Category: foooood

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foooood in france

what we ate in paris

we love holidays because they are like cheat season chez nous… we eat what we want, when we want it, in order to fully appreciate the experience. paris was no exception… i even had a list prepared! here are the highlights of our 4 days:

crêpes de sarrasin, from the street. these had cheese, ham, mushrooms and egg, and were a steamy and deliciously stringy mess.


we had to try the croissants! they were ok, but my heart is loyal to their much fluffier portuguese version. the boy loves palmiers, so we gave those a shot too :)

ah… the croissants aux amandes are much more my style – oh the crème! and we tried the macarons, of course. we picked up some from ladurée, in their mini-version, and ate them in park nearby. they were surprisingly nice, and the small size was just right.


more galletes de sarrasin! we were staying in montparnasse, so we indulged in these quite a bit. with bacon and eggs, and with honey and goat cheese… mmm…


random sweets: tarte au citron and éclair!


oh, the omnipresent baguette! the french might not use the beret anymore, but true to stereotype, the ratio of baguettes/person is still surprisingly high. and rightly so, since they are heavenly. we treated ourselves to one every morning, slathered on with divine salty butter.


more baguettes with jam and cheeeeese! we had this cheese platter at the café des 2 moulins, while watching asian tourists smiling for the photo and cracking their tiny bowl of super-expensive crème brûlée.


ah! les escargots! my dad had delighted me with tales of snails from his years in france. so we went ahead and tried them too. and they were delicious, and tasted nothing like i thought they would. :) and we also tried fondue (finally!) and it was good as well.


one of the dinners was at breakfast in america, because by then we were feeling like less gourmet, more comfort food. and what better than a egg-filled burrito to satiate our hunger? :)


i’ve saved berthillon’s ice-cream for last. i wasn’t prepared for discovering this ice-cream, fully convinced no ice-cream could top our beloved vanille marille… boy, was i wrong. this… this was… magnificent. i have no words, and while i was eating it, i was delighted and furious at the same time. how dare they make this… this impossibly good ice-cream so far away from where we live?! oh the injustice!

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foooood

golden kiwis and yellow watermelons

when i entered the goal “taste 30 new fruits” on my list, I didn’t know it would be so hard for new fruits to come by… in retrospect, i think it was probably naïve of me to think that i’d have a huge variety available within reach – i mean europe isn’t exactly known for having a lot of native fruits…

so i’ve decided to change the goal to “taste 30 different fruits or vegetables”, which should be somewhat more feasible. i’ve been getting a lot of unknown vegetables on our ökokiste, and it’s been a pleasure to discover and try them out. now, they count too!

meanwhile, he’s a couple of fruits i’ve found, that i hadn’t tried before:

golden kiwis. they taste a lot like the normal kiwis, but i seem smoother than their green counterparts.

and yellow watermelons… well, if we were to do a blind taste test, i don’t think i would have been able to tell a yellow watermelon from a red one – they taste exactly the same to me!

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foooood in portugal

beehive inspection

when i was in portugal earlier this month, my brother gave me a tour of the family’s new beehive (the previous one was hit by the varroa mite and couldn’t be salvaged). the tour was a little scary, but very informative! i’m afraid we spoke portuguese throughout the whole thing, but if you’ve ever wondered what the inside of a beehive looks like, here’s your chance to find out!

yes, i know, i make a lot of questions… and hyperventilate a little every now and then… we weren’t exactly planning on publishing the video with sound, but i think it’s a lot more interesting when you know what you’re looking at. :)

i’ve since learnt that ours is a lusitana hive, (a type of langstroth hive), with a brood box (brown bottom part, where the queen nests and bees are born) and honey super (top blue part, where the honey is stored). did you notice how hard it is for the frames to come out sometimes? that’s because of propolis, a resinous mixture that is collected by the bees and used for sealing gaps.

you can see how quiet and calm the bees are in the beginning – but that quickly changes when we get to the brood box, where the queen is.

i’m only now just learning about bees, but i find it fascinating (and a little scary, as you can probably see in the video). if all goes well, this christmas we should have a nice amount of honey to give away to the whole family :)

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foooood in portugal

the francesinha

this post is about francesinhas, one of my favourite portuguese dishes. it’s a contraption of a dish, consisting of with layers of yummy things wrapped up in melted cheese. it’s typically portuguese gastronomy: meaty, heavy, no-frills and so caloric that it might induce heart-palpitations on unsuspecting foreigners… :)francesinha @ café torres

wikipedia calls it a sandwich, and the definition is true insomuch as it consists of two slices of bread with lots of fillings in between them… but if one needs cutlery in order to eat it, can it really be considered a sandwich? it feels… like an over-simplification.
francesinha @ café torres
the layout, from bottom up, goes as follows: slice of thick toasted bread, linguiça sausage, a thin steak, a few slices of ham or mortadella, and another slice of bread. sometimes there’s a fried egg on top of all of that. then, you cover everything in slices of cheese, let it melt for a bit, and pour a beer-based sauce over it. if you’re like me, you’ll want the fries that come with it swimming in the sauce.
francesinha @ café torres
the people of porto are fierce about their francesinhas, and each have their favourite. the most famous ones would be in bufete fase or café santiago. mine is actually in ermesinde, my hometown, a few kilometers from porto itself. if you’re ever around, go to café torres and give it a try. i promise it will be worth the trip!
francesinha @ café torres
hungry? :)

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foooood in germany

the currywurst replacement

paris has its baguettes, lisbon has the pastéis de belém and berlin… well, berlin has the currywurst, a fried pork sausage, drowned in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. for a long time, it puzzled me. how could this be their thing? it didn’t appeal to me at all. i guess i was never a big fan of ketchup to start with… nor processed meat fried in vegetable oil… but we dully took all our visitors to try it out, just for them to get it done. some even liked it!
honestly, i can’t see it – and i don’t think anthony bourdain was very impressed either…

these days, i just skip it and go for the fries instead, dutch/belgium style with lots of mayo. yum! :)