Research into this year's itinerary hints that 2013 will provide some equally unusual platefuls of fodder. So let me take you on a tour of this year's nations and the colourful chow I'll be hunting out once I arrive. Knives and forks at the ready? Sick bucket to hand? Good, let's go.
Innards have played a vital role in my European diet. These have included mainstream lumps of body part like livers and kidneys but also the less popular tripe, intestines, lungs and spleens. Finding an untasted organ was proving tricky but there is at least one left. The gizzard is the thick muscular stomach pouch used by birds to grind seed. Yummy. Hungarians add peppers, onions and tomatoes and turn it into zuzapörkölt or gizzard stew. Let me know if you want the recipe.
Pork, and the perfect snack?
From the inside of the beast we move to the outside for two tasty Romanian snacks, ureche de porc and coada de porc, roasted pig's ear and roasted pig's tail respectively. Sadly, it seems like these might only be available at the feast that usually follows a porker's slaughter. Damn. But all is not lost. As you would expect from its name, Romania has a large Roma population and my dad tells me the story of how, at a gypsy camp in Kent in the 1940s, he once partook of a baked hedgehog and so - who knows? - maybe that's a possibility. In some ways it's the perfect snack. It even comes with its own toothpicks.
Although Moldova's national dish, mamaliga, a maize goo solidified into something approaching bread, sounds a little pedestrian, Ukraine has something to give those arteries a good kicking with its salo, a block of pork fat. Interestingly, it is sometimes covered in chocolate, which sounds like a Scotsman's dream. This might be washed down by neighbouring Belarus's kvass, a barely alcoholic drink made from fermented stale rye bread. Maize and fat and bread-flavoured beer may provide the calories needed to grind myself across the Steppe but they don't tantalise the taste buds quite like Poland's offering, czernina. I suppose that in English this would be translated as 'duck blood soup'. Sounds good, doesn't it? Oh, and I forgot to mention, it's sweet too.
Something to drink?
Despite being the unfortunate host of many a UK stag party, the Baltic states aren't going to offer up anything as mundanely British as pie and chips. Lithuania has its skilandis, a pig's stomach stuffed with smoked meats and then 'matured', whatever that means. According to at least one website, Latvians love their intestine kebabs and wash them down with lashings of rūguspiens or curdled milk. Not to be outdone, Estonia has sült, melted down pig’s feet that are then spiced up and set like a pork-flavoured Angel Delight.
And then there's Russia. The two thousand kilometre slog across its flatlands to Moscow and then out again via St Petersburg should have given me plenty of time to try out stacks of Soviet snacks but I'm struggling to find any weird ones. Despite Russia being the size of Jupiter, its offerings are mostly familiar, with its borschts, blinis and cabbage soups. The most interesting new thing I can find is rassolnik, a sour cucumber soup sometimes made with chicken giblets. But sometimes not. And then it's just sour cucumber soup. Maybe I'll just stick to vodka.
A chance meeting the other day with Kjel, a friendly Norwegian, solved my problem of what to eat in Scandinavia. I'd already heard of Sweden's surströmming, a tin of fermented fish so putrid smelling that it has to be opened outdoors under running water. As the fish rots, the tins start to bulge by such a worrying amount that some airlines have banned it for fear of mid-flight herring explosions. But Kjel also told me of the Finns love of bear meat - thanks for that! - and also finnbiff, a Norwegian dish made from shavings of reindeer. Sorry, Rudolph.
According to gluttonologists, the world's best restaurant is Copenhagen's Noma. I can't afford to eat there. Instead I'll be searching out something cheaper, like røget ål, smoked eel with scrambled egg. But given how expensive Scandinavia is supposed to be, especially its beer, then maybe I won't even be able to afford eel. How to eat cheaply and still manage a pint? There is one solution. If Belarus's beer made from bread didn't appeal, there's always the reverse, Øllebrød, a bread made from beer. I wonder how many times you can make one from the other. Do you reckon there could be a PhD in it?
The last gastro-miles
And then, after Denmark, it's home. With a ferry trip back to the United Kingdom in September I am now finishing off the ride with a little tour of the place, to include England, Wales, both Irelands and Scotland. Technically, to complete this challenge I only need to find something new to eat in Ireland, with Dublin as my final 'real' capital (although Edinburgh might become a 'real' capital shortly after I finish the ride). But having had the English delicacy of jellied eels as I passed through London in Year One, there's no reason why I shouldn't opt for something new in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too. I've always fancied trying a deep-fried Mars Bar but do they really exist? Anyway, if you've got a suggestion for any genuinely weird British foods from your neck of the woods - even if it's actually something's neck that you've found in the woods - then I'm all ears. Just like my lunch in Romania. Bon appetit!
