Ode to shkembe chorba
24/10/11 14:07![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsGreetings, my fellow gluttons handsome diet fans! See, I was recently asked, "...but, WHY don't you move over here to California [or anywhere civilized, to that matter]? What's this lack of ambition, don't you want to develop? Why are you still staying in that shitty country of yours, where you're wasting your potential for nothing?" All right then, here's why. Short answer: Shkembe-chorba. Do bear with me.
I'm sitting at the "Squill" snack-bar at the railway station in Plovdiv. Yes, that same snack-bar which used to be called with the same name during those times of old when the sun shone brighter and the sky was bluer, and when the good old comrades were promising an even brighter future under the banner of communism. The table cloths are the same like they used to be back then, chequered in red and white, and with huge and heavy salt-shakers on them, looking like nice shiny clay phalli. I'm waiting for the waiter to bring me my Shkembe-chorba. A nice big clay bowl of steaming, fragrant soup of tripe with eggs, flour, vinegar, peppers, and lots and lots of spices.
In fact, it's how it has always been since time immemorial. I'd sit here in the snack-bar and wait. Without even taking a look at the bar, I already know what's to follow. In a minute the chef will be done pottering about in the kitchen, he'll clank theatrically with the ladle on the cauldron, he'll cast his final incantations at the egg thickener, then he'll splash the final mix into the bowl. He'll finish cooking all this bliss with a quiet hiss between his teeth, meaning he's whistling with kef at the sight of this bubbling divine masterpiece.
But it won't be before the "chorba" has burbled for at least ten minutes on the low fire, that the waiter will toss the crumbs from the previous night off the table cloth, and into the old rubber plant in the corner, and finally bring me what is due. And finally, I can tell that my day has kick-started. Indeed, thus the day is officially born, and when I think about it, that's how life goes on. By me waiting for my Shkembe-chorba early in the foggy morning. Which is not such a bad thing, when you think about it.
Better wait for your soup, rather than your end. No?
And I bet you don't have that awesome stuff over there in California. Or even if you do, it won't be the same. It'll be just some guys pretending they're making real Shkembe-chorba, but only remaining with the pretence.
I love having a good hot Shkembe at the "Squill" snack-bar early in the morning. A nice tripe soup in the budding dawn of the new day, somewhere at the no-one's land between darkness and light. The place, the moment where the forces of bright have locked horns with the hordes of darkness, to inevitably win. Just one deep bowl can save the day, and why not a second one? A pot bowl full of boiling Shkembe-chorba, blowing its steam, the food of the poor man, toward a red cold nose, or a starving throat, even if those belong to a guy like me. And a steam directly entering this shivering, bare soul, skin-shaven by the northern colds of the coming winter.
Shkembe-chorba! A divine gift of a soup settled with heavy eggs from a black hen that was fertilized by a shaggy three-year old rooster; a soup of whipped yoghurt from a young sheep in her prime; an added soup-spoon of pounded garlic; and chilly paprika crushed to dust, and hot little peppers roasted on a smoky tin plate on a sunny autumn afternoon, and dried soft under the fading sunrays of the platinum October and then dipped in home-made vinegar from the northern slopes of the Rhodope mountains. And, where without a couple of slices of white wheaten bread with a crispy cover of gold, along with the crust!
And finally, a beer! Or two maybe. The third one already counts for domestic alcoholism, and the fourth would border on public vice. Nothing serves as a better hangover killer than a hot Shkembe-chorba and a pint of amber awesomeness descended directly from Heaven. You close your eyes and you take a deep breath. A man should be able to come back from a Sunday's binge just in time to get to work, with a pint in hand on an early Monday morning.
So that's what I'm doing right now, just sipping from my second beer after a Shkembe that has resurrected me again, and given me strength to go on, and hope that today will be even better than yesterday. Maybe I should ask for a third beer, then?
