Dinner in Colindres, lunch in Laredo

As you may have read elsewhere, my wife and I spent four days in Spain recently as a tenth wedding anniversary celebration trip, visiting our friends Erik and Marga. While fancy restaurants were definitely on the agenda (wait for the next post for details), we also ate Chez Rasmussen and at a few bars in town.

On the first evening Erik prepared a lovely tortilla. Check out his expert tortilla-flipping technique!

He also sliced some ham from a large pig leg he happened to have sitting in his kitchen. Check out his expert ham-slicing technique!

Plus, there were some yummy anchovies on sticks with chillies and olives. But after that they did something else with anchovies. Wait for it; I’m about to blow your mind. Anchovies…with condensed milk.

I know, right? I did take a photo but I’m not going to post it, as the finger-length cylinders of dark red fish flesh spattered with creamy white sauce looked a little NSFW. But trust me, they were amazing.

The next day we headed over to the next town: beach resort Laredo. We bar hopped drinking red wine and stuffing ourselves with tapas. After a couple of tortillas we were taken to a restaurant which specialised in grilled mushrooms.

And here they are. Huge, succulent, piping hot and slathered in garlic sauce. So hot in fact that I burnt the roof of my mouth on the first bite, but it was worth it. I could have eaten ten of these.

 

I tried to take a photo of another bar’s tapas selection, and this guy photobombed me. And then he gave me his email address and asked me to mail him the picture.

 

 

Next bar, soft-boiled egg, potato puree and ham speckles.

 

Erik ordered one enormous slice of tomato, which I think had mozzarella underneath. He seemed happy with it.

 

Finally, more anchovies with dairy products. Cheese, this time.

 

A very civilized approach to lunch, and pretty filling too. Which helped soak up all the wine. Maybe these Spaniards are onto something?

Eating Portland

I didn’t have any particular culinary expectations regarding Portland, Oregon, but then a friend reminded me via facebook that there’s a big food cart scene there. A few minutes later I’d downloaded a free smartphone app and was on my way downtown to search for lunch. According to the site which produced the app, there are around 500 carts in the city, usually grouped into “pods”.

I headed for a spot on the corner of  SW5th and Stark, where there was a pod of around twenty carts offering a wide range of fare:

Love the photo on this one:

I chose a Czech cart, which is one of the most well known and popular.

If I’d known I could get a free postcard I’d have stopped shaving before I left Brussels.

Here’s my “Schnitzelwich”, which is, as the name suggests, a Schnitzel in a bun, although a tangy red sauce underneath added flavour.

If we’d had more time there I’d love to have tried some more. In fact given the number of carts you could stay in Portland for over a year and never need to step inside a restaurant or eat at the same cart twice.

The other food ‘must do’ in Portland, about which I was also ignorant before arriving, is Voodoo Doughnuts. Friends who live nearby insisted that we go there.

We passed it several times during our stay and there was always an enormous queue.

All the bricks are glittery, for some reason.

Here’s the full menu.

And there’s a range of suggestive merchandising. I bought a t-shirt.

Here’s our haul. Chocolate covered figures for the kids, a Portland special for me (filled with cream and covered in chocolate), and the two at bottom left are for our friends who are American and who therefore insist on having bacon with everything.

Beautifully soft, sweet doughnuts, and very reasonably priced too.

Coffee Capital

One afternoon, back in our hotel after a hard day’s sightseeing in Seattle, I popped in to the tiny coffee shop next door. It was smaller than our hotel room, and could seat about five or six people.

On one wall was a fireplace, although, upon closer inspection, it turned out not to contain a real fire but a widescreen TV showing video of a roaring fire. Above it and to one side was a picture frame. This contained an iPad mini, showing a live video feed from a small camera positioned next to the coffee machine, so you could watch your drink as it brewed and poured out from the machine. And when I paid for my purchase the till consisted of an iPad with an app which let you pay by signing your name with your finger on the screen.

The speciality coffee that week was Bacon Latte: a normal latte containing bacon-flavoured syrup, served with a strip of caramelised bacon on the side. Not for me.

Osteria Francescana

The same day we had lunch in Ermes, we dined in 3-Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana. Perhaps as different as two restaurants can be in terms of style and presentation, and yet still both reflecting certain aspects of traditional Italian, and specifically Modenese cuisine.

In a little side street just off one of the main roads in the centre of town, a simple sign and unadorned metal door are all you see from the outside. Once inside the usual flock of besuited staff waited with smiles and “Buonasera”s to take our coats and guide us to our table.

