9 de set. 2005

Casa do Alentejo



Lisbon, Rua das Portas de Santo Antão 58

A bit of Alentejo in the centre of Lisboa. You not only get the finest food, you also enjoy a house with an interesting architecture. Influenced by the arabs, the style of Dom Manuel and various other mixtures, Casa do Alentejo is a gem of architecture. Combine this with excellent food and some of the best wines of Protugal and you are close to heaven...

Percebes



Percebes are a species of crustraceans, they are a kind of Barnacles (Pollicipes cornucopiae). They grow in the surf of the rocky coasts of the Algarve and Galicia and are collected by local fishermen. These fishermen have to climb down the cliffs and collect the percebes while trying not to be smashed by the waves on the rocks, the most dangerous job on the european continent. Percebes are a rare delicatesse.

How to eat them




Secure the upper part.



Fiddle around until you can get the outer skin of the foot to move.



Remove the outer skin.



Enjoy...

Casa dos Pasteis do Belem



Lisbon, Rua de Belém 84-92 Homepage

In the centre of Belém, the place for Pasteis do Belem (or Pasteis de Nata as they are known outside belem). A Cafe with a lot of back rooms, offering much more space than it looks like. Since 1837 you get the finest and best pasteis here, eat them while they are still warm!

Cafe Internacional



Much less well known than Peter's Cafe Sport, the Cafe internacional is the place for the locals in Horta. It looks like the place where the telegraph engineers met in 1900, having the charme of a place lost in time since about 100 years. Much less overcrowded and much more a normal cafe than a tourist attraction we preferred it to Peter's. Definitely a must and an insider's tip if you are visiting Faial!

Kreativpause



Sorry for not updating, but Cogumelos Aprocalhados have been travelling around Europe to find new and interesting places... Check back to see where we have been.

Restaurante República



Location: Faro, Rua da Republica

Opening hours: Lunch all days except sunday (?) and dinner all days
Prices: expensive, but well worth the money

A place where, when you ask what the chef recommends, you get shouted at that everything is recommendend, this is not one of those places where only one dish is good and the rest is crap, here everything is good. And amazingly enough, the chef is right. Everything is brilliant. We had sole with clams which was excellent, as dessert we had Tarte de amendoims and some other typical algarvian sweets, you just cannot have enough of it. A must!

6 de jul. 2005

4 de jul. 2005

Extreme Home Schnitzeling

Don't try this at home.

9 de maig 2005

The Fat Lady Sings

Location: Obere Karlsstrasse, Erlangen, Germany
Opening hours: most of the time
Prices: above the Erlangen average, but still OK
Overall Rating: One of my favourite pubs



What do you say about a place where they play songs like The Menstrual Rag, have a good steak, fish and chips, have homemade chips, sandwiches, devilish hot pizaas and good beer? It is run by a fun irish-man, if he isn't bringing your beer it's one of the nice waitresses. Just a fun place to be, a nice pub. We need more of these, definitively.

8 de maig 2005

Tomato Soup Cake

I found this recipe in a book called "The New York Cookbook". It sounded so strange, I just had to try it... It's amazingly good.

Ingridients
125g vegetable Fat (in Germany this is "Palmin")
250g sugar
1 large egg
300ml Tomato Soup (canned or freshly made...)
250g Flour
1.5 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. Cinammon
1 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
0.5 tsp. ground cloves
1 dash of salt
60g walnuts
90g raisins

Preparation
Heat the oven to 180°C.
Whisk the vegetable fat that it gets a bit foamy. Join in the egg and the sugar, mix it until it gets a homogenious paste. Add the tomato soup, then join all the dry ingridients, mix until it looks like pastry. Fill in a cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes. Cover with icing sugar.

23 d’abr. 2005

Asparagus in Orange-Vanilla-Butter with Scallops




800g Asparagus
50g Butter
2 Shallots
1 tbsp sugar
150 ml white wine
1 orange (organic preferably)
thyme
salt


Orange Vanilla Butter

20g Butter
2 Shallots in little cubes
1 cask of Orange, organic
80 ml Asparagus stock
juice of 2 oranges
1 vanilla husk
60g ice cold butter
Filets of 2 oranges
2 tbsp battered cream
2 tbsp parsley<
salt and chili to taste

Scallops
12 Scallops
olive oil
thyme
rosemary
salt, pepper


Clean the asparagus and cut it into 3cm long pieces. Let the butter melt in a pan, add the 2 halfed shallots. Add sugar and let it melt. Join the white wine and the asparagus. Add the sliced orange and the thyme. Let it simmer for around 15 minutes until the asparagus is al dente. Keep the stock.

For the Orange-Vanilla-Butter melt the butter, fry shallots and the cask of an orange. Join the stock and the orange juice, add the vanilla. Reduce to nearly half. Bind it with the cold butter, add salt and chili to taste. Join the orange filets and the batterd cream. Pour over the asparagus.

Fry the scallops with the herbs in olive oils. Serve the asparagus in deep dishes with the fried scallops on top.

