The sausage mystery

 

Now Europeans are exporting curry sauce to Asia

SAUSAGE SALES ARE UP. Unbelievable. What is it about sausages? We all eat them at one time or other, despite the fact that everyone knows they are made of disgusting things such as minced cowlip, desiccated pig testicles and the semi-decomposed underpants of farmers. Yet we knowingly put them in our mouths! How come?

My theory is that powerful biochemicals released when sausages are sizzled cause a temporary brain shut-down.

In Germany recently, your humble narrator was served sausages (called “wurst”) every day for breakfast, including one apparently made of coarsely minced Frenchmen seasoned with alpine gravel.

On every street corner was a sausage stand.

In some cities, one-man mobile sausage kitchens circulated.

Guys with stoves strapped to their chest follow you around, frying sausages and wafting the smell at you in a threatening manner.

Meat-eating is HUGE in that country. The German Vegetarian Association said last week that “the average citizen eats four cows, four calves, four sheep and 46 pigs per year”.

Per year? No way. My hosts and I got through easily that much meat per meal. Each.
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Last week, Europeans flocked to Hungary, which hosts an annual Sausage Festival. Participants get to actually kill a pig and then make it into sausages. They say that personal acquaintance with the pig improves the flavor of the sausage, but I doubt this. Who (other than Mike Tyson) would want to chomp into a buddy?
*
By my fourth day in Europe, I was missing Asian food. I raced away from a tourist spot (with half a dozen heavily-armed sausage-friers in pursuit) to find something spicy.

At a junction near a statue of someone holding something (probably the first sausage, invented in 1432) I smelt something pungent, mouth-watering and cumin-flavored. It had to be either an Indian restaurant or Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai.

Unfortunately it was neither. Turning a corner I saw the aroma came from a street-food stand steaming gently in the below-freezing temperature. It sold something called Currywurst. This turned out to be a sausage with curry sauce poured over it.

The vendor explained in detail. “The sausage is topped with curry sauce, which is thick, creamy, tangy, spicy sauce made with coriander and cumin,” he said.

I couldn't believe it. A European guy was trying to explain to an Asian what curry is.

He also told me that this was now considered the ultimate German food.

A Museum of Currywurst recently opened, describing how curry sauce was invented by a Berlin housewife. On every TV station, politicians pose with sausages in curry sauce to make sure they are seen as patriots. Moviemakers have produced a documentary called “Best of the Wurst”.

Most shockingly, I was told that several European companies have started exporting currywurst to Asia. The boss of the Currywurst Museum, Birgit Breloh, said: "No other German national dish inspires such excitement as the currywurst.”

So there we have it. Curry is now a European invention which they are sharing with us Asians out of the kindness of their hearts. How very kind of them. The world has gone mad.

Having said that, I ate a plate of currywurst and it wasn’t bad. But I’d still prefer to get my teeth into a real Asian dish. Aishwarya, where are you?

Technorati Tags: currywurst

Comments

[Rika]

Oh, don't tease Germans about their Currywurst - it is a national treasure! See our history is poor.I mean, actually it is rich - of nasty people and horrid events - so the only thing to be proud of is sausage. Which, typically German, has rules of what goes in; a bit like bear. So it has no milk powders and farmers underpants.

Did you know that VW is more famous for it's Currywurst than the cars? They even sell it in bottles and tourist hot spot restaurants advertise it as: Here the real VW Currywurst.

It all started in the Wolfsburg cantine, VW home town, in the 80s when a smart chef invented his own recipe. In that area of Germany you can insult someones grandma, but not the Currywurst!

[Christy]

I've always thought sausages are the one aspect where Europeans are as disgusting as Asians...while we have wobbly cubes of pig's blood jelly, they make sausages out of blood. Double yuck.

[farah]

Aishwariya was described as plastic garbage by one of her ex-boyfriends so i'm sure that she won't be meaty enough to bite.

[Angela]

Never trust ex-boyfriends....or ex-girlfriends for that matter. Just don't trust Exes to give good opinion :)

[Nury]

Talking of products of dubious merit and gossip from ex's, there's a good debate going on in the Chinese newspapers (but not English ones) about a girl who has been declared "fake" in the sense of "pirated product" in Chinese.

This is because she has had so much plastic surgery that the beauty prizes she has won are all due to her surgeon/ sculptor. Anyone know her name?

Rika -- I have to agree with you, German sausages are actually really good. They are also well-distributed. You can get them all over Asia, even the supermarket near me.

But they are so expensive that I only buy them maybe once a month.

[sej]

I'm sure there was a beauty pageant recently specifically for those who have had plastic surgery? I can't recall what it was called. Miss Plastic World? Miss Plastic?

