Hungry?

Hungary – or rather Budapest – is quite a surprising city. For those who've not been, the city is actually divided down the middle by the blue Danube, creating effectively two cities: Buda and Pest. While in Hungary, there was only one thing that I knew I had to try – goulash.

For me, goulash conjures up memories of Mother's Day back in Melbourne, and specifically to a restaurant in Mornington unpleasantly named “The Garlic Kiss”. At the Garlic Kiss (TGK) for a number of years, my brother, mother and I have tucked in to one of TGK's most-loved dishes: spaetzle and goulash. Combined with red wine, my little family unit have spent mothers day silently supping and thoroughly enjoying this hearty, warming dish.

So upon arrival, I knew that if Hungary's goulash was anything like the Kisses, I would be eating goulash for days.

Having been quite restricted in Western Europe in a budgetary sense, Eastern Europe breathed life back into our funds. Food, accommodation – things are CHEAP; so while walking around the Castle Hill area of Buda, when we stumbled across a gorgeous, cosy restaurant in which to defrost our bones and stomachs, which had been frozen by the European autumn (not even winter!) we said “yes'm”.

Seated on a banquette and surrounded by rich Hungarians, French tourists and other well-to-do foreigners, we started by ordering drinks (a Hungarian red at EU8.00) and then we got down to business. For entree, I ordered goulash soup (the only goulash entree on the menu) and for main a macadamia-encrusted breast of chicken with short noodles, vegetables and a red wine jus. Mr Von S has the most buttery pumpkin soup I've ever tasted, and a goulash main.

My goulash soup entree was served in a very novel way – in a pail with its own soup ladle, meaning I ended up with two and a bit bowls of the stuff. Not at all what I was expecting, the broth-based dish had swirls of oil and lashings of paprika floating above tender pieces of pork, vegetables and short pasta. Certainly not the hearty goulash of The Kiss, but an experience into 'real' Hungarian goulash soup. Mr Von S's goulash was incredibly similar to my entree, hold the soup. Once again, tender pork, vegetables and spaetzle, with a rich gravy.

So after a rather underwhelming goulash experience, I wasn't too sure that Budapest had anything else that could really pique my interest.

Not being the savoury-fiend that Mr Von Strudel is, he lapped up the opportunity to sink his teeth into more Hungarian salami than you could poke a tooth-pick at. However, while at a market hall waiting for Mr Von S to get his meat fix, we decided to wander upstairs to the food court to sample a dish a tour guide had told us of.

Susie (her English name) had said that this particular dish was what Hungarians ate after a big night out – a Hungarian cheeky cheeseburger if you will. On this particular day my feet had gone completely numb: it was pouring with rain, and we were feeling a bit glum (yes, we chose the wrong time of year to explore north-eastern Europe). But of course, we all know what makes Fifi Von Strudel happy. It was time to taste Langos.

Simply put, langos is a deep-fried flat bread, usually served with cheese, meat or sour cream. It can also be served sweet, with powdered sugar or jam. I chose cheese and ham. I am so glad I did. Each langos is made while you wait, meaning there may be a delay in getting the langos to ones' stomach, in fear of oil-burnt mouth-roofs, but believe me, the wait is well worth it. Eating langos made me think of eating hot jam donuts from the Queen Vic Market in Melbourne or from the Sunday Camberwell Market. The greasiness, the warmth, the doughiness. Salivating. While. Writing.

So friends, when in Hungary, one need not be (hungry...get it?) – wrap your chops around a langos or two (just 70 euro cents for cheese) and try some Hungarian wine, which was also surprisingly good!

One, two, skip-a-few, ninety-nine, one-hundred.

Hello possums!

Call me presumptuous in my skipping of Switzerland and Germany, but here’s a nice surprise for you all – you’ll be hearing a whole lot more about Germany in coming months. I shall say no more. It is for this reason that I’m skipping Switzerland and Germany, whose cuisines are essentially very similar. The only thing the Swiss really hold over the Germans’ heads is Roesti (which I didn’t even get to try) Raclette and Swiss chocolate.

