I Hear it's Raining in Ireland

Here are some pictures to cheer you up. They are of the market in Tashket, Uzbekistan taken by my dad while he was on a work trip. The variety and colours of the produce is simply amazing.

Boxwood Cafe

To those of us not in the know the reservations policies of well-known London restaurants can be something of a mystery. For our London trip we were on the waiting list at the River Cafe - to this day I have no idea if we came anywhere near getting a table or not. Happily Gordon Ramay's Boxwood Cafe operates a very egalitarian resevations policy, and bookings for tables up to 4 persons can be made online from one month before the date in question.

We turned up for lunch on a wet cold Sunday afternoon and were greated warmly despite a backpack and a myriad of parcels - all these, plus coats, were wisked away allowing us to proceed unemcumbered into the dining room. The clientele was a varied mix on a wet sunday afternoon, some hotel guests, well-heeled locals, out-of-towners doing their Christmas shopping and a few tourists.

What we ate:

For The Doc a kind of deconstructed salad - this is the sort of dish that relies on the quality of the individual ingredients and in this case everything was spot on. I've been trying to replicate the texture and creaminess of the advocado and I'm close but not there yet.

For me a ceviche of salmon with crab, grapefruit and chilli. I was slightly afraid that the chilli would overpower this dishes but it was a simple background presence with the citrus of the grapefruit the predominant note.

The Doc went for the burger - but not any old burger, a veal and foie gras burger. The veal was melt in the mouth tender which is not what you expect when biting into a burger, and he didn't feel the texture worked in a burger setting. Surprisingly, given Gordon Ramsay's rants on the subject, the burger could only be ordered "Medium" (or "mooing", as the Doc commented).

Once I started reading the menu this dish intrigued me, I would never have paired tuna with parsnip and then added a pepper sauce to the mix - I just had to order it. The tuna was served rare, as I had requested, and was meltingly tender. Surprising the combination of the slightly sweer parsnip puree with bold flavour of the pepper sauce worked really well and the parsnip crips added a dramatic flair to plate that needed something to bring it all together.

This was possibly the best pear and almond tart I have ever had. Drenched in syrup it was moist without being too sweet. The custard was spot-on, silky, sweet and warm.

When I ordered the chocolate fondant I was told 'there will be a fifteen minute wait madam' , 'not a problem' I replied. There was no way a fifteen minute wait was going to come between me and a chocolate fondant. Was it worth the wait? Definitely. What arrived on the plate was perfectly cylindrical but one small slice in with the side of a spoon and the whole thing collapsed with molten chocolate flowing accross the plate. Accompanied by some salted caramel and mint ice-cream (kept from melting in a pre-chilled metal canister) which just tempered the richness of the chocolate slightly.

Two coffees were ordered and arrived with two chocolates each. The looked like pretty standard chocolate truffles coated in cocoa powder. I bit into one to find molten caramel cascading out, simply wonderful.

The total bill including sparkling water (but not wine, we don't tend to drink a lunchtime) was a nice round £100, which is a lot less in € than it was a year ago, but there is a set lunch menu which I feel is a steal at £25.

London Calling

The Doc and I made the trip to London last weekend and our first stop of the trip was Borough Market. The Doc described it as 'medieval' and he's right, it's been there since AD43. It's a true market - full of tourists too - but the primary focus is still the daily trading.

My favourite trader is definitely Brindisa - set up in 1988 they import fine Spanish food into the UK. I got some cheese, manchego and membrillo to go with it (unfortunately I had to had the membrillo over at security in Satanstead as they consider it a liquid :-().

There was a huge queue for the coffee at Monmouth both at the stall inside the market and at the shop outside it. We joined the throng to see what they were excited about it, the coffee of the day was 'Finca La Fany' from El Salvador. It definitely not a 'standard' coffee, I liked the taste, a rich dark flavour and the heart shaped foam was a nice added extra!!

Our other foodie shopping experience was as the food halls in Harrods. If you have never been here it has to be seen to be belived, any place that has a whole room devoted to chocolate goes right to the top of my list. The Doc's head was turned by the whole corner devoted to Jelly Belly. We spent a good hour wandering around marvelling at the selection. The thing that I found odd was that they also sell staples like milk and Wheetabix - are there people out there who buy everything in Harrods???

Say tuned to see where we went for lunch...........

