Austrians love pork. They love it on the barbie, they love it in a pan and they love it in the oven. I waited 4 years for my first, traditional, Austrian, home-cooked pork roast, but it was well worth the wait.
Sure, I’ve had it in restaurants – it’s on every Gasthaus menu, right up there with schnitzel and Kärntner Nudeln. But somehow it’s different when it’s home cooked.
Having travelled Sri Lanka and southern India, and pretty much eating whatever I liked, I was pretty confident about the constitution of my stomach while I was in northern India.
Here’s what I learned:
The start to our growing season this year saw a few early warm days, but by the time I was ready to begin the weather had turned. After that it seemed that the re-warming was so gradual that most of my veggies got off to a late start. Add to that the fact that I had to first eradicate the Giersch, and I wasn’t as on the ball as perhaps I could have been.
Austria is well known for many different types of food – some you will definitely have heard of: strudel, schnitzel, goulash etc. Each region also has specialities they call their own. Though consider that Austria has nine states in a total of 84,000km² (compare that to Australia’s 8 in 7.7million km²) – this means that a dish ‘local’ to one area is very often found in other places too.
I live in the state of Carinthia (Kärnten) and I work in the state of Steiermark (Styria), so I’m familiar with quite a few.
I’ve already talked about Kärntner Nudeln and this week I’m focusing on Glundner Käse.
Before I moved to Austria I had never heard of pumpkin seed oil.
Pumpkin seed oil is surprisingly green, with a nutty taste, and is rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Austrians are absolutely nuts about it (pun intended).
I am not a big salt eater. I grew up on less salt partly due to the fact that high blood pressure is in our family, and salt is one thing that exacerbates this. I remember cooking with my mum as a kid, and whenever I read out the salt requirements for a recipe, she would wave it away and tell me it wasn’t necessary. Hence, my taste buds have been conditioned to not require as much salt as the average person. And I was fine with that.
And then I came to Austria.
And I was as-salted (pun intended).
When I was in the Ukraine a few years ago I remember being surprised by how much dill was in everything. Every dish had dill in and on it. Well, it seems that in many countries and cultures there is a ‘spice of choice’. And in Austria, their spice of choice is definitely… cumin.
Austria is well known for many different types of food – some you will definitely have heard of: strudel, schnitzel, goulash etc. Each region also has specialties they call their own. Though consider that Austria has nine states in a total of 84,000km² (compare that to Australia’s 8 in 7.7million km²) – this means that a dish ‘local’ to one area is very often found in other places too.
I live in the state of Carinthia (Kärnten) and I work in the state of Steiermark (Styria), so I’m familiar with quite a few.
This week I’m taking a look at Kärntner Nudeln.
My hubby and I love food. We love to look at it, smell it, taste it, savour it and gobble it down. We also like to try as many different things as possible, so it’s probably not surprising that we often share food or go halvsies when we go out for dinner.
But it can cause problems.
When someone’s celebrating an occasion in Austria (birthdays, someone’s last work day etc.) and keeping it low key and easy, they might simply invite a few people over for a bite to eat, or in the case of a work environment, bring something along to share with colleagues (including the mandatory prosecco, of course, because we are in Austria). Quite often there will be cakes, pastries and other standard things you might expect. But there could also be something you were not expecting: a giant pretzel sandwich.
an aussie in austria 