But enough of the kraut-eaters, we’re moving over to the Eastern Bloc, to the beatroot eaters!

Far from being a scary, the Eastern Bloc is a fantastic place for a foody – things are cheap and food is mysterious! I simply love playing guessing games at meal time, and it’s always a surprise as to what exactly is going to land up on your plate as dinner. I didn't say it was always a nice surprise.

First food stop was Krakow, Poland. Or to be more precise, somewhere in northern Poland, for we first tasted Polish cuisine on our 15 hour train journey from Wurzburg to Krakow via Berlin and Warsaw. All I can say is thank goodness for picture menus; saviours of non-polish-speakers everywhere. My meal was pretty safe – a chicken piadina. Mr von Strudel ventured out to try Polish dumplings, or pierogi. Pierogi were soon to become our friends. A mix between

dirty dumplings from Camy Shanghai Dumpling house, and ravioli, Mr von S had ‘russian’ pierogi, with a filling of potato and cheese. These pierogi almost tasted more like gnocci than anything else, and were rather ‘wet’ i.e. not drained properly. When eating in a train carriage in the middle of the Polish country-side, I would say that the hungry cannot be fussy. Despite being a bit bland, the pierogi were served with sautéed onions which adds a nice something-something to this texturally-pleasing meal.

I’m not sure if it’s come across much here on this blog, but for me, eating encompasses much more than the usual senses. For me, eating is as much about the texture of food as it is about the taste and the sight. This is why I’m not the biggest fan of prawns or fish. The texture just really throws me. Crab, lobster, Morton Bay Bugs etc are all great – the texture is more meat-like and thus more pleasing to my palate. Thus, while something may be quite plain or dull in a taste sense, if the texture is awesome, I might just love it. Plus, there’s always salt.

We managed to get only one other sitting of pierogi in while we were in Poland and the second time around, they were fabulous.

Starting our meal with a bone-defrosting cream of broccoli soup (it was raining and about five degrees outside) russian pierogi floated to us on UFO shaped dishes, merrily dancing around a puff of creme freche, crowned with alphalpfa sprouts. One by one, the pierogi were devoured. There was silence for a good couple of minutes, broken by yours truely with some comment or other about deliciousness or a groan of enjoyment, I cannot remember which in my pierogi-induced haze. I had seen potential in those dining cart pierogi, I had believed that that little dumpling could achieve great things. And, my friends, that potenital was realised in a little cafe in the old Jewish quarter in Krakow. It was a happy moment.

If I could have squeezed in another couple of sittings of pierogi consumption, I surely would have. Instead, we ate dinner three nights in a row at the conveniently located wood-fired pizza place around the corner from our hostel. While not necessarily Polish, the pizzas were damn good. Not pierogi good, but close(ish).

My final thought, memory, recommendation to anyone venturing to Poland: do yourself a favour and order a hot chocolate for dessert. Do not order a hot chocolate AND dessert, that would be a mistake. I managed two such 'beverages' which I ate - yes, ate - spoonful by delicious spoonful. Those Poles like their hot chocolate a THICK, bordering on pudding consistency, and it turns out, so do I!

So, phoenetically speaking, jenkooya Poland, for a very enjoyable couple of meals.

Holland - a very quick round up.

Holland.

Three foody things you need to know:

Stroopwafels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroopwafel

Albert Heijn, or more specifically, chicken curry from Albert Heijn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Heijn

and

Poffertjes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poffertjes

And my best tip for the most amazing apple strudel pastry-thing (I nearly ate one every day I was in the 'Dam) it's somewhere on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal approximately 90.

Carb-lovers' paradise: Belgium

Brussels. What a gorgeous little city. Old cobble stone streets, window boxes full of vibrant, red geraniums, crisp, cold mornings and plenty of sunshine. Yes, it was definitely a change from the some-what bleak landscape of Spain. Thanks to the lovely (I’m being sarcastic) folks at Ryan Air, we scored EU9 flights from Zaragoza, Spain to Brussels, Belgium. And by Brussels, they actually meant a 55 minute bus-ride outside Brussels. Jerks.

