The novel’s protagonist, Fernando – the novel has autobiographical streaks – is a well-to-do, gay writer who has been witnessing his home city’s decline from a distance for years. Now he returns, and what he finds leaves him disillusioned and cynical: he doesn’t trust anyone, seems to hate everyone, especially “los pobres” (the poor), and analyses the downfall of Medellín and the entire country from the vantage point of an observer who pretends to still be distant, even though he is now physically there, in the midst of all the chaos. Fernando passes cynical and truthful judgement on politics and politicians, the press, law enforcement, and his fellow Colombians:

El “presunto” asesino, como diría la prensa hablada y escrita, muy respetuosa ella con los derechos humanos. Con eso de que aquí, en este país de leyes y constituciones, democrático, no es culpable nadie hasta que no lo condenen, y no lo condenan si no lo juzgan, y no lo juzgan si no lo agarran, y si lo agarran lo sueltan… La ley de Colombia es la impunidad y nuestro primer delincuente impune es el presidente.

 The “presumed” killer, as the written and spoken press would say, very respectful of human rights. Because here, in this democratic country of laws and constitutions, nobody is guilty until he has been condemned, and he isn’t condemned if he isn’t tried, and he isn’t tried if he isn’t caught, and if he is caught, he’s let go… impunity is the law in Colombia and our first unpunished delinquent is the President.*

However, it’s clear that deep down, he loves his country and his people and his cynicism is just a defence mechanism. Fernando is capable of loving and needs love, which, however, he’s not ashamed to buy by showering his lovers with presents.

He falls for Alexis, a young man, whom he lavishes with any material luxury Alexis asks for to make him stay. Alexis becomes Fernando’s “guardian angel”, all his happiness depends on him. Like seemingly everyone in the city, Alexis is involved in the drugs trade, he’s a sicario, a mercenary, of one of the cartels. Among the toys Fernando buys him is a revolver, which Alexis uses to kill anyone that even remotely inconveniences him and his lover. This seems to be perfectly normal, nobody even takes notice. When you’ve shot someone, you just leave and pretend nothing happened. Then the police sweep in and comply perfectly with their bureaucratic duty, although everyone knows this is futile and won’t do anything to find the killer or change the situation. The law is completely helpless in the face of corruption, complicit with crime, and just pretends the circumstances are normal rather than absolute chaos and impunity.

When Alexis is killed, Fernando is devastated. He finds solace in a new lover, whom he treats as if he were Alexis. Things turn out to be much more sinister, however, a suspicion I had while reading, and yet it hit me hard when it was confirmed.

La virgen de los sicarios is raw and violent, just like it should be. Nothing is hidden from view, and the novel fakes the same kind of normalcy the citizens of Medellín and Colombia are faking: as if it were normal to shoot someone for looking at you the wrong way and to get away with it, as if being “employed” by a drugs cartel were nothing, as if corruption were just an ordinary way of earning a little extra – and as if there was nothing wrong with any of that.

Fernando’s narration is insightful; behind his cynicism shows a deep understanding of the societal circumstances that made absolute chaos possible, for instance:

El tiempo barre con todo y las costumbres. Así, de cambio en cambio, paso a paso, van perdiendo las sociedades la cohesión, la identidad, y quedan hechas unas colchas deshilachadas de retazos.

Time does away with everything and customs. That way, change by change, step by step, societies lose their cohesion, their identity, and become a frayed rug of fragments.

And so people make up a kind of normal situation where evidently there is none, look the other way, and convince themselves that everything is somehow in order and their loved ones are good people, when really they have succumbed to the call of organised crime just like everyone else.

La humanidad necesita para vivir mitos y mentiras. Si uno ve la verdad escueta se pega un tiro.

Humanity needs myths and lies to live. If you see the plain truth, you’ll shoot yourself.

There’s no beating about the bush in La virgen de los sicarios, which makes it a very immediate reading experience, and a great insight into Colombia’s darkest years.

English title: Our Lady of the Assassins
German title: Die Madonna der Mörder

*All translations by myself

Ingredients (1 portion)

For the chicken:

• 1/2 chicken breast
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• juice of 1/2 lemon

For the pimientos:

• about 5 pimientos del piquillo
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tsp sugar
• good pinch of salt
• olive oil

Mince one clove of garlic and pop it in a bowl or a soup plate. Add the soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil and honey and mix well. Wash and dry the chicken breast and place it in the mixture. Let it sit for 30 minutes, turning it over occasionally.

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C. In an oven dish, cook the chicken breast for about 15-20 minutes. Keep the soy sauce mixture!