That one will be a toast to all the powdered poodles in Brussels, those fastidious prigs who once considered thrusting their dirty hands into MY cauldron with MY tripe soup, and toppling it for no known reason. If they ever seriously try to do that for real, I'm coming to Brussels, motherfuckers! Or if I can't, I'll rather move to another place, some place where they're not that finical and where they don't press you to "become European" and to "civilize yourself" and stop eating whatever your heart most desires, just because some bureaucrat sitting in his shiny office somewhere a couple thousand miles away has decided that "that food is unhealthy for you". Has he EVER had a spoon of Shkembe-chorba? No? I guessed so!
Either the pernickety Europeans WILL get used to our ways and the things we love to eat and drink around our parts, or we won't let those borders fall. You hear me? Integration is not equal to you telling ME what *I* like to eat. It's me showing YOU the immeasurable bliss that is the Shkembe-chorba, and YOU loving it. You'll find that out for yourself one day, and you'll realize that I've been right all along.
Until then - toss the spiciest of stuff in, and tuck into that chorba, brothers! You'll be loving every drop of it, and you'll be begging for more!
Ps. And don't even get me started on fried veal brain... Because I'm beginning to starve again just by thinking about it.
I'm sitting at the "Squill" snack-bar at the railway station in Plovdiv. Yes, that same snack-bar which used to be called with the same name during those times of old when the sun shone brighter and the sky was bluer, and when the good old comrades were promising an even brighter future under the banner of communism. The table cloths are the same like they used to be back then, chequered in red and white, and with huge and heavy salt-shakers on them, looking like nice shiny clay phalli. I'm waiting for the waiter to bring me my Shkembe-chorba. A nice big clay bowl of steaming, fragrant soup of tripe with eggs, flour, vinegar, peppers, and lots and lots of spices.
In fact, it's how it has always been since time immemorial. I'd sit here in the snack-bar and wait. Without even taking a look at the bar, I already know what's to follow. In a minute the chef will be done pottering about in the kitchen, he'll clank theatrically with the ladle on the cauldron, he'll cast his final incantations at the egg thickener, then he'll splash the final mix into the bowl. He'll finish cooking all this bliss with a quiet hiss between his teeth, meaning he's whistling with kef at the sight of this bubbling divine masterpiece.
But it won't be before the "chorba" has burbled for at least ten minutes on the low fire, that the waiter will toss the crumbs from the previous night off the table cloth, and into the old rubber plant in the corner, and finally bring me what is due. And finally, I can tell that my day has kick-started. Indeed, thus the day is officially born, and when I think about it, that's how life goes on. By me waiting for my Shkembe-chorba early in the foggy morning. Which is not such a bad thing, when you think about it.
Better wait for your soup, rather than your end. No?
And I bet you don't have that awesome stuff over there in California. Or even if you do, it won't be the same. It'll be just some guys pretending they're making real Shkembe-chorba, but only remaining with the pretence.
I love having a good hot Shkembe at the "Squill" snack-bar early in the morning. A nice tripe soup in the budding dawn of the new day, somewhere at the no-one's land between darkness and light. The place, the moment where the forces of bright have locked horns with the hordes of darkness, to inevitably win. Just one deep bowl can save the day, and why not a second one? A pot bowl full of boiling Shkembe-chorba, blowing its steam, the food of the poor man, toward a red cold nose, or a starving throat, even if those belong to a guy like me. And a steam directly entering this shivering, bare soul, skin-shaven by the northern colds of the coming winter.
Shkembe-chorba! A divine gift of a soup settled with heavy eggs from a black hen that was fertilized by a shaggy three-year old rooster; a soup of whipped yoghurt from a young sheep in her prime; an added soup-spoon of pounded garlic; and chilly paprika crushed to dust, and hot little peppers roasted on a smoky tin plate on a sunny autumn afternoon, and dried soft under the fading sunrays of the platinum October and then dipped in home-made vinegar from the northern slopes of the Rhodope mountains. And, where without a couple of slices of white wheaten bread with a crispy cover of gold, along with the crust!
And finally, a beer! Or two maybe. The third one already counts for domestic alcoholism, and the fourth would border on public vice. Nothing serves as a better hangover killer than a hot Shkembe-chorba and a pint of amber awesomeness descended directly from Heaven. You close your eyes and you take a deep breath. A man should be able to come back from a Sunday's binge just in time to get to work, with a pint in hand on an early Monday morning.