Anyway, with a shift in geography comes a lot of changes – temperatures shifted from early thirties to high teens; language shifted from Spanish to German, French and Flemish (take your pick...I choose German!) and the food shifted from protein-based and sweet-deficient to carb overload.

First assault on my feeble attempt-at-maintaining-figure: Frites mit mayo.

These thick-cut French fries with mayonnaise - or frites sauce which is a mixture of mayo and mustard - are everywhere in Belgium...and Holland...and Switzerland. Walking down to the park – hey, there’s a Fritkot, let’s get some frites. Doing a city tour and feeling peckish? Let’s get some frites! It’s just before dinner but I really feel like Frites! Hey, let’s get some. Pretty much any excuse you could think of, we would get us some frites. Served in a cornet (a cone shaped from newspaper) a variety of sauces are available to accompany your fries: curry sauce, mayo, ketchup, ‘special’. And the best part – you eat frites with a tiny little fork, provided by your Fritkot (I still have about 3 in my bag...all light pink).

Having written the above paragraph, I can now see why I may have stacked it on a tad. But come on, frites are SO good. And available in three countries I spent a bit of time in. And affordable. And delicious. And sadly, no, DEVESTATINGLY, they are fattening.

Of course, frites were not my only food-issue in Belgium.

Assault number two on the attempt-at-maintaining figure: waffles.

OK, so you simply cannot go to Belgium and not eat a Belgian waffle. As a sweet tooth and devout food worshipper, it would have been sacrilege to avoid eating a waffle and I would simply have never forgiven myself.

So I did what I had to do and forced Mr von Strudel to join me on my pilgrimage to the tourist centre where we found waffle shop after waffle shop right next to each other.

Now, a word from the experienced to the non-experienced: there are two types of waffles available in Belgium. There is the round waffle ‘with the sugar on the inside’ as our hostel staff member told us i.e. mixed into the batter, and then there’s the square waffle ‘with the sugar on the outside’. If you would like to sample a true Belgian waffle – go the square one, which is apparently the traditional Belgian waffle. As we were in the tourist centre, we got sucked into having a round waffle each – dripping in chocolate and ice cream mind you (and speculaas ice cream at that for those who have the privilege of knowing how awesome speculaas is). Not content with a tourist waffle, we went in search of a true Belgian waffle – and found one across the road. It was easy to taste the difference in the waffles: the Belgian waffle was lighter and eggier – definitely no sugar in the mixture. My preference though? As a candidate for sugar-induced coma in later life, definitely the sugary round, chocolate and ice-cream laden one. Authentic-schmautentic.

Love and marriage, horse and carriage, waffles and...?

CHOCOLATE. Meet assault number three.

His name is Belgian chocolate. He’s rich, smooth, comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and is delicious. Seriously, I would marry Belgian chocolate if I could. We were actually rather restrained in the chocolate eating category and only went to one ‘Leonidas fine Belgian chocolate’ shop once. Although I did go a little crazy when I saw Milky Bars with speculaas in it. White chocolate and speculaas. Wow.

OK, so far we have frites, waffles and chocolate. We round out our offenders with that amber ale that has sparked a series of world-wide cafes to be named after it: Belgian Beer.

Yes, my readers, it was carb overload, and washed-down with that carbonated carb-filled beverage, beer. Well, what can you do when the local beer is Hoegaarden? We managed to sample quite a few beers (thanks to the bar within our hostel). We also managed to go to a micro-brewery which brews a very special beer that is only made in Belgium: Lambic. As I’m not very good with all the fancy beer language, I’m just going to paste Wikipedia’s explanation of what a Lambic beer is. I’ll round it out with what it tasted like.

Here we go: “Lambic is a very distinctive type of beer brewed only in the Pajottenland region of Belgium (southwest of Brussels) and in Brussels itself at the Cantillon Brewery and museum (that’s where we went!). Lambic is now mainly consumed after refermentation, resulting in derived beers such as Geuze or Kriek.

