Thanks a bunch for the home cooked lunch! I love Couchsurfing.
We were getting ready for bed and he told us that he had to go cut and dry the mushrooms so we offered to help him. He had his misgivings at first and when we went in to help him he actually said "I can't believe two Americans are helping me cut mushrooms". Apparently it was his least favorite kitchen task. We had fun cutting them and laying them out on screens to dry.
There were all sorts of mushrooms we cut. I didn't know any of their names and Lukaš had a hard time translating them. Because the names wouldn't translate directly into an American name.
Actually we ended up with some pretty patterns naturally from the shape of the mushrooms.
The wood smoked naan was a perfect utensil to eat Butter chicken with. This was random chicken bits cooked in a butter sauce. It's not a spicy dish or "sharp" as our Finnish friend would call it but it has a lot of spices in it. Almonds, chilies, cumin, bay leaf, cloves, cinnamon, garum masala, cardamom, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, coriander, onions, etc. All stewed together to make a heavenly sauce which I eagerly lapped up ever drop of with my naan.
We are traveling again this time through Italy so I think won't really have any time to post much in the next 10 days or so. I really need to devote myself to full time eating while I'm here in Italy.
After wading through the hordes of chessboard buying tourists, we stumbled to the outskirts of the bustling tourist town and found ourselves in front of this sign:
U BABY! We decided to have lunch here at this dirty shack on the side of the road. Imagine our surprise when we walked back to the terrace and found this:
Right then we knew we made the right choice.
Really well cooked tripe, not very chewy at all. However the broth somehow reminded me of ramen, I think there was a lot of chili and MSG in the broth, but it was still very tasty and had a whole lot of tripe in it. A very good starter if you ask me. Please don't be afraid of tripe, it has a very meaty flavor, not at all reminiscent of organ meat or liver. The texture is something most Americans have trouble with, but once you get past that, or learn to love it, it's really a treat.
We're gonna need a porn shot of this one.
Really good and quite tangy from the pickling process. Tasty and filling traditional food.
It was a magical lunch! Great food and an incredible view. We sat and enjoyed the terrace for almost two hours. New friends, new cities, this is what traveling is all about. Although travel is really a lot of work, sometimes it's moments like this that make it all worthwhile.
Bad food can happen to the best of us. Words of advise, never travel to a new small town in Europe on a Sunday. Do what everyone else does, relax, eat the food you bought the day before in preparation for Sunday, and try not to eat at Restaurace Sklep.
When you get closer it gets even creepier, as every baby doesn't have a face, but rather a flat spot that just holds a bar code... David Cerny is one strange dude, but he has some awesome art.
And more then what was on this little plate. (I know my mom is shocked, SHOCKED to hear this)
So this is a really really big hunk of pork. On the menu they advertise it as 1kg, but as a tiny little side note they charge 13kc per 100g so this dish costs 130kc(6.50) if it weights 1 Kg. That will be important later on.
Then I found out why. Apparently my miming skills aren't as good as I had hoped, as they brought the largest knee they could find. 1.95kg. If my math is correct that's almost 5.2 heart attacks on a single plate. Eat your heart out Fettuccine Alfredo (0.95 heart attacks on a plate).
The meat was very simply roasted with salt and pepper. The cut and meat is so good you really don't need to do anything else. The juices running into the circular crack around the cutting board were the best part, using some dark rustic Czech bread as a mop I greedily cleaned my plate. Of course the ever-present mustard and horseradish as accompaniment were a delicious counterpoint to the heavy meat and make great condiments. At 130 Kc this is a great filling and amazing meal.($6.50)(300g uncooked weight).
This is one of my all time favorite Czech meals. Simple, easy, and filling. The sauce is the braising liquid and it all perfectly balances each other, the nice dense potato dumplings, the zing of the fresh zeli, long stewed pork shoulder that falls apart when the fork gets near it. Lets be honest, it would be more healthy with a little green, but I could eat this for lunch every day and never get tired of it. This one I may have to make for myself when I get home.
