Gypsy Kitchens: Baking with Gertie

"Gertie is responsible for bringing lasagna to Dungarvan," Pat told us proudly, but she's really famous for her scones.  In a local pub, we were told we just had to try them.  "You're staying at Kilcannon House? You have to have Gertie's scones."  Pat and Gertie Ormond had a cafe in town for years, one which churned out hundreds of scones and breads per day along with full breakfasts and lunches.  That sort of thing can get exhausting and, unfortunately, none of their three children had an interest in carrying on the family business.  So, now, it's the guests at their in-house B&B, Kilcannon, who get the honor of enjoying Gertie's cooking.  And, in our case, a cookery class with the master herself.

Baking with Gertie wasn't as much instructional as it was experiential and recipes were certainly not the focal point of the session.  In fact, the first lesson we learned was that there doesn't need to be anxiety about the exactness of baking or bread making.  There's always this feeling that 'baking' is more precise, scientific, mathematical than 'cooking,' and that a close focus and carefulness are key.  Gertie's school of thought was much different.  Sure, she knew all the measurements by heart, but questions about if a spoonful should be 'heaping' or 'leveled' or a 'handful' was the right size were always shrugged off with a "that's perfect!"  If we get our hands in there, she stressed, we'll feel that it's right.  Her process was one based on physical memory and an interaction with the ingredients.

Really, we were moving too quickly to take full head of every step of the process(es).  You see,  in about an hour and a half, we made two types of scones and two types of soda bread simultaneously.  One of us worked on one while the other was given a task for the other and all the while, Gertie moved between us taking our hands to help or taking over altogether.  It was more Show than Tell, more Feel than Measure.  She wasn't trying to teach us how to make scones or soda bread, but really how to bake.  Like pushing someone on a bike and then letting go, she was gave us the feeling of doing it, of hitting the sweet spot and trusted that we'll be able to get back there on our own.

This isn't to say that there was anything absent-minded or lackadaisical about baking with Gertie.  There was a process and a science, just one that had less to do with measurements and more to do with the chemistry of it all.  There was never a direction without an explanation, which is a hallmark of good teaching.  You've gotta understand to remember.  She stressed never letting your dough sit too long after adding baking soda, because of the chemical reactions.  Also, adding too much baking soda to white soda bread will make its color brown, because it burns.  A left hand was submerged in the dry mix before buttermilk was added with the right, that way we could feel our way to the perfect amount of liquid.  Something that was of the utmost important was air, "letting lots of air in."  The white flour was sifted three times to get as much air in as possible. 

Ingredients were combined with a soft touch for more air.  Instead of breaking the tabs of butter up inside the dry mixture or folding the raisins or cheese in, we were told to put both hands down deep into the bowl and bring the mixture up and out, letting it all sift through our fingertips.  It was a motion akin to tossing spaghetti, intermingling ingredients instead of mushing them together.   Another trick of the trade was to be careful about adding too much flour.  "That's what makes scones too hard."   This meant minimal handling of the dough once it was plopped down on a floured surface.  Messing with the dough too much also hardens it

Gertie's methods ensured that the scones wouldn't be hard and the soda bread wouldn't be dense.  What's funny is that we always thought hard and dense were words that were supposed to be associated with scones and soda bread.  It was a little like going to France after a lifetime of eating croissants and having someone tell you that they shouldn't be moist or doughy.  Because it's only the real deal croissants that are crusty and flaky.  The ones you don't come across all that often. At the end of our whirlwind baking session, we had a dozen cheese scones, a dozen raisin ones, a loaf of white soda bread and a load of brown.  Every morsel was fluffy, airy, pillowy.

Pat came in just as we were setting ourselves down beside the heaps of warm baked goods and afrench press of coffee.  "Did a little cooking?" he asked, bemused.  "She does this every morning," he said rolling his eyes and slacking his jaw, an expression of bystander fatigue and marvel.  And, indeed, as we said our goodbye the next morning, with a dozen or so scones and a loaf of bread still left over, Gertie went into the cupboard and got her handy 3 gallon container of cream flour.  "The kids are coming over for lunch, so I've got to get started!"

Tricks of the Trade

Sift your white flour three times for airiness
Once the baking soda is added, don't let sit too long
If you're white soda bread isn't perfectly white, there was too much soda in it
Never add egg-wash to the sides of your scone or pastry, it will weigh it down from fluffing up
Or just skip the egg wash altogether. "I wouldn't crack an egg for it.  It's only worth it if you have some egg left over or if you really want to impress someone. " - Gertie
Cut the X into the top of a round loaf with a scissor.  A knife will tear the dough.

