How do you like your bagel?

I used to love eating bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese, sprinkled with black pepper and lemon juice, until one day my daughters Emily and Maria told me how they eat their bagels....

You need to have an onion bagel, cream cheese and salt & vinegar crisps, but to take a notch higher, you should have Walkers' Extra Crunchy salt & malt vinegar crisps, an red onion & chive bagel and original full fat soft Philadelphia (definitely not one of those 'light' half fat nonsense!!!).

Toast a bagel brown, spread the cream cheese ....

...and don't be stingy with the cheese ...

And place crunchy salt & malt vinegar crisps on top!

Definitely not healthy but it's really yummy and soooo addictive!  You get the extra crunchiness of crisps, combinations of flavours from salt & vinegar, onions, chives and full fat cream cheese, married all into one. Textures of softness of cream cheese, toasted bagel, crunchy crisps and the smells of salt & vinegar, toasted bits of red onions and chives, married all into one.  A bit weird? Maybe but you should try this and you know how addictive this can be.... 

So, how do you like your bagel?

That's all forks.

You gotta eat seafood in Lisbon

If you are fish or seafood lover, you must go to Lisbon, where you can eat fresh fish or seafood, often available at affordable price and from so many selections or varieties to choose from. What I love about Lisbon is that you can find so many restaurants that serve fish or seafood cooked simply but perfectly to retain the freshness and tastes of the sea.

Anyway, one night we were looking for somewhere different to try but not too far from our hotel. We saw this eaterie with menus in different languages on windows, clearly catering for tourists but somehow appealing to us because of blue and white azulejo tiles on the walls depicting some Portuguese agricultural scenes from the past. The restaurant was nothing fancy and foods on the menu seemed cheaper compared to other restaurants near-by. We thought, 'Surely they would not serve anything bad, after all this is Lisbon and this place is in area full of restaurants where lots of tourists come and go.'

We went in, sat down at a table and ordered beer. My husband ordered a bacalhau (dried salt cod) stew type of dish while I ordered calamari with rice. When the foods arrived, my face fell. They looked like school dinner. My husband bacalhau was full of fish bones although he said that it tasted fine while my calamari was tough and dry. "How can Lisbon go wrong with these!" I thought any restaurants in Lisbon serve fresh seafood and I just could not understand the logic of my calamari. I even started feeling sorry for this restaurant that served this quality of food, the chef who cooked it and the waiter who served this to us. My husband asked if I wanted coffee after the meal.  I just wanted to leave this place as soon as we could. ... Ok, it was cheap after all so maybe I should not have expected too much but how could any restaurant go wrong with calamari! Well, in the end we were the one to blame as we wanted to try this restaurant. The problem I have is that if I had something that I did not enjoy, that would ruin my whole day.

So, the next day, we decided to splash out and upgraded a restaurant. The restaurant was Ribadouro on Avda da Liberdade 155, Lisbon. This place is often listed in many guidebooks and seems very popular with tourists ordering lots of fancy looking seafood as well as locals standing by the bar ordering beer with quick bite to eat. Surely it can't go wrong this time.

Well, we ordered grilled tiger prawns between us. It was really extravagant but so as the bill! Still, it was our last night in Lisbon after all, and we had cheap but bad, bad meal the previous night, so that would justify it. And justified indeed. Our tiger prawns were really good. They were like mini-lobster, rather rich but very tasty.

Our grilled tiger prawns came with garlic butter sauce.

Close up - Mmmmmm, it was a seafood lover heaven!

Before cooking. Look at the sizes of tiger prawns!

They bring you fresh seafood to show you before they cook. Well, our tiger prawns were really big. We did not expect the platter to be so big so we also ordered clams cooked with olive oil, coriander and garlic for starter.  They were really good, perhaps a bit salty and lots of chopped garlic that could ward off vampires, however it was tasty and we mopped up the clam juice with lovely bread.

We also ordered a bottle of local vinho verde ('green wine') wine. I did not know what was the difference between normal white wine and green white wine at first, only to discover, after we came back from Lisbon, that it is a slightly sparkling wine, lowish in alcohol (from 8.5%), made from immature grapes, hence being called 'green'. I should have read the guidebook properly before we went to Lisbon.

Anyway, the same guidebook also informs me that if a bottled vinho verde (apparently many are not bottled!) says Alvarinho anywhere on the label, it will be a good one to try. Well, having checked my holiday photo now, it does say 'Alvarinho' so we chose the good one after all. I don't remember it was hugely expensive neither.

Vinho Verde that we had to go with food!