"More than a mouthful, is a waste." - author unknown.

[Angela]

I had lunch with a german guy today, forgot to ask him about his wurst..errrr...I mean curry wurst...if he likes it. I think he does though coz we had briyani and he ordered mutton curry...that's hard core curry by my standards.

today I did not bring up circumcision as I did not want him to choke on his papadom but since he is from Berlin, I did ask how old he was when the wall went down. He seems to like me so next time I will go a step further and ask if he would agree to name our future child Adolfo.

[Leo]

I got to eat one of those made-in-Germany sausages thrice in my host family during my immersion study.

Those sausagea tasted so good that I started to hate the sausages my mom has been cooking for years...well, I do know the price of those sausages.

Nury, you get to eat it once a month, but I get to eat it thrice per 20 years...I guess I might never get another one in 20 years time...T-T

[Rika]

In German villages people used to raise their own pigs and in early winter they had slaughter day. Whole family and friend helpers came to process the thing. I remember at least 4 types of saussage you can make out of a single pig and they are all very delicious - gosh my mouth is watering now.

The most important one for kids is Bratwurst - spiced mince meat filled into a gut - which is supposed to be fried. The kids of the village were to visit people having slaughter day and the butcher would measure the gut around their necks and then fill that bit, so you would get your sausage the appropriate size to your own :o)

How would you like that, Angela?

These however were the best sausages EVER, so of course we dashed off to the other neighbours when they were killing a pig. Good ol' German village life...

...oh my goodness, just remembered the broth that came from the cooked saussage types... oh my... what are you doing to me?

[fardel]

Hi Rika
In the french countryside it was the same.

The whole village would gather around the slaughtered pig ( only one pig would be killed at a time).
Those pigs were huge , over 300 Lbs.
Some would bring vegetables, potatoes, wine , apples
Some big stew would cook on a wood fire ( most probably drift wood ), and big potatoes ,and apples would cook in the ashes.
Then everybody would go home with blood sausage, and pieces of meat which were stewed in the fat to preserve them for the long winter to come, some meat would be kept in big jars with salt
My mouth is watering too, remembering the smell of the wood fire and the taste of the potatoes with fresh meat and rich warm soup.
And the firndship, and.... and....

[Mike]

I would love to meet my meat. I enjoy all sorts of meat. The health concerns I have come from how many animals are now born and raised in factories. They get packed in tight full of antibiotics etc If you buy hamburg in those tubes at the supermarket it could have meat from a hundred different cows.

I would love to meet my meat, see what contitions it lived in, before it died for my supper plate. Please introduce me, I'll be happy to scratch it behind the ears, before I taste it.

[Rika]

Hi Mike, you would have loved to see the bloke in our village who tamed the escaped pig. The whole village was in disarray with the squeeking animal dashing around. One guy, drinker, with a stutter, walked to the pig, whispered something into its ear and the pig followed him back to the slaughter.

In the village where my mum lives now you still can get to meet your meat. Visit the cattle some of it raised by the butcher himself. For poultry give the egg lady a shout and ask when they have slaughter day, and in winter you might get a nice fat goose from her which you might have seen before in her garden. There I even eat the infamous German 'Gehacktes' which is raw pork mince which is usually eaten on a white bread roll with freshly sliced onions. Should pay her a visit soon... yummy!

[Nury]

The memories of village life in Europe above are amazing.

Why on earth did we give that up for the "joy" of shopping in supermarkets?

Angela -- I love to hear stories about your dates, but let me give you a word of advice. if you ask a German guy to tell you about his sausage, you may get more information than you expect.

Rika -- you can actually meet your pig, and then you eat a dish made of raw pork with onions?!

I can imagine the pig saying: "Did you enjoy that? Now try a bit of my leg."

[Angela]

Thanks to Rika, I don't have to ask the German guy about his wurst, I just have to look at his neck and do some calculations in my head. He's got quite a wide neck, I reckon :)

I didn't have a chance to visit village markets in Germany but did visit markets in Majorca and boy do they have some interesting fishes and huge array of salted pork meat. Too bad I am not a big meat eater.

Hey Sej, how did you post those photos? Can you share the tags please? :)

[Angela]

Fardel's story reminds me of growing up in a small town in Indonesia, being the only christian family in a Muslim village, we always get special invites to join community celebrations where cows and goats are slaughtered and cooked en masse, there will be stews, satay, etc.. and everyone can bring home the food after. Once during a neighbor's son's wedding, I was asked to be the flower girl, I was in costume and escorted by the groom's little brother.
I remember the wedding pictures showed one little chinese girl standing amongst batiks, sarong and kopiah and she was smiling proudly because she felt right at home.