Gertie's Top Five Baking Tips (which could also be general advice for life)

Lots of air
Don't mess with it too much
If you feel it, you'll know
Gotta get your hands dirty
Show it who's boss/Handle it gently (whichever is applicable. choose wisely)

Grey Stone Studding Green Grass: Irish Ruins

With mud on our boots and hawthorn-scratches on our arms, we've wandered Ireland's Autumn lands.  In the background? Cawing crows, manure laid on tilled earth, big places and important things that have been covered over by time and moss. Some of Ireland's greatest sights lie in cow pastures.  Walking the Green Isle's back lanes and marshy meadows, we've seen countless ruins and decaying piles.
People come to Cashel to see the Rock, the venerable citadel of the kings of Munster.  But we found the old seat under re-construction, half obscured by scaffolding and tarps.  We never went in. From the hilltop we caught sight of another stony relic in a field below that flared our imagination even more.  Hore Abbey (funny name) is like so many secondary sights on the island: neglected, beautiful, lonely and worth the walk.

On a bright day in County Tipperary, we set off on a ramble between Cashel, where we were sleeping, and the nearby town of Golden.  The public trail was closed because of potential flooding, but we followed it anyway, figuring we could always turn back if the water got too high.  The path hugged the swollen River Suir, crossing electric fences and stone stiles, taking us by Holsteins and tractors.  For some miles the walking was never worse than muddy, but after a while it became necessary to continue on an inland road - the river was a bit rambunctious, the ground really sodden.  At noon, we were able to eat our egg salad sandwiches, satisfied, beside the water in Golden.
Golden is like so many Irish small towns affected by the recession.  There were more closed storefronts than open - of the three pubs, only two seemed in good working order and a little butcher's was the most lively spot among the blank windows.  There was a steady stream of traffic on the road, but nobody was stopping.  A woman at the Spar grocery (which seemed to have replaced an older grocer's) told us we should continue on to Athassel Priory.

"It's only twenty minutes" she said.  "It's very popular with the tourists and the photographers." She may have meant that it was the most popular spot in Golden, but it's hard to think that too many people really come here, even if it is a beautiful place.
The abbey is reached by a low medieval bridge over brackish water.  Goat willows and reeds were sunk in the muck, and cow patties are littered here and there in the field, but once inside the ground was firm and dry and close-mown.  A few birds were still in the chinks and holes where they'd built their nests, high up on the soaring walls.

Athassel was once the largest abbey in Ireland, built during the 13th century by Augustinian monks.  In the early centuries of its life, the walled brotherhood was at the center of a thriving village, and there may have been several hundred monks living in the complex.  The village was burned down twice, though, and now all that remains is a convoluted, sprawling stone shell.  This cluster was once the gate house.  Now, only a little cattle-gate is still in place, to keep the nearby animals out of the abbey's center.
In the massive nave are a collection of headstones - some were placed back to the 14th and 15th century, some are as recently dated as the 1980's.  Faceless statues stand along the walls and waterspout gargoyles jut from the crumbling crenelations.  We could see our own footsteps in the grass, and the marks of one car in the soft earth, but otherwise there was no sign of recent humanity.  If you want to feel great solitude, standing in the shadow of antiquity can deepen the sensation.

On that walk along the Suir, we talked about how intricate the Irish countryside is.  Centuries of stonework crisscross the fields and glens - walls for sheep and stoned up ditches, old springs and little crosses in the woods, forgotten monuments and weedy tombstones - and it's difficult to walk more than a few hundred yards in any direction without coming across something from a previous generation.  The cows don't pay any mind to the feudal-age rock walls around them, or to the old barns where they're milked - we, on the other hand, find it intoxicating.  It's the essence of old-stone Europe.  It's the quiet thrill of blackberry bushes and unfaded green, a land that feels eternal.
And, just as we were getting ourselves worked up, we spotted this tumbledown tower house across the water.  We could never figure out what it was called, or anything about it.  Just another pile of stone, surrounded by fences and bracken, sitting quietly in the autumn sunshine.