The setting is fairly sober, albeit with the occasional startling and incongrous piece of modern art. There’s nothing like three pigeons and a bin bag to put you in the mood for haute cuisine, right?

There were three tasting menus available, of differing lengths. We chose the one in the middle: “Classics”.

The first starter: freshwater fish (“aula“) tempura topped with fish (“carpione“) ice cream. The coldness and crunch combined perfectly to make a confident and surprising amuse-bouche.

Next, what looked like a simple, even uninspiring piece of white fish. Baccalà, in a tomato and caper broth, topped with thyme-infused breadcrumbs. Beautiful, delicate flavours and firm yet yielding flesh. Definitely more than meets the eye.

The next dish was presented as a journey along three different canals into Modena. Adriatic eel with some kind of strong teriyaki-style lacquer, polenta on the right and apple jelly on the left. The black dust in the foreground is burnt onion.

The next dish was listed on the menu as simply “Think Green”. What this meant on the plate was a selection of mushrooms, truffle, radish and chlorophyll, all raw, and presented in such a way as to suggest (according to the waiter) the hills around Modena. The subtly earthy flavours were a nice contrast after the previous dish.

Now this was perhaps an unusual moment for the cheese course to appear, but it wasn’t really your conventional array of slices and nuggets. It consisted entirely of Parmigiano Reggiano, all of different ages and strengths, and all prepared in a different way: liquid, soufflé, mousse, foam and cracker. A lovely, tasty idea, although it’s probably just as well it was a small portion.

Another strange presentation next: a glass containing (bottom up) veal, pancetta, parmigiana, beans and rosemary. It supposedly represents, via its ingredients, a journey through France, Spain and Italy.

For the main meat course we were back to something more recognisable, but no less tasty for that. Slow-cooked guinea fowl, truffle potatoes, chlorophyll, balsamic vinegar. And just before we tucked in the waiter gave it a shot from an aerosol spray made from the bird’s bones, which was intended to give it that “roasted” flavour. It worked.

What was even better was the little mouthful served as a side dish: a crunchy slice of the bird’s skin, with white chocolate with garlic, dark chocolate with liver, and toast flavoured ice cream. This may have been the most interesting and stimulating mouthful of the whole evening.

Pre-dessert, and another break with traditional menu formats: foie gras. On a stick. Covered in caramelised almonds and containing a large blob of balsamic vinegar in the centre. I wish I could persuade Magnum to market a large version of these.

After the foie gras the dessert proper was a very mild disappointment. “Broken” lemon tart, capers, zabaglione, chili pepper. Not the best end to meal but a better use of the smashed plate idea than we’d seen in ‘t Zilte last year.

Finally, a word about the wine, most of which was exceptional and some of which was quite strange. As usual we asked for a selection of wines to accompany the various stages of the tasting menu. Perhaps most notable was the Zibibbo Serragghia, a naturally cloudy, unfiltered white which to the nose gave the impression of being a sickly sweet dessert wine, yet in the mouth was dry and acidic.

At the end of the meal we asked for a list of the wines we’d tasted and the next day they emailed us this PDF with the full menu:

Let’s put it this way: I found Modena as a town to be of limited interest, but the five-hour round trip from Genoa to visit Osteria Francescana was worth it.

Trattoria Ermes, Modena

We’d arrived in Modena (a two and a half hour drive from Genoa) just before lunchtime. We’d read in the guidebook about a couple of traditional trattorie which sounded appealing, and when we asked at the hotel they recommended “Ermes”, and phoned on our behalf to make a reservation, as this was the kind of place which sold out fast, and where people queued outside for the chance of a table.

Our place secured, we set off immediately and five minutes later made our way into a tiny, packed room off a nondescript street. Our eponymous host placed us on a table next to another young couple (her: Tuscan, him: Modenese) and quickly and rather brusquely informed us of the dishes available. This being a home cooking kind of place the options were few and simple. You pay a flat fee of 20 Euro regardless of what you eat, but you have the right to three courses, water, bread, wine and coffee.

I didn’t want to interrupt the experience too much (and was maybe a little intimidated by the close quarters and proximity of the other diners) so I only took a few iPhone photos of the dishes. A longer post (in Italian) with more pictures of the room and Ermes himself can be found here. My wife chose the cavatelli in brodo as a starter:

I went for the maccheroni; oven baked pasta with a very crunchy dark crust on top. Good, moreish comfort food for a cold February lunch time.

For the main course I had rabbit with boiled potatoes. Nothing groundbreaking, and rather starkly presented, but the meat was tender and well seasoned and tasty.