How Y'All Doin??

Last week The Doc and I were in Houston visiting our good friend BJM. Houston is somewhat of a culinary conundrum. The NYT food critic Craig Claiborne said that there are only five regional American cuisines worth considering - bbq, Cajun, Creole, Tex-Mex and soul-food - these all converge in Houston. It is the city that eats out more than any other in the US, yet it is also the fattest city in the US. As the fourth-largest city in the US it also has a very diverse range of ethnic eateries, the expected Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Indian and Chinese abound but there are also Korean, Ethiopian, Sardinian and Greek restaurants. A good guidebook is the 'Food Lover's Guide to Houston' which includes information on grocery stores, markets, bakeries, speciality shops, bars cafes, kitchenware shops as well as restaurants.

On our whistlestop tour we ate at:

Brasil: BJMs local cafe. Simple salads, quiches, pizzas, good coffees and yummy desserts. The emphasis here is freshness and organic where possible.

Aladdin: We got take-out food from here. In my head 'take-out' is associated with greasy 'fast-food' but this Greek restaurant has a big selection of the freshest salads, 3 served with a meat of your choice (grilled to order) for $10.50, and the best hummus I've ever had, served with fresh pitas. There is a large Greek community in Houston with their own Orthodox church and school (about 40% of the students here are ethnically Greek). As we left they were preparing for their annual Greek festival.

El Tiempo: The one miss of the trip, The Doc's fajitas were good but my Chalupas del Mar didn't taste of much and came smothered in iceberg lettuce. It was also overpriced for the level of resaturant that it thinks it is.

Paulie's: Down the road from BJM's house (although nobody walks anywhere in Houston, I sense a possible connection with the obesity level). A simple neighbourhood Italian which is also known for its cookies, these were a little on the sweet side for me but the pecan tart is to die for.

Beck's Prime: This styles itself as 'The World's Freshest Fast Food' and is a far removed from McDs as a fast-food joint can be. I had the California burger, with fresh guacamole and a patty that was reassuring inhomogeneous in both shape and texture, a burger that both looked and tasted like it once ran around a field. The chips (skin on) were good but the limeade was a little to sweet for my liking - I did eat lemon halves as a child though, so my taste is probably on the sour side for most.

Mockingbird: The standout meal of the trip. This bistro is proud of its wine list, it runs to 17 pages and although I'm not an expert on any wine, nevermind American ones, those in the know do rate its selection. The food on the other hand I can comment on, the menu here is the one we chose from (it changes regularly). I started with the calamari which were plentiful with a light crispy batter and not at all chewy. At that they were not a patch on my main course of buttery mountain trout served with lobster and garlicky green beans (and only $29!!). The Doc's Kobe beef burger came topped with 1/2" of Hudson Valley foie gras and the accompaning truffle fries brought that heady earthy smell to the table. Around the table we also had the tuna with wasabi potatoes, the free-range chicken with roast veg and the Angus beef fillet, there were votes of approval all around. Dessert was a carrot cake served with ginger ice-cream and caramalised pineapple, a combination I'll be trying at home soon.

Starbucks: had to add this in. It seems like there is one everywhere you turn in Houston, even to the extent that there are two directly across from one another in BJM's local mall!!


A tip to all those travelling to the US, I bought two Microplane graters for my sister for $12 each, I love these graters and use mine everyday but I've never seen them here for less than 30 Euro.

Barcelona

Introducing my first guest blogger, Little Sis, on the gastronomic pleasures to be found in Barcelona.

"Recently, I was lucky enough to spend a long weekend in Barcelona. Aside from the opportunity to watch some fantastic football, enjoy the sun and see some of Gaudì’s fascinating - and mad - buildings, my dad and I also got to sample some of the gastronomic delights of the Catalan capital.

We arrived hungry and disorientated after a 4 a.m. start, badly needing solid, reliable comfort food. Luckily, we soon found an innocuous-looking underground tapas bar called ‘La Bodegueta’ which quickly served up some of the simplest, and best, food I’d ever had. We shared plates of chorizo, cheese and the eponymous tortilla, and also enjoyed one of Catalonia’s signature dishes, crusty tomato bread. I particularly liked the tortilla, which I ended up eating at every possible opportunity after that - this was probably the best example we had. The cheese plate was also interesting, especially a variety which had been stored in oil and had a tangy, moist-but-not-oily taste. All in all, it made for an excellent start to our trip.