In the forests near Lismore, some miles to the south, a very different kind of ruin lies hidden in crawling vines and overgrown oaks.  The Ballysaggartmore estate is more modern than the others, built not for defense but for vanity. For mossy, branch-covered intrigue, this is the place to go.
In the countryside around, the hidden "towers" are legendary - everyone wanted to know if we'd been or were planning on going.  "They paved the river with cobblestones, they put up huge towers and planted dozens of oaks," we were told by one woman.  "And then, before they could get started on the real castle, the money ran out."

The Ballysaggartmore towers are two large architectural follies, built in the 1830's by a man named Arthur Keily-Ussher in an attempt to please his young wife.  Keily-Ussher was a terrible landlord, by all accounts, who leveled the houses of tenants who couldn't pay his high rents - this during the great famine, no less, when the people who lived on his estate were starving.  The "castle" towers were to be the gates to a palatial new home, but money became scarce and the actual house was never built.  Some accounts say that his wife left him when she didn't get her castle.  Others say she was too embarrassed to go out anymore.
Today, there's a very atmospheric walk up along a stream, past the first gates - which serve as a bridge - and up to the second, gothic revival structure.  Weeds grow from cracks in the stone, the old iron gates are rusted and swing loosely on their hinges, the forest around is creeping ever closer to the walls.

We walked around Hore Abbey at dusk, as the dew was settling onto the grass and the air was beginning to feel like frost.  A few other people were roaming around, casting long shadows across the fields and murmuring in hushed tones.  We all kept our distance from one another, appreciating the quiet and the beautiful, broken spaces.  Inside, the medieval chambers were surprisingly well-preserved, even without their roofs.  The earth floors looked as though they'd just been swept.  Outside in the scraggly weeds, a few gravestones tilted beneath crabapples.  Their inscriptions were too worn to read.

As the darkness gathered around us, the black outline of the abbey - the nave, bits of an old cloister, some other surviving walls - began to take on more and more character.  It was difficult to tell in which century we were standing.  Hore has been abandoned for nearly five hundred years. The sheep and spongy grass around it haven't changed.  The romantic feeling at sunset is just the same.   

Galway, Sunny-Side Up

Six young Irishmen in Galway pile on top of one another, swinging and grabbing at each other, red-faced and hyped up.  That sentence would mean a whole other thing after nightfall.  But on an afternoon in South Park, outside the pub-ccentric city center, it is just the scene of a rugby practice.  Galway by day. "Vibrant" is a word that gets used a lot to describe cities, but Galway really embodies the word most fully to me.  The vibration of string instruments in its streets, the energy of the student population, the ebb and flow of the water in its bay, the brightness of the green and blue backdrop - all a version of vibrancy, all the epitome of Galway.

It would be so easy for daytime Galway to feel like a hangover.  Most places that play as hard as it does just don't rise with the same vigor as they fall.  Sleepy mornings and empty beer bottles would seem fitting after evening trad sessions and nighttime brawls.  But that's just not how Galway rolls.  Bright and early, the pubs open, new kegs are rolled in on dollies by white-coated delivery men.  The jewel-toned pub exteriors with names like Foley's and Gallaghers and The Old Hen painted in gold look as brilliant in the sunlight as they do under streetlights.  Irish breakfasts and pots of tea are the order of the morning.  The smell of toast fills the air, calling you down through your hotel window.

Secondhand shops and record stores, crafts shops selling authentic woolen products from the nearby Aran islands, bakeries, cafes are all opening up.  This is daytime Galway, a plethora of charming places that close before sunset.  There's maybe a sliver of time when day Galway and night Galway coexist, like those evenings you can spot the moon before the sun has gone down.  But mostly, they're flipsides, and if your experience of the city is purely vampiric you may never know places like Sheridans Cheesemongers, Griffin's bakery or Goya's cafe exist.  At Goya's, savory pies in the window, like steak and kidney, lured us in; the carrot soup with buttered brown bread and chicken liver pate won us over (especially Merlin, who declared it the best pate of the trip).  The spot, tucked away on Kirwan's Lane, is one of many bright, wonderful cafes open only for lunch and afternoon tea, places that vanish before nightfall. 

During the day, that smell of toast, of pies, of scones may pull you down streets and have you sniffing out their sources around corners.   Perhaps the smell of fish and chips will lure you down to McDonagh's at the end of Quay Street.  And that's when you'll collide with the unmistakable whiff of salty sea air and meet Galway city's other half, its harbor.  Testament to the pleasures within the city, it's almost easy to forget Galway is set on a bay of the same name.  A perfect line up of old houses rise up from the eastern side of the central inlet. They are mostly white with some light blue and yellow and one painted red like a motivational poster about uniqueness. 

