It must be autumn: Norway feasts on sheep's head

[Guest guest]

http://tinyurl.com/8g4mj

It must be autumn: Norway feasts on sheep's head

Voss, Norway

20 November 2005 10:19

It takes guts to stare your food in the eyes and then swallow them,

but once Norwegians are let loose on a smoked sheep's head, they let

nothing go to waste, except the bare bones of the skull.

In Voss, a tiny town in the mountains near the south-west Norwegian

fjords, people have always eaten the " smalahove " , which means " sheep's

head " in the local dialect, and the autumn is the best season to munch

this delicacy, eyes, tongues, ears and all.

" The best part are the eyes. These are the most-used muscles and

therefore they taste best, " said Ivar Loene, who runs Norway's only

" smalahove " factory, where patrons can also savour the traditional

dish in the intimate setting of a wooden chalet.

To help his guests overcome any squeamishness, the stout 64-year-old

host leads by example. He plunges his knife into a sheep's eye socket,

takes out the eye, cuts it in half, discards the pupil and pops the

remainder in his mouth. " It just melts on

the tongue, " he says with a smile bordering on the ecstatic.

After being delivered by the local abbatoir, the heads are unfrozen

and run through an infernal torchblowing machine which burns off the

fur. They are then washed, cut open, emptied of the brain and gristle,

before being salted and smoked.

They are served hot, with boiled potatoes and mashed kohlrabi.

Cephas Ralph, a Scot visiting Norway on business, admits to his

scepticism.

" Oh my God! Oh no! It's got eyelashes. It's looking at me, " he says

after being served his sheep's head.

His Norwegian colleages burst out in laughter, and Cephas Ralph says,

somewhat sheepishly: " The meat is lovely but the eyeball... I think I

will wait for a few years before I have another one. "

A little later on in the evening he confides that " when I worked for

the fire brigade, I saw torn off legs, arms, brains, but nothing

compares to this " .

His English colleague, Nigel Gooding, keeps more of a stiff upper lip.

" It's a bit a of a visual challenge. But the meat is very good, " he says.

But Gooding still says " no thanks " to the sheep's eye and also managed

to stay out of the way of the ram's testicles, which are on the

starter menu, served with a little pineapple.

That the foreigners haven't fled the table altogether may well be due

to the generous flow of home-brewed beer and the local firewater,

" akevitt " , which dull their resistance.

" A mouthful of smalahove and a sip of akevitt. The sheep's head is

really a bit of an excuse to have a drink, " says Geird Vikoeren, a

leathery pensioner and a regular in this sheep's head haunt.

Ivar Loene says demand for sheep's heads is rising every year and he

reckons he will prepare about 60 000 sheep's heads either for local

consumption or to be sent elsewhere in Norway this year.

" As far as anyone can remember, we've always eaten sheep's heads in

Voss. Since it was the main staple food of our ancestors everything

had to be eaten, without leaving any waste, " he said.

This was a long time ago, but even now that Norway, once poor, has

become very wealthy thanks to its oil reserves old traditions die hard.

" Today we eat gourmet sheep's head for pleasure, " he added.

Norwegians also continue to eat the traditional " lutefisk " , soaked

stockfish, " rakfist " , fermented trout, or whale meat, and even polar

bear and seal meat.

And as if this was not unusual enough, a restaurant owner in southern

Norway recently added raven and seagull to the menu. - Sapa-AFP

[Guest guest]

On 11/20/05, downwardog7 <illneverbecool@...> wrote:

> http://tinyurl.com/8g4mj

<snip>

> In Voss, a tiny town in the mountains near the south-west Norwegian

> fjords, people have always eaten the " smalahove " , which means " sheep's

> head " in the local dialect, and the autumn is the best season to munch

> this delicacy, eyes, tongues, ears and all.

<snip>

> " A mouthful of smalahove and a sip of akevitt. The sheep's head is

> really a bit of an excuse to have a drink, " says Geird Vikoeren, a

> leathery pensioner and a regular in this sheep's head haunt.

<snip>

> " As far as anyone can remember, we've always eaten sheep's heads in

> Voss. Since it was the main staple food of our ancestors everything

> had to be eaten, without leaving any waste, " he said.

<snip>

> Norwegians also continue to eat the traditional " lutefisk " , soaked

> stockfish, " rakfist " , fermented trout, or whale meat, and even polar

> bear and seal meat.

Hey it all sounds like a yummy experience to me.

--

" It is no crime to be ignorant of economics,

which is, after all, a specialized discipline

and one that most people consider to be a

'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible

to have a loud and vociferous opinion on

economic subjects while remaining in this

state of ignorance. "

-- Murray Rothbard

[Guest guest]

> Hey it all sounds like a yummy experience to me.

,

Potential NN field trip? Send to eyeball-eating finishing school?

B.