So that's what I'm doing right now, just sipping from my second beer after a Shkembe that has resurrected me again, and given me strength to go on, and hope that today will be even better than yesterday. Maybe I should ask for a third beer, then?
That one will be a toast to all the powdered poodles in Brussels, those fastidious prigs who once considered thrusting their dirty hands into MY cauldron with MY tripe soup, and toppling it for no known reason. If they ever seriously try to do that for real, I'm coming to Brussels, motherfuckers! Or if I can't, I'll rather move to another place, some place where they're not that finical and where they don't press you to "become European" and to "civilize yourself" and stop eating whatever your heart most desires, just because some bureaucrat sitting in his shiny office somewhere a couple thousand miles away has decided that "that food is unhealthy for you". Has he EVER had a spoon of Shkembe-chorba? No? I guessed so!
Either the pernickety Europeans WILL get used to our ways and the things we love to eat and drink around our parts, or we won't let those borders fall. You hear me? Integration is not equal to you telling ME what *I* like to eat. It's me showing YOU the immeasurable bliss that is the Shkembe-chorba, and YOU loving it. You'll find that out for yourself one day, and you'll realize that I've been right all along.
Until then - toss the spiciest of stuff in, and tuck into that chorba, brothers! You'll be loving every drop of it, and you'll be begging for more!
Ps. And don't even get me started on fried veal brain... Because I'm beginning to starve again just by thinking about it.
(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 11:43 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 11:44 (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:Because I was dared:
From:(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 12:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 12:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 13:17 (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 13:17 (UTC)Thus speaks the undoing of empires.
Date: 24/10/11 13:41 (UTC)"I think I am better than the people who are trying to reform me."
— Edgar Watson Howe
Re: Thus speaks the undoing of empires.
Date: 24/10/11 14:11 (UTC)Oh wait. I did that first? Oh well.
Re: Thus speaks the undoing of empires.
From:Re: Thus speaks the undoing of empires.
From:(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 13:42 (UTC)I had sweetbreads at a South American cafe once and they were pretty yum. Haven't seen them anywhere since and that cafe is long gone now. ::sigh::
(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 13:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 14:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 14:27 (UTC)Also...no thanks, re: tripe. Call me un-adventurous and boring, but I guess I'm too fourth-generation American for stuff like that. My grandma used to make sweetbreads (*horror!*) and I wouldn't even touch the stuff. Ditto liver, ditto kidneys, ditto gizzards, ditto the unholy abomination that is chitlins. It's muscle meat only for me, per favore.
(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 14:58 (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:Goose liver...
Date: 24/10/11 15:53 (UTC)Re: Goose liver...
From:Re: Goose liver...
From:Re: Goose liver...
From:Re: Goose liver...
From:(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 14:35 (UTC)Don't hurt me.
(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 14:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 15:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 15:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 17:02 (UTC)Do some exercise!
(no subject)
From:In Los Angeles...
Date: 24/10/11 15:49 (UTC)Everything is big in Texas
Date: 24/10/11 15:55 (UTC)Tex-Mex and Smoked Brisket of Beef.
Dude....c'mon...guts soup?
Re: Everything is big in Texas
From:Re: Everything is big in Texas
From:Re: Everything is big in Texas
From:Pass the pretentiousness, please
From:Re: Pass the pretentiousness, please
From:Re: Pass the pretentiousness, please
From:Re: Pass the pretentiousness, please
From:Re: Everything is big in Texas
From:Re: Everything is big in Texas
From:Re: Everything is big in Texas
From:(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 17:27 (UTC)Oh. My. God. I can almost smell it.
Look what you've done! I'M HUNGRY NOW!!!
(no subject)
Date: 24/10/11 17:34 (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 26/10/11 00:17 (UTC)How funny that one of the powdered poodles of Brussels is the Swedish prime minister! He certainly is an ass, so I can well believe it. (I don't vote for HIS party)
(no subject)
Date: 26/10/11 22:05 (UTC)