Lunch by the beach

It was my lovely partner at work, Alan, who first introduced me to the wonders of seafood in Barcelona, and it was also him that recommended going to Can Majo in Barceloneta. As it turns out, it is one of the most popular places in Barcelona to eat seafood, and we soon found out why. It is literally on the beach, with lots of lovely seating outside. But given we are from Hong Kong, we were very happy with our table inside, out of the sun :p

The inside decor is really very simple, and we had a table right by the kitchen. Some would argue this is probably the worst place to sit in a restaurant, but we loved seeing stuff being ferried in and out. There is also an awesome fridge just outside displaying all their treasures:

One thing I really loved was that they were happy to serve everything 'family-style', which is what we're used to in our culture. For starters, we had some octopus Galician style (scoffed too quickly for a photo), and fried small fish (also scoffed, but just enough time to take a teeny photo) - both excellent. The potatoes with the octopus was probably the highlight of that dish, impossibly smooth and waxy, and the fish so sweet and fresh. We also shared a huge shellfish platter, which was really quite bargainous at €36 given that there was copious amounts of langoustines and lobster:

Perhaps the most exciting thing in the platter was their 'spiny sea snails', which were very reminiscent of the 東風螺 we had when we were all kids. Very sweet, and very pretty:

Can Majo is also very famous for its rice, and even though paella is a southern Spanish dish, almost every table seemed to be eating it. Personally I found it a little too rich actually, maybe because the other two dishes were also 'tomatoey':

We also tried some fideua, which is a Catalonian version of paella, made with short vermicelli rather than rice. This I found to be much much better than the paella, they somehow manage to keep the pasta very al dente, and I loved the texture. I've already eaten lunch, but this has gotten me all hungry again:

We also had a rice casserole with lobster, a more brothy affair. I loved how they managed to very fairly split the lobster between our 6 plates, especially as I got some lobster brains - mwahahaha!

Amazingly, the bill came to just over €200 for lunch for 6 people (inc. a very delish bottle of Gewurtztraminer and 2 desserts), very good value given the quality and amount of seafood that we had. Definitely some of the best seafood I've had in Europe, when's the next trip back?

Mercat de Sant Antoni

Although we stayed within a 15 minute walk of Mercat de la Boqueria, we discovered we were actually staying a stone's throw away from Mercat de Sant Antoni, a much more local, but no less amazing food market near Sant Antoni metro station. As well as being close, there were none of the annoying photographers as in Boqueria who just snap and don't buy anything and hence annoy all the shopkeepers.

I really started thinking about buying a holiday home in Sant Antoni whilst walking around this market - how amazing would it be to have it as your local! The shopkeepers were absolutely adorable here. Most don't speak a word of English, and my Spanish is atrocious, yet you can tell they really respect their food, as well as knowing tons about it. They take so much care with each customer, it's simply a pleasure to shop here. For example, I asked to buy some avocados at one stall, and the woman refused to sell it to me because she said they were passed their best - you'd never get that in London.

Again, it was the variety of seafood that really caught our eye. Just look at the variety of stuff you can get - so many different types of prawns, huge hunks of tuna, dover sole, 白飯魚...:

Gorgeous looking red mullet:

So many types of clams, we were confused at what to buy. We ended up with some Berberecho (middle left hand bucket) in the end. The attention the woman paid to them was amazing - she repeatedly tapped them to seek out the empty ones, and threw any away that she wasn't happy with. We ended up putting them into a hotpot, the soup was impossibly sweet.

Even more exciting (how can you get more excited Connie?!) was the discovery of 賴尿蝦, mantis shrimp which is affectionately known as 'pissing themselves prawns' in Cantonese:

These are an absolute childhood favourite, I have such fond memories of gnawing at their impossibly sweet meat. However, they have become quite rare even in Hong Kong, especially the small native ones that we used to eat. You can still get mahoosive ones that are normally fried with garlic in the big seafood centres in Hong Kong, but they are just not the same.

But the ones in Barcelona were more like what I have in my memories. They are a complete bugger to get into - very sharp shells with lots of little hooks to get into your fingers - but they are so worth the effort. We very quickly boiled them, and they retain all their gorgeously sweet flavour. Such a shame we only ate these once.