We finished with a kind of light, sweet pastry which is traditional at Carnival time and goes variously by the name of bugie, frappe, or chiacchere among other regional variants.

So, the food was simple, honest, tasty fare. Nothing spectacular, but popular with those who like traditional regional specialities prepared in the same way their grandmothers used to do it. But perhaps what made it a more memorable experience was Ermes himself. He’s quite the local celebrity and he probably exaggerates his moods swings and outsized personality at least a little in order to keep his clientele entertained. A few examples: at one point his elderly aunt stopped by for a bite to eat. He dumped her at the end of a large table full of strangers and they bickered with each other sporadically throughout the meal. During our main course someone on the table behind ours wanted to know what a particular dish was like, so Ermes picked up my wife’s plate, as she was in the middle of raising a forkful to her mouth, held it out in front of the other diners for them to glance at, then plonked it back on our table.

On the wall there’s a chart indicating his mood that day. The text at top left says “For those of you who drink to forget, please pay in advance”.

This was undoubtedly good for a few laughs, and the warm atmosphere and conversation we shared with the other couple on our table meant that the social aspect of the meal was at least as important and enjoyable as the actual food. There are a lot of press clippings on the walls and I wondered whether Ermes’ celebrity was overshadowing the restaurant itself. Had it turned into a magnet for the tourist horde (of which, of course, we ourselves were a part) who wanted a caricatured Italian shouting and gesturing and flinging plates of hot pasta around?

But on the other hand we were the only non-locals there that day, so I don’t think his popularity can be put down to catering to foreigners’ expectations. The “character” of the place is certainly a little self-conscious, maybe even a little exaggerated and theatrical, but no less genuine for that. And I did enjoy the food. Of the reviews on sites like Trip Advisor the negative ones expressed mainly disappointment with the food itself, which they felt didn’t match the restaurant’s reputation, and the flat 20 Euro fee which applied even if all they ate was a plate of pasta. But if you’re in the mood for something simple and tasty and filling, and don’t mind a bit of noise and bustle and shouting, it’s a bargain.

And by the time we left a queue was starting to form outside…

Terborght

A friend had recommended the restaurant Terborght (one Michelin star) to us a while back, so when we noticed that Groupon were offering a tasting menu for two at a very attractive price we jumped at it. In fact this is the first time we’ve seen a starred restaurant using Groupon, but I guess they’re more and more keen these days to try special promotions and discounts (RestoPass, RestoDays, etc) to get customers through the door.

Here’s our menu, for those of you who can understand (or Google translate) Dutch. The only thing here we didn’t get was the ham and melon, but I could live with that.

Our first amuse-bouche was sardine and radish. Fresh and sharp and tasty.

Foie gras with onion chutney. Fine, but the foie gras was a little cold and hard.

This one was the first in a series of dishes to use a presentational novelty. A flat plate for one dish, which serves as a lid for a warm dish in a bowl underneath. Two variations on cockles.

And then one of the best selections. The chorizo “pizza” on the right was fine, but the tomato macaroon in the middle was lovely.

On to the main courses, and this was undoubtedly the highlight of the meal. It’s just tomato and shrimp, as traditional a starter as you’re likely to get in Belgium, but the use of different coloured varieties of tomato and the slightly “deconstructed” presentation, along with the quality of the ingredients made this a winner.

And of course this was just the lid, covering the selection of shrimp, egg, croutons and avocado inside.

Another course, another lid: a slice of eel with apple, meringue and balsamic blobs.

And in the bowl underneath another Belgian classic: eel in green sauce. No complaints here either, although the traditional version comes in a slightly larger portion.

Another wacky presentation for the consommé, which was covered with a crusty dome.

Once broken, the aroma of the pigeon broth wafts free, and crumbs from the dome fall in to give you something to chew on.

Oxtail with truffle and a soft-boiled egg. Probably the evening’s only failure. It looks rather unfortunate, like something that’s been dropped rather than constructed, the egg yolk smothered the flavour of the oxtail, and the truffle was lost completely.

But we were back on track with the final meat course: pheasant with endive and sprouts. Beautiful tender meat.

Unfortunately things ended on a slightly sour note (ironic, as we were at the dessert stage). Service had slowed down enormously throughout the meal, and we’d already had an interminable wait for the pheasant. It was getting late and snow was starting to fall pretty heavily, so I enquired as to how much longer the rest of the meal would take, throwing in a casual reference to our babysitter as justification. The head waiter got the impression that I was saying we had to leave ASAP, and gave me the option of skipping any remaining courses. One of the two desert courses would be ready almost immediately, whereas the other would take more time, so I told her we’d like the quick one only. We received our plates of cold, citrus-flavoured sorbets and ice cream shortly afterwards, and the bill almost immediately.

