Spanish Food & Culture

I recently had the opportunity to work in the outskirts of Madrid for 4 weeks. Apart from the lovely hot, dry weather, I have a couple of strong memories from my time there: bullfighting and Spanish food.
Bullfights were being televised quite regularly in the evenings. I thought I would be able to handle watching a full fight but after a few twists and turns, including a toreador running up to the bull from behind and stabbing 2 spears into its back (and then watching this in slow-motion replay), blood running down the bull's back and the bull trying the gore one of the horses, I couldn't watch anymore. The fighting is just too cruel, bloody and one-sided. At one of the restaurants we went to, there were 2 bulls' heads on the wall. They were 2 bulls who had lost their fights. One had both ears missing and the other still had one ear (apparently, a toreador will take a bull's ears as trophies if the bull fought a good fight). It's extremely gruesome.
I don't normally like ham that much but I absolutely fell in love with Iberian Jamon. The most famous comes from the Extremadura region of Spain in the south west. The ham is from black pigs who have been exclusively fed acorns. The ham is aged 2-3 years, is cut very thinly, is dark red and very sweet.
One night, we went to an Asturian restaurant. The Asturian region is in the north west of Spain. They are famous for cidar, which is served by holding the bottle above one's head and poured from there down into a glass held in the other hand at thigh level. This is supposed to make the cidar fizzier. We had blue cheese croquettes (really strong), beans, octopus (extremely soft and tender) and lamb chops.
We also went to a Basque (north of Spain) restaurant. We had chorizos, black sausage, white asparagus, cod omlette (the size of the plate and an inch thick), monkfish (with garlic, parsley and olive oil sauce) and steak (so rare it was almost bleeding). The monkfish and steak were particularly fantastic. I disgraced myself by eating most of the dessert as well.
On my last night, we went into Madrid city centre for the first time. We ate at the oldest restaurant in the world (continuously operating since 1725), Botin, a restaurant serving food from the Castilla y Leon region. We had jamon, cheese, pork loin ham, cheese & pork croquettes, black pudding and the most delicious roast lamb and suckling pig, so tender that they melted in the mouth. After dinner, I got to see inside the kitchen. There was a big clay oven with long paddles to put the food deep inside. The wall was full of shelves and on these shelves sat little suckling pigs, cut down the middle and spread out on clay dishes with the skin facing upwards. These were real suckling pigs, not the enormous ones that they have in Australia. After dinner, we went to a club on the roof of a hotel. It had a lovely view of Madrid.
In other news, I went to see King & I in the round at the Royal Albert Hall. The Hall is beautiful and enormous, all red and gold. We were too high up to see the performers all that well. The 2 big disappointments were the King and the children. The children in particular were undisciplined and the March of the Royal Children ended up a messy, random affair. Taffy says that he was much better when he was in the Melbourne version with Hayley Mills (except, of course, the time when someone farted and all the children (except Taffy, so he says!) burst into fits of giggles while the king lay dying). Despite tv screens set all the way around the hall so that he could see the conductor regardless of which way he was looking, the King was out of time, alternatively rushing and slowing down. In comparison, Anna and Lady Thiang were fantastic. Tuptim was also very good. Lady Thiang and Tuptim were both classically trained and it certainly shows.

Copenhagen & Roskilde

In the last few of weeks, I have been working in Madrid and in the midst of the sunshine and warm weather, 2 colleagues from Denmark kept repeating that Copenhagen was '15oC and raining', '15oC and raining'... So, with a couple of days to the weekend, I checked the forecast - 23oC and sunny! 'You are soooo lucky!', says one of my colleagues. The weather held up all weekend and got up to 27oC on Monday.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon in the midst of bright sunshine. Koufu and Kum Mo arrived a couple of hours after we did. We went to a typical Danish restaurant for dinner and had herrings (pickled & marinated with egg yolk) for entrees and meat for mains ('the Danes eat a lot of meat', said the lady at reception). This simple meal cost ~DKK400/person (~A$85). Such exorbitant prices! Just incredible how much food costs in Denmark. I don't know how much they must have to earn to survive.
On Sunday, we took a canal cruise in the sun and saw palaces, the royal yacht, cruise ships and expensive houses and apartments converted from old navy barracks and torpedo factories. The Little Mermaid is off to Shanghai next year for the expo but for the timebeing, she is still in Copenhagen. She's very overrated but looking very well given that she has been attacked several times and had her head and limbs hacked off at various points. We stopped of in Nyhavn (New Harbour), home of the old docks and sailors' watering holes, for lunch. We had a smørrebrød, an open sandwich, which was very rich and very nice.
In the afternoon, we visited the Danish Design Centre, which had an exhibition on Light and talked about how LED lighting was going to be the way of the future because of its clarity and environmental benefits. We also visited the Glyptoteket, the art gallery, which has a large collection of Impressionist paintings, Rodin sculptures and Egyptian, Roman & Etruscan statues.
That evening, we went into Tivoli to have dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is not a tacky amusement park as most others are but is actually quite elegant.
On Monday, we met up with Yi and Jerry and went to Roskilde for the day. It used to be the seat of the Danish crown and its cathedral contains the remains of most of the Danish kings and queens. It is quite morbid to see so many tombs. A couple of them were especially morbid with a marble skull wearing a crown perched on the end of the tomb.
Roskilde is also home to the Viking Ship Museum. 5 Viking Ships were found in the fjord where they had been sunken to protect the harbour from enemy invasion. These 1000 year old ships were excavated and preserved. The museum had the replica ship that was used to sail to Dublin and back in 2007/08. It also had smaller replica viking ships that they took people out on. We ended up being the crew, rowing out of the harbour before the captain raised the square sail. It was amazingly easy to row despite Ma, Yi & Kum Mo declaring beforehand that they weren't going to row, there being 2 children as part of the 12 man crew and the guy in front of me being worse than completely useless and tangling his oar up alternatively with mine and the guy's in front of him. The captain managed to get the ship back to port without our having to row again, which was probably much better for her given her useless crew.
So, the forecast for this weekend in Copenhagen? 14oC and raining. :)
Have just watched Roger Federer win the French Open to win a career Grand Slam and equal Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slams. Yay! He's such a beautiful player to watch, I'm so happy for him.