FOOD AND WINE

Having explored seven countries in six weeks, it does seem worth making some notes about the culinary aspects of the experience. 

Tomatoes are always a much sweeter in Europe. I often avoid the large red ones in Australia because they tend to be somewhat soggy and rarely tasty. Instead I search out tiny cherry tomatoes for a snap of flavour. But here, the tomatoes were as I remember them. Because there’s so much geographical and cultural connections between the Balkan countries and their Eastern European cousins, one finds a variation of what we traditionally call a Greek Salad everywhere. Tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum, olives, feta with some greenery. In Bucharest, in its most famous cafe Caru’ cu bere, the salad came with some beef strips on top and a honey mustard dressing. In Veiliko Tarnova, the old capital of Bulgaria, as we sat looking out to the Tsarevets fortress the cheese was scattered like tiny rivulets of snow over the top. 

It was the end of summer but the watermelons still glowed ruby red in the markets. Somewhat to my surprise, the breakfast fruit options on board and in hotels were also of better quality than you get in Australia. The odds of getting sweet and firm pineapple, rockmelon and watermelon every morning never happens back home. 

These countries have hot summers like ours but cold, often freezing, winters (although less frequently than in past years thanks to climate change). The excess of summer is never wasted and pickling is an important aspect of a hording cuisine. At the Central Market in Budapest, we tasted pickles that we know (cucumber, cauliflower, bell peppers) but also some that we didn’t - green tomatoes, plums and mini-watermelons. 

Each country has its own variation of a spirit made from fruit. Again, whatever is left over is used and the alcohol rating ranges from a 25% fruit wine in Bulgaria to a 55% palinka in Hungary. We were offered (and often resisted) tasting variations using pear, plum, apricot, cherry and apple. Much as I’m a happy drinker, there’s a limit to how much of that form of spirit I can consume. Mind you, I still miss the rose petal liqueur I bought back from Bosnia. 

The one spirit I wanted to try was Bulgarian honey brandy but I didn’t manage to find any. Instead, I had to make do with some honey tasting at the Museum of Beekeeping and Wine Cellar Zivanovic in Serbia where one version was combined with sesame seeds to make an interesting new flavour. And then I found the honey man near the entrance to the Belogradchik fortress in Bulgaria. Thanks to the joys of Google Translate I could interpret the Cyrillic of his labels. Thyme. Herbal. Blackberry. I was satisfied. Since leaving Melbourne, I’ve had to leave behind the joys of Beechworth Honey, including their delicate, sweet floral blackberry honey. And suddenly, there was its replacement. Of course, I couldn’t bring it back to Australia but each morning of the rest of the trip I consumed a spoonful either direct or on warm buttery toast. 

Another honey highlight was in a citronnade. In many countries, this would a homemade lemonade in cafes. Flavours included lime and ginger, mint and basil, lime and mint, raspberry and elderflower. All served with soda water in tall glasses. A wonderfully refreshing summer drink. And one version contained honey. There nestling in the bottom of the glass but still liquidy enough to suck up with a straw was a layer of golden sweetness. 

Of course we drank wine as well. The river cruise was particularly bad for any incipient alcoholic but particularly good in the quality of wine on offer. Happy hour started at 5.45pm and the wine flowed freely until dinner ended at 9pm. We tried roses from Germany, Bulgaria, Serbia, France, Austria and Hungary. We also tried some whites and reds in Ilok (Croatia) and Sremski Kalovci (Serbia) and I confess that there weren’t any reds that converted me. I did love the story of winemaker who hid the best vintages from the Nazis by building a wall and touching it up to look ancient. This was at the vineyard which provided Gewurztraminer for Queen Elizabeth’s wedding in the 1950s and for every royal British wedding since. 

The wine experience is Norway wasn’t quite as plentiful and certainly much more expensive than Eastern Europe. The Norwegians are determined to control the alcohol content of their citizens by taxing it very heavily. And on the Hurtigruten ship that meant a glass of wine cost 175 krone or about A$27. I know that you pay that much in some Australian restaurants but not the ones I go to! A little research showed us that as long as we drank in our cabin and weren’t too obvious about it, we could take a couple of bottles of wine onto the ship. Which meant, in my mind at least, that one could replace those empty bottles along the way. I got very good at locating the Government run bottle shops, Vinmonopolet, in every second town we called in to. And I know the wine purists amongst you will be horrified but I also found plastic bottles with decent French and New Zealand wine. Lighter to carry and they don’t clink when you smuggle them onboard.

food on the boat was not necessarily focused on the cuisines of the countries we were sailing past but the range and quality was surprisingly good. Some of my favourites were plates where the presentation was as good as the flavour. For example, a salmon dish with touches of watermelon for crunch and a pineapple salsa for sweetness. Even when there was nothing on the dinner menu that particularly appealed (you know me and my fussy attitude to food), there was always the simplicity of well-cooked tender modest-sized sirloin steak.  

