This summer

I've finally got round to writing about our trip to Panama this summer, so here goes!
We started out in Panama City – and it was nothing like I expected: towering skyscrapers, fancy cars and malls bigger than anything I've seen in the UK. This contrasted sharply with the poverty and tumble-down houses seen in less-priviledged parts of the city. The most interesting part of the capital for me was the ‘casco ‘viejo’ or the old part of town which is being done up and experiencing something of a cultural revival, with a mix of little boutiques, European-style cafes and prettily painted and flower decked colonial houses.

From PC we made a trip to ‘La Chorerra’ where D’s grandparents live – it was so nice to see him reunited with them and to see that they were so lively and in such good shape. Than, we drove across Panama (an-oh-so-slightly terrifying experience!), stopping off with D’s uncle on the way before settling in the highlands of Boquete for a few days. Here we relaxed in the gorgeous Rancho de Caldera, went on coffee tours and cloud-forest safaris and saw a Quetzal (apparently the 2nd rarest bird in the world - no idea what the 1st is?!). Here's the view from our 'rancho'...

Next stop – the Caribbean! What surprised me about Bocas de Toro wasn’t so much the pristine palm fringed beaches, but the sheer amount of wildlife, which I just wasn’t expecting. Dolphins, sloths, colourful frogs, toucans, parrots, starfish, monkeys and more surrounded us. And perhaps the most memorable part of our days in Bocas was when we got to see giant sea turtles laying their eggs one night and then help recently-hatched baby sea turtles make their way to sea. The next photo is of the secluded beach just steps from our room.

From Bocas we drove back east through Panama and bid farewel to los abuelos. 2 weeks really wasn't enough to sample all that Panama has to offer - but here is my list of 5 unmissable things to do in Panama:

1. Eat, eat, eat: sancocho - a traditional type of chicken soup is delicious as are the fried plantains - patacones, ceviche made with Panama's national fish 'corvina' is yummy too. Also try the raspados from a roadside trolley - watch the seller grate fresh ice into your cup and top it off with a tropical juice of your choice – Passion fruit was a favourite of mine.

 Lobster on the Amador peninsula near Panama City (Los Bucaneros restaurant)

Ceviche at Amador

Raspados in the Casco Viejo

2. Buy a Mola - an indigenous indian embroidered panel that can be used as a wall hanging or sewn into a cushions, bag etc.

Source

3. Climb Mount Baru and see both the Pacific and the Caribbean sea from the same vantage point. I'm sorry to say we didn't do this due to the poor visibility at this time of the year, but I'm told it's well worth the climb (which can be done partially in car).

4. Get up close and personal with the wildlife

Red frog (the hand is mine)

5. The Panama Canal - lunch at the Miraflores Lock Visitor Centre while you watch the boats go  by is an unforgettable experience - the huge ships look like whole apartment blocks floating by and the food is excellent.

As we're saving these days I don't think I'll be going on any exotic trips for a while, but I have a weekend in Merida coming up and another in Galicia so I can't complain :-)

Cream of Spinach soup

As seems to happen with me every few months, once again I'm mildly aneamic. Instead of resorting to iron pills which don't agree with me all that well I'm taking a more natural route - starting off yesterday evening with some homemade spinach soup - absolutely delicious even if I do say so myself. Here's the recipe which is a mixture of stuff I've seen online and a bit of my own inspiration (I measured out amounts pretty much guessing as I went along, but if you taste as I go I think it's quite hard to go wrong with this one).

