Mozarella from Aromi = Insalata caprese

This is what I had for lunch yesterday.


The mozzarella comes from Aromi la bottega. This melt-in-your-mouth milky buttery goodness is no comparison to those supermarket mozzarellas. Yes, it’s not exactly cheap, but it’s worth every halíř. Aromi’s la bottega is probably the best Italian deli shop in Prague, also the most expensive one. But if you are looking for unquestionable quality, this is the place to go. Good and ripe tomatoes and good olive oil are a must!

The curry test

I was revising my pantry yesterday and came across 4 packs of instant curry paste. These aren’t the classic and basic Thai green, red and yellow curries. These are more special – Matsaman, Madras, Panaeng curries and the very special Korean Ottogi curry. Very special because I have never seen it before :)


I do use stuff like this sometimes when we need to eat something fast and I don’t want to indulge in any cooking. All you have to do with these is cut up some meat, roast the paste a bit, add meat and maybe some vegetables, add coconut milk and let simmer for a few minutes. The results vary though, from very acceptable to plain bad. Let’s give these 4 curries a go and find out whether it is possible to cook a palatable or even tasty quick meal from prefabricated stuff like that.
The first contestant is the Panaeng curry with chicken.
It did smell nice while the paste was being roasted. I added some green beans for colour and texture.

But tastewise it was just ok and I won't be buying it again. I had to add some fish sauce and quiet a lot of brown sugar to make it more interesting. It absolutely lacked the depth of flavour a curry should have. It’s described as „Mild“, but is rather medium hot. The coconut milk desintegrates into lots of fat when cooked too long and this is what happened in my case. I overcooked it a bit.
I would not have been happy if I was served this in a restaurant, but if you're come home hungry and exhausted it will do the trick for you. Don't expect any wonders though.

Crayfish from IKEA

No recipe here, just a tip. From late july to early september IKEA sells wonderful frozen crayfish. In Sweden there is a festivity called Midsommar and during it lots and lots of crayfish is eaten. IKEA is offering crayfish in its cafeteria and also this frozen stuff. It's already boiled in a salted dill brine and can be eaten straight away without any further cooking.

I haven't got the slightest idea why there is no fresh local crayfish sold in the Czech republic. With so many ponds and lakes there could be plenty of farmed crayfish here. The only 2 places that sell frozen boiled crayfish that I know of is Makro and IKEA but only during the summer months. This crayfish costs 249kc for 1kg. Although a bit messy to eat it's delicious with a beer or 2!

Prague market - Pražská tržnice

Mr. Cuketka posted a picture of things he bought at the Pražská tržnice in Holesovice on his Facebook page. I decided to follow and so here is what I bought today.

Dill, koriander, garlic, baby eggplant, "Canadian" blueberries, Czech blueberries, cucumbers, string beans, beautiful gladioluses.

I try to shop at this market every week, or sometimes even twice a week. There is no other place like this in Prague and I like it a lot! There are some stands with imported fruit and veg but about 60%-70% of the vendors sell local seasonal produce. I will post photos of what I buy every time, I think it will be interesting to see how the variety of fruit and veg changes through the seasons.

New seafood store

A new seafood shop opened up in Žížkov. It's called Pescheria Adriatico and is located in Bořívojova 11. The owner, who is Italian, brings the seafood from Italy. The stuff is fairly fresh, given that you go there when there has been a delivery recently, which is on Firday I believe. The shop is very simple and the variety of seafood is not as wide as at the Seafoodshop or Makro, however the quality/price value makes up for it. There were 2 Italian families doing their shopping when I came in and that's a good sign for me. The fish they sell is NOT scaled or gutted, I guess you could ask the shop assistant to do it for you. But especially the clams and mussels are very clean, even the black mussels.
I don't know why they display ungutted fish, the only thing that comes to my mind is that this is used as evidence of freshness. Ungutted fish goes bad much faster than gutted fish and maybe they do it on purpose so they can say "See, we don't gut our fish, it's so fresh and gets sold so fast that it doesn't have the time to go bad!" But maybe I'm just thinking too much and they are too lazy to gut and scale the fish in advance. :-)

I bought 2 seambreams, 1kg of anchovies and 1 kg of vongole veraci clams. This will make 2 lovely seafood dinners!

The first dinner featured the seabream and the anchovies.

I put some marjoram, thyme, dill and lemon inside the gutted fish, sprinkled it with olive oil, salt and pepper and baked them in the oven under the grill. The fish was beautifully moist and delicious. Nothing beats a simply prepared fresh fish for me.

The anchovies were battered in flour and deep fried. Oh man, did these smell when they were being fried. I had to open all windows to increase air circulation. Anchovies and sardines are the most smelly fishes, but this doesn't make them less tasty.

The dinner involving vongole clams is described here.

Back home from Spain!

We are back home form a 2 week holiday in Spain. We are lazy tourists actually and spent the whole holiday in one town called Cambrils, we went on a couple of trips though.
To start off here are some things I brought home. I would have loved to buy more things if only there was some more space in our car, but it was totally cramped.

From left to right -

1. Torres Esmeralda white wine - I liked this wine a lot. It's fairly local, it's light and refreshing. Torres is a big multinational company and I never liked its wines until I tried Esmeralda.

2. Pinord La Nansa sparkling white wine (blue bottle) - also fairly local and very light.

3. 3 kinds of infused olive oils by Borges (Ferran Adria line) - 3 peppers, rosemary, soy sauce and ginger. Those are available in the Czech republic (with the exception of the soy sauce ginger variety) but cost about 3-4 times as much. Borges is a very mainstream olive oil producer but has managed to get Ferran Adria to design a product line for them.

4. Baro de l'Albi olive oil - reccomended by the staff of the De'Gusto gourmet shop in Cambrils. Haven't tried it yet.

5. Mestral olive oil produced by the Cooperativa Cambrils - This oil is apparently unique, it's being made exclusively from arbequina olives. It has been been named the best olive oil of Spain of 2006 and 2008 by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and has collected numerous awards on fairs all over the world.

6. Walmer salsas - Olivada (tapenade), Alli olli (garlic sauce), Salsa Brava (spicy hot sauce used for Patatas Bravas). Bought on a food market in Cambrils on the first day of our stay and not seen anywhere afterwards.

7. Arbequina olives - in brine. Arbequinas are small and look unexciting, but they are a favourite among the locals. In the previous post there is a pic of a pickle stand at the local market with dozens of different olive sizes and flavours. Tourists were buying the big fat spectacular looking ones while the locals stuck to small and humble arbequinas. The best Spanish olive oils are made from arbequina olives.

8. Local honey

9. Tuna fillets in olive (glass jar) - very high quality tuna. Delicious and impossible to buy in Prague, for a fair price at least.

10. 1 pork sausage of some kind - bought in a butcher shop

11. 1 fuet salami - bought in a butcher shop

12. another can of my beloved tuna.