That night we ate at ‘Tragarapid’, a fast-food (fast-food in the Catalan style, which basically means cheap and informal) restaurant in the Tragaluz group, who have restaurants all around the city. We also lunched at the flagship ‘Tragaluz’ restaurant and a third member of the group, ‘Bestial’ on other days. ‘Tragarapid’, although vastly preferable to fast-food outlets here, wasn’t particularly memorable until we got to the dessert. I had an unremarkable rigatoni with tomato sauce and parmesan, while dad had fried chicken. However, the dessert was one of the single best things we ate on the trip - a basil and lime sorbet. The sharpness of the lime perfectly complemented the richness and slight oily taste of the basil; this dish was a revelation. ‘Tragaluz’ itself was more impressive, though that was possibly helped by the fact that dad brought along a Catalan friend who seemed to know every member of staff. We shared a portion of deep-fried aubergine to start (apparently, the Catalans share the tendency to deep-fry everything in sight with the Scots, though they haven’t yet got to Mars bars) which was much better than it sounds. We both had a simple, but perfectly made, starter of rigatoni drizzled with pesto and then I had a main course of seared veal. For dessert, a mango coulis cut through the richness of my chocolate brownie; this made for a wonderful conclusion to a great meal. The third restaurant, ‘Bestial’, was one of two restaurants from the group on the seafront (the other is ‘Agua’) and was definitely the weakest of the three. We started with seafood antipasti, which wasn’t bad but also wasn’t anything special. For the main course, dad’s mushroom risotto was reasonable while I accidentally ordered foie gras ravioli in a port wine sauce. Given that it was a hot afternoon, this was far too rich and cloying to have on he menu and neither of us could eat it. Although the caramel and cinnamon ice-creams we had for dessert were good, they didn’t really compensate for a disappointing meal. As this was one of the most expensive restaurants we went too, I can’t recommend it - the food never lived up to the stunning setting.

In a spirit of adventure, we booked a dinner at ‘Loidi’, a new venture by the three-time Michelin-starred Basque chef Martín Berasategui. A four-course set menu for €33.65 per person was thankfully quite a bit short of Michelin prices and both of us enjoyed an excellent meal. A tasting menu for €45 was also available for those that were so inclined. We were offered glasses of cava as soon as we entered, although possibly that was because we were the only people there - as a general rule it’s not a good idea to go out for dinner at 8 p.m. in Barcelona. I started with a rice and chicken casserole, while dad had an intriguing leek and egg soup - the egg was actually poached before being cooked in the soup. Both dishes made for a good start to the meal. For the fish course, dad had a helping of monkfish and clams, while I had a double helping of rabbit - I don’t like most fish. The rabbit was rich and juicy and my only problem that I wasn’t quite hungry enough to do it justice. I continued with the rabbit into the third course while dad had a lamb ragù. This was perfectly cooked; the lamb falling off the bone in a deeply rich sauce. The meat was perfectly complemented by the bottle of Finca viladellops we shared. The high standard continued into the desserts where I had an interesting coffee and Bailey’s spongecake topped with a crème brûlée-style crust. Dad had an apple tart with a sharp-tasting apple ice-cream. He finished with a ‘cortado’ - an expresso with a shot of milk - the traditional way to finish a meal in Catalonia. On the whole, we thought that ‘Loidi’ was well worth the visit.


No visit to Barcelona is complete without a trip to the Boquería, arguably the best market in the world. For a foodie, the only question is how many days you spend there. It’s a riot of colour and scent, a real feast for the senses. It’s here that you can get ‘cinco bellota’ ham, made from pigs that have been fed only on acorns. As it’s expensive, there’s a sliding scale based on how many acorns the pig has been fed. Even the smell of this ham is intoxicating, and I find myself savouring the tiniest amount of it. There are stalls dedicated to every type of chili and spices and sections full of fruit, vegetables and fish. A few of the stalls also act as cafés where you can sample ham, cheeses and myriad varieties of chorizo. This place is mesmerising, and any foodie who goes to Barcelona will find themselves in heaven.


