Pottering in Palermo

After such a long hiatus in exploration, it feels right that the first blog in two years should be about a food tour, since this is one of my favourite travel indulgences!!

On a seaside trip to Sicily, we took a couple of days out from the peace and quiet of Trabia to explore Palermo. Our guide book wasn’t exactly kind in its introduction to the city, but we love bustle so decided to give it a go. We left the car and took the train, because we’re not quite mad enough to face driving in an Italian city. Day one consisted of numerous spritzes and a lot of walking as we explored what, in my opinion, is a buzzing, exciting, interesting and often beautiful metropolis.

One of the more positive things the guidebook had to say about Palermo was about the street food, and it recommended Streaty as the company to introduce them. So we arrived at the lions outside Teatro Massimo to meet Marco, company founder and our guide for the tour. From here, our little party of Brits and Germans headed to Capo market to start our tour.

Marco seemed to know everyone in the market by name, and we were welcomed warmly like friends everywhere we went, being allowed ‘behind the scenes’ to look into the kitchens of the stalls whose wares we would try. Our first selection of delights came from the family run Arianna Frigitorria, a ‘fryeria’ where everything served is, unsurprisingly, deep fried!.

Cazzilli, little balls of potato with a hint of mint; chickpea fritters called panelle; arancina (no, not a typo) filled with a traditional ragu bianco of veal, onion, carrot and peas, wrapped in saffron flavoured rice and uber crisp breadcrumbs; and a little added extra because I’d asked about the vegetable I’d seen being sold across Sicily but didn’t recognise, fried cardoons.

Deep fried cardoons, a green leafy vegetable

All of this was washed down with Forst, a Sicilian-brewed lager that tasted great alongside all of the deep fried bites.

We moved on through the market, sampling olives, chatting to stall holders, and meeting many a local character as we went. The market was just re-awakening after several days of closure following the death of one of the long-time fishmongers, lost to the Covid pandemic. This was a stark reminder that all is not yet ‘normal’.

Next stop was to try something we certainly would have walked by had we been alone, dismissing it as a slightly sad looking pizza, but sfincionello is a food stuff of its own. In a similar realm to pizza this fluffy base, topped with an onion and tomato paste with lots of oregano, is toasted to order in a compartment within the server’s cart.

After a brief stop for a glass of Sangue, a sweet chilled dessert wine, and another local beer, Stretto, while we nibbled on some delicious Caciocavallo cheese, it was time to move on to the most challenging tasting on the tour!

Pani câ meusa is a famous street food in Palermo. Consisting of sesame-topped bread stuffed with chopped veal lung and spleen that have been boiled and then fried in lard, it’s not one for the faint-hearted! The sandwich is seasoned with fresh lemon juice before serving, and for me this was the saving grace. I didn’t love the sandwich, but I certainly didn’t hate it. The lemon juice cuts through the fatty, offalyness of the meat, and I was happy to have tried it but won’t be rushing back!

A street vendor making the famous Pani câ meusa

The square where we tried our sandwich was filled with BBQ smoke, and from this source came our next, and my favourite, treat. Mangia e bevi, literally meaning eat and drink, is a delicious, salty snack of spring onion wrapped in bacon and barbecued. It was so moreish, and is the thing I’ll crave most from the tour.

Barbecuing mangia e bevi and other meaty snacks

Our street food adventure was topped of with a traditional cannolo (the singular word for cannoli), a crispy fried pastry wrap, stuffed with a creamy filling of ricotta and chocolate chips. Washed down with a strong macchiato, it was the perfect end to a wonderful tour.

A plate of cannoli and other sweet treats

Copper and Ink – an English Gem and a Journey to Remember

There’s so much of the world to see and share that I often forget to tell you about the gems in my own incredible home city. London is most definitely home, and it’s a city that sprawls, so few travellers make it to some of the best bits (in my humble opinion) that require just a bit more exploration.

Copper and Ink is a restaurant in the stunning once-village of Blackheath. If you’re a foodie traveller and want to see some ‘real England’ on a trip to London, then I couldn’t recommend a visit to Blackheath, and this establishment, more. Whilst definitely being part of the London sprawl, Blackheath manages to maintain that village feel, and has numerous lovely pubs in which to enjoy a great British pint.