Unlike conventional ales and lagers, which are fermented by carefully cultivated strains of brewer's yeasts, lambic beer is instead produced by spontaneous fermentation: it is exposed to the wild yeasts and bacteria that are said to be native to the Senne valley, in which Brussels lies. It is this unusual process which gives the beer its distinctive flavour: dry, vinous, and cidery, with a slightly sour aftertaste.”

Well, sour is right. Lambic beer doesn’t really taste like beer much at all. We tried some fruit limbic as well – cherry to be precise. Had I not known that what I was drinking was actually beer, I would not have been able to classify what exactly the liquid was. Cherry lambic is red and has a slight fruit flavour to it, but is not sweet as one may expect. It was sour and actually a little difficult to drink. Definitely an acquired taste.

So there you have it folks. Belgium: not the country for people on a diet, but definitely the land for people who love carbs. I’ll see you all at chocoholics anonymous later. Like, in a year.

Fun links!

http://www.leonidas-chocolate.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculaas

P is for...

Dear readers,

I am currently in Krakow, Poland – a really long way away from the promised Portugal, but hey, at least the country still begins with P.

In the time it has taken me to get from Portugal to Poland, I would say that I’ve managed to gain about 5 kilos. Oopsies. And after thinking about it a bit, I have determined that my downfall all began in that pirri-pirri chicken eating country, the land of Nandos (not actually...Nandos is South African, bet ya didn’t know that) and really good soccer teams, Portugal.

You see, and sometimes you might actually see if you venture into certain Nandos stores, Portugal is home to a little tart, and no, her name isn’t Juanita. To be precise, these divine little tarts are said to have originated in a bakery near Lisbon, in a small suburb called Belem. The tarts themselves are known as Pasteis de nata, or to you and I, Portuguese tarts. You’ve probably had some at one stage or another – they are readily available in Australia - but you’ve not had them until you’ve had them at the Bakery in Belem; crisp, flaky, multi-layered pastry and warm, smooth custard, with a sprinling of sugar, crisp like the top of a crème brulee.

After visiting Pasteis de Belem and finding a table among their dozens of cavernous rooms, which are desperately required due to excessive patronage, we sat down to find each table equipped with a powdered sugar and a cinnamon dispenser. OK, yes we’re eating sweets, but what’s with the cafe-style accessories? . Mr Von Strudel and I controlled ourselves when ordering and demanded...ahem, requested the waiter to bring four tarts between us. This order could have easily spiralled to dizzying heights. Tap a little cinnamon or powdered sugar on top of your tarts and prepare to see the light More-ish? Understatement!

Having fallen in love with these tasty morsels, I began seeing Portuguese tarts everywhere (like when your friend has a certain make of car and you start seeing them everywhere?) however none that I sampled could come close to the fresh-out-of-the-oven deliciousness of Pasteis de Belem. Still worth the eating and a bargain at EU 0.70.

Did I mention pirri-pirri before? Oh, yes I did. And no, it’s not called perri-perri a la Nandos. I’m not quite sure where the deviation comes from, but you will not find anything perri-perri in Portugal.

We first happened upon pirri-pirri on our first night in Lisbon, at a dinner held by our hostel (rated second best hostel in the world – Lisbon Lounge – highly recommended). The amazing cook, Pedro whipped up a Portuguese storm for dinner: Portuguese soup, an enormous salad complete with berries, pirri-pirri chicken, ice cream, red wine and more bread than you could imagine. Nandos is grossly inferior in comparison to this freshly-prepared chicken, with spices and oils and who knows what else lathered all over it. With only a mild warmth to it, the sauce is certainly not overwhelming, but it certainly does fill your mouth and cover your fingers, which you will lick clean if someone else doesn’t.

