Truly, there is no such thing as coincidence...

An interesting prelude to the new Die Hard 4.0 movie was standing in Borders with a copy of Douglas Adams" seminal "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in hand. Three decades on, the Guide is still as maverick and original as ever. Glorious stuff.

Which is why this video so tickled me. Apart from the fact that I have petrol in my veins, the makers of this lovely little spoof clearly understand that their product will appeal to the HHGTTG child rather than gen. 4.0...

Our Bonus Final Breakfast

Having endured the ignominy of presenting myself and Better Half at the airport fully packed and ready to fly a day early, our second final breakfast was part serendipity, part necessity. Basically, combine what’s left in the fridge with whatever you can forage from the garden. Fortunately,. the former yielded up a few eggs, parsley and a little cream, whilst the latter presented all kinds of inspiration – fennel, sage, rosemary, thyme, basil…

Omelettes Aux Herbes Fine

Beat together some eggs lightly with a fork, add a little cream, milk or even a tablespoon of cold water, season.

Foam a knob of butter in a heavy frying pan, and when it just starts to brown pour in your beaten eggs. After several seconds, draw some of the cooked mixture from the base of your omelet into the uncooked parts, allowing uncooked mix to flow into the space so cleared. This creates texture and speeds the cooking, but you don’t want to overdo it or you’ll end up with scrambled eggs.

Meanwhile, shred whatever herbs you fancy. As your omelet nears cooked, sprinkle your herbs generously across the whole surface. If you have some, a sprinkling of grated cheese can be added. Season with pepper, and salt if necessary (the cheese may have added sufficient, taste to check).

When cooked, fold omelet in half in the pan and slide onto a warmed plate.
The interior should still be creamy and soft, the outside golden and crispy.

Serve with warm sunshine, accompanied by the song of chaffinches and bees. Bliss.

O! Thoukas

Fortunately, tomorrow was another day, and with it came a particular highlight of this trip. Early on, Spiros the car-hire guy (as opposed to Spiros the handyman who lives in the house up the hill) had recommended a taverna in Doukades, one O Thoukash, opposite Elizabeth’s in the main square. It has only been a taverna for a couple of years, but the food, he assured us, is extremely good. So on what was meant to be our last day on the island, how fitting that we should find a taverna that really did live up to the hype. Our order is by now established – tsatsike, Greek salad, sofrito and the special of the day. In this instance, Pork in the Oven, a dish we saw being fetched by the taverna owner while we sat contemplating lunch. It later transpired that he still does things the traditional way, preparing his roast at breakfast time, then taking it to be cooked in the baker’s oven, over the slowly cooling embers remaining from his night’s work. This particular joint had been stuffed with pounded sage and pepper, and roasted in the smoke from the dying embers of the baker’s fire for several hours. It was meltingly tender, rich, sticky and unctuous, and tasted wonderful – smokey, herby, spicy and hot, everything you could wish for on a plate.

Well, perhaps apart from my sofrito, which is roast beef cooked with a sauce of garlic, parsley and white wine. The best we have had to date was that served by Smurfs, and his veal-based version was divinely tender. O Dukas got very nearly as close, with Castelinno’s version a distant third. Here it was beef rather than veal, almost as tender, richly sauced and served with sublime, hand-cut chips. Simple, honest, and created with deep understanding.

Preceding this had been another couple of triumphs, the aforementioned tsatsiki and greek salad. Tsatsiki is a simple mix of grated cucumber, garlic, greek yoghurt and olive oil, so both the quality and balance of the ingredients are critical to its success. Here the garlic was so abundant and forceful that the result was actually hot, and whilst such a robust approach might not appeal to all, I enjoyed it immensely.

The greek salad is also a staple, traditionally consisting of tomatoes, cucumber, sliced onions, sometimes sliced green pepper, all chopped and surmounted by a generous slice of good feta. Here, the vegetables were all present and correct, if underpinned by the now ubiquitous mound of shredded lettuce (makes for a bigger pile in your serving dish). But it was the feta which triumphed, still bearing the tell-tale imprint of the cloth in which it was wrung out. Feta is normally stored in brine, and only squeezed dry in a muslin before it is to be sold or used. Here it was just that, firm, crumbly, quite dry and light in flavour, but unmistakably local. Our host confirmed that it was “feta from the house here in the village”, meaning that it was home-made and utterly local. Simply fabulous.

Two minute bell

Intermission over. Back in harness, normal service will now resume. Thanks for your patience.

EoD

Degustibus nil et disputandum

The highlight of Easter Sunday on Corfu is lunch, and specifically spit-roasted lamb, which has been turning over a bed of charcoal since the cool hours of daylight this morning. We have been promised this for days, that every taverna would have it laid on especially for this most auspicious of meals. Why so special? Because the Corfiot tradition, at least in Orthodox communities, is to undertake an extended and severe Lenten fast, foreswearing even such essentials of island life as olive oil and local wine. A meal without either, unthinkable!