Slice the second clove of garlic and cut the pimientos del piquillo into thin strips. In a small frying pan, fry the garlic in olive oil until a bit golden, then add the pimientos, sugar and salt, and let them caramelise. This will only take about 5 minutes, so don’t start straight away when you’ve put the chicken in the oven (do some dishes in the meantime).

Once the chicken breast is done, get it out of the oven and put it on a plate. If it has left some juice, mix that with the soy sauce left over from macerating the chicken, and in a small pan, reduce the sauce until it thickens a bit. If your chicken breast, like mine, refuses to leave juice, just use the soy sauce mixture by itself in this step. Cut the chicken breast into slices, arrange the pimientos on the plate and pour the sauce on top. Enjoy!

But sometimes, you just can’t get it right. This happened to me on Tuesday, when I got it wrong both ways: I was dressed both for too cold and for too warm weather. How? You see, Hamburg loves to play little weather tricks on poor, unsuspecting cyclists. On Tuesday morning, I had to attend an event on the other side of town that required suiting up. It also more than doubled my commute from 2.5k to about 8k. So far this year, it’s still been quite chilly in the mornings, but on Tuesday the first thing I did upon leaving my house was to take off the coat and scarf I was wearing. Even so, as I pedalled along, I got quite warm and had to go slow to avoid getting really sweaty. This is what the weather was like:

It was amazing: pretty much an early summer day. By the time I got to the event, I was hot but happy, and feeling really smug because I’d gotten there much faster than I would have by public transport!

Who would have thought that by 7:30pm the same day I’d be biking home shivering in the cold? Well, that’s exactly what happened. During the afternoon, we got thunderstorms and the temperature dropped considerably. Fortunately, by the time I left work it had stopped raining, so on went the coat and scarf. But I was still cold! What can you do? Sometimes the weather just won’t play along. I really appreciated my warm meal once I got home.

If you’re a mac & cheese purist, then this is probably not your dish. The first reason is the cheese – I don’t think Idiazabal and the resulting flavour is your normal mac & cheese fare. The second reason is the recipe, which I based on the Amateur Gourmet’s Easy Mac and Cheese recipe. It does away with the bechamel sauce and I think it does a few other things that aren’t usually done, but as a complete mac & cheese novice, the “easy” in the recipe title really appealed to me. I also tweaked it a little to suit Antxon’s needs, and the fact that I’d forgotten to buy the cream the recipe asks for. The result was very tasty, but also sent me into a food coma that further contributed to making my spring cleaning day rather minimalist on the “cleaning” front. Please don’t make this if you need to be productive afterwards.

Ingredients (1-2 portions)

• two or three handfuls of macaroni or other pasta
• 150g Idiazabal cheese, grated
• 230ml milk or single cream (a mixture of both is probably best)
• 1/2 small onion, minced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• Dijon mustard to taste
• Dash of Worcestershire sauce
• Dash of Tabasco sauce
• 1 tsp flour
• 2-3 tsp breadcrumbs
• 2-3 tsp Parmesan cheese, grated

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Cook the macaroni in salted water for 6 minutes (they should still be very al dente). Drain them and pour them into a small oven dish.

Heat the milk/cream/mixture until it boils, but be careful it doesn’t bubble up. Add the onion and garlic, then add the Idiazabal cheese while stirring continuously. Lower the heat a bit, keep stirring. Remember Idiazabal takes a while to melt, so be patient here! My mixture looked disgusting at first and I was getting disheartened, when suddenly something happened and the sauce thickened beautifully. I also added 1 tsp flour, again while stirring continuously, to thicken the sauce a bit more. Stir in a healthy dash of Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, and the dijon mustard (probably about 1/2 tsp). Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour the sauce over the macaroni and top with the Parmesan and breadcrumbs. Place it in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Enjoy, and have a nap afterwards.

Tschick is about two boys on the verge of becoming men, Maik Klingenberg and Andrej Tschichatschow (“Tschick”) and their summer holidays. Both are outsiders: Maik is considered boring by his cool classmates and Tschick, well, he’s an ethnic German immigrant from Russia, comes to class drunk and generally doesn’t give a shit about the other kids in the class.