Ingredients (will serve 4 'normal' people or 2-3 greedy guts like us):
1 huge bunch of spinach (stalks trimmed)
Good vegetable stock (I used Aneto - all natural, no additives) - around a third of a litre.
Around 1/4 litre of milk
A largish onion finely chopped
Big chunk of butter
Flour a desertspoon or a bit more
2 slices of cured sheep's cheese - though given the choice I would have used a Kraft cheese slice here (something that is normally inedible but comes into its own when used in green vegetable soups)
Cream - a good dash and extra to serve
White pepper
Salt

In a big pot melt the butter and add the onion, fry gently until transparent. Sprinkle flour over the top and blend in to make a thick paste/roux type mixture. Gradually blend in the milk- when dissolved add the stock and bring to the boil - I've been pretty inexact about the quantities of stock and milk but basically they should be 50:50 an reach up to about 2.5 inches above the base of the pot. Add the spinach and cook on a medium heat until wilted and soft. Remove from the heat and blend with a hand blender until smooth. Crumble the cheese into the soup and whizz with blender. Whizz in a little flour if it's too runny. Check seasoning, adding white pepper and salt. Serve with a swish of cream and crusty bread. Enjoy!

Winter in Madrid and a recipe to share

This winter in Madrid is proving to be particularly enjoyable; not too cold this time round, plenty of home-cooking and good wine, browsing art galleries, day trips (Aranjuez in the photo) and staying in and watching Caprica (and no, I don’t normally like SciFi but this is one of those series that doesn’t include characters that wear spandex jumpsuits or have bony knobbled foreheads or pointy ears, so I’m actually not averse to it!). I just wanted to share a little side dish that I cooked the other day as it was perhaps the first time that I cooked fennel and it turned out just right. Normally I cut it into lengths then braise it with white wine and butter, and while it’s tasty it’s not ‘come back for seconds’ tasty… but the other day D did roast lamb and I decided that I’d do a side to accompany – a quick Google and voilá (Sp?) – fennel with pine nuts and raisins (a mix of various recipes found online). I’m sorry that as usual I don’t have a photo but promise this is delicious and easy peasy!

Ingredients (for 2-3 people as a side)

1 bulb of fennel

Tablespoon of butter

Slug of olive oil

Small handful of raisins/sultanas

Small handful of pine nuts

Salt and pepper to taste

Chop the fennel into more or less 1.5 cm cubes, meanwhile heat up the butter and oil in a pan. Add the fennel and cook for around 5 minutes on a medium heat, add the pine nuts and raisins, cook until the fennel is done – about 10 more minutes in my case. You might want to partially cover the pan if you find the pine nuts and fennel are getting too dark. Add salt and pepper to taste. Goes beautifully with lamb. Enjoy!

A lovely bank holiday and a recipe to share

We are in the midst of a huge bank holiday here in Madrid - all in all it's five days off from Saturday to Wednesday. I so needed this break, and although I haven't done anything particularly exciting I feel like a new woman. On Saturday D and I had a G&T night in, and I wanted something light and fresh to accompany so I made sweetcorn blinis, topped with greek yoghurt whipped with a little Philadelphia cheese (which makes a decent substitute for sour cream, which you can't get in Spain) smoked salmon and..er...Euro Caviar - I promise I wasn't being stingy and would have bought the real thing, albeit a tiny thimble of it... but alas El Corte Inglés's rincon del gourmet isn't always all that gourmet and I couldn't get any... Still, we enjoyed them as luckily I'm a big fan of roe of all types. Sorry, they were devoured so quickly that I forgot to take photos - ok, that plus the fact I was a little tipsy - embarassingly, all I have left is the one remaining sad little blini that somehow managed to miss my mouth and that I have pictured below. Anyway, to make up for my lack of journalistic detail, I will share the recipe :-)

The recipe is one I adapted from one I scribbled down on a back of an envelope years ago and while it isn't totally orthodox (no buckwheat flour, and no buttermilk - partly as they're hard to get here and partly due to laziness) I can promise they are very tasty and won't disappoint .