This Lenten fast ends on the stroke of midnight on Saturday, an occasion marked by day-long parades of icons, musical processions, operatic recitals and all manner of traditional observances in Corfu town itself, and to a lesser extent in all the smaller towns and villages on the island. Tradition dictates that the first meal eaten almost immediately after midnight is a rich soup called (Tisoullardes?), a rich broth featuring mostly lamb entrails. There certainly will be plenty available to make this historic dish, given the number of wee lambs whose number’s up this weekend…

We marked the occasion from Villa Nova by listening to the fusillade of fireworks crackling and booming across the island. And some pretty big bangs there were to, the sort of basso profundo ‘whoomph’ that you feel as much as hear, and that reverberates around the valleys for many moments. The don’t do bangs that big even during the Festival Fireworks in Edinburgh, and there it is something of a local tradition to see how many shop and car alarms they can set off with a single pryotechnic… ..not that these sorts of things actually happen, of course.

Anyway, they would find some stiff competition here. There is a fierce inter-village rivalry to see which one can create the biggest single bang to mark Easter and their own parade. The net result of which is, for several days, we had been hearing the repeated sound of what we took to be hunting with high powered rifles, and blasting in the local quarries. From hills near and far, at several points through the day, we would hear and feel one of these blasts, and both of us would wander outside to scan the horizon and wonder at what had blown up now. Of the source, there was never a trace, but the blasts kept happening…

The closest we have experienced was New Year in the Italian Dolomites, where the villages compete to see who can let off the most spectacular fireworks display to entertain the tourists. Given that in Italy New Year celebrations begin at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the constant whoosh and crackle of fireworks is something you get used to, and it goes on for another three days. Easter on Corfu seems to pay homage to the same tradition.

However, on this particular Easter Sunday we were taking it especially easy, touring the local sights, taking the odd photograph, generally chilling and enjoying the holiday mood. So at around three in the afternoon, it seemed only fair to go and join the festivities at Smurfs, and sample this much-vaunted Easter lamb. Down we went, found ourselves a sunny and almost warm table on the terrace in front, jammed between two extended families of several generations each.

When our hard-pressed waiter eventually managed to reach us, the order was simple, dio Mythos and a half kilo of lamb. Half a kilo, he assured us, was the appropriate order for two. Some chips would come on the end, we learned. We got the beers, and after some time, the lamb. Once too often, I fear, we have joked about the recipe for Greek Lamb Chops. “Take one lamb. Chop. Grill”. For that is what appeared, some random bits of lamb carcass, chopped up and plonked on a cold stainless steel salver, with a garnish of fast-cooling chips. Better half was extremely polite and gamely struggled through it, but this was a huge disappointment. Where was the singing and dancing, the endless local wine, the community celebrations marking the start of summer and another year? In a different village, up a hill and far away from the tourist strip of Paleo, I fear. The Greek Easter Feast remains one we have to experience, in other more propitious circumstances. Next time…

Culinary highs and lows

Leaving the madding crowd behind, we descend to Paleo, and again begin the tortuous climb to Lakones. Before that, though, we have the small matter of topping up the simm card in Better Half’s phone. Halfway through a call she got a beep and then received a message which was all Greek to us. So, off to the friendly local petrol station, source of all good things including cheese pies, octopus, teabags and advice on how to top up Greek simm cards. The message did indeed say what we had surmised, that there was one Euro credit left, but it was the phone itself that caused much hilarity. Clearly there is a market for slim-line clamshell phones among the cognoscenti in Corfu. Suitably recharged, we set off back up the hill, to Lakones, Makrades and Krini, in search of lunch, olive-wood sculptures and views.

Lunch first, in the Castillion Taverna, perched high on the cliff above Paleo and boasting the only external glass lift for what must be a very great number of miles. The setting is superb, the views stupendous, the lunch ordinary. Actually, that’s not entirely fair – our starters (Fried Cheese and Fried Marrows) were really very good indeed, hot, fresh and crisp, exactly as the should have been. It was the main courses, of Sofrito and Stifado, that suffered from being dressed up to suit the location. We enjoyed much better versions of both in the considerably humbler surroundings of Smurf’s on the beach. Still, we did get to go up in that lift.

Makrades was closed, as was Krini, so we took a few snaps and began to retrace our steps. Those of you who have read this far will be aware of how steep and twisted is the road up to Lakones, and how narrow the main street through it. I find it plenty challenging to navigate in our trusty little Fiat, so you can imagine our incredulity at finding those omnipresent tourist coaches lumbering their way up here as well. I simply have no way to comprehend how their drivers do it. Or the chaos that must ensue here in summer. Today it was bad enough, with several occasions where two opposing vehicles inch past each other with millimeters to spare. You begin to appreciate why each village has a set of traffic lights at either end, to make the passage of such leviathans at least possible, if not exactly convenient.

Stopped for a coffee on a delightful little terrace overlooking all five of Paleo’s bays, and enjoyed the wonderful aromas emanating from the bakery downstairs. They’re working double time at the moment, because everything is shut for Easter tomorrow, and there won’t be another piece of fresh bread till Tuesday. We’ll just have to live off the contents of the fridge, not exactly a hardship given the extent to which it is currently stuffed.

On the way back down, we stopped at yet another small pastry shop for baklava and sticky buns. Not another shop for miles, but this one’s open - got to get your priorities right. And finally back to the villa for a cuppa and a snooze, in preparation for a trip to Smurf’s to try out his Easter lamb which has been slowly roasting since this morning. Will report when the head clears in the morning…

Intermission...

Hello Reader

There will now be a brief interlude while I persuade a new employer to pay me unfeasibly large amounts of money for the sort of writing you enjoy here free. Wish me luck. Normal service will resume shortly.

EyeOnDubai