A view into Blackheath village, including the fabulous Hare & Billet pub

If you’re up for making your journey to Blackheath a real adventure, then a Thames Clipper trip from Westminster Pier to Greenwich will show you numerous of the best sites in town (think Tower Bridge, Tower of London, The Shard etc.) before depositing you for a glorious walk alongside the Cutty Sark, up through Greenwich Park (best view in the city), past the Royal Observatory, and straight to the famous heath itself. If I could only do one thing on a visit to London then this journey would be it for me.

A Thames Clipper cruising the river close to Greenwich

Copper and Ink itself is the establishment of flamboyant former-Masterchef contestant Tony Rodd and his partner, Becky. What they have created is a restaurant delivering the high-end, quality food you’d find at some of London’s more famous institutions, but in a relaxed neighbourhood setting. Not only are the food, wine and service divine, but the prices are far more reasonable than those you’d find an an equivalent restaurant in the heart of the city.

The seasonal, monthly-changing tasting menu and accompanying wine flight are really not to be missed. At just £70 for both at the time of writing, this is serious quality for the price. The five courses are creative and use locally sourced ingredients from independent suppliers, the wines provide a wonderful complement to the food, and if you’re fortunate enough to be seated downstairs then you can also enjoy the theatre of the open kitchen.

Potato ragu, braised leaks, crispy potato strings, crème fraiche and winter truffle

Espresso panna cotta, coffee & chocolate sponge, and dulche de leche ice-cream

All of this splendour is a 20 minute direct-train journey away from Central London (just use your Oyster or contactless card) when you’re ready for a quick journey to bed with your full stomach and happy heart.

London is so much more than the standard tourist trail so do get out and see the glory of what some of us are fortunate enough to call home. And if this is home for you, then make sure Copper and Ink is on your to-visit list.

Seafood and Eat It!

I almost avoided eating seafood in KL because I knew I’d soon be sea-side on the beautiful island of Langkawi. It was certainly worth the wait! There’s seafood in abundance here, even though there seem to be a surprising number of establishments that have gone to the wall. The island is certainly much quieter in terms of visitor numbers than I expected, although it seems those working in the tourism industry see 1st December as some sort of line in the sand, after which they expect serious visitor numbers for a number of months. But I digress, back to the food!

Seafood here is fresh, in many cases still living when you arrive at your table, and this makes it pretty damned delicious! In many cases, you can also tuck into your seafood supper whilst you watch the bright green lights of the squid fishing boats bobbing on the horizon, catching the next day’s dinner. There’s certainly no excuse for frozen seafood here!

My highlight so far has got to be the wok fried crab in chilli paste and lemongrass, which I enjoyed at The Cliff, where I arrived looking like a drowned rat following a particularly spectacular rain storm! Having dried off at the bar with a very potent purple cocktail, we were seated overlooking the sea, and my love of crab won out, particularly since I’d spotted some fine looking specimen perched on ice as we entered!

What made my chosen dish spectacular was that despite its punchy flavour, and being packed with onion and peppers, it was the vast quantity of crab that remained king. Its sweetness was utterly glorious. and I dug in with gusto, getting spectacularly messy and loving every minute. I fear my enjoyment was most amusing to the wait staff, but they seemed quite happy to keep replacing my waste-plates as I sucked, slurped and fished flesh from the shells.

This was not a dish for a diner who prefers their food served without the need to eating effort, which suited me fine as it meant my husband was inclined to leave the dish almost entirely to me! His chosen dish of butter prawns, which came surrounded by a super fine and flaky egg floss, required a little effort, but this seemed simple as compared to the deconstruction of crab!

The only fish I’ve had so far was served as part of a meal at the end of an evening mangrove tour. Large chunks of lightly battered sea bass were presented alongside the ubiquitous chicken satay, and I loved it dunked in the slightly sweet and spicy chilli sauce by which it was accompanied.

