Currywurst

Like many Premiership footballers, I enjoy taking pictures of my sausage with my 'phone.

Ever since I saw a ‘close up’ feature about currywurst on the BBC’s news web site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8408716.stm), I’ve been excited to a degree best described as ‘juvenile’ about the prospect of trying this exotic new dish.

Apparently the Germans have the same enthusiasm for curried sausage as they do for lederhosen, beer and war. The origin of the dish is that a German Housefrau in 1940s allied occupied Berlin obtained some curry powder from British troops and created the curried sausage and the lucrative sex-for-food trade at the same time

Currywurst is available in London at Kurz & Lang, 1 St. John Street, Smithfield, London (www.kurzandlang.com). They are, apparently, a German sausage importer and the shop has a small café attached. And by café, I mean griddle in a room.

The café itself is a monument to white tiling, like a better class of public convenience. There is a shelf running along the front windows and at this you can sit up on stools, watching the world go by while passers-by look in end envy you your hot sausage and cold beer. Those having their wurst inside get it on a china plate, those who wish to sit outside at the small tables on the pavement and fag up get paper plates.

Inside it’s a cosy and warm place to be on a winter’s evening. The hiss and sizzle of sausages cooking on the griddle complete with the banging tunes coming out of the radio, more commercial rock than oompah. It wasn’t in the least crowded but there was an atmosphere, which by my reckoning was never less than about 70 per cent pork fat and occasionally took on an almost solid appearance not unlike one of my more enthusiastic weekend fry-ups.

There are a variety of sausages on offer, all cooked by an authentic German chap sporting a rather unfortunate beard. I went for the posh end of the wurst experience; currywurst, sauerkraut, fried potato and a roll. In truth all you need is sausage and sauce and roll.

The currywurst is a sausage, smothered in a spicy brown sauce and then sprinkled with curry powder. Seeing curry powder shaken over sausage and sauce was truly a cultural shock and something of a taste sensation. Curry powder in British cuisine has the reputation of being used timorously by housewives in the late 1970s to bring a touch of the exotic to the dinner table. But not too exotic - lest one inflame passions that, in an era heavy on man-made fibres and material, might lead to chaffing, or tremendous static discharge. No, you used just enough to have you reaching for your glass of blue nun.

It was quite a surprise to see that it’s curry powder that gives the currywurst its kick, not so much a curry sauce, Curry sauce is, of course, a staple of after hours cuisine in the Midlands where, smothering chips, it is often the last, desperate throw of the dice to try and head off a hangover. It’s probably possible to work out where you are in Britain by what people put on chips, curry sauce means Midlands, chips and gravy means t’north and chips and cheese is, of course combined with a glass of white wine to constitute the ‘ladies special’ at the Café Piccante in Edinburgh. (www.cafepiccante.com). God knows what they serve further north than that; maybe the national dish of the Shetlands is chips and sheep dip.

To drink? An excellent lager – pauliner in this case, but there was quite a selection. It was such a shock not to be grossly overcharged for decent German beer that I quite forgot to steal the glass as a souvenir.

Also on sale was Jagermeister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4germeister). This was sold in a bottle (from which you pour a shot), a little bottle (from which you pour a shot), and in a test tube (and if you’re drinking from that, it’s time to go home). I’m wary of drinking anything from a test tube as a search of literature shows this inevitably leads to transformation into Mr Hyde. Unleashing an inner beast without conscience usually happens when I drink stella anyway.

In addition I’m made aware that there’s a practice called Jagerbombing, surely the preserve of somebody hell bent on self-destruction, you drop a shot of Jagermeister into a glass of red bull and end up hammered but unable to sleep it off. It’s exactly this sort of behaviour that makes you hellish grumpy and sets a nation down the road of fascism.

Fast food, convivial atmosphere, with booze! Surely this is the way forward.