Arabs and Meat

I'm coming up on my one year anniversary of life in New Zealand, so I suppose I should do a bit of a recap. I can't be bothered at the moment, so I'll write that up tomorrow.

Some Saudi guys my wife and I know invited us over for dinner the other night. A fairly dreary Wednesday evening that followed an 11 hour/4 different jobs day turned into a completely surreal gastronomic bizarre of nearly unrivaled proportions.

One of the Saudi guys is a chef. He and his buddies are in NZ to study English. They decided last week to buy a sheep, so they contacted a farmer, agreed upon a price, and drove out to the farm. They agreed to pick out the sheep, and even physically, uh, gathered, the sheep, running around the farm chasing the most attractive victim. Apparently the sheep pretty much acted like I would if I saw five hungry Arabs running after me, which it to say that it hauled ass and did everything in its power to prevent the jihad. It lost. Saudis 1, that sheep 0.

After about 20 minutes the chef (who by the way looks exactly like Lou Reed circa 1978) pinned the sheep down long enough for everyone to grab a hoof and transport it back to the farmer for halal slaughtering. Lou Reed had never killed and quartered a sheep before, so he was given the honours. It took him a good hour, which everyone else found to be hilarious. Blood and fleece filled the air as they all dreamed of how the dead ball of fluff would be turned into a week's worth of dinners.

Our invitation was for Wednesday; as far as I know the guys had been eating the mutton for the previous four days. We hadn't brought the customary bottle of wine, making sure not to offend Islamic sensibilities. It turns out we had nothing to worry about. Fortunately, Lou Reed and the gang have adopted a when-in-New Zealand-attitude to drinking alcohol, so as soon as I sat down I had a beer in one hand and a tequila shot in the other, with the salt and lime on the table right in front of me. I am all about the when-in-someone's house-drink-whatever-they-give-me attitude toward social drinking, so off we went. For guys who aren't supposed to drink, they have pretty good taste in beer, providing a seemingly endless supply of Speight's Summit (a "pure" golden lager that is pretty much the best beer made by NZ's biggest beer company).

Saudis eat very late. By the time we finally sat down at the table it was almost 10 pm, and I was bloody starving, even after a few beers and an appetizer of dates and Arabic coffee (which tastes nothing like coffee, doesn't look like coffee, and doesn't even have any caffeine, but I was assured that it is actually coffee. Whatever.).

Lou Reed sat down along with a dude who's name is pronounced like Knife (spelled differently, but it's more fun to just call him "knife" so that's what I'll do), a guy wearing a large coat made of the fur of many, many rabbits (rabbits, if they could talk, would refer to this guy as "Hitler"), and a very, very happy man who came to New Zealand with his wife and young son (so we'll call him Family Guy). A tall, skinny guy called Abdullah (and yes the others do have real names that I know but I don't want anyone getting their hands cut off on account of my blog . . . ), in whose apartment we were eating, was the waiter. He absolutely refused to sit down to eat until everyone else was done. He wouldn't even sit down anywhere. He brought water, coffee, beer, bread, rice, or whatever anyone wanted. Dude was literally a waiter in his own house. He even folded his hands behind him like a waiter would.

Abdullah the Waiter placed three huge ceramic dishes in the middle of the table. On my right was the mutton, huge chunks of meat on large, curved bones that would have been my vegan youngest brother's worst nightmare. I didn't even care if it was gonna taste good - I remembered my friend Ben saying once that even if a piece of meat didn't taste all that good, the thought that somewhere a vegan hippie was upset about it made the whole meat-eating enterprise worthwhile. But once I grabbed onto a sheep rib and stuck my face into some seriously tender meat, I realized I didn't have anything to worry about. Rabbit Hitler said it was okay to eat with my hands, so I grabbed a gone and got down to business. Mutton doesn't have the greatest of reputations as meat goes, but I suppose if the Arab Lou Reed chucked damn near anything into an Arab pressure-cooker for long enough, added enough garlic and spices, and allowed me to eat it off the bone cave-man style, I'd be pretty satisfied. This was not "mutton dressed as lamb" (the Kiwi version of the Texas expression "all hat and no cattle"). It was mutton that was proud to be what it was. This was meat that was meant to be eaten outdoors by men seated in a circle around a fire, naked, speaking in grunts as they reminisced over the morning conquest of Atila and/or the Huns. Meat that filled me with enough manliness to wear pink for the rest of this year, or to put down every toilet seat I see. I'm still blissing out over this meat, and this all happened about two weeks ago.