My next seafood fave was an off-menu order, discovered thanks to some very helpful Google reviews of a Chinese seafood restaurant close to our hotel. The idea of squid with salted egg (apparently not on the menu because it’s not always available) struck me as a very good one! Now, I should explain at this juncture that my first ever experience of salted egg was not a good one. I love a boiled egg dunked in sea salt, so when I saw salted eggs for the first time whilst living in Thailand, I thought these sounded like a fabulous snack. As I took a huge bite from said egg, I began to gag, having totally underestimated just how salty they would be! It was several years later, and thanks to an Indonesian chef neighbour, that I dared to try them again, now understanding that they were to be treated more like a seasoning and not as a stand alone treat!

I had expected the squid dish to be a stir fried again containing small chunks of salted egg, but what arrived was surprising. Rings of deep fried battered squid, so fresh that they almost melted in the mouth and with no rubberiness at all, were served in a rich, creamy salted egg sauce. Now I realise that this could potentially sound disgusting, so you’re going to have to trust me that it was a combination made in heaven!

I’d love to pretend that when I’m travelling I eat nothing but local cuisine, but I’d be lying! Sometimes I enjoy a club sandwich by the pool or a burger by the beach, just as a way of re-setting and letting me get back to enjoying local fare. Today was the best of both worlds for me. After a hot morning of island exploration, we were dropped by the Grab next to a restaurant that was well designed to look cool, comfortable and appealing. But its menu did not offer local delicacies, so I decided that a bowl of pasta with garlic and chilli prawns ticked the seaside box whilst also giving me a bit of a flavour change. What was unexpected was just how good it was, in the main because of an ingredient that I’d give my right arm to be able to get at home. My pasta was full of the small, super-sweet garlic that you find all over Southeast Asia – it would not surprise me if I consumed a whole bulb of the stuff in this small bowl of perfectly al-dente pasta. By the bottom of the bowl I was using my spoon to scoop up whole cloves of the stuff and loving every bite. It’s almost impossible to accurately re-create many Asian dishes at home because I can’t find this garlic, and its flavour is so unique. This dish, therefore, seemed to tick the ‘local’ box for me despite being pasta, as it was certainly Asian in flavour and seafood. No guilt required here!

Three Food Faces – Kuala Lumpur

It’s been many years since I last visited Malaysia, but the clarity of my food-related memories was bound to bring me back. I’ve yet to find another country where the strength of multiple food influences results in such distinct ‘types’ of cuisine that are yet each totally local.

But here, there are clearly three dominant food cultures that create an incredible array of Malaysian food, something that provides a wonderful variety before you even need to consider consuming anything else to have a change. Local food can, in the main, be divided into a trio of distinct groups: Malay; Chinese; Indian. That is not to say, however, that each has not been influenced by the others. We took a trip off the beaten track with Food Tour Malaysia to get a view of all three.

Malay

Native to the Malay Peninsula, Malays make up the largest ethnic group in Malaysia. Rice is generally considered to be the centrepiece of a meal, with everything else being an accompaniment. Nasi Lemak, which competes as one of Malaysia’s national foods, is a fragrant rice dish cooked in coconut and pandan leaf. Traditionally served with sambal, boiled egg, crispy anchovies and peanuts, Nasi Lemak is eaten throughout the day and with varied accompaniments.

Our tour also saw us sampling Mee Goreng at the Malay inspired stop, a spicy fried noodle dish made with thin yellow noodles and another classic and prevalent Malay dish.

Otak Otak (a fish cake with chilli, grilled inside a palm leaf), beef and chicken satay, and Sup Kambing (a rich spiced goat soup made with celery) were also all served at this stop. All were delicious, but I could have gone on eating the Mee Goreng all night if I hadn’t known how much was still to come!

Chinese

I think a fuller Chinese meal is required here to really enjoy what’s on offer, but the Chinese stop on our tour gave us a little taster of some of what’s to come when we go. A plate piled high with lobak (rolls of five-spice flavoured pork wrapped in bean curd) and Fu Chuck (fried tofu skin), alongside beansprout stuffed spring rolls, each dunked in a mix of thick soy and chilli sauce before consumption, provided a delicious snack with a cold beer.