Service had been a little spotty throughout, to be honest. We’d been served by three different staff, one of whom was obviously in charge and spoke to us in English when she heard us doing so, another who spoke in Dutch (which we managed to follow), and a third who barely spoke two words to us in any language, and who plonked our plates down in front of us without any explanation as to what we were about to eat.

Still, these slips aside, it was an enjoyable meal of modern versions of Belgian classics.

Eating Budapest

So what did we eat in Budapest? Many yummy things, I can tell you (and, more importantly, show you). My knowledge of Hungarian cuisine before going was limited to goulash and tokaj, so this was a voyage of discovery for me.

Breakfast

We tended to get up pretty late during this trip, to take full advantage of the fact that someone else was at home looking after the kids. The one time we had what could be considered a Hungarian breakfast was at the famous Gerbeaud café, just around the corner from our hotel. A selection of cheese, salami and bread, plus some surprisingly sweet bacon, a pleasantly peppery dish of scrambled eggs, and a glass of very sweet muesli-type stuff.

Street food and markets

Tecnhically the first thing we ate in Hungary was a Kürtőskalács, known in English as chimney or funnel cake. Baked on a cylindrical spit over an open fire and then dusted with chocolate, sugar, or some other flavoured sprinkling (see list on the left of the photo), then eaten while still hot and steaming.

We walked down to the Great Market Hall to browse and drool among the food stalls. Upstairs was a very busy selection of lunch and snack establishments. If we hadn’t already eaten I could happily have worked my way through them all.

Sweet pizza!

The “spit meat” looks appetising. Presumably it’s a description, not an instruction.

Most of the sausages, and a lot of the other pork products you find in Hungary come from the Mangalica breed of pig. Certainly Mangalica makes for a nicer name than the alternative “curly-hair hog”.

Dio

For our first evening meal we’d planned to go to a local restaurant recommended by a colleague, but they were fully booked, so the hotel concierge pointed us just around the corner in the direction of a “modern Hungarian” called Dio. We started with a selection of “Cold goose liver in it’s [sic] own juice, Beef tartar, ’mangalica’ pork sausage, Crayfish tartar, smoked breast of goose, fresh vegetables”.

My main course was an amazingly succulent duck breast, drizzled with tokaj, on a date & barley risotto. Beautiful. And my wife’s Mangalica chop with sausage sauce and goat cheese polenta was just as good. By this stage it was becoming obvious that Hungarians like to add a lot of sweetness to their meat dishes, which is fine by me.

The friendly waiter warmly congratulated us on clearing our plates, and offered us a complimetary shot of pálinka (fruit brandy). During the meal we also had a few glasses of Bull’s blood wine. Check out that link: the story behind the name is interesting.

Onyx

The following night we went (again, just around the corner. Our hotel was very conveniently located) to Onyx, one of Budapest’s two Michelin-starred restaurants. The other, Costes, looks great too, but it’s a little more international, whereas Onyx seems to offer more in the way of local produce and traditional recipes, albeit done all fancy and posh-like.

I mean, just look at the bread trolley.

We chose the Hungarian Evolution tasting menu, which came with a selection of wines, all of which were local with the exception of the first Riesling.

Amuse-bouche: marinated salmon, herb salad, fennel mousse.

First starter: Hungarian sturgeon caviar, vegetables, quail egg, and a “soil” made of burnt breadcrumbs, lentil, mushroom and cashew nuts.

Second starter: goose liver slice dusted with almond on a brioche, plum jam, goose liver torte with apricot jelly. Gorgeous. Also, we’d noticed a lot of goose and duck on various menus around town. No, I’m not going to make any jokes about Hungarian food being mostly “fowl”.

Fish course: Danube salmon topped with crispy veal, potato purée and a potato rosti soaked in pumpkin seed oil.

Meat course: Charbbroiled Mangalica loin on a lentil bed. Pork’s not the tastiest of meats, and I found this very slightly dry, but not so much that I didn’t enjoy it.

It also came with a side of goose liver mousse, which was more pleasant than it looks.

Pre-dessert: pineapple ice cream and granita, white chocolate. Perfect.

And the final dessert, a modern reinvention of the traditional chocolate and vanilla Somló cake. Beautiful, if quite rich and filling.

What I didn’t know was that there was another, special birthday chocolate cake on its way. This was lovely too, but by this stage I was too full to finish it.