[Disclaimer: I don't have anything against hippies or vegans. I do have something against white people with dreadlocks, and there are shitloads of white people with dreadlocks in New Zealand - I'll never get used to it, and I always assume they are either hippies, vegans, or both. It's just not right. Anyway, I imagined that the angry vegan hippie who would have been horrified at all the meat I was about to consume was the guy I met at a pub quiz night who was a, very white, and b, had a perfectly trimmed accountant/mortgage broker style beard, and c, had dreadlocks down to his ass. Dork.]

The dish in the middle of the table was filled with sauteed vegetables and the tenderest chicken wings I've ever had.. Family Guy challenged Knife and I to a contest to see who could produced the cleanest chicken bones after one bite. I think we tied. The meat fell off the bone and melted in my mouth as soon as the wing hit my tongue.

The dish on the left was filled with rice, which Abdullah the Waiter insisted on scooping onto my plate every time I got anywhere near finishing the rice that was already on my plate. We also had some pitas to scoop any remaining meat or veggie remnants up.

And I think there was a salad at one point.

Rabbit Hitler pointed out again and again that I couldn't stop eating. "In my country, ....." I've learned to be weary when an Arab begins a sentence with this seemingly innocent cultural entreaty. What comes next could be anything from a defense of polygamy to why Hitler (the German one, not the rabbit guy) is a great hero. In this case, though, the "in my country" phrase led to nothing but pure gluttony. According to Rabbit Hitler, Family Guy, Knife, Lou Reed, and Abdullah the Waiter, to refuse food was something akin to pissing on the Koran. So I kept on eating. And when the cinnamon schnapps came out for dessert, I went for it in the name of cultural understanding. And even though I was really full and had to get up early the next day, I couldn't help but have another beer or two as we all sat in the living room watching the Daily Show. They didn't understand it, but laughed anyway.

If only they knew Jon Stewart is a Jew . . .

Four Years

High School: Four Years
University: Four Years
Olympic Training Period: Four Years
Time Between World Cups: Four Years
How Long I Spent Trying to Appreciate Leonard Cohen Records Before I Gave Up: Eight Years
How Long My Last Band in Japan Lasted: Four Years
How Long My First Band in NZ Lasted: Four Months
Number of Work Days in a Week with One National Holiday: Four Days
Minimum Paid Holiday as Mandated by NZ Government: Four Weeks
Length of US Civil War: Four Years
Length of World War I: Four Years
Length of World War II (US involvement): Four Years (give or take a few months)
How Long I've Been Married: FOUR YEARS

David Bowie may have sung, "We've got FIVE YEARS/ that's all we got" but it just seemed like five years to him because during the Ziggy Stardust period he was trying to be gay and refused most solid food. The magic number is clearly four, and the fact that Sarah and I have survived the first four years is reason for serious celebration.

We went out for some seriously ***** (that's pronounced "five star") Italian food last night. You may have heard that I don't do restaurant reviews, and I'm not about to start now, but there was a quattro formaggi pizza with walnuts, a bruschetta composed of manuka honey and pears, and, as the menu said, The Best Ever Lasagna, which, were it my restaurant, would be renamed the Best Ever Lasagna Because It Comes With a Shitload of Meat. As I sliced the lasagna, meat poured out from between the layers of pasta like ice cream on a half melted Mississippi Mud when bitten. It was so good that I didn't even have anything to drink, for fear that adding anything further to the taste orgy would so desensitize my tongue that my own penne-and- tomato-sauce-with-$6-bottle-of-South-African-Cab-Sav would never suffice again.

In keeping with the celebration of FOUR, I've decided that the anniversary will last for four days. Thursday was Italian food, Friday was staying at home and watching Springsteen on the Daily Show (we would have done that anyway . . .) but it all picks up again on Saturday because we are flying to Auckland.

To see The Who. From the 12th row.