Hokkien Mee, thick noodles fried with thick, dark soy sauce and prawns, fish cake, cabbage and all sorts else, was a very unusual dish that didn’t quite hit the mark for all diners. Personally I found it very pleasant, just not as good as the previous noodles.

Indian

Our Indian stop was at something of a Kuala Lumpur institution, Kayu, and I have to admit that this was my favourite!

We kicked off with Nasi Kandar, steamed white rice with a medley of curries. I will 100% be tracking this down to eat it again. The heavily spiced, but not overly spicy, dish, originally from Penang, was food heaven for me.

The idea of Cham had not been a pleasant one for me, but I stand corrected! Ordered for me, this hot mix of coffee and milk tea is actually delightful and I’ll be having it again too. It went beautifully with the Indian food, both sweet and savoury.

Before the sweet feast started, our Nasi Kandar and Cham were also served alongside the famous roti canai, buttery roti served, in this instance, with dipping bowls of dal and a fish curry sauce. I personally favoured the Thosai, a crepe-like pancake made with fermented rice flour and served with the same dipping sauces as the roti, but with the addition of some delicious coconut chutneys.

The roti theme continued through to dessert, where we ate both roti kayu (stuffed with the prevalent and surprisingly delicious local coconut jam) and the spectacle that is roti tissue! Roti tissue arrived at the table in towering form, and is an extremely thinly stretched (and therefore crispy) roti coated in salted butter, sugar and condensed milk. I referred to it as the crack cocaine of desserts – I just couldn’t stop eating it despite being full to bursting.

I am super happy to have many more days to continue this food exploration, enjoying again the things I loved from this tour and finding plenty more to enjoy along the way too!

Eat Rio

I love a food tour. What better way to start a trip than to be shown around a city by someone who loves food as much as you do? It’s a great way to find out how best to enjoy food for the rest of a trip.

So, after the usual trawl of reviews, I booked a tour with Eat Rio. Everything about their website said they were my kind of company, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. Starting at a market, it was brilliant to be able to ask questions about the weird and wonderful fruit and veg I’d never seen before. It still amazes me that this can be the case!

I came to the conclusion that maxixe, a small spiky cucumber with a slightly lemony flavour, would be best served in a G&T. My mind was blown that each single cashew nut comes from the stem of a cashew apple (caju) and that the fruit itself is so delicious! Having also learnt that the nut (really a seed) starts life in a poisonous form and has to go through rigorous process to make it safe, I now understand why they cost so much!

A favourite discovery was to ask for pimenta da casa when eating the wealth of snack foods available. I’d been surprised to see so many chillis in the market when the food I’d eaten so far had so little spice. And this is the answer. Everyone adds the fiery chilli sauce or oil ‘of the house’ to their snacks. It brings them to life and varies from good to incredible.

On the subject of snacks, well, wow! These are something that Rio does well, and they can really constitute a meal in themselves.

The tour offered opportunity to sample bolinhos de bacalhau (salt cod and potato croquettes), coxinha (traditional chicken croquettes), pastel (deep-fried pastry parcels), and even beiju de tapioca (a thin pancake-like form filled with the local salty cheese). I loved them all!

Visiting an Amazonian restaurant offered the most divisive dishes. Personally I enjoyed the Tacacá, a strange soup which leaves your tongue tingling and contains some super salty prawns. But I don’t think the Açaí bowls, fruit pulp of açaí berry, slightly sweetened with guaraná syrup, are really for me even if this berry is a supposed superfood. It was a great excuse to add lots of delicious nut filled granola though!

Away from the snacks and enjoying more of a meal, we demolished carne seca com abobora e feijão de corda (air-dried, salted beef with pumpkin and beans), moqueca Baiana (in this case prawn, stew made with coconut milk, peppers and red palm oil), escondidinho de carne seca (creamy mashed cassava with cured beef, topped with grilled cheese), and couve (shredded bitter collard greens cooked with garlic. The moqueca was a winner for me, and I could have gone on eating that with rice and greens all day!