Well, after all these foods, our stomachs were really satisfied and we also had uma bica coffee, a small cup of strong coffee like an espresso. I was never a fan of espresso much but during our trip to Lisbon I became very fond of this Portuguese strong coffee and I also developed my fondness of adding sugar in it. Strong coffee and sugar were never my thing before. Now I am drinking espresso with sugar, alas, it's just not the same - I do miss uma bica in Lisbon....

Damn fine cup of coffee... (without a cherry pie)

I can forget about and forgive calamari disaster in Lisbon as I got so many delightful memories of food we had in Lisboa!

That's all forks.

Emily's Kitchen

My husband and I were invited to daughter Emily and her fiancé, Craig's new house for dinner last Friday. Actually I invited ourselves, hahaha. They were off work whole week past week decorating their house and I just said half-jokingly to Emily, "Oh, you could invite us for dinner." Emily had no choice but say no....

Emily had a challenge as she needed to think what she could make to cater everyone as Craig does not eat fish or seafood while my husband and I don't eat meat. Anyway, Emily did a great job, prepared and served us wonderful dinner and both my husband and I came home with happy stomach.

For starter, she made butternut squash and potato soup with hint of chilli, with sour cream and drizzle of olive oil. It was really delicious.

Emily's home made butternut squash and potato soup

For main course, Emily made home-made beef burger for Craig and herself whilst home made tuna burger for my husband and myself. She put tuna steaks in the blender to mince, added soy sauce, chopped spring onion, onions, minced garlic, ginger, chilli, salt and pepper. The burger came with either smoky tomato and paprika sauce or mayonnaise with garlic and spring onions.

Emily's tuna burger with chips and salad.

For dessert, Emily did some experiments in making chocolate casings, having seen some recipe on Pinterest.  Basically she melt chocolate to coat the bottom of balloons and once chocolates were cooled and hardened, carefully deflate the balloons so that she could then remove the balloons off the chocolate casings.  If the temperature of chocolate is too hot, it would burst the balloons so she had to be careful with this operations, albeit looking easy and fun ....

Another use for balloons..... 

She then put vanilla ice-cream, decorated with strawberries. Knowing how she made the chocolate casing, it was even more tastier, not to mention 'interesting'!

During the dinner, we talked about our recent trip to Lisbon. Poor Emily and Craig as they had to endure having to look at more than 1,000 holiday photos we had taken.

We all really enjoyed the dinner. We even came home with take-away tuna burgers, that became our next day's dinner at our house!

I was about to blog about another food we had in Lisbon today but I had to blog about Emily's food as they were really delicious and she put so much thoughts and efforts to it, so well done to Emily.

That's all forks.

You gotta eat fish in Lisbon

We went to Lisbon 4 years ago for the first time and really enjoyed then so we have recently returned there for holiday. It was the last week in August but the weather was gorgeous, 30 - 34 degrees every day but very dry and you get lovely sea-breeze everywhere. Up in the sky it is so blue and beautiful, contrasting wonderfully against Lisbon's light red coloured roofs tiles and white walls of buildings below whilst old-fashined trams running through the labyrinth of streets of Lisbon. It's just wonderful.

Anyway we went back to one of our favourite restaurant, Solar dos Presuntos (http://www.solardospresuntos.com). The restaurant first opened in October 1974. Inside of the restaurant the walls are covered with photographs and drawings of celebrities and foreign dignitaries who ate there, adding an unique atmosphere.

Anyway,  we ordered our favourite item from the menu - salt baked sea bass, yes literally the whole 1kg of fish is covered by rock salt mound and baked to perfection whilst retaining softness, moisture and "ocean" flavours!  It takes for a while to get the fish cooked but it's worth waiting for.

Our salt-baked sea bass - it was around 1.1 kg in weight before cooking

This was our sea bass - before being covered in salt mound for baking.
Sorry, Fish... but if any consolation, you were really delicious and well appreciated!

Once baked, they will then crack the salt-mound open, scraped the salt off the fish, de-boned, filleted and serve on plates.  Yummy.... My husband took a video on this but unfortunately I could not upload on this blog, pity that you could not see this. You just have to see what was on my plate!

Perfectly baked fish served with spinach and garlic flavoured potatoes. 

Oh, while we were waiting for our fish to be ready, we had some starter - this one was marinated octopus. It was really delicious, octopus being really lovely and tender.

Marinated octopus.

There was so much fish to eat, I did not have any room left for dessert but my husband managed to have egg custard and really enjoyed it too.

The restaurant has this following quote displayed up on the wall from Jean Moliere (1622 - 1673), French playwright and actor.

"With my stomach satisfied, my soul may rest at ease."

Need no say more.

That's all forks!