In every country, we went out of our way to have a local food experience and even if it wasn’t always to my taste, it’s part of absorbing the culture of a country. In Prague, I loved the ham and seeded bread on our food walking tour. In Budapest, it was the chicken paprikash and dumplings that Susan made in our cooking class. In Belgrade, it was all the grilled meat (chicken, cevapi, beef rissoles) at the historic restaurant in the Bohemian quarter. In Bucharest, it was the pita bread and dips and cheese pastry - but not the polenta nestled in sour cream and topped with a fried egg! And then there was the Hurtigruten Coastal Express.

In some ways, it was standard cruise fare – buffets for breakfast, lunch and the occasional dinner. But for most meals, it was a focus on local. And in this case extremely local – farms and fisheries, bakeries and ice-cream makers, seaweed collectors and herb growers on the route taken by the ship. . For example, salted leg of lamb from Hellesylt, a village with 240 on the Sunnylvsfjorden; ice cream from Ganstad Dairy Farm, 750km north of Bergen; Cheese from Alan Gard where the milk is provided by 200 goats grazing on native Lofoten flora across the hillside.

The one area that you may have noticed is missing from the list is dessert. Leaving aside the variations on “Turkish” delight and “Greek” baklava that you get in Eastern Europe, many of the cakes are creamy which is not to my taste. However, anticipating this, I cheated and took some Haighs milk chocolate frogs with me for those moments when I needed a sugar hit. 

And sugar hit is what you get from the wonderful range of cinnamon bakery items in Norway. Sometimes they come with cardamom (kanelknutter), sometimes with vanilla custard (sommerbolle) and sometimes just lots of sugar and butter in a skillingsbolle. This deliciousness does make up for some of the more bland aspects of Norwegian cuisine. We didn’t know that our Bergen hotel provided breakfast but also afternoon tea and dinner as part of the booking. Not that there was choice involved. Each dinner included soup, salad and bread - and a single option for main course. On the first night, it was the rather beige looking meat patty, onion and boiled potatoes which was bearable (just) but Wednesday’s night option of hash and beetroot with Worcestershire sauce sent me running away….to the Bergen Fish Market, which turned out to be a mistake for our first Norwegian fish experience. The chips were crunchy, the smoked salmon plentiful and the young Spanish waitresses were delightful (“when I, do you say, am old, I want silver hair like you”) but the fish was watery (I suspect frozen) and so dumped after a couple of expensive mouthfuls. 

Much as I loved the pickled pilchards and the salmon tartare and the herring, I’m afraid that cod leaves me cold. I literally wouldn’t have survived in those Northern climates where cod or stockfish has been a staple industry and a staple part of people’s diets for thousands of years. Instead, I stuck to the meat and I confess that both north and south, the quality was better than most cuts of pork and lamb and beef that I’ve had in Australia. One of last nights was a brilliant mixed grill with a middle eastern twist. Something you’d expect to find on Sydney Rd, Brunswick but instead we found it sitting looking out at the Oslo Fjord. 

We did make a couple of dinner bookings on the basis of either a TV documentary or a travel guide. One in Budapest was excellent as the restaurant, in an old bakery, had created a folk museum in its basement. The other, a Jewish restaurant in Prague was deeply disappointing. I thought it was odd that they took our booking on a Friday night but perhaps, I thought, they are culturally Jewish rather than religiously so. But no. As soon as the sun was starting to set, they hustled out after a rather dull, poorly cooked meal. Still, compared to all the other positive experiences, one bad meal did not spoil a holiday. Just a pity it was on Susan’s birthday. To make up for this disappointing moment, our Prague apartment was opposite an Armenian restaurant and we had an interesting meal there surrounded by folk outfits, swords and an older gentlemen crooning like Tom Jones but in Armenian as we ate veal with onions and pomegranate seeds. Other Prague moments included the “chimney” cake (dough wrapped around a stick and baked – and in our case filled with strawberries and ice-cream) and beef in a carrot-flavoured sauce topped with cranberry cream plus dumplings accompanied by milko beer (i.e. 90% froth). Not quite to my taste. 

I asked Susan if there was anything from what we’d experienced that she’d add onto her cooking list. The answer was Hungarian Chicken Paprikash. With Norwegian cuisine, it was about the ingredients and fish, fish, fish so I don’t envisage that it’s going to be on Susan’s dinner menus any time soon. 

Overall, although we didn’t search out the Michelin star restaurants anywhere, the food and wine experiences in both Eastern Europe and Norway were enjoyable ones.

Photos:

1. Cheese Salad, Veiliko Tarnova, Bulgaria

2. Sunday Market, Novi Sad, Serbia

3. Pickles, Central Market, Budapest, Hungary

4. Honey stall, Belogradchik fortress, Bulgaria

5. Salmon entrée, Avalon cruise

6. Cinnamon buns, Bergen, Norway

7. Brown dinner, Brygge Hotel, Bergen, Norway

8. Mixed grill, Oslo, Norway

9. Armenian restaurant, Prague, Czech Republic

10. Beef dish, Prague, Czech Republic

11. Chimney cake, Prague, Czech Republic

12. Chicken Paprikash, Budapest, Hungary