Of course, no food tour is complete without added drinks! We tried sugar cane juice, which is beautifully balanced if you add a squeeze of lime, and has to be drunk freshly squeezed or it begins fermenting. And of course there was beer, fruit juice and the legendary caipirinha! Having experienced the classic lime caipirinha on the beach (and wobbled home afterwards!) I decided to try one made with passion fruit, which here are larger and a little more sour. It was DELICIOUS! The husband went even more rogue, and tried it made with jabuticaba, a sour black berry we’d tasted in the market. We also tasted a Cachaça, the spirit base of a caipirinha, made with jambú, the green leaf that caused the tongue tingling in the aforementioned soup. I can’t even describe how strange this was, hitting each of your taste receptors in turn over a couple of minutes to create some very odd flavours and sensations. Fun, but perhaps not a regular for the drinks cabinet!

A brilliant day of food, drink, and exploring the city with lovely people. So many things to eat and drink again.

Feijoada and all the Sides

Feijoada is just the kind of soul food I expected to find in Brazil, and what better place to try it than overlooking Ipanema Beach at sundown as the masses depart following a Sunday of sand, sea and surf.

Sitting on the terrace of the (deservedly) popular Bar Astor, I was glad that I’d made the stop that day. Feijoada is one of four dishes on the menu that are only available from Friday to Sunday, and it was this I’d come to try. I’d been tempted by the descriptions I’d read of this black bean and pork stew, though to call it that somehow undersells just how delicious it is, particularly here where it comes with a griddled pork chop in addition to the more traditional accompaniments. I mean, what this dish really needs is a little bit more meat!

Hiding under the chop were the traditionally served collared greens, heavily laced with almost caramelised garlic. The orange too is something you expect to find with this dish, and the freshness it adds makes it a must. Fluffy white rice topped with spring onion, a small bowl of toasted manioc flour, and a vinaigrette salsa complete the set of accompaniments, and that’s all before you get to the main event.

The stew may not look much, but trust me – it’s fantastic (albeit the stuff of vegetarians’ nightmares). Black beans slow cooked with what once would have been offcuts of pork, this dish was packed with smoked pork, short ribs, sliced chouriço sausage (akin to chorizo) and who knows what other chunks of melt in the mouth meat. Spicing varies, but bay, black pepper, salt and garlic are a must. Some of the beans are mashed to thicken the stew, and the resulting dish is rich, earthy and utterly wonderful.

Though I was far off able to finish the vast amount of food I was served, I was delighted to refresh my palette with the sharp lemon of the complimentary sorbet. Thoughts of any other dessert would have caused my waistband to burst!

Mussels in Brussels

I love Brussels, but it’s somewhere I think it’s best to eat simple, classic dishes at their best and avoid the many tourist traps! I’ve made mistakes before, so this time I did my research.

A colleague recommended a place, Le Pré Salé, she’d eaten Mussels with a local friend – a good enough recommendation for me. So I took the husband along and we certainly weren’t disappointed.

Between us, we ordered one classic Moules Marinières and one version with cream and garlic. Both were delicious, though the latter probably topped the table for dunkability with crusty baguette! The mussels were small and sweet, perfect as far as I’m concerned.

Of course, the meal would not be complete unless it were Moules-frites, and the accompanying fries were hot, crisp and delicious. All washed down with a couple of Belgian beers, this was, in my opinion, the epitome of ‘fine’ dining Brussels style.

Dumplings to Die For!

When five friends headed to Kiev for the weekend, we didn’t have high hopes for the cuisine. Our destination had basically been decided upon by the availability of a bargain basement flight, and without the usual food related assessment! But I have to say, we were all blown away, and our food memories will primarily be focussed around dumplings. They may not look pretty, but boy they sure taste good.

Night one saw us at a Ukrainian restaurant in the middle of a park, which had been recommended by our hotel receptionist. As one of the few things we’d read about during on-plane research, and since they’d also been recommended by a returning school girl seated next to us on the plane, the ordering of Varenyky was a must. These small stuffed parcels, perhaps better known (in the UK at least) by their polish name, Pierogi, were the perfect accompaniment to an ice cold beer. We opted for a selection of three flavours: meat, potato and mushroom, and cottage cheese. Each dish came topped with fried onions and served with vast quantities of soured cream. And that was it, we were hooked, ordering dumplings at every opportunity.