Galway's Bay can feel postcard-cheery one minute and mysterious the next, depending on the weather and the mood.  It's always that way with seasides, I guess.  There's the promise of the voyage and the homecoming, and also everything washed up and left behind.  Brilliantly green moss covers most everything.  The stones have a sense of age rivaled only by the ocean floor.  Arriving at the harbor in just a few steps from all the action of central Galway is a lot like hopping onto the silent car after a mad dash through the train station, then watching the world blur by in streaks of color.  A breather just as exhilarating as the rush.

To keep the train station thing going, the harbor is also where you find Galway's hookers.  (Ha!) Turns out, a "Galway hooker" is a type of boat different than the ones above; they're traditional racing boats with a semi-unfortunate name.  In a description we read, they were described as "small, tough and highly maneuverable," which only made me giggle more.  Anyway, if you google "Galway" and the search bar guesses your next word is "hooker," this is why.  Don't be alarmed. There's nothing fishy going on in Galway Bay.  Well, there is, actually.  Seafood, which it's chock full of.  There's a mix of farming and collecting these days, both methods producing enough fish and shellfish to export in huge numbers out to France, Spain and the UK with enough leftover to enjoy at home.

A place famous for its drinking options, Galway really doesn't get enough credit for its food.  It is absurdly easy to eat extremely well around the city, proof that the residents' great taste and high standards don't stop just at trad music.  Of course, the awesome local oysters are widely available.  (This is probably the only place in the world I'd ordered raw oysters at a dive bar).  But you also have a plethora of other local seafood and produce being crafted into some seriously great meals.  At Ard Bia at Nimmo's, in an old stone building with big windows looking out at the bay, we waited out a rainy spell over seafood chowder with mussels, smoked cod, sea trout and clams.  It was atmosphere in a bowl.

We walked along The Prom, the promenade between Galway's harbor and the suburb of Salt Hill.  There were joggers and people walking dogs.  A man taught his daughter how to cast a line, that rugby team practiced.  A road led out to a lighthouse with the Aran islands visible in the distance behind it.  We walked along until a sign told us further access was prohibited - and we wondered how many signs in how many other countries told us not to trespass, but we couldn't understand.  Some city's have momentum because of crowds or traffic or a beat that everyone drums to.  Galway has a different momentum, one that is self defined but still constant.  There are so many options and outlets, watering holes, strolls and speeds to choose from that you keep on going.  You bounce from one to the next.  Sometimes to a soundtrack of trad music, sometimes to the lapping of the sea.

The Mecca of Irish Trad

The eaves are arched, the windows stained-glass, the music spills out over the congregation from a balconied stage.  The allusions to church architecture inside The Quays in Galway are obvious.  Like a cathedral, there are aisles and corridors, rooms off to the sides, doorways that lead to spaces for quieter reflection.  The main altar was a long, two bartender bar.  The shorter bar near the doorway, presided over by an older man in less of a rush, was the confessional.  We sat at a table for a meal and two pints.   Boiled bacon, cold cod mash, a beer and a cider.  "Is there live music tonight?"  A tall young American asked the front room bartender who gave a look that read 'of course' and simply said, "you'd better go back there if you want a good place for it."  We followed the overheard advice and resettled ourselves in the main space which proceeded to fill up around us.  It was heaving by the time Prospect Hill began their set.

Every night of the week, you can count on live traditional music at at least a handful of Galway's pubs. The Crane, on the West bank of the river, away from the concentration of central pubs, promises nightly live music in their upstairs bar. We sat at stools downstairs, across from an inebriated old man who was passionately schooling a young stranger about politics. We figured, when we saw people walk in with instruments, we'd know to follow them upstairs. One after another, customers came in.  Cold hands deep in their pockets, they would approach the bar and ask for a Guinness before the door had closed completely behind them. We drank and waited and then suddenly, a lively reel broke through the room. The corner booth's coffee drinkers had gone into superman's phone booth and transformed into a superband without even standing up.  The crowd continued to talk, but were sure to clap and hoot at the end of each set of reels.  A round of applause, the next round of drinks.

During the day, music fills the streets.  Buskers are planted around each corner with open guitar cases sparsely covered in a confetti of coins.  They close up and move under an awning during the bouts of rain, having a coffee, staying dry. Then, they're right back out again in their spot. Or a new one.  Their routines were anything but monotonous. The day after we saw the "MacNamaras Band" (above), Santa had ditched his accordion, Elvis and the O'Bamas, and picked up an electric banjo and amp in another spot. You'd see a guitarist alone one day and with a group of guys another, like the streets were filled with a single band that disassembled and reassembled at their whim. One big jam session.