And yes, I know that Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are half the original band and that their combined age is 128 (no shit), but as Pete has said, they are very lucky that the guy who wrote all the songs and the guy who sang them are the two left standing. Fair enough I suppose. And besides, we and about 50,000 other people saw the Beatles play a show in the Tokyo Dome a few years ago with one original member, and that dude was definitely sporting man cans (abnormally large male breasts) at that point. The Japanese did have the decency to advertise that event as a "Paul McCartney" concert, but you know what I mean . . .

And the four day celebration of the four year anniversary concludes Sunday with a lie in at the Rydges Hotel in central Auckland where we shall gather another six months worth of mini soaps (perfect for the gym) before returning to Christchurch and eating the best fish and chips in Australasia, no screw it, the best fish and chips in the Pacific Rim (I find it hard to believe that there's a place in either Chile or Oregon that can compete with our guy down the road).

1040 Takeaways at, uh, 1040 Colombo Street for those of you in ChCh, is absolutely the best fish and chip shop in town. The double burger with cheese will melt the heart of anyone (and I now you're out there) opposed to the basic premise of ever ordering a burger in a fish and chip shop on the basis of keeping some order in the universe. To hell with order in the universe. It's time to embrace chaos, and order the fucking burger. It's really good.

I'll let you know how it all goes. Hope everyone else has a good weekend.

Strawberry Fare

I can't stand restaurant reviews. I don't have much time for cookbooks either, or cooking shows for that matter. I'm a big Anthony Bourdain fan, but mostly as a travel writer and memoirist who happens to be really into food. For the most part, food writing is pretentious drivel, one attempt after another to out-"scrumptious" or out-"salivate" a competing review.

So this is not a restaurant review. It is a story about a somewhat legendary Christchurch eatery that gave me a mild case of food poisoning.

Problem number one - the name, Strawberry Fare. It reminds of those silly 70s band names that put three completely unrelated words together, like Grand Funk Railroad or Three Dog Night. If Strawberry Fare, why not Apple Ticket, or Grape Season Pass?

I had duck. My wife had groper. She won. Hers was a beautiful layer of oily (in a good way) fish on a block of perfectly formed mashed potatoes. My duck was cooked reasonably well, its tenderness evidenced by the way it slid off the bone with one slight poke of my fork. The problem, and I realize this is not Strawberry Fare's fault, was that the dish tasted just like the preserved duck-in-a-bag I ate twice on a 36 hour train journey across China. The food choices on that train were instant noodles and duck-in-a-bag. An entire duck. In a bag. Vacuum packed, yes, but a bag still. I will no longer order duck. Ever. Again.

At Strawberry Fare we were seated at a window table; as soon as the duck touched my tongue I half expected the window to start moving. It's a wonder it didn't.

The menu at Strawberry Fare has one page of mains, and two pages of desserts. I don't generally order dessert in restaurants, as I strongly believe the perfect dessert time to be between one and half and two hours after the evening meal is complete. But Strawberry Fare is known for dessert, so much so that at least half the diners on this particular Tuesday (Fat Tuesday in fact), were there solely for dessert. My wife got some raspberry oriented chocolate cake plate, and I ordered the Ultimate Chocolate Dessert, described as something along the lines of shitloads of chocolate ultimately served on a large plate made of chocolate, to be eaten with a chocolate fork.

All of this I washed down with a bottle of Central Otago Pinot Noir.

I've been sick ever since (it's now Friday). I don't know if I contracted some kind of food poisoning per se, but perhaps one can poison oneself with an inappropriate combination of food and drink. The wine swirling around with the duck and all that chocolate, not to mention the appetizer of fresh bread and 12 year old balsamic vinegar, resulted in a chemistry experiment that I wish had taken place in a beaker instead of my stomach.

Is any of this the restaurant's fault? Probably not. But the fact remains that Stawberry Fare's very well prepared duck conjured up memories of licking glutinous duck jelly off my fingertips in the middle of China. Then the ultimate glutton's dessert mixed with some red wine (that I brought from home!) that kicked off my self flush response, and in hindsight my wife's main tasted a hell of a lot better than mine.

So, my apologies to the chef, but I'll never go back. To hell with that place.