Maik is in love with the girl everyone else is also in love with, and of course his love is unrequited. She doesn’t even invite him to her birthday party. His mum is an alcoholic, and as she’s shipped off to rehab once more, his dad jumps at the chance to go on a “business trip” with his assistant. All of a sudden, Maik finds himself free and unattended. And then, Tschick shows up on his doorstep with a “borrowed” Lada and a proposition: a road trip. Off they go, with a bunch of frozen pizzas and no map. A few days of wild freedom begin, and they savour them despite being searched for by the police. On their way, they also meet some very interesting people: a slightly crazy family that knows almost everything and a few things more but has no idea where their local supermarket is, an old man who first shoots at the boys and then teaches them a thing or two about communism, a speech therapist whose wits you can’t quite be sure of (she’s either using the chance to break the rules a bit herself, or she’s just not terribly clever, but terribly nice), and a few more.

Tschick has been compared a lot to YA classics like Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye. I thought that with its experimental rule-breaking, it was a bit like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with two teenage boys and minus all the drugs. On second thoughts, that makes it quite far removed from Fear and Loathing, actually – but the feeling of absolute freedom I associate with Fear and Loathing was somehow present in Tschick (My memory of Fear and Loathing is evidently very remote. I read it ages ago). Wolfgang Herrndorf hits just the right tone: savvy, streetwise, and surprisingly innocent at the same time. He never judges and he doesn’t want to push any ideas onto his young protagonists. He just tells the story from Maik’s perspective as Maik sees it. The boys’ growing up, their deep philosophical conversations, their awkward coolness and first love adventures, all of it is authentic and has the taste of the absolute freedom of a summer without adults. I earned strange looks on the bus more than once for laughing out loud. These two guys are awkward, confused and often afraid, but they’re also damn cool and on the lookout for some good, clean fun.

There are some issues with Tschick, as kjd of Love German Books points out: not realistic of a German high school situation, not enough action (or rather, too subtly told), and not enough sex. While I agree on the first (sadly for the German schooling system, it’s not at all likely that a “new” immigrant kid would end up in a Gymnasium, a grammar school, although Tschick is evidently very smart), I’m not so sure about the rest. Because these flaws, as kjd also points out, apply to Tschick as a book for young adults. Granted, perhaps – like all the other reviewers who raved about it – I’m a bit too far this side of 14 to judge Tschick from the point of view of the young adult audience it has been marketed to. But I still think I would’ve enjoyed it immensely at 14. I don’t think I would’ve found the action too subtle: on the contrary, personally I was allergic to books that were too over the top. I also don’t think a book needs at least one sex scene to go down well with the young crowd (I might be wrong though). On the contrary, when everyone around you is having – or pretending to have – lots and lots of sex, wouldn’t it be comforting to know that you could also refuse it and things would still be OK? Or that you could be gay and things would still be OK? And there’s definitely some sexual tension to get your imagination going. Unfortunately, I don’t know any 14 year-olds I could ask how they felt about Tschick. Another possibility is that it has indeed been marketed to the wrong audience: maybe this is a novel for adults who are looking back on their teenage days with a fair bit of nostalgia, wishing they could’ve gone wild like that when they were that age.

I found Tschick to be very, very entertaining – not at all high-brow literature, but a tremendously good read.

If you’ve read Tschick, I’d be thrilled to hear your views on the whole suitability for young adults question – too tame or not? Would your 14 year-old self have enjoyed the book?

Sadly, Tschick hasn’t been translated into English yet. There’s a French translation, Goodbye Berlin, and a Spanish one, Goodbye Berlín.

I do wear makeup almost every day, except on the weekends when I usually throw on some eyebrow gel and mascara and call it a day – if I’m planning to leave the hose. To be honest though, I’m blessed with quite good skin – no major outbreaks, few wrinkles –  so I like my makeup light and don’t put on too much. Here’s what goes on my face on any given workday:

Just go from left to right, top to bottom, and you have it in the right order. It takes me just over 5 minutes to do, though I haven’t timed myself and don’t know exactly. My bike commute is relatively short (about 3k), so I don’t usually get too sweaty. In the summer, I’ll sometimes leave out the tinted moisturizer, because it’ll feel to heavy in the heat – not that it ever gets really hot in around here (there may be a positive side to our lack of real summers after all). I really don’t mind biking with makeup and don’t think I’d ever transfer my makeup routine to the office, unless the commute was really long and prone to messing up my “handiwork”. Once I get in, I do a quick check in the bathroom to see if everything is still in place and keep a tissue handy for blotting purposes.

As for other female bike commuters – my feeling is that biking generally doesn’t deter women in Germany from wearing makeup. Although I don’t think a person who wears loads and loads of makeup would be the kind of person to bike to work on a regular basis, but that might just be my prejudice. I read somewhere years ago that German women prefer more natural-looking makeup in general, so maybe they just wear less makeup overall – I’ve no idea.