"Trad," as traditional music is colloquially called, is the pervading sound of Galway.  Street musicians may blend it with acoustic pop or soft rock, but the roots are unmistakable.  The young members of Prospect Hill's set gave us an hour long primer in Irish trad, and hooked us in to searching out more. The vocalist put down her banjo for a sean-nós ('in the old style') song, sung in a high Irish-language chant style. When they threw in a more contemporary sounding folk tune, the lyrics were a lamentation in the tradition of caoineadh songs of sorrow. Of course, traditional Irish music has always been made for dancing and the reels were the main focus of the night. Reels are fast-paced tunes in the vein of a jig or polka or waltz, a repetition of measures with a set meter.   In tow were the Reel Masters, a step-dancing duo who brought down the house, jumping over brooms, stomping and twirling along to the banjo, accordion, mandolin, guitar and bodhrán (a traditional Irish drum).

Live music in Galway has a specific feel to it, a dynamic between musician and audience that doesn't really match up with anything I've experienced before.   It's more fluid, like out from any crowd can emerge a musician who, after his or her set, blends right back in with a Guinness in hand. Sometimes, a scheduled set would start without us knowing immediately where the string-plucking was coming from.  Then, in the corner we'd spot a duo whose hands worked feverishly across strings.  Sometimes the crowd would quiet down, stand at attention, clap afterwards.   Other times, the din would only get louder as voices struggled to be heard over the tunes.  We could never really tell which way things would go, but everyone else knew whatever the local code was.

If the musicians indoors competed with conversation, the ones outdoors had a tougher opponent. Rain. The street musicians are as much a part of the outdoor atmosphere as the infamous Galway rain and the two forces often jostled for attention, taking turns silencing each other. Or maybe just giving each other a rest. A short, heavy rainfall acted as a curtain and the performers would pack up and hurry offstage (and into a pub or under or awning). Then, the curtain would rise again and the sun would cast its spotlight on the performance once more.  Showtime.

In Galway, live music is a centerpiece and a soundtrack. In the forefront or in the background, it is always around. No one complains when a soccer match is turned off because a set is about to begin. Guitar cases are strung across backs at the rate of messenger bags. That woman sitting next to you with a tea or that man whose had a few too many Smithwicks may be the headliner. On Halloween night, two bouncers stood outside The King's Head and college kids piled through the door in droves. Inside, a man in a turtleneck played pop/rock under neon lights. It was far from traditional folk music, but it also wasn't the DJ set I'd expected by looking at the crowd. Maybe if it had been trad, the act would have had an easier time getting people's attentions. Maybe not.

A compilation video of some of the trad sessions we enjoyed in Galway - with a conclusion that would make Michael Flatley sweat.

Halloween in Galway

The night got grimmer as it got later - pirates vomited beside the River Corrib, ghouls with bottles stumbled in the streets, scantily dressed cats and bloody brides crowded the bars.  An awful sounding fistfight began in the early hours outside our window; accompanying it was much shouting and pleading.  In the morning, we saw spots of blood on the concrete and broken bottles in the gutter.  Bits of costume were strewn everywhere in the wet. A report was in the paper about a man whose costume caught on fire.  He'd been dressed as a sheep, in cotton balls and gauze, and had burns on eighty percent of his body.  The Galway nightclub he'd been at wasn't far from us.  Frightful stuff indeed.
We spent Halloween in Ireland, where the holiday was born, and came away a little unsettled.

It's hard to tell what to believe when it comes to pagan traditions and festivals - this is the stuff of legend and misty history after all - but most historians say that Halloween's roots can be traced back to the Celtic Irish festival of Samhain.  As far back as the first century BC, Samhain marked the changing of the seasons and a time when the dead could make their way out into the world of the living - there were bonfires and animal slaughtering, feasts in honor of ancestors and costumes to trick evil spirits.
The pagan rituals have mostly been replaced, but the frightfulness still resonates powerfully in Ireland.  This isn't a holiday for children.