On a walking tour of Kiev, our guide told us about the strong Georgian influence in the city. Our hotel was beside the Georgian embassy and so we decided to try the highly rated Georgian restaurant nearby. Well, we thought Ukrainian dumplings were good but the dumplings here, Khinkali, were on another level! Looking rather like garlic bulbs, the top of the dumpling shouldn’t be eaten (thank goodness our waiter explained that!) and is purely used to enable you to hold the dumpling and take a bite, drinking the incredible broth inside before you go on to devour the rest. A beautifully spiced and dense mixture of beef and pork was the favourite filling for us, and we’ll definitely be trying to track these beauties down in London town!

Imagining them to be the size of dumplings, we also ordered Chebureki, a kind of pastry turnover, which we selected to come stuffed with cheese. Having ordered one each, it’s safe to say they limited what other food would be consumed as they were HUGE. Fortunately they were also delicious, flaky and packed with oozing salty cheese

We did eat other things in Kiev, many of them snacky in nature to accompany the fabulously prevalent craft beer, but dumplings were the winner. All five of us will return to the city, having been amazed by just how beautiful, friendly, and full of fabulous food and drink it really is. A very happy discovery indeed.

Saffron Rice

You may be wondering why I haven’t titled this blog post ‘Paella’. The answer is simple: saffron and rice do not (necessarily) a paella make! My favourite saffron rice dish so far on a visit to Tenerife used a rice that wasn’t of the required round grain. It was also much more soup-like, and hadn’t been cooked in a paella pan. All that said, it was divine!

Consumed alongside a steaming vat of seafood in white wine and garlic, this particular rice dish was packed full of prawns, squid and peppers. Eaten at the seafront Restaurante Las Aguas, the dish was rich with saffron and its enjoyability was no doubt improved further by the sound of the waves.

I’ve eaten two other dishes so far this trip which were of the more recognised paella variety, one an extremely tasty seafood paella (though it could have skipped the limpets for my taste!) and the other an adequate but unremarkable chicken one. The latter was given more interest by the inclusion of butter beans and runner beans, which gave a different texture and flavour dimension.

I adore the availability of such delicious and cheap rice dishes, the only problem is finding enough stomach space to eat other things too! More to follow on my non-rice Canarian food experiences in Tenerife in a future post.

A Taste of Holiday

Vietnam and Thailand feel like a distant memory but it’s amazing how food can take you back. After a long, sunny (but freezing cold) bike ride around London, we popped out of a street right opposite a Vietnamese restaurant that my companion had been wanting to try for an age. The idea of noodle soup warming our cold bodies was just too much to resist!

Deptford is a part of London on the up, and Eat Vietnam (whilst not imaginatively named) is one of many little gems in the area. Our delicious bowls of Bun Ga Hue, a hot and spicy vermicelli soup with chicken, warmed both body and soul. The fragrant, lemongrass scented broth and abundant herbs took me straight back to the streets of Hanoi.

Having started my holiday food reminiscence, I decided that I should continue with a little creation of my own for dinner. Yum Som-O is one of my favourite Thai dishes. A spicy pomelo based salad, it’s fresh and delicious. I won’t even pretend that I created a dish that could bear the same name, but I did make a pomelo salad with a Thai dressing!

Getting to the flesh of a pomelo (a large citrus fruit with a flavour somewhere between an orange and a grapefruit) requires a little patience. Even once you’ve pulled away the thick, styrofoam textured peel you need to take the flesh out of each individual segment to really enjoy it at its best. But the effort is worth it and what you’re left with is a bowl of firm, juicy fruit.

I made a simple dressing of fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, garlic and chilli, mixing it through the pomelo with a few herbs and some shredded chicken. Topped with crushed toasted peanuts and served with steamed rice, I have to confess that I was delighted with the delicious (and January health-kick friendly) result.

I will make this again!