Variation: instead of the scallops try sweetbread.

15 d’abr. 2005

Café du Soleil, Genève

Location: Switzerland, Genève
Opening Hours: every day until 23h30, reservation is recommended
Prices: normal (for Switzerland)
overall rating: a must go there



Once in Genève, Café du Soleil is one of the spots you can't miss. According to the owners, "la cuisine du soleil, préparée avec des produits de la région et de saison, se veut simple et abordable". Although this is truth, prepare yourself to be surprised by the place, people and food.

We have tried the pavé de boeuf au poivre vert and fondue moitie-moitie. At this point, I have to explain that we were three persons at the Café. Otherwise it would be impossible to accomplish such a demanding goal. The pavé was saignant, comme il faut. It was pleasant, but not enought to justify the loss of the fondue.

The fondue is the speciality of the house and deserves a detailed description. It is made mainly with swiss cheese (Gruyère and Vacherin in equal portions), wine and kirsch. Start by squeezing small portions of bread on the fondue fork; after that you will get half an hour of pure pleasure. But be careful: according to Asterix experience, if you loose your bread in the fondue pot, you will have to dive in the frozen waters of Lac Leman. During the fondue it is normal that you need some help. A nice bottle of Chasselas white wine will do it just fine. This is a regular young wine with a subtle note of red fruits. It is not divine, but we wouldn't like to have something distracting us from the fondue. To finalize this magnificent dinner, we had a café and a calvados.

A last word for the very special atmosphere of the Café, a place where you will always find an expert advice on everything you need (even if you don't need or want the advice). If you visit Café du Soleil in January/February don't forget to ask for the nice calendars they have.

6 de març 2005

Palace Hotel, Buçaco

Location: Portugal, Serra do Buçaco
Opening Hours: every day, reservation is recommended
Prices: high (for Portugal)
overall rating: a must go there



The Palace Hotel in Buçaco is one of Portugal's most famous hotels. It is located in a palace built in the beginning of the 20th century mimicking manuelinic style. Located in one of the most beautiful national parks it is sourrounded by woods featuring trees from all over the world which portuguese explorers brought back from their voyages.

In such a place only the four courses menu was an option. We began with an amuse geule (paté de figado), offered by the house. It was definitely the begining of a beautiful friendship! For starters we had espargos com queijo da serra, soupa de legumes and sardinhas à chéfe. These divine creations were followed by tamboril enrollado em bacon and massada de tamboril. Third course tourné de pato and vitela mirandesa. This abundance of delights was highlighted with a combination of desserts. As a worthy finish of such a bacchanal we chose Fim de Seculo and oporto wine (Niepoort vintage 1995 and LBV 1992).

The most notable thing about Buçaco, worth not only a paragraph of it's own, but whole books of it's own, is the wine. Only available in Buçaco and three other hotels in Portugal, made especially for these hotels in the region of Bairrada this wine is the nectar of ancient portuguese gods. The white is fruity but corpeous as only a Bairrada can be, available in vintages from 1944 to 2000 (which we tasted). The red is a largely dominated by Baga grapes, which give him a rich warm flavour, with light notes of tannines. Also this wine is available in vintages from 1944 to 2000. The 1995 is more mature as the 2000, while the younger is more vivid in it's fruit notes. These wines are definetely on the list of portugals best's wines, surpassing many famous wines from france, spain, etc.

All of Buçaco Palace Hotel forms a great ensemble, the fine food and wines are served by descrete but attentive waiters, the glasses are refilled when necessary without unnecessary invasions. Overall, this Hotel is a place to be when in Portugal and well worth the money.

Zé Manel dos Ossos, Coimbra

Location: Portugal, Coimbra, Baixa, just behind Hotel Astoria.
Opening Hours: Sometimes...
Prices: medium
Overall rating: a must go there

This is the place Cogumelos Aporcalhados was born, named after the dish of the day, "porcified mushrooms". Zé Manel's great speciality, as the name suggests (not Zé Manel, but dos Ossos) is cooked pork bones, which make a great starter. Followingt this, the menu offers a wide variety of fish and meat dishes, especially good are the dishes involving boar (javali). All dishes are traditional portuguese cuisine, no distractions. Just trust the waiter to recommend you something. Everything we tried so far was good and served in great quantities.

What makes Zé Manel special is the atmosphere. The walls are covered with papers ripped of the paper table clothes, full of poems and other writings thanking Zé Manel for great evenings. Also a lot of curiosities and oddities ornate the walls. The waiter is all prepared to make a joke. The question is not what do you want to drink, the only question is white or red. The house wine is nothing special but it is not bad and does not involve a lot of headaches afterwards.

5 de març 2005

Entradas

Como alguém disse, todos os prazeres da vida são, à escolha, imorais, ilegais ou engordam. Aqui dedicamo-nos aos últimos. E, se os encontrarmos, também aos outros. Preparem-se para uma aventura culinaria que irá deleitar muitas linguas e explorar os sabores do mundo, quaisquer que sejam. Stay tuned und watchen das Blinkenlight.