Ingredients: (makes about 30, 5cm diameter blinis, though again, due to tipsiness I can't vouch for my this 100%)
150g plain flour
250ml milk (you may need to add a little more less when done, check how the texture is, it should be like a thickish cake batter)
3 small eggs, beaten
1/ tsp salt
dessertspoonful baking powder
2 tablespoons of melted butter (I cheated and used a good slug of olive oil)
200g sweetcorn drained (I got mixed up and thought the recipe required fresh corn on the cob, so I removed the kernels from one cob and boiled them for about 15 minutes then let them cool down)

Mix the flour with the milk with a wooden spoon, beat in eggs, salt, baking powder and butter/oil then add sweetcorn. Fry spoonfuls in a pan with a little oil/butter and turn over when bubbles begin to show on the surface. Serve with soured cream and smoked fish/roe with a twist of lemon. If I had had any mixture left over I would have served it with bacon and eggs the next morning, yummy. Anyway, I'm going to get on with enjoying the rest of this lovely little break and if I get up to anything interesting, I'll let you know :-)

Foodie blogbuddies and more

When I started this blog 2.5 years ago I had no idea that it would lead me to meet such nice people.

After months of reading their amusing musings, last weekend I finally got to meet fellow Madrid bloggers, Aaron of A year in the mierda, and Deb of ComoSolo. We had arranged to meet at the Bristol Bar - think English gentleman’s club (not that I’ve ever been in one); G&Ts, red velvet, bangers and mash and photos of none other than Queen Victoria – but alas, Madrid being Madrid and having wayward and unexplained opening times, it was closed. So we went for a drink elsewhere, then Deb had the fantastic idea of taking us to try what is probably the best pizza I’ve tried outside Italy. Pizza al Taglio (C/Barco 45) sells pizza by the slice, you can even choose what size slice you want. The dough is to die for – fine and crispy yet just a little chewy. The simple yet tasty toppings included parma ham and mozzarella, gorgonzola and pear, courgette and ricotta, wild mushrooms and tomato and cherry tomato and chilli. You can’t actually sit down to eat, but they have a deal going with a nearby bar where you can do so. Unfortunately this was closed, so Deb kindly invited us up to her lovely apartment for wine, music and a good laugh over certain compromising facebook photos. The staff are also charming and not entirely uneasy on the eye :p

And this weekend I had a wonderful sushi lesson with Vanessa, who I also met through the blog a few months back, and her friend Sally. We went shopping for salmon and tuna in the marvellous mercado de las maravillas (metro Alvarado) then back to Sally's for a fun day of rolling makis followed by eating them, washed down with champagne. Makes me think, writing a blog has been worth it, if only for the lovely people I've met :-)

Fish market - I couldn't help but put my finger in the shark's mouth

 Prep time

 Slicing the tuna and salmon

 Rolling the makis

Et voila!



Tea at the Santo Maura

A friend and I stopped by at the gorgeous Hotel Santo Mauro today for a nice cup of Earl Gray. I'd heard of this swish former palace on C/Zurbano before but had never seen it in person. Gorgeous!

Yummy Frozen Goodness

I've never tried frozen yoghurt before. Does that sound strange to readers from the States where I'm guessing it's really well-known? Well, I finally got to try it the other day in Madrid's newly inagurated frozen yoghurt bar - Ö! My Good - in Alonso Martínez. I'm not usually a fan of yoghurt, which I realise is almost unheard of, but I was so hot and bothered in the 37º sun that I thought I'd give it a try as I was in the neighbourhood. And O! my was it good! The decor was all super minimalist and cool and the yoghurt was great - more refreshing than ice-cream with a sort of creamy but tangy taste. The toppings on offer are a mixture of mouthwatering and healthy: everything from white chocolate buttons to goji berries and pineapple - personally I went for blackberries, chocolate brownie bits and caremalised soya seeds - topped off with a little complementary grated lime rind. Sounds odd but it worked. Final verdict? This sin't a substitute for ice-cream, but it is a yummy alternative. Best of all it's virtually fat and therefore guilt-free :-)

Calle Sagasta 32, Metro Alonso Martínez

A birthday breakfast in Madrid

My heavy-handed approach to butter and mustard.