The most disappointing though were the crayfish which we experimented with:

They look fab, don't they, but their meat was very disappointing - soft and withered. We wondered whether they had died in transit, and had started emitting enzymes which met their deterioriated really quickly.

A note on these markets though, and probably a note on Spanish shopping in general. These places stayed open really late during the weekend, until about 8pm, but there is the siesta time, anything from 12 to 4pm, when nothing is opened. Markets do not open on Sundays, and even on Mondays, they are very quiet, with the seafood sections completely dead. I suspect it is because everyone's too busy at church to go and fish on Sundays - we'll know that we should make it a weekday visit next time.

海鮮團 visit Barcelona

I was lucky enough to be taken to Barcelona with work back in 2005, and it has been a place I've wanted to take my parents to for a very long time. Amazing food, amazing weather, gorgeous beach, what's there not to like? I finally pulled my finger out this year and organised a mini food holiday with the family, accompanied by John and Julie to form our 海鮮團。

We deliberately rented an apartment very close to La Rambla, mainly for the proximity to Mercat de la Boqueria. It is a real testament to how much the Spanish value food to have such an amazing food market bang in the middle of their equivalent to Oxford Street. Unsurprisingly, we all got a bit overexcited by the immense choice available there. Just look at how perfect these papaya are:

And ultimately what we came for - fresh seafood, and so much choice too! The langoustines below were so fresh they were still bubbling at the mouth:

The Spanish are extremely open about their love of eating animals, with sheeps heads and all sorts of internal organs on display. I have zero qualms about eating this kind of stuff, but even I felt a bit guilty with the following picture (Babe is one of my favourite films!):

We returned home with a huge turbot, prawns, and some amazing vegetables to cook our first meal in Barcelona. Unfortunately, we were also a bit too greedy and quick, so I could only take one picture before we scoffed everything. My dad was a bit of a genius with these prawns, which he simply dry-fried with some salt and pepper:

So simple, so delicious. It was helped with a recent family discovery of 頭抽, which is the first pressing of soy sauce. Very similar to extra virgin olive oil, it is the first pressing of the soy beans - most soy sauce you buy recycles the soy beans to make a much more diluted sauce. It was the first time I knowingly ate 頭抽, and god was it good!!! It is so flavoursome and rich in unami, you'd think it was completely laced with MSG. You can't buy it in the UK though, so I'll treasure the few drops my dad left at my apartment - will probably scoff it all very plainly with some plain rice :)

Credit crunch cooking

I am right now officially unemployed (well, at least until May anyway), and apparently there is a global economic downturn right now, so some frugal cooking today. Actually, I had a lot of fun making a shepherd's pie out of the scraps of my fridge today, it challenged my cooking, and I tried to have everything 'homemade'. The pies are sitting at the counter cooling right now, so this is a very 'live' blog indeedy.

I cooked a roast leg of lamb the other day, and somehow we didn't eat it all, and yesterday, I cooked some pan-fried cod with aioli and mash, so deliberately made too much mash. There is a big mash potato fight right now amongst my London foodie community. My mash secret is to add creme fraiche, copious amounts of it, and to use a masher, none of those ricer things. Dave always taught me to do shepherd's pie with Bisto (yes, shocking for a foodie, but I must say it is essential), but I've run out today, so it's a little more challenging...

Leftovers shepherd's pie (serves 1 hungry Connie at lunchtime, with potential leftovers for her brother later on)
Half an onion, sliced
Half a carrot, finely chopped
Stalk of celery, finely chopped
Frozen peas
Slosh of red wine (I used rioja today)
Worcester sauce
Cornflour
Leftover roast lamb
Leftover mash

1. Fry the onions very slowly in some butter until it's all nice and soft and slightly burnt around the edges - minimum 15 minutes! Then add the carrot and celery and fry for a further 5 mins
2. Add the slosh of wine (be generous!), and mix about a teaspoon of cornflour with water and add that too. Slosh in some worcester sauce. Simmer until sauce starts to thicken
3. Add frozen peas, and simmer until the meat starts to break down a little
4. Assemble into pies in cute little ramekins

And here they are, sponsored by my lovely Le Creuset ramekins!

