Barcelona. Sweet city of my dreams, city of culinary delight. May I present to you the culinary experience of a Strawberryelmo at the Mediterranean?
Barca really tickled my senses and I feel like I have eaten tons of new stuff there.
First of all, this city has a huge food market – La Boqueria. There are a lot of tourists there, but, hell, it’s really worth the stress. You get some really fresh and interesting food there.
… e.g. smoothies…
…mini burgers…
…eggs from various kinds of birds…
…pretty much everything to fulfill your dreams of sweet sin…
…and some organic (orgasmic) Mexican food. Be careful what you choose there, because the spicy stuff is really really spicy.
The district “el Gotic” has a lot of touristic restaurants with way too high prices. We were lucky and found a tiny restaurant offering fresh made pasta. Therefore I recommend to you the “Pasta Bar” in C. Escudellers street.
If you find a Spanish baker’s or pastry shop, go in there and buy something. We were lucky to have a bakery right around the corner next to our hotel. They had some great goods. I liked some puff pastry filled with crema Catalana, a kind of vanilla pastry cream. “Our” bakery (I call it this way because we bought a lot of things there) also made the best donuts ever. Seriously, forget about Dunkin’ Donuts. These soft babies are just perfect. I have never seen such a good donut dough.
Don’t miss churros with dulche de leche or chocolate sauce.
I also had a special ice cream with chocolate coating at Vioko’s. It was yummy, but not really worth the price of 4,5o Euros.
We were very happy to get to know El Cangrejo Loco, a noble but not terribly expensive reastaurant offering seafood. A friend of mine recommended it to us and told us the local specialty was not paella but fideuà, a skillet meal with seafood and small noodles. It was savoury heaven.
So if you ever get to Barcelona, I can tell you for sure you foodies will not be bored. And it this is one more reason to actually go there and try some things yourself.
While I am still enjoying the heat of September in Bulgaria, I present to you the easiest, most-addictive topping for everything.
It is helthier than Nutella and oh-so-creamy. You can prepare a lot of it ahead and store it in an airtight container in the refridgerator.
Basically, you can choose any kind of chocolate for this cream, but I like dark chocolate the most, because it contains a lot of cocoa and has the strongest taste.
If you are a chocolate-lover, you should just grab the following two ingredients and make yourself some happiness topping.
Chocolate Cream Cheese
150 g (5 oz.) cream cheese
50 g (1 2/3 oz.) dark chocolate
Chop the chocolate and microwave in a bowl until it melts, heating for not longer than 30 seconds at a time. You can also use the water bath method to melt the chocolate.
Mix chocolate and cream cheese until well-combined.
Let the topping cool in the fridge for about 30 minutes, so it gets a little firmer.
Spread on bread, cupcakes, cake and the like.
Enjoy!
I know what you’re thinking: What is this strange heading supposed to mean? Is that a post…
1. about a new Pokemon?
2. about the effects of drugs on human eloquence?
3. about strange autofill mechanisms?
Nope, nope, nope. I will introduce something culinary to you, something I found at the Restaurant Day in Berlin on August 17th.
The so called ‘Restaurant Day’ takes place once every three months in Europe. Every passionate cook or baker can open their own restaurant for this one day. There were 6 pops-up restaurants in Berlin and the offer of savory Japanese pancakes Pekopeko offered sounded the most appealing to me.
You could try the delicacy at the former airport Tempelhof, which is now a kind of huge park. Okonomiyaki is the name of these savory pancakes made basically of cabbage, flour and fish stock (the vegetarian version I had was made with vegetable stock). The dough is baked on a hot plate and garnished with special Japanese sauces.
Okonomiyaki is traditionally served on festivals and makes a good snack to go in Europe, as well. The organizer of the event has imported the recipe from its origin and according to the many customers , I assume Okonomiyaki has potential to be a real competitor for sushi.
Now let me tell you about the taste: Okonomiyaki is best when served warm. There is a nice bite to the dought and it tastes fresh, since it contains cabbage. The sauces are salty and add an aroma to the dish, which I personally associate with Asian food. it is not easy to find a word for that. A combination of fruity and savory maybe? You’d better try yourselves.
If you want to visit Pekopeko’s pop-up restaurant, you should come over to Berlin for the next restaurant day, if you’re around. By this, you will support the organizers, so they might be able to open a real restaurant, offering the snack throughout the whole year.
Peace.