Pain au chocolat

Belgian bread at Le Pain Quotidien

This photo is from absolutmadrid.com

My friends and I are huge fans of breakfast. Whether it's a greasy British fry up, a dense slab of campesino bread rubbed with tomato and drizzled with olive oil, or something that slides into brunch like eggs benedict followed by carrot cake. When I'm on my own, I'm guilty of missing breakfast, but back in my 'cooking days' I would occasionally have people round for creamy scrambled eggs or on one momentous occasion (can't remember what that was) a brunch of home-made sweetcorn blinis, smoked salmon and that creamy, gherkiny dip, liptauer. I do sometimes wonder what happened to that girl that loved cooking, and wish she would come back and make me stuff. Bring out the violins :p

Today was another memorable morning meal. We had a little celebratory birthday breakfast for my dear friend Catherine, who is queen of breakfast and all things wholesome and orderly :-)

At the birthday girl's request the 4 of us made it to Belgian bakery-come-eatery Le Pain Quotidien on Gran Via for 11am. We started off with big bowls of coffee and pain au chocolat - which were good though our francophile friend Kate said the pastries weren't quite up to Parisian standards. Could anything really ever be up to Parisian standards? Following this were boiled free-range eggs with 'soldiers' of gorgeous organic bread, excellent home-made hummus with just the right balance of earthy cumin, cloying olive oil and sharp lemon, and thickly sliced ham with mustard, tapenade and more of that great bread - all washed down with freshly-made lemonade, apple and ginger juice, and OJ. I really had to restrain myself not to order the whole menu here, one of their specialities seem to be tartines - toasted slices of organic bread topped with goodies like curried free range chicken with mango, harrisa and red fruits chutney, or the equally delicious-sounding marinated tuna with hummus and chives.

Our breakfasts are usually followed by a session of window shopping on C/Fuencarral (a digestive aid I say) and more often than not a stop at another cafe for refreshments. In this case, our favourite little vintage bar, Lolina, where we enjoyed raspberry and strawberry juice and a few good laughs (photos below).

P.s. have a great weekend everyone!

Felicidades to the lovely birthday girl :-)

Wine tasting in Madrid

I've been meaning to try out wine-tasting for pretty much the past 6 years - but there's always been some 'valid' excuse not to (time, money, going teetotal for abit, no-one else wants to go etc). Don't get me wrong, a lot of wine has been tasted during my years in Madrid, but little attention has been paid to colour, to bouquets and to woody undertones...lol.. Well, the other day, one of the lovely girls at my yoga class suggested going for a lesson at the vinoteca she's been studying at and it was the most fun I'd had in ages! For the paltry sum of 10 Euros we had a lesson on the basics of wine tasting from the lovely Antonio, then got to taste one white and three reds - all the while excitedly jotting down notes on the forms he'd laid out for us. Contrary to what I'd been lead to believe about wine tasting - we swallowed everything and there was none of that spitting it out stuff that I'd seen on TV programmes. After the main technical tasting bit, the 8 of us were invited to polish off the 4 bottles which he accompanied with some great jamon ibérico, tuna salad, cured manchego cheese and the best preserved red peppers I've ever tried. Needless to say, by the end of it, we'd all made friends and were more than a little tipsy. In order to assist one of the tastings you have to either be a student at the school, or be invited by a student (as was our case) - but after having such a great afternoon I'm actually considering doing the beginners course which works out at 75 euros for 4 2 hour sessions - for anyone else who's interested you can check out their website - I know it all looks a bit basic, but it's because they're in the midst of moving premises and I can promise that the quality of the tuition and the wine was spot on :-)

P.s. It's right by metro Almendrales - no I'd never heard of the station either - but it's about 6 stops from Sol on the yellow line.