We saw little trick-or-treating, which seemed odd at first but made sense later.  A few kids were in costumes, but there weren't many and there were even fewer after dark.  Parents keep their young goblins and witches inside on Halloween night, we've learned, because the streets are just too dangerous. After a fun, energetic parade, Galway began to spin out of control and tilt toward alcohol fueled revelry, fights and firecrackers.
These three girls were asking people for money in a pub before they got chased out by the bartender ("Go on!" he said, not quite angrily.  "You can't be in here without your parents!")

Dublin police and firefighters were attacked through the night by people throwing stones and bottles.  In one instance, emergency service vehicles were ambushed when they responded to a phony call for help.  The night is wild by tradition.  In Galway, firehouses and ambulances were "stretched to the limit" by the fires and drunken chaos, but nobody seemed surprised.  Luckily for us, the wickedest stuff happened after we were in bed.
Ghoulish and bloody costumes were more in vogue than ironic and humorous, but there were some laughing exceptions.  Two friends wandered the streets dressed as a beer bottle and a banana.  One girl went out as a twister board.  This young man was… something.

It sound as though we didn't have fun, but we actually did. A real excitement pervaded the early going.  The weather was fine and clear, the moon was not much less than full, the streets were crowded and the pints were flowing.
In the dead of night, we listened to a girl beg "nobody wants to fight anymore," as the sound of blows echoed in the darkness.  On the bus out of town the next day, a group of highschool boys called friends on their cellphones - "we've been in Galway.  Nope, haven't slept.  Bars were too crowded, couldn't get in anywhere.  Just drank silly inside the flat."

Halloween is such a place-specific event.  In America, it speaks most directly to childhood and dead-leaf nostalgia. Two years ago, in Krakow, the streets were quiet and somber in advance of All Saint's Day.  In Barcelona last October, around the time of La Castanyada, the few people celebrating seemed intoxicated partly by the novelty of it all.  Here in Galway, we felt that the city was on the verge of falling apart in the dark.

Here's a video of the parade, with all of its drumming and twirling.  A note: Rebecca suggested that I name this post "Hall O'Ween"

Gypsy Kitchens: Potted Potatoes in Edible Dirt

"Your next course is in the flower pot." We were about six courses into the rapid-fire introductory 'snack' portion of dinner at Noma - a dinner we'd nabbed a reservation for three months ago despite a nationwide internet outage in Montenegro, a dinner we'd almost not made it to thanks to the lovely cop who stopped us on the way there for not having lights on our bikes, a dinner at "The Best Restaurant in the World" three years running.   Noma is almost mythic at this point. Do the chefs really forage ingredients from parks and shores around Copenhagen?  Yes.   Do they actually make you eat dirt?  Well, kind of.  The 'edible dirt' filled flower pot, from which perfect carrots and radishes are messily unearthed by hand, is one of Noma's signature dishes.   So, we decided to create our own version as an homage to Noma and New Nordic Cuisine.   Everything in that flower pot is edible.

New Nordic Cuisine is the biggest thing to hit the culinary world since molecular gastronomy and we were lucky enough to be introduced to it at three of the best meals of our lives, Fäviken Magasinet in Sweden and both AOC and Noma in Copenhagen.   In 2004, Noma's founders, chef René Redzepi and Claus Meyer, got all the top chefs and restauranteurs in Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark together to discuss the concept of a new cuisine.  The idea was to utilize the fruits of the the Nordic's soil and water and its traditions of food preparation and preservation, salting, marinating, drying and curing.  New Nordic Cuisine is doggedly seasonal and place specific. The ingredients are foraged, collected and farmed. The preparation allows the natural flavors to shine.  "Simplicity" is a hallmark, but the actual execution is anything but simple.  Throwing out any rules from world cuisine, the chefs create something beyond easy explanation or comparison.  Now known as "Nordic."

We began with the dirt.  Noma's was explained as "malt soil."   Like just about every explanation that evening, something utterly complicated was stated as simple fact.   Oh, that's just some carrot leather and parsley snow.   Their dirt recipe is no mystery, a quick google search gave us all the instructions which  require two days, two unconventional flours (malt and hazelnut), beer, sugar and precision.  Our own soil is much more basic and required fewer ingredients and less time.  It's a little odd to look at items in a market and gauge how much they look like dirt, but that's just what we did.  Pumpernickel bread and dried chanterelles were obvious winners.  Roasted pumpkin seeds were added in for flavor, a punctuation of salt and fat. The bits of mushroom provided that dirty, earthy taste all soil should have (right?) and, visually, it reminded us of crumbled dry leaves settling into the earth before the winter frost.  Food dirt shouldn't just be edible, but also enjoyable.