‘Cacao Sampaka’ is a place of pilgrimage for every member of our family. There are branches throughout Spain and they serve the greatest hot chocolate known to mankind. I’m not exaggerating. ‘Azteca’ is drink made of 80% cacao infused with spices and tastes much like solid chocolate that has been liquidised and mixed with cream. It’s so rich that it starts solidifying as soon as you take your spoon out. I dream about this stuff. There’s also a variety of pastries available, although they’re mainly a sideline to the chocolate. We had feather-light melindros which were excellent for dipping, and perfectly buttery - but not over-rich - brioche. Dad also had a yoghurt and lemon smoothie which was apparently nice, but still ended up unnecessarily diluting the chocolate (in my opinion). It’s also a shop, so you can take some of the chocolate home with you - and, believe me, you will.

Although that’s a round-up of the most notable places we ate, Barcelona is full of good food. The Camp Nou serves up fresh, sturdy hot dogs at half-time with particularly good ciabatta-style bread. On our way home from the Parc Guëll (one of Gaudì’s) we dropped into the ‘Store Café’ where we had lovely, fresh drinks - I had lemon with ice, while dad had a strawberry and lime smoothie. Fresh bocadillos (sandwiches) are readily available and are almost invariably filled with excellent quality ingredients. The only misgiving we had was about the hotel breakfast - it was €18 per person for a mediocre meal, while we had hot chocolate and pastries the next day for a fiver in a small café. It’s something to watch out for if you go there as it’s easy to eat well for little money once you avoid the tourist traps. If you get the chance to go there - and eat there - savour it!"

I've been tagged

This is the first time that I've been tagged

First, the rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2. Share five random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.

3. Share the five top places on your “want to see or want to see again” list.

4. Tag a minimum of five random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment in their blog.

Firstly I was tagged by Rachel at Fairy Cake Heaven

5 random and/or weird facts about me
1. I swam competitively until I left school
2. I have more than 50 pairs of shoes
3. In my day job I work as a physicist
4. I have an uncanny ability to remember numbers - this can be dangerous when it means that you know your VISA card off by heart!
5. When wearing heels I'm more than 6ft tall


5 top places on my "want to see or want to see again" list
1. Italy: I've been once, on a family holiday as a teenager and it whetted my appetite (literally!) for more. But we're going.....in June.....on our honeymoon. I can't wait, we're going to Tuscany and are going to move around over the two weeks. A few days lounging by the pool in a villa, a few days exploring the towns and cities and we may even sneak in a cookery course for a day or two.

2. India: We love Indian food, one of our best friends is Indian and we have had the pleasure of his cooking here in Ireland. But also five years ago we went with him to visit his parents in New Delhi, from this base we took day trips to Jaipur and Agra as well as a few days up in the Himalayas. Visiting a country such as India with a native is just fantastic experience, eating in roadside stalls that you wouldn't be brave enough to try yourself, going to the restaurants that tourists never hear of. We had dinner in the houses of a number of his relatives, the Indian way of dining involves a selection of dishes placed in the centre of the table from which you select what takes your fancy. This is a great way to try a wide variety of dishes, although we both came away with the view that there is no such thing as a good Indian dessert (they are all far too sweet). On our last night, on the way back to the airport, we had dinner in Bukhara in the Shereaton Hotel - that year it was voted one of the top 50 (and best in Aisa) restaurants in the world by Restaurant Magazine. We got to go into the kitchen and see them putting the family-sized naan in the tandoor - one man puts it in while another holds his legs so that he doesn't fall in. It was an absolutely fantastic meal, classic North Indian dishes but just really well done as well as the best dahl I've ever had. India is hot, noisy, chaotic but magic and we can't wait to go back.

3. London: because I've never been. I know it seems odd to say that, I've been in all London's airports but always on the way to somewhere else. It's just that when it comes to a weekend away it seems so expensive compared to Paris or Barcelona.

4. Dubrovnik: I spent less than 24 hours here last summer and I really want to go back and explore it further, it's gorgeous and all around this region you can get fantastic fresh fish for dinner.

5. Wexford: my hometown. Now I have no particular desire to move back there but there is something special about Wexford in the summer, fabulous beaches, buying strawberries on the side of the road. Oh and in "La Dolce Vita" it has what Tom Doorley described as "some of the best Italian food in the country".

5 people I'm going to tag
Jen from Little Bird Eats
Caroline from Bibliocook
Valerie from Val's Kitchen
Sarah from Stuff Yer Bake
Brett from Educated Nobody