While in nearby Cashcais, and it was down to the Portuguese equivalent of the charcoal chicken shop for lunch. The first thing that hits you, even a kilometre away is the smell of roasting chicken. A large cloud of smoke floats above the shop from the barbeque, over which dozens upon dozens of chicken rotate, awaiting their destiny – my stomach. For the cost of a charcoal chicken back home (none of this crazy AU$14 for a meal at Nandos) we feasted on half a pirri-pirri chicken and small chips (which was actually enormous). There was finger-licking, chip-dunking, the search for excess sauce; and all this done on a park bench opposite the take away store. For such a small price, it was possibly the best meal I ate in Portugal, and certainly has happy memories for me.

But then again, anything involving food generally leaves me quite content.

Helpful links

Not sure what Nandos is? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nando's

Pasteis de Belem: http://www.pasteisdebelem.pt

Pastei de nata recipe: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/portuguese-custard-tarts---pasteis-de-nata/Detail.aspx

Hasta luego Spain...finally

Apologies for the delay in subsequent postings. I can imagine you’ve all been hanging on the edge of your seats wondering what in Allah’s name horchata is, not to mention how appetising something called a farton could be. Well you can all exhale now, for this is to be a bumper edition where I cover off Spain in one fell posting.

We first came across street vendors pouring ‘horxata’ out of refrigerated vats at all the popular tourist destinations in Valencia. It looked like a mix between chocolate milk and an iced coffee, and was really quite affordable. Mr Von Strudel and I vowed we would try it and notch it up to ‘cultural experience’, regardless of what exactly horxata was, we would try it.

Well, it so happened that this traditional southern-Spanish drink was explained to us the next day on (another!) free walking tour. Our Scottish guide pulled us over the side of a main square next to not one but TWO horchatarias. He then pulled out a bag of what looked like dried chickpeas, or garbanzos, that the Spanish are fond of eating. He told us each to take a nut and try it. What we’d been offered were not garbanzos, but tiger nuts, or chufas (not tiger testicles as an animal-loving American once mistakenly thought). The nut itself was quite sweet, and slightly bitter. The outside was quite rough and striped, which is, I suppose, how the nut came to be named.

He then explained the following which I have stolen from Wikipedia:

“The horchata (in Valencia, orxata of xufa) is a refreshing drink (including dessert), prepared with water, sugar and tiger nuts”

and

“It is served ice cold as a natural refreshment in the summer. Tigernut horchata is also used in place of milk by the lactose intolerant.” This should be very good news to a certain friend back home *HIII FAITHHHH*.

Served with horchata was some sort of pastry that dunked in the liquid and slurped down. At that stage, we hadn’t quite caught the name.

The next day, we returned to the same location and sat down to order our horchata and pastries. Not knowing the name of the pastry, we made a dunking motion and out came our pastries with our milky-looking concoctions.

I took one sip of my horchata...and nearly spat it out. Expecting something pleasantly sweet like the nut I had tasted yesterday, I wasn’t quite prepared for the chalky texture of the drink and the bitter, almost sour taste of the beige liquid. Bracing myself for round two, I hoped that dipping the pastry in the drink would magically make things better. Sadly not. The pastry itself was nice, much like a plain éclair or the like and obviously fresh. Pity about the name.

I guess I can notch the experience up to, well experience. But never again.

Tapas gratis in Granada

We arrived in Granada late evening, and the place was alive. Streets were busy and the temperature in the early twenties. We asked the guy at reception (who we dubbed Ernie, as in Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street due to the uncanny resemblance) if there was a guest kitchen so we could do the budget traveller thing and cook ourselves an affordable yet nutritious meal. Ernie fairly laughed at us and fired at us in Spanish (never tell the Spanish you can speak or understand Spanish if you’re at a beginner or intermediate level) that haha, there was no need for a kitchen when you have free tapas.

Really? Free? If there’s one thing a budget traveller loves more than a guest kitchen, it’s free stuff.

Not quite sure of the whole ‘free tapas’ thing, we keep wondering what the hitch was. We walked through the buzzing laneways of Granada, seeing people sitting outside enjoying little plates of food, drinks, and children running amok at 11:30pm on a Thursday night. Oh Spain.

