'You really are the snack king', W. says. Is there any kind of snack I haven't brought with me? He admires me for it. There's something very true about my hunger.
I lay my snacks out on the table between us. I've gone for an Indian theme for this trip, I tell W.: chevda, Maharashtra-style, I explain, with dried fruits; banana chips fried in coconut oil (upperi, it's called, I tell W.), and the snack of snacks: murukku, from Tamil Nadu, which is well nigh unobtainable in England, but was sent to me by Indian relatives. It's wrapped in Indian newspapers for an authentic touch. And the wild card – an American snack, this time - corn nuts, too – the only snack I know wholly invented by one person, I tell W.: by Albert Holloway in 1936.
W.'s brought nothing to eat in his new man bag, he tells me. It's a souvenir from his recent Columbian trip. He was flown all the way to Bogota to give a seminar. They looked after him very well over there, of course. He'd expect nothing else from South Americans. They're not like us, limited people. They're full hearted, open. And they love philosophy! The philosophy department was massive. There were dozens of philosophers, young and old, crowding his seminar.
W. tells me about the snacks he met on his trip to Columbia. Puntillitas, he thinks they were called: battered squid, delicious. And guindillas – picked chillies. And there were various kinds of chorizo sausage – various cold meats, the Columbians are into those. And they each pork scratchings, which is very reassuring. When you're a long way from home, pork scratchings are just the thing. They're called chicharron, with a crisp later of fat under the skin, as in its British version.
I tell W. about flaeskesvaer, Danish pork scratchings, served in great packets, and W. tells me of the Hungarian pork rind one of the fellow members of the Plymouth Bela Tarr society bought from Budapest to share. Apparently, they fry the pork rinds in lard, he tells me, and eat them with bread and spring onions. In fact, that's what Bela Tarr's probably doing right now, W. says, eating pork rings with bread and spring onions.
Lars Iyer's Blog 