I'm tucking into one now - very very very nice. And all for free (kind of).

I also read today about this little dining club where this bloke in East London opens up his house to strangers and cooks for them every Wednesday, in return for a £10 donation. Check his place out on Facebook, it's called Secret Ingredient. It's such a lovely idea, I shall suggest something similar to Eugene for Uncle B's dining club I think...

Agra and Rajasthan

To be honest, I got sick of Indian food very quickly on the two-week trip. Plus all Indian food looks pretty much the same, so I also gave up on taking pictures very quickly - one curry really does look very much like another I'm afraid. That is not to say we didn't have some great food, but I did feel like I gained 2 stone in 2 weeks with all the heavy sauces and buttery naan.

We were extremely P, and really didn't have a plan until we reached Delhi. Our route turned out to be a trip through the Golden Triangle, with more of Rajasthan tacked on the end - we had been previously more ambitious, thinking of also meeting up with Meghana in Goa and also maybe Kerala, but the inefficiency of the transport system in India really doesn't allow for that much ground to be covered in two weeks.

Agra was our first stop - I'd been before, so I enjoyed the pool whilst Carl went off to see the Taj Mahal and the Fort. Here are a few photos from my 2007 trip when I went to India with work with Norby, Edwin and Jonny - partly due to popular demand that I post some non-food pictures, but mainly so I can post a gratuitous photo of Jonny. Agra Fort is seriously underrated, definitely the most beautiful fort I visited in India:


We also went to Fatehpur Sikri on the way from Agra to Jaipur - I had agreed to go to Agra again so that I could go to this place, only to realised I'd been there before in 2007 - duh! Getting up at 3am to see the Taj at sunrise meant I really wasn't awake the first time round.

Given that we were visiting a mosque, Jonny had to do a David Beckham:

But anyway, back to food. In Agra, we treated ourselves to a dinner at Peshaweri, a restaurant owned by the ITC group in India, with many similar branches around the country (both Carl and I had eaten from the same menu in Mumbai and Bangalore respectively). Most of what's on the menu is pretty ordinary, but their prawns (again, fist sized) and their leg of lamb is unusual and out of this world. Their dal murkhani will just clog your arteries, but is sooooo good:


Moving on from Agra, we spent a few days in Jaipur, the so-called Pink City. Personally, I thought it was the least interesting place we visited - being the capital of Rajasthan, it is crowded, congested, and not really that pink - but we did have one of the most memorable meals here.

I have learnt not to trust Lonely Planet for restaurant recommendations, but this time it did good! Four Seasons (not the Four Seasons of course) is a pure-veg place, and the dishes were much more interesting to the usual Butter Chicken menus we were used to. It is also conveniently very close to an Ayuvedic massage place, where we learnt we didn't really like Ayuvedic massages. The chef special is probably the dish I remember most from the whole trip - paneer, mushrooms, pineapple in a creamy sauce - don't be put off by the pineapple, it worked:

After Jaipur, we went over to Udaipur, where Octopussy was filmed, and apparently Nicole Kidman was there a few days after we were to film at the famous Lake Palace. After that was Jodphur, the Blue City, and then Jaisalmer, the Yellow City famous for its sand dunes.

Unfortunately, as we ventured further and further out of the Golden Triangle and into areas not reachable by plane, the food did get steadily worse. The 'highlight' possibly being the hotel in Jodphur which boasted an international menu containing prawns, fish, pork chops, lamb chops, duck (which got us very excited), but only had chicken available the night we were there. Miraculously, however, I managed the whole trip without any Delhi belly - Carl wasn't quite so lucky.

So I end with a picture of one of the hotels we stayed at. Being P, we were very haphazard in organisation, but ended up staying at some very cute places with a lot of character. This one below is a little haveli (a traditional Indian rich man's house) in Jaipur, in the middle of being renovated into a hotel. The outside was literally crumbling with pigeons pooing everywhere, but inside was really quite nice. Look at the size of the bed!

All in all, fascinating trip. Such a shame I will not be able to stomach Tayyabs or Indian food for a while though.