What to plant? The radishes and carrots at Noma could be pulled up by their stems, but our own market had trimmed the green right off their veggies.  We'd just passed harvested potato fields on the bus back to Vejle from Legoland.  The idea of unearthing warm root vegetables on a frosty day also held an appeal.  So, we chose fingerling potatoes.  To complement them and get the aesthetic look we needed, chives were ideal. They were sold in a pot of their own, their roots deep in actual dirt. Once all washed up, their thicker white stemmed bottoms made them much easier to work with than shortened all-green chives would have been.  The potatoes were boiled.

At the bottom of Noma's flower pot was a green goop.  We were instructed to harvest our veggies and then use them to scoop up as much of the goop and dirt as we could.  Our own base layer, served a second function, keeping our potatoes upright and their tops high enough that we wouldn't have to dig around too deeply to grab them.  We used Icelandic skyr, a version of yogurt that is a little thicker, and flavored it with chopped chives, parsley and minced horseradish root - a nod to horseradishy Danish remoulade.  The result was a play on sour cream and onion, the perfect flavor combination for potatoes.  In fact, sour cream would work just as well, as skyr isn't widely available outside of Scandinavia.  As would a thick, plain yogurt.

We spooned the mixture over a slice of bread we'd placed at the bottom of our flower pot to cover up the pesky drainage hole.  Then, we stood our potatoes up in the skyr, submerging them about halfway.  The chives planted deeply to keep them as vertical as possible. When the potatoes are added to the cream, the level rises significantly.  So, you want to be careful not to fill your pot so much that there isn't any room for the dirt.  Enough potato should be sticking up that you'll be able to get a good grasp on it when searching around in the soil.  At least an inch of soil on top keeps them well hidden.  As we sprinkled the dirt carefully between our potatoes and packed it around the chives, keeping them vertical, it felt exactly like gardening.  Then came the harvest.

Things got a little messy.  But that's part of the fun!  It was harder to get a grip on the potatoes than we thought it would be and we definitely wound up getting our fingers gloppy.  The potatoes' skyr-covered bottom halves did an excellent job at grabbing onto the soil on their way up.  So, with a little fishing around and yanking, a fingerling would emerge covered in every ingredient we'd put in the pot.  The Potted Potatoes in Edible Dirt were fun to make and fun to eat.  And if you set one of these surprising dishes out at a dinner party, our Martha Stewart tip would be to write each guest's name on a 'plant tag' and stick it right in there.  Then, bask in the pleasure of saying "Your first course is in the flower pot!"

 

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The Plastic Nation: Legoland

You shouldn't go to Legoland to play with Legos.  I had always assumed that it was a kind of utopian nation full of bricks - a place where the landscape was made of mountains and floes of plastic.  It seemed the land's only pass-time would be pawing through the Legos, admiring all the strange and unusual pieces - something like collecting butterflies or rare wildflowers.  "Look at this strange wheel, and this remarkable helmet from the early 1980's."  Serious work would consist of grand building projects, dozens of kids banding together to create cityscapes and space fortresses.  I imagined building something very impressive (maybe a spaceship or a space-car) that everyone would admire - "no big deal, really," I'd say, "all it takes is hours of practice and a healthy imagination."  Maybe one of the Legoland chief architects, who I suppose would be elfin creatures who were paid richly to sit around and play with toys all day, would notice what I had built and offer me a job ("we don't usually hire kids, but you've got so much talent…").  I'd be let into those secret rooms in the factory where they design special pieces, and there I would play at being god and create the raw matter of plastic life, the elements that form the universe.  "I'd like a four-long, two deep slope with about four screens painted onto it and several knobs, made of clear plastic and…"
Well, that's not what Legoland is like at all.

On a frozen, white-edged morning we took a bus through rolling farmland to Denmark's original Legoland, on the outskirts of Billund.  On the way, we watched the sky lighten over cow pastures and sleepy towns.  Drawing closer, huge buildings began to pop up - square, massive, windowless factories.  They could have been anything, except that there were refrigerator-sized Lego bricks in front of them, and some had giant Lego people standing on their roofs. I assumed that this was what we had come for and got excited, but it turns out those are just the manufacturing buildings.  They're off limits.
We were let out in front of the Legoland hotel (where I'm sure the beds are very hard and bumpy).  Across the street were the ticket booths and lines.  Strange, tinny music echoed in the cold air.  Little kids ran around in snow suits.  We bought tickets and went in.
And here's what we discovered: there are millions and millions of bricks at Legoland, but almost all of them are fenced off.  This is a theme park.  The theme is "Legos." That doesn't mean you get to actually touch any.  People come for the rides.

