscuity things for dipping. Yum!

The crab salad that ate Sonar:


Another highlight of Sonar eating is these green pimientos: in Japanese they're called shishitou, they are amazing! Some hot, some mild, it's pimiento roulette. Fried and well salted.


Squid, Barca-style:


More tapas drenched in tasty olive oil:


The restaurant:


If you need some new music to help you digest, here are some of the sets we recorded in the RBMA Lounge:

Sonar Sessions 2007 - Flying Lotus (Warp/Plug Research, Los Angeles) - the cartoonist nephew of Alice Coltrane plays funky beats

Sonar Sessions 2007 - Ian Martin (Spin Palace, Rotterdam) - cheery mix of deep housey techno and italo new wave stuff

Sonar Sessions - Tunng (Full Time Hobby, UK) - amazing acoustic pop-electronics from the Sonar before last

If you have the disease where you like to eat different things all the time, monthly Japanese home-maker's magazine Orange Page is a useful solution since many of the recipes are quite simple preparation-wise and have some very good inventive combos of Japanese and Western style cooking... like endless varieties of wiener-asparagus-egg dishes (at least one per issue).

Nothing funny to say about it really but here's a 'simple soup' I pulled out of last month's Orange Page, you'll love it.

Simple Soups: Broccoli Bacon Soup (serves two)

1/2 broccoli head cut into bite sized florettes
3 strips of bacon with most fat removed & cut into 3cm pieces
1/2 red onion cut into slices
2 cups of water plus a teaspoon of high-quality western style stock powder (I used half a sachet of kombu stock powder and a quarter of an organic vege stock tablet, but guess two cups of good chicken stock or whatever would be even better)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper
parmesan

Saute the onion and bacon in the olive oil, then when cooked but not too browned, add the broccoli and saute for about a minute. Add the stock & water and simmer until the broccoli is as tender as you like it. Reduce the heat and if necessary skim off any fat. Add lots of freshly ground black pepper and if necessary a little sea salt. Serve and grate a scant tablespoon of parmesan over each bowl.
Later if I can be bothered I'll scan a picture from the magazine so you will be convinced of how yum this actually is!
Erik says it's now his 'lieblings suppe'