Do you bike to work with makeup or do you prefer to put your face on after you reach the office? Any makeup tips for people who are starting to commute by bike? (Please also join the conversation at LGRAB and Checkerboard City!)

I made it on Monday and ate it on Tuesday, and then again on Thursday. When I first finished cooking on Monday and tasted it, I was more than slightly underwhelmed. It was OK, but sort of bland and not half as tangy as I’d expected it to be, given that the juice of half a very juicy lemon had gone into it. But by the time I got home on Tuesday, it had marinated in the fridge for about 24 hours and in the meantime, some sort of transformation process had taken place. My previously not-so-exciting chickpeas with tomato sauce were suddenly fresh, garlicky, and springy. Let’s not lie, I wanted to bathe in them. So make it, let it sit, and have it for dinner the next day or take it into the office for lunch. Best thing? You can have it hot or cold. This, I think, will become a summer favourite.

Ingredients (2 portions for the very hungry, up to 4 if you serve it as a starter or main course with bread)

• 400g chickpeas (from a can)
• 1 can of chopped tomatoes
• garlic (the original recipe uses 3 cloves, I used one very big one – next time I’d go for two)
• pinch of sugar
• 1 onion
• 2 handfuls almonds, peeled (if you’re really lazy you can buy ground ones but I peeled and chopped them myself)
• 1 small handful smooth parsley
• saffron (a few strands or a pinch of the ground variety)
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 300ml vegetable stock

Try your chickpeas and cook them al dente in salt water if they’re not completely done. Dice the onion and mince the garlic. In a large, heavy frying pan with some olive oil, cook them at low heat until they’re absolutely super tender. Add the tomatoes and the sugar, turn up the heat a little, and let them fry for about 15 minutes until they’re reduced to a very thick paste (from The Traveller’s Lunch Box, I learned that this is called a “sofregit” and is frequently used in Catalan cuisine. Given the Catalan obsession with tomatoes, I can totally see this).

While the sofregit is frying away, you deal with the almonds, parsley, and saffron. In the ideal case, you have a mortar and/or a food processor. Just throw them all in and pound or pulse them into a thick paste with the help of some water. If you’re me, you have neither – this dish brought me to the long overdue decision that the next purchase for my kitchen will be one of these handheld blender-cum-whipping devices – and will need to do some serious chopping. I also recommend making this dish if you’re feeling aggressive; just envision your worst enemy. I placed it all on a cutting board and chopped away until it was reasonably mashed. The almond pieces were probably much larger in my version than what they should be, but I actually liked that a lot. It was crunchy.

Poor the chickpeas, stock, and almond mix into the pan with the tomato sauce. Let it cook for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the sauce is nice and thick. Add the lemon juice and season to taste. Let it cool down and stick it in the fridge overnight. Eat it the next day and marvel at the flavours that will spread in your mouth.

If you like it on the more strongly flavoured side, you could probably add a dried chilli to your sofregit and add some tomato puree. I loved it as it was.

First, we bought a new bike tube for Mr Liburuak’s bike (the orange box in the back). Then we went to the bookshop and picked out each other’s books. Can you guess which one is for whom? And then we went for food: waffles and coffee. It was great!

Alas, tomorrow it’s all supposed to be over again, and rain will be with us for the weekend. Well, you can’t have everything. Today though, I even enjoyed a beautiful half hour on my balcony after work, soaking up the sun while reading a magazine.

But then also, the annoyances. If the below picture leads you to think that this beautiful spring weather is making people in Hamburg a bit crazy because they’re not used to it and it screws with their minds, then you are wrong. It’s always like this. This, friends, is how people park in this wonderful city (for the locals, this is Hochallee*):

The space between the thick white line on the left and the kerb is, supposedly, the bike lane. Hamburg drivers seem to take this as an invitation to mount an obstacle course for cyclists, though. Note the following:

• The grey Mercedes parked three quarters on the kerb (where it’s supposed to be), three quarters on the bike lane. Not great, but way not the worst thing about this picture.
• The two cars (a black Mercedes and a Jeep) parked half on the street, half on the bike lane. There’s actually a third car in front of the Jeep which you can’t see. Also, this happens in both directions: the yellow van on the far left is parked exactly the same way.
• The Jeep’s open door, which pretty much completely blocks the bike lane. Here the door is already open, but this parking “set-up” also invites dooring situations where a car door is suddenly opened in the way of an unsuspecting cyclist.

