Eating in Vienna: tongue, sliced thin and drenched in a kind of horseradish porridge. A lovely goulash, which means bits of stewed meat along with a fried egg, wiener sliced into a perfect fleur de lys (oh look, I say naively, foolishly — I think it’s octopus!), an enormous knödel at least as dense as lead, a bit of pickle. A dense, dry, hare, with lingonberry sauce. Egg and bacon, and boy do they ever fry those eggs.

At last, as Aimee has written, we give up. Admit defeat. We go Moroccan, and after a few lovely glasses of north african wine we are chattering with the restaurateur, cheering at spicy lamb, and oh, he says, I sell these Tagines too, only place in Österreich. Naturally we take one.

So naturally, our Austrian keepsake is a Moroccan clay dish, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We are using it well. We’ve had chicken, we’ve braised lamb (but not spicy enough yet), we’ve baked a kind of a mutant pizza-ciabatta. Soon all of our meals will be clayified, and it’s about time.