All in all very impressive, and deserving of at least one more star than they currently have.

On our final night in Budapest we managed to get a table at Paprika, the place recommended by my Hungarian colleague. I plumped for the goulash, which was large and flavourful and satisfying.

Overall I really enjoyed what I saw of Hungarian cuisine, although I was glad I’m not a vegetarian or I may have gone hungry. But even I couldn’t bring myself to taste this particular local delicacy:

Bouchéry

Had dinner in Bouchéry last night. Decided at the last minute that I couldn’t be bothered to take any photos. That maybe, just maybe I don’t need to document all my meals.

Well, I did take a photo of the menu, but only because once we’d ordered they took it away and I wanted to be able to refer to it and remind myself what was coming next.

The first two courses were the best; the last two slightly disappointing.

In the small and intimate dining room we were sat next to two middle-aged English men who spent the evening discussing the music industry in great detail. At the table across from us sat a young woman who seemed to be there for no other reason than to chat and laugh with the waitress (friend, girlfriend?), play with her phone, and occasionally take small bites from a small plate of cheese and salad. I guess she felt she had to order something to justify occupying a table.

I took a second, final photo of the restaurant’s business card, because I liked the textures.

Invasion of the Giant Sprouts

Wandering through a park in central Brussels recently I came across this:

Then I remembered: they’re specially commissioned sculptures to advertise the year-long Brusselicious festival. As with Art on Cows, artists are given a plain model and asked to decorate it any way they like, and so the park is full of varying versions of brussels sprouts, beers, mussels and a cone of fries. And they’re all for sale. It was raining and I had my 3 year old son with me so we didn’t get to go all the way around the park and see the full set, but my favourite was this railway-themed sprout.

Look at my mussels!

An otherwise unremarkable Wednesday morning in August. My phone rings.

“Hi, is that Simon?”

“Yes”.

“I hear you’re a foodie, is that right?”.

“Ummm…well, I like food”.

The call was from a Flemish production company who were looking for “foodie” expats for a new English language cooking show they were making for channel OP12. I had been “volunteered” by a friend who thought I might be up for it, and when put on the spot I said “Ummmm…ok”, despite the fact that I’m not particularly comfortable with being on camera. In fact I’m not that comfortable cooking either. Don’t get me wrong; I love food, and I love eating. I eat pretty much every day, in fact. But my kitchen skills haven’t really evolved since my student days (pasta, toast, pasta on toast), so I was a little apprehensive about the complexity of the dishes we would be preparing.

The following Monday we drove out of Brussels to the filming location, which turned out to be the producer’s own house.

The basic set-up was that my wife and I would each be filmed separately being taught a traditional Flemish recipe by a “Flemish granny”.

As it turned out the recipes were fairly simple ones: my wife was given tomato stuffed with shrimp and I had mussels and fries. Now obviously, having lived in Belgium for over a decade these dishes aren’t unknown to us, but it was the first time we’d tried to prepare them ourselves, albeit under strict expert supervision.

Things got off to a slightly wobbly start as the first few takes were interrupted by a dog excitedly barking in the next room, but once it had been disposed of (well, moved to a different part of the house), things went more smoothly.

Paola went first and they filmed it twice, so that they could get the close-ups and cutaways they needed, but by the time it was my turn they were a little more organised and did it all in one go.

Everyone, from the director and crew to the presenter, was relaxed and friendly and that helped make it a more pleasant experience. I managed not to embarrass myself too much, although I feel it was unfair that I, the less experienced cook, was given onions to chop (yes, tears were shed) and at one point I had some problems cleaning a stick of celery, much to my wife’s amusement. Her stifled giggles did nothing for my concentration, I can tell you. I felt vindicated however when the chef confirmed that the knife I was using was insufficiently sharp.

But both dishes turned out very well, it was a fun morning, and we ended up drinking wine, chatting and eating up the food. Well, most of it. Once we’d finished the mussels clip and I’d tasted the final dish, complete with fries and mustard sauce, on camera, I turned to the presenter and asked her if she’d like to try some. “Oh god, no!”, she cried, “I can’t stand mussels!”

After the summer break I received a mail from them, just on the day that the website was launched, telling us that they’d decided not to use the footage they’d shot of us after all. Personally I thought that during filming I came across as stilted, hesitant and a bit boring, so I’m secretly relieved that this won’t be made public, although I guess I’m a tiny bit disappointed too. Still, it was a fun experience. And who knows, maybe we’ll even make these dishes next time we have friends over for dinner?

But I’ll delegate the onion-chopping to my wife.