Delhi - without the belly

Monsoon Wedding is one of my absolute favourite films in the world, and one of the few times when I bought a soundtrack to a film (Slumdog's soundtrack pales in comparison, trust me), so when Carl invited me to be his date at an Indian wedding, I just had to go, naturally. We thought it would also be nice to incorporate it with a bit of travelling around India.

As a world first, I'm uploading a video on my blog (albeit pretty bad quality - my blackberry camera just doesn't really work in the dark)! One of the bride's cousins is a semi-professional dancer, and more weirdly works for one of my ex-clients back in London. Here she is in action!



In all, we spent about 4-5 days in Delhi, and I was very pleased to see the standard of the food is really very high here. Carl's friend Sonali invited us to The Indian Accent at the Manor Hotel in the Friends Colony district of Delhi, a newish restaurant, whose chef also cooks at the Tamarai in London. Its Asian fusion menu was by far the most interesting food we had on the whole trip, and for once I thought that the fusion worked. We started with an amuse bouche of paneer wrapped in rice paper, served very cold:


The highlight of the dish was the mekong basa fish, with a saffron infusion. Beautifully presented, I loved loved the green paste on the fish - for once I thought the spice complemented the fish rather than hid it. Superb.

I had some incredibly big prawns for my main (think size of fist!), good if not very exciting. More exciting was the dessert - a chocolate bombe with flames! Even my rubbish camera managed to capture the excitement!

The other big highlight of Delhi was actually on our last night, when our lovely host Gemma took us to Stonehouse, an uber-trendy bar/restaurant. Carl and I were so sick of Indian food by this point, so a decent Modern European place was just what we needed.

The food really was good, if you steered away from the weird combinations - my main of seabass with squid ink risotto and porcini sauce was just too much, the seabass also a little overcooked. But my starter of tuna and beef carpaccio with a sesame and kalonji sauce was just simply delicious. The perfect antidote to the thick Indian curries!

Unfortunately, I really can't recommend the restaurant simply due to the service. I'm not normally too fussed about these things, but it really reminded me that Asia doesn't really do good service.

But talking of service, by far the most fun meal was when Gemma had the genius idea of getting a sushi chef to come cook at her house. It is just such a nice idea, and the prices are really pretty reasonable (less than £20 a head). The sushi wasn't super exciting, but then we were in India - being able to have raw fish is good enough!

Given that the last time I was in Delhi, it was in a mad-rush case where we ate a lot of hotel food, I was mighty pleased with this time's food. However, things took a bit of a nose-dive when we started travelling - posts coming soon!

Tofu

Well, it is my last night in Kunming, and I'm getting rather upset. I will especially miss the people - my teachers 涛涛，龙飞 and 飞飞 (for once I will use simplified Chinese for them!), and of course my wonderful, wonderful host family. They have been absolute diamonds to me, and my homestay mum made me all my favourites for my last supper: 夫妻肺片 (Husband and Wife lung slices), and a simple tofu stirfry.

Tofu is probably the most underrated and misunderstood Chinese foodstuff there is. Foreigners only seem to eat it if they are vegetarian, but it is the most wondrous wondrous stuff. I was brought up on tofu mixed with rice, the thought of it immediately fills me with cosy warmth.

However, I did want to warn people about the tofu in Yunnan and Sichuan. I first came across it on the trip to Chengdu with Caris and Rosy: after a few hours of wandering around in the mountains, we thought we would go and have a nice bowl of '豆花' which appears to be available everywhere, thinking it is just like the lovely dessert 豆腐花 common in Hong Kong (and which happens to be my mum's 拿手 dish). How wrong we were!!!

豆花 in both Sichuan and Yunnan are savoury, naturally served with chilli. In Chengdu, it appeared to be just a big slab of slightly wobbly tofu, with chilli on the side, presumably to be mixed with rice. A Kunming specialty is 豆花米线, which I definitely do not recommend: rice threads are quickly boiled, then drained, and topped with chilli sauce, preserved vegetables, peanuts, and then a big 'pet' of wobbly tofu on top. Even a tofu fan like me struggled through my bowl - bleugh!