I had taught there for a while and was keen to show off my knowledge of the language.
We stopped for lunch in Teruel, a town known for its jamon serrano, a dry-cured ham.
Dogs and old men slept in the shade.
We took seats in a bar where the waiter wore a whitish apron and flies circled drowsily near the ceiling.
The waiter brought us beers.
I initiated the following dialogue in my best Spanish: ‘‘Teruel ham is famous, is it not?’’
‘‘Yes sir.’’
‘‘It is the best ham in Spain, is it not?’’
‘‘Yes sir.’’
‘‘And we have come all the way from England to taste Teruel ham.’’
‘‘Yes sir.’’
‘‘So, please, give us three servings of your best Teruel ham.’’
‘‘We haven’t got any.’’
My two companions found this very funny.
Many years later, fatter, richer, sadder, I was again in Europe, this time passing through Vienna.
Central Vienna is stately, formal, clean and costly, full of grand stone buildings dating from the years of European empire. I sat at an outdoor table for lunch.
The waiter wore a crisp black waistcoat and when he brought me a beer he all but clicked his heels. He laid a compendious menu on my table.
‘‘No need for that,’’ I said, in English. (I wish it wasn’t so, but in central Europe one can rely on people speaking English and my German is negligible.)
‘‘What is the dish for which Vienna is famous?’’
‘‘Wiener schnitzel, sir?’’
‘‘Indeed. Please bring me a Wiener schnitzel.’’
‘‘We do not serve Wiener schnitzel, sir.’’
And his tone suggested that it was not the first time that he had said this.
All of which comes to mind right now because last night I cooked schnitzel, though not the Viennese variety.
True Wiener schnitzel is made with veal, the ivory-coloured flesh of a milk-fed calf that has gone to the slaughterman without ever seeing grass.
The meat I used was a slice of haunch from the veal-calf’s elder brother.
Schnitzel. Listen to it. You can hear the sizzling oil.
What language other than German could begin a word with those four consonants?
What language other than German could begin a word with any four consonants?
Schnitzen apparently means to carve or cut, so a schnitzel is a little cut.
Perhaps the only more Germanic food is Schweinshaxe, or pig knuckle.
Order a Schweinshaxe in southern Germany and shortly afterwards the pony-tailed waitress will place in front of you more meat than you have ever eaten at a sitting, a Matterhorn of meat, a peak of pork, with a shin bone rising through its apex and its great flanks shrouded in crackling.
Astonishingly it will come with a side dish of potatoes.
It is Germany on a plate, on two plates.
I have never cooked Schweinshaxe, wouldn’t know how to start.
But schnitzel I am expert at.
And here’s both how and why.
How is simple but easy to get wrong. Put half a fingernail depth of any oil into a wide frying pan and heat it hard.
Your meat doesn’t have to be beef.
Pork works, chicken works, aardvark probably works, but, whatever the flesh, it has to be cut or pounded thin. Not see-through thin, but cook-fast thin.
Then season it with the liberality of your heart — salt, pepper, garlic powder, it is hard to overseason. Rub the seasoned meat with flour.
Beat an egg in a bowl and tip breadcrumbs on to a plate.
The best breadcrumbs – who knows why? — are Japanese.
When the depths of the pan are swirling with menace, dunk a sheet of meat in the beaten egg, let it drip a bit, flop it either side in the breadcrumbs and slip it straightaway into the hot oil in the manner of a burial at sea.
See the oil seize it.
Hear the oil seize it.
In three minutes or so it both sides will be the colour of old gold and the casing will have puffed away from the flesh.
There is only one way to serve it and that is immediately.
There is only one thing to serve it with and that is haste.
Its excellence is as ephemeral as a soap bubble.
Bite right away into the crunch of the casing, the tang of the seasoning, the ease of the meat.
That’s how.
And the why? The why is easy.
The why is pleasure.
Let me do it now and not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again.
• Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