Too chicken on the first night, by the second day, we had steeled ourselves and went to a gorgeous outside restaurant and ordered a pitcher of Sangria. Out came the pitcher...but no food. We looked at each other and thought that perhaps we had to order the tapas. Before we could make that silly mistake, out came a waitress with a little pan of paella. She placed it in front of us and left. “This is for us?” Our smiles grew wide and we tucked into the saffron-yellow rice. Next round, we received deliciously garlicky potatoes. We couldn’t believe we were being fed simply because we were drinking.

The day continued, we got wise and started ordering the smallest beers we could, and received plate after plate: fish croquettes, jamon and melon, bread and meatballs, olives, salad. We went to bed that night without dinner, having spent the day eating and eating.

Although the free tapas rule doesn’t just apply to alcoholic drinks, as we found out at lunch-time the following day. Escaping the sweltering heat outside, we went to our local sandwicheria and ordered two lemonades and our sandwiches. Out came the drinks...and some fries and jamon on bread. Score! Free entree.

Some restaurants obviously do better tapas than others, and I would hazard a guess that there’s a correlation between price of drinks and quality of tapas. In any case, one can really ‘eat for free’ in Granada – although just be careful about the cumulative cost of drinks. If you want to be a super cheap back packer, order your drinks one at a time and see just how much free food you can squeeze out of people!

NEXT: Potugal, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland...maybe all in one posting

Repeat after me: paella

Valencia: home of oranges, a park where once a river ran, and most importantly to this blog, paella.

Now, for who just read that word as ‘pay-ella’ STOP. Say it again like that, and you may as well line up at your nearest tattoo parlour for your very own Southern Cross on your shoulder-blade. Would it help if I tell you that in Spanish language, double L, as in the double L in paella, is pronounced as a Y? OK, now try it again: pie-ay-uh.

I’m not quite sure how Paella came to be born in Valencia, but I’m really glad it did. I’m also really glad that I managed (with some help from my travelling companion) to suss out a somewhat less touristic restaurant in which to sample this Valencian speciality.

When thinking of paella (did you pronounce it correctly this time?) most people see bright yellow rice with opened mussels, prawns and other sea-dwelling creatures swimming around enjoying their saffron-bathed surroundings. I hate to break it to you, but that is not traditional Valencian paella. While it’s nice, it’s not the real McCoy.

So what is? When we took our seats at a beach-side restaurant in Valencia, it was already 4:30pm on a lovely, balmy afternoon. We took a look at the menu, spied what we came for and requested in our best Spanish: quesiera Paella a Valencia. “Are you sure you don’t want the seafood one?” came back at us in accented English “it is very nice”. No, we wanted what we came for: paella with rabbit and chicken, like any Valencian would want. “Oh, OK, if you sure...but might be 40 minutes”. No problem for us – at least we knew we were getting freshly cooked paella, and not a batch of packet-mix that had been sitting there for hours.

Two jugs of sangria later and out came our very own pan of paella – it was huge, or at least it seemed huge. We of course managed to finish the entire thing. On top of our saffron-infused rice and hunks of rabbit and chicken, were cooked snow peas – something we would notice more of on top of this Valencian speciality.

For those who followed Master chef season one (an eternity ago now) you may have remembered Gary and George crapping on about the importance of the ‘crust’ in paella – now, I’m still not quite sure what they were going on about, but I do know that the tastiest rice in the paella dish is what I would suppose is the equivalent of a crust – slightly more cooked than the rest of the rice, each grain takes on additional flavour and texture. Much like the skin on a good roast chicken, but it’s not a crust as such – just clumps of rice that have come stuck in places to the paella pan.

I think I almost ate that entire meal with my eyes closed, savouring each mouthful of that golden grain.

For those who claim that paella is a glorified version of risotto, I have this to say to you: seriously?!? Are you kidding? Step away from the Ainsley whatshisface packet paella and go to a decent Spanish restaurant and try saying it again.

Next up: horchata and fartons in Valencia

Tapas gratis in Granada; and

Pasteis de nata in Lisbon, Portugal

More info on paella: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paella