Be a lady that lunches in Madrid

The good thing about going for an early evening aperitif in Madrid is the variety; one afternoon you might fancy cañas (tiny measures of ice-cold lager) at a bohemian terraza in the dishevelled yet increasingly on-the-up neighbourhood of Lavapies, another day it could be Mojitos in one of the over-crowded hippy-chic bars in La latina and sometimes (ok, very occasionally) you might just want to hang out in your local ‘old man bar’ – this Madrileño institution fascinated me for my first few months here; granite work tops, unflattering strip lighting, ensaladilla rusa (‘russian’ potato salad) cemented with dollops of mayonnaise, sculpted into domes and ornamented with olives and anchovies, slot machines, and of course, the ubiquitous old men, who line up at the bar downing black coffee laced with whisky, animatedly exchanging anecdotes or staring trance-like at the sports news on the flat screen TV. So '70s. Anyway, that was my poetic little bit about old men bars :-)

Sometimes however, you want something a bit different, you want to get out your best handbag and rub shoulders with groomed señoras with perfect helmet-hair and huge pearl earrings. You want to be a lady that lunches. Or at least a lady that drinks Martinis or enjoys her tea in fine bone china. Here are some suggestions for when a more pija ambience takes your fancy:

Living in London

I think I’ve blogged about this before. It’s a little ‘English’ tea place in the heart of Alonso Martínez (C/Santa Engracia 4). Decked out like Fortnum and Mason's and serving real Earl Grey from dainty silverware, it’s one of the few places in Madrid you can get a cream tea. I also recommend the bresaola and rocket finger sandwich. Has a little shop annexed to it selling such sundries as Walker’s crisps at extortionate prices, and a partner store a couple of doors down selling traditional English homewares – bearing in mind whoever owns this place must think Brits frolic about the house in chintz pinnies pruning our miniature rose bushes with William Morris stamped secateurs (Sp?). I love the sentiment however.

Source

El Espejo

In the heart of museum-land on Paseo de Recoletos is the art deco pavillion El Espejo. I admit that I’ve only been for a Vermut on the terazza but I plan to go back and see what it’s like to eat inside. Even if you don’t want to eat here, its worth ordering something in the pavement cafe if only for the people watching and live piano music.

Embassy

Maybe even a little posher than the above 2, after all we are ladies (and boys) that lunch :-) I ended up here completely by accident when meeting the friend of a friend. Established getting on for 100 years ago by an Irish emigree who complained that there was nowhere in Madrid where a lady could go unaccompanied for a cup of tea. Thanks to her, us ladies can do tea here (in company or otherwise). Great tea list, pastries, restaurant and delicatessen. Get to the tea room early to ensure you get a table.

Source

Saturday evening

I had a lovely evening on Saturday - dinner at a friend's house, delicious prawns, lots of laughs and dodgy music :-)

Bits of my weekend

The weekend started for me on Thursday when we had a day off for Corpus Christi - it was back to work for a half day on Friday but that doesn't really count. I've had a bit of everything so far this weekend, shopping, eating, relaxing and partying; I bought some cute black pumps in Nine West and stripey sailor top in Pimkie and now the sun's coming out I restocked on Clinique's City Block sheer SPF25 - there's probably better sun protection out there, but for me this product is the only one that's truly oil-free - the rest just make me break out (if you are pale skinned they have a factor 40 too, but it's too chalky for my skin tone).

After shopping there were tintos de verano (red wine and lemon spritzers) and delicious little bites of battered cod at Casa Labra, on C/Tetuan in Sol with my dear friends C and K - it can be almost impossible to get an outside seat at this old-school Madrileño institution, but we got there as it opened and grabbed a table on the pavement.

And on Friday was my friend A's birthday, 36, but I swear she doesn't look a day over 28. I got all dressed up for the occassion in my 'lucky' leopard print heels which are possibly the comfiest shoes I own. We used to work for the same company, and have both been through a whole lot of trials and tribulations over the past few years so it was good to see her back on her feet and celebrating. As a gift I got her some smellies from my lovely l'Occitane - by the way they have a new peony range for anyone who's interested. Anyway, what started out as food and a little singstar (or whatever it's called) contest at hers ended up being an all-nighter - out till 6am at a townie club I hadn't been to in years called, ahem, Torero (bullfighter). To give you an idea of how long it was since I'd been to this place - last time I was there I was wearing red and white from head to foot and was accompanied by a gaggle of long-haired gypsy men - we are talking a long time ago. Thankfully times and fashions have since changed. I admit to being more than a little tipsy and dancing the night away to the likes of Lady Gaga and Ke-dollarsign-ha.