They say everyone's mom and grandma make this dish best, unfortunately I never found anyone's grandma to make it for me. However U Jagušky makes a pretty great version which I ate with relish.
Add a big dollop of mustard and more grated horseradish and you have yourself a first class starter.
The flavor of blood sausage is one that isn't very familiar to most Americans. Blood on the whole is not often consumed in the US. What a shame. This sausage was almost entirely made of coagulated blood without the rice or starch filling common to a lot of French, Spanish and Italian blood sausages. This gives an honest and strong flavor of blood. Cooked blood tastes, looks and smells absolutely nothing like fresh human blood. The flavor and aroma are much closer to the smell of cooked liver, kidney or marrow. The flavor isn't as overpowering as liver, but it has a very similar taste, perhaps because the liver is basically I giant blood filter?
The inside was covered in murals of fairytale stories presumably from the traditional czech cannon. Unfortunitely I don't know any czech fairytales, Altough this one is teaching mermaids to drink I believe.
Also creepy witches lanterns
And really good beer.
They only sell Pilsner Urquell at this bar. And it's really really good. This type of beer is called Tank beer, and you can only really get it in the Czech republic. It's an unfiltered unpasturized type of beer which is stored in large tanks under the restaurants. I heard that large tanker trucks back up to a restaurant and pump the beer into a specifically designed tank. This makes the bottom fermented pilsner style lager, really come alive. Pilsner Urquell I've had in the states was tinny, overly floral, and not a very pleasant drink at all.
This extended to a little pizza place in Praha 9 about a block from "Ubitovani Prokopka" where we lived for almost 3 weeks. This was a tiny little family run pizza shop in a tiny neighborhood at the outskirts of Prague. Still you can tell they take a lot of pride in their craftsmanship. Fresh toppings, good pizza oven they kept well tended. They turned the pizza 3 times in the oven so it was perfectly cooked all around. They made really really thin crust style pizzas that were a delight to eat.
This one has chicken, tomatoes, bacon, garlic, tomato sauce, cream and nice fresh mozzarella. yum yum and perfectly cooked in my opinion.
This pizza had jalapeno peppers bacon ham and a whole egg on top. I'll admit the whole egg was a little strange on a pizza but the nice spicy peppers more then made up for it. OK I'll admit this isn't the prettiest pizza ever but their only transgression was to make it too big for the box. You know me you can't have too much of a good thing, even if your stupid pizza box doesn't agree with me.
probably hundreds if not thousands of sellers, stockers, and buyers. What kind of food do you think they serve here. Pho of course! We were looking for an authentic bowl of Hanoi style Pho.(pronounced fuh)
to try a bowl of Pho bo which basically is a beef broth soup with rice noodles and some fresh vegetables and beef thrown in to order. The broth is left simmering for hours to extract all of the flavor from the beef and it individually served into bowls where the noodles, vegetables, herbs and meat are all cooked a la minute(to order)
Which was the site of Anthony Bourdain's filming of his show No Reservations. However he didn't actually eat at this shop, more on that later. Here is our steaming bowl of Pho on a cold rainy day that was perfect for Pho.
Mmm it's making me hungry just looking at it. This was an amazing bowl of Pho, but actually the best we had was at the large unnamed complex in Malešice. There are no signs to lead you to the right place, and it's a long complicated route from Metro to the bus system to this marketplace. But this bowl of Pho with marinated pork was one of the best bowls of Pho I have had in my life. Perfectly clear broth but full of flavor. Nice firm noodles and the best most tender delicious meat.... MMMM
On the other hand the snails were quite a delight. The very hard texture of boiled snails, but tender enough to eat comfortably. The stock was heavily flavored with snail shells I think and the tofu, greens, onions and everything else was cooked perfectly. This uses a smaller vermicelli rice noodle then the traditional fat Pho noodle.
MM MM snails and this place doesn't skimp on the snails either.