Yeah, it is the community spirit and the friendship among neighbors that I miss now.

[fardel]

I'm lucky
In my neighborhood after a hurricane has passed, everyone
comes out , cleans up in front of his yard, trim the trees , throw whatever has piled up during the storm.
Then barbecue fire is started ,and everybody bring what would spoil:frozen food , no longer frozen after one or two (or more ) days without electricity;
the coms the music, all day and late into the night.
another hurricane which did not take us(or our good spirits) away

Yes I am definitely lucky..

[Angela]

Nuri - yesterday wasn't a date, it was just a lunch. This guy works in the same building as me and he has been checking me out for months during mornings when I am not late or when I go out to get lunch. One day last week we were in the same elevator and he saw my name on my company badge. He googled me up then emailed me to ask me if I wouldn't mind having lunch together. I wish I could share his email and my reply but it would make me a very bad person (date-and-tell) I think :) so I will just give a synopsis.

He said something like: I don't know which one will be more offensive to you: a) talk to you and ask you to go for lunch when I see you in the elevator, or b) check out your name on your business card and then google your email.
He signed off simply: the blond guy from the fifth floor whom you saw on the lift today.

I replied something like: dear blond guy from the the fifth floor whom I saw on the lift today, a) would have gotten you more points for audacity but b) got you more points for creativity. next time if you see me just say hi, I don't bite. But sometimes I bark.

So yesterday I was going down for lunch and when the lift door opened on the fifth floor, the blond guy walks in, smiled and said "hi!" and I replied "woof!"

[TS]

I'm actually part Swede as well as Dane, which mean that we have some cross-over traditions in our family, one of them being that we just love buying our furniture in flat-packs.
Most of the Swedish traditions that we have taken to have been tried and tested and if the family approved, it was in.
One tradition that never made it was Surströmming.
My grandmother brought a can of this to a Christmas lunch and it stunk out the house for years after. The people who lived there got used to the smell but everyone else that came visiting would notice it.

Watch this YouTube video of some English blokes trying out a can of Surströmming.

[fardel]

TS is it really worse than roll mops?
Angela
when is the wedding?

[TS]

Rollmops does not smell rotten and the jar does not explode in your face when opened.

[Angela]

Huh? Wedding? Who says anything about getting married.

Why buy the whole pig just to get a little sausage?

[TS]

Angela,
Not all sausages are good quality though, they may contain things that even the pig was happy to see go.

Always ask to see the stamp of good health as well, it's normally located on the buttocks, but you don't seem to have any inhibitions that prevents you from working that into the conversation.

[sej]

Angela,

I use Flickr, so I will base the instructions on using that service. It also makes them nice and simple.

1. Set yourself up a Flickr account if you don't have one already.
2. Upload your photo(s) to your Flickr account. You need to make the photos you want to share public in this case.
3. Locate the photo you want to share.
4. In the top right hand corner of the page, you will find a "Share this" link. Click on that.
5. A box will drop down, choose the "Grab the HTML" section.
6. Cut and past the text from the box, into your comments.

For the image below, the raw text/HTML you cut & paste looks like:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozisej/3950719826/" title="IMG_2786_s by ozisej, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2516/3950719826_d23f794272.jpg" width="333" height="500" alt="IMG_2786_s" /></a>

Hence why I do the cut & paste.

(For anyone interested, this was the view from my living room at ~6am during the dust storm in Sydney a few weeks back).

[priya bhonge]

Dear Sir,

I am a regular reader of your article in the Standard and I really enjoy it.When I saw the mention of the famous actress Aishwarya Rai I was excited to read it but I did not like the way you mentioned her in context of the curry dishes.

She is a married lady and daughter in law of one of the most prestigious families in India.I think that all ladies deserve a better respect from an esteemed writer like you. This is not the way we talk about married women in india. I am sure you have other better options to dig your teeth in- like tandoori chicken maybe.

I would like to apologise if I have offended you but being a woman myself I thought it was not appropriate.

thanking you.

Priya

[yours truly]

Dear Priya beti

Why you upset with Nury Sir for writing "mouth watering" about Aishwarya-ji.

See..he is tellling sach, the real truth. Not some duplicate truth.

You know all MAN have this problem. When MAN see or think in mind "beautiful woman" their mouth waters.

Nury also MAN, you see.

So, when he write curry, his stomach make noise and mouth waters. But, his mind jump to Aishwarya-ji. His mind not think straight direction and he make this tamasha. Silly chap.

So, dont put too much pressure on yor head thinking of this tamasha story our Nury man write.

OK. OK.