Thankfully my energetic moves burnt off most of the G&Ts and after a good night's sleep, I woke up at midday feeling almost spritely. 2 episodes of Glee later (I admit to having a huge crush on Mr Schuster) I managed to pull myself off the sofa, get showered and head off to the Retiro park on my own to practice closeups of flowers with my new camera.... However, my picnic blanket and the cool grass underfoot were too tempting, and no sooner had I entered the park I bedded down with a cornetto and a book (Tony Robbins' Awaken the Giant within - don't ask - I have a strange penchant for burly Republican motivational speakers which I will explain in another post) and spent the next couple of hours chilling. To be fair I did walk around and try to get a snap or two, but realised that there are no flowers in Madrid in summer as they usually get sunburnt to death. So I took a photo of the fake flowers on my balcony - I worry about the neighbours realising they're not genuine so I cunningly mix them in with real greenery ;-) Why I care about what the neighbours think I really don't know.

Chicken nuggets with a twist

This isn't a review, more of a quick mention. The other night I was introduced to Cervecería Pontepez, on Calle Pez in Malasaña. There wasn't time to do much sampling, but I have to give a nod of recognition to the 'Pollo con krispies con salsa de curry y helado de coco' - basically cornflake-breaded chicken goujons with curry sauce (one as deliciously cloying as the Macdonald's sauce, which I love, no joke) served with a ball of coconut ice-cream. Surprisingly, it was pretty delicious. I can't say the same for the hummus, which was ok, but by no means great. In fact I can't remember the last time I had good hummus in Spain, restaurants seem to think if they jusy whizz up a jar of chickpeas and add a bit of cumin that's enough - but it isn't if you grew up on the real thing :-) Anyway, Pontepez is definitely worth returning to, as I'm keen to try out the other innovative stuff they have on their menu.

The other reason I've chosen to post on it is that I'm pretty sure that this is one of the bars I checked out about 5 years ago when I was about to give it all up to start my own cafe and spend all day slaving over a hot stove. Seeing how the former owners had been bankrupted by their business (or maybe the business had been bankrupted by them?) was perhaps a deciding factor in me not going down that route.

A winey weekend

This weekend I worked, but I was also lucky enough to try some pretty nice wines and some yummy food. After near on 2 years of pretty much being teetotal (just because I felt like it) over the past 2 days I've probably tried out more (good) wine than I have in many many months.

Saturday, a friend introduced me to la cave du petit, a French wine shop specialising in 'natural wines', something which I'm sure my dining companion could explain much more eloquently than me :-) I have no idea what we drank, apart from the fact I liked it a lot (one was a sort of cloudy rose, which was just lovely and so spring like). Wine aside, the thing I liked about this place was the food - baked dorada (a member of the bream family I think), a totally juicy and flavoursome magret de pato (duck) with thyme-cented potatoes and a tatin (without the official, ahem, tart). All very good.

Sunday I was lucky enough to be introduced to Bodegas Rosell, a great little tiled bar behind Atocha station  and therefore a stone's throw from where I live. The sumiller (who was a really nice guy) brought out bottle after bottle of interesting Spanish wines, and again, was more knowledgable on the subject than I could ever hope to be. And with the wine, came food - foie with baby broad beans, wild mushrooms and other good stuff. Somewhere, between all this I managed to get some writing done.

So, are my teetotalling days over? I don't think so. This spring I'm in the mood for 'wellness', for spas, for reading, for early nights, for sorting stuff out (for just being a bit of a boring girl in general!) - though I'm sure the odd glass of wine can fit in there somehow :-)