Well, that's not entirely true.  There are a few instances where you can get up close with some of the toys, but these chances are few and far between.  Here, for example, you could sit with a shockingly dressed prostitute in the "Legoredo" wild-west section of the park.  The rest of the western themed section was almost empty of bricks, except for a few big displays - a 1.4 million brick Mount Rushmore and another huge "running of the buffalo."
Most of the rides and areas are based on older product series - Knight's Kingdom, Polar Land, Pirates, Vikings - that children today might not even recognize.  There are roller coasters and spinners, splash-rides and pop-shot booths.  It's not much different than most theme parks.

The most interesting part of the park is "Miniland", where famous European cities and world monuments are re-created in miniature.  Amsterdam, Bergen, Copenhagen, the US Capitol Building, the Statue of Liberty (etc…) are set up in fine, pixilated detail.  The visual effect is fun: there are trees towering over skyscrapers and grass growing up around tiny people.  Leaves drifted in the streets and the whole of everything was covered in frost.  Little trucks drove through the streets, powered by battery.  Barges floated in the canals.  The Cape Canaveral tableau emitted steam when the shuttle was about to "take off."  Young men walked carefully between the displays, picking up twigs and dusting tiny courtyards.  There were boats to ride in between some of the bigger creations, and a nearby "safari" had near life-size models of exotic animals.  This part of the park was great, and it was where adult visitors lingered the longest.  Here were the fun Lego creations we had expected to see.

Over a thousand pieces are produced every second, stamped in one of three factories on two continents.  Rubber World magazine recently recognized the toymaker as the world leader in tire production, based on units produced - 381 million in 2011.  Lego, by its own estimates, has produced over 400 billion pieces since 1949, when they began making the "automatic binding brick."  Incredibly, the pieces from that first year are compatible with modern bricks - there have been changes made to the plastic and the process, but not to the basic design.

Tastes have changed, though, and Lego began losing money in the late 1990's.  The company was forced - they say - to change the focus of the bricks.  Instead of sticking with the free-form pieces that made them famous, they began creating more specialty pieces that would grab the attention of children used to video games.  In fact, they began making video games, then movies and clothes.  Most of their old product series were scrapped in favor of movie tie-ins: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, Lord of the Rings and others - there's even Spongebob Squarepants Legos.
The company also opened more theme parks.  The Billund one is the first, built in 1968, but there are five other, newer parks and three more on the way.  Lego says that 1.4 million people visit each of the six parks annually.  I believe it.  Legoland was packed.

The best part about these toys is that they seem limitless.  Nothing else is like them. Legos are a magical base substance that allows the builder to create incredible shapes, machines, towns, vehicles, castles, whatever. And not only that, but this act of creation is fast, easy and fluid - unlike, say, carpentry or sculpture.  But the most incredible thing about Legos isn't that they can be used to build, but that they can be taken apart and used in a different way, then a different way, like a process of alchemy and atoms.  What is built is only a temporary form, brought into being or reduced to its elemental parts on a whim.  They give someone the ability to think and imagine in three dimensions.
Which is why the themepark was a little disappointing.  Not only were the rides less Lego-centric than they could have been, the rest of the place just didn't feel that imaginative.  They do have brick-shaped french fries, but that was the only theme-specific food - what about Lego waffles (their waffles were normal shaped)?  Or Lego-decorated brownies, carrot cake and cookies?  How hard would it be to put on a few dollops of frosting?  And what about a few bricks to actually, you know, play with?  Instead, there's a Nintendo video game center and a movie theater.

Legoland Billund is the biggest tourist attraction in Denmark outside of Copenhagen, and it's easy to see why.  There are millions of people around the world who love Legos, and who are willing to travel all the way to a fairly remote town for a big Lego experience.  We weren't the only twenty-something travelers there without kids.
Sadly, we left a little disappointed.  Not that it wasn't fun.  It just wasn't the experience I'd dreamed of.  It's not a place I would recommend, unless someone really likes tame amusement park rides and happens to be close by.
Still, it was fun to think about the toys again, and to see Miniland.  The tiny, leaf-covered houses and people were perfectly charming.  They were weathered and a little faded from the elements.  It had me wanting to build something.