And do you know the best part? The Jeep’s door was open because its owner was loading it with her kid and heaven knows what else. I used the opportunity to point out to her she couldn’t just park on the bike lane. Do you know what she said (OK, my wording may have invited this response)? She said “Yes, I can”. Then she disappeared into the safety of her stupidly large car and drove off before I could argue with her.

Agreed, this area of town is notoriously short of parking spaces – the downside of all these beautiful town houses built before the motorised era. However, this sort of parking is a known issue. If I were the Hamburg police, I’d put a nice plain-clothed colleague there (it’s spring and nice out, they’d even get some fresh air) to catch these lovely car owners in the act. I bet that after a few days of handing out fines, the problem would go away at least for a while.

*This street is full of good intentions for cyclists that are badly executed. I’m already plotting the next post.

Filed under: Bikes Tagged: Bike Commuting, Hamburg, Nuisance, Parking, Spring ]]> http://booksbikesfood.com/2013/04/25/parking-skills/feed/ 4 liburuak http://booksbikesfood.com/2013/04/23/recipe-idiazabal-risotto-with-mushrooms/ http://booksbikesfood.com/2013/04/23/recipe-idiazabal-risotto-with-mushrooms/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:00:05 +0000 Liburuak http://booksbikesfood.com/?p=1143 Continue reading →]]> This is the first installment of the Idiazabal series. Antxon the Idiazabal cheese is happily chilling in my fridge, and I’m slowly nibbling away at this amazing product of cheese making. I don’t know how you feel about risotto, but for me it’s the epitome of comfort food. It’s warming and creamy, and best enjoyed with a glass of white wine. I always drink the same wine I use to cook the risotto, so it shouldn’t be a cheap cooking wine. Go for something nice and dry. This time, to complement Antxon’s heritage, I used a white Rioja. If you want to be even more authentic (i.e. Basque), you could try making this with Txakoli, but I didn’t have any handy. If anyone does it, I’d be delighted to hear about your experience! This risotto turned out to be absolute perfection. I was hungry. The risotto was cheesy. What else could you possibly ask for?

As for the recipe, I combined Jamie Oliver’s Basic Risotto Recipe (which I normally follow loosely when making risotto) with Baso-Etxea’s Idiazabal risotto recipe.

Ingredients (1 portion*)

• 75g risotto rice
• 5-6 medium-sized mushrooms (Baso-Etxea suggests porcino mushrooms, but they didn’t have any at the supermarket so I ended up using dark champignons, which taste a little nuttier than their white cousins)
• 1/2 onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• white wine
• about 300ml of vegetable stock (I like to have a bit more handy, in case the risotto needs it. This always depends on how much water your mushrooms contribute)
• 1 knob of butter
• a roughly 1cm thick slice of Idiazabal cheese
• olive oil

In a medium-sized saucepan, heat a very healthy dash of olive oil (about 2 tbsp.). Dice the onion and start sautéing it in the pan. Mince/squeeze the garlic and add. Once the onion is nice and transparent, crank up the heat and add the rice. Fry for about three minutes until it is transparent around the edges – make sure you stir it all the time. Turn down the heat and add a healthy dash of white wine. How much you use depends on how “drunk” you want your risotto to be. I usually add another small dash right at the end. Once the rice has soaked up the wine, start adding the vegetable stock ladle by ladle, “massaging” the risotto in a figure-of-eight movement. Always add one ladle, then stir, wait until the liquid is almost gone before adding the next ladle, stirring every once in a while so it doesn’t stick. At this point, you may also pour yourself a first glass of wine, it helps the ladling-stirring-waiting procedure along nicely.

While you do this, dice the mushrooms (about 1.5 x 1.5cm). After about 10 minutes of cooking the rice, add the mushrooms just after adding some of the stock. The mushrooms will give off quite a lot of water themselves, so be careful not to add too much stock at this point. Keep up the ladling procedure until the rice is cooked al dente (in total, this will probably take about 15-20 minutes). At the last turn of adding liquid, I like to use some wine again to give it more flavour.

While the rice is cooking away, grate the Idiazabal cheese. Idiazabal isn’t a cheese that melts very quickly, so you should definitely grate it rather than cutting it up into small pieces. Once the rice is done, turn off the heat and add the knob of butter and the grated cheese. Stir well and take off the hob. Try the risotto to see if it needs some salt (it probably won’t). Cover and let the risotto sit for 5 minutes. At this point, try to ignore the fact that by now you’re probably close to starvation. I can only implore you to be patient – this step makes all the difference. In the meantime, pour yourself another glass of wine to go with your risotto. Enjoy!

*Risotto does not reheat well. Always make it from scratch.