European food I - a catch up

I am pausing from my sight seeing travel posts to try and catch up on some of the snacks and meals that haven't yet been mentioned. Squeezing food and sights into single posts has proved tricky, and the food side is easier for me to remember and post at leisure.

Before starting, I should mention our approach to eating on holiday. We tend to mix self-catering with eating out whenever possible, and definitely prefer picnic-style or casual cafe lunches to formal restaurants at lunchtime. We also carry snacks with us wherever we go (Mr Bite always has biscuits, for instance), because we have learnt through experience that we are liable to walk for hours and then think about lunch, meaning that by the time we actually find somewhere it can be 2.30pm with blood sugar levels dropping fast.

Yoghurt-topped, fruit containing Digestive biscuits. I ask you, why can't Australia have these?

For me, this is also the first overseas trip where I haven't eaten meat. Two years ago, I still ate chicken on occasion and fish and seafood quite freely. These days, my eating doesn't fit neatly into a category, but at home I tend to describe myself as 80% vegan. I don't really think that veganism is something you can dip in and out of, but that term is the best I have come up with to describe my eating preferences. The non-vegan 20% consists of dairy intermittently, about two serves of fish a month, occasional honey, and the odd trace of egg.

I decided ahead of this trip that I would be a vegetarian with vegan preferences for the purpose of travelling overseas. The idea of eating fish of unknown origin, unknown storage method, and unknown preparation method did not appeal. At the same time, I didn't want to complicate our eating efforts by strictly avoiding dairy and egg in countries with unfamiliar foods and languages. I know it is possible to do so, but as I am not strictly vegan at any time, travel seemed an occasion for flexibility.

I haven't tried this yet, but I am extremely excited to do so...

Mr Bite, who eats chicken regularly at home and red meat occasionally, also drops those products whilst travelling. This is due to some questionable experiences in the past with hygiene / food preparation, and means that he is a vegetarian who also eats fish when on holiday. It makes eating out slightly simpler, even if his food preferences tend to include tuna and cheese and egg whereas mine do not.

Enough, however, of words...here are some of our previously unmentioned, but nonetheless memorable, food experiences to date.

(More) Madrid frozen yoghurt.

This came from the same market-based store of my first Madrid frozen yoghurt. It included the same slightly tart base, this time with cherry sauce and chocolate coated sesame seeds.

Seriously good.

Pizza.

This is an easy fall-back for us and featured the night after our fancy vegetarian restaurant in Madrid. It was a sort of his and hers swap, in terms of dinner selection!

Mr Bite had a tuna pizza, which he declared to be good, and I had a vegetarian that featured artichokes, mushroom, zucchini, eggplant and tomato. The base was gorgeously crispy and whilst there was a tad too much cheese for my liking, the surplus was easily removed.

Lindt mousse chocolate.

I don't know why we don't have this in Australia (or perhaps we do and it's just not in Western Australia?). It contains milk, but the outer chocolate is dark enough to offset the milkier mousse within, and it had the truffle-like filling that I love in chocolate.

A bit melty when travelling, but that's all the more reason to eat it quickly.

Self-catering meal number 3.

Our first self-catered meal in Madrid, the night of our arrival, was soup and bread. We also had a tomato-based pasta with chickpeas (me) and tuna (Mr B) in the middle of our week there. 

On our last night, in an effort to use up food and try out newly found tofu nuggets, we had a slightly random combination that I will not even attempt to name - self-catering meal number 3 is as good as it gets.

Mr Bite's plate featured pasta in vegetable soup, with a side of a few tofu nuggets. Mine had more tofu nuggets, a smaller amount of pasta, and soup in a mug. We both had raw carrot eaten whilst the nuggets and pasta were cooking. Not exactly gourmet cuisine, but enjoyable!

The tofu nuggets were different to any I've tried in Australia, tasting ever so slightly of falafel in their flavouring and being nicely coated but still more tofu than crumb.

Kari's dress shopping purchases.

You may remember that I mentioned a shopping trip on our last afternoon in Madrid. I had vague ideas about a summer dress. Instead, I bought a scarf and then found a large supermarket and a smaller vegan-friendly food section within Madrid's largest department store, El Corte Ingles. 

Dresses were forgotten and instead I purchased these:

The Lindt chocolate, also pictured at the top of this post, is yet to be eaten. The 87% cocoa dark chocolate with vegan white mint chips has been eaten, and was delightfully dark as well as delightfully minty. 

The freeze-dried pineapple made me thirsty, as freeze-dried fruit is wont to do, but made for an enjoyable snack on our train ride to Porto.

Fruit.

This has featured all through our travels, with summer fruit being in season and just incredible. I have had peaches, plums, nectarines, pineapple and mango to date. Even the 'boring' fruit, like apples and pears, has tasted better than Australia's fading winter crops.

Wok to Walk

Oh, Wok to Walk. We first stumbled on this in Lisbon, and have managed to eat it twice in the past week. The company is a European-based franchise that started in Amsterdam in 2004. The stores aim to provide fresh, nutritious food quickly, made in front of you, and made to your specifications. It is a bit like an Asian subway, but better. We loved it and I would happily swap Australia's Wagamama stores for some Wok to Walk branches.

Mr Bite's egg noodles with tofu and vegetables in black bean sauce

The menu is designed to be a 3-step process. Pick a base, pick toppings, and pick a sauce. Mr Bite has ordered the same combination twice, with egg noodles with vegetables, tofu, and black bean sauce.

I have pretty much ordered the same thing twice too. The first time I had their vegetable base, which is number 7 above, with tofu and soy sauce. The second time I had the vegetable base with tofu, extra brocolli, and sweet and sour sauce. Both were amazing. In the picture below, it is ALL vegetables and tofu. I was in heaven.

One of the best dinners I have eaten on this holiday, despite it being completely un-European

I would like a spicy sauce that isn't super hot or coconut-based (their spice options at the moment) but really, I love the menu concept too much to complain.

Lemon and coconut sorbets.

These were a Madrid purchase, on a hot afternoon when we had walked for some hours. Mr B is quite a fan of lemon sorbet, and I was caught up in the novelty of a coconut variety - not something I had seen before.

Lemon sorbet

The lemon sorbet was very lemony, tart first and sweet second, and I think it has satisfied Mr Bite's lemon taste buds for some time.

My coconut variety was incredible, with the texture and consistency of sorbet but added creaminess from the coconut component and an eating experience that straddled sorbet and ice cream.

Coconut sorbet

I loved it and am keen to try and recreate it at home.

And there we have it - a lot of food! If you could pick one item, what would you pick?!

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Spain days 4 to 6 - Madrid and San Lorenzo De El Excorial

I smiled at some of you expressing concern over my blogging on honeymoon. Rest assured that we are having a wonderful, relaxing, honeymoon-ish time and my computer is only coming out at rationed intervals :-) I have found blogging to help hugely with organising my thoughts and helping my memory, and I am keen to have these posts to look back on for myself too.

My internet presence is likely to wax and wane over the month (and my commenting to be reduced), but free wifi and some quiet hours this week have allowed me to get online a few times.

Madrid's Royal Palace - front exterior

We have managed to alternate days in Madrid this week with day-trips out of the city. Highlights from the past few days include a visit to Madrid's Royal Palace (Palacio Real De Madrid), which is a spectacular building. It is also the official residence of the Spanish royal family in Madrid, despite it not actually being used by them to live in. The palace has 2,800 rooms, of which 50 are open to the public (no photos sadly), and they are incredibly ornate. I have decided that Spain knows how to decorate grandly - the wall coverings, painted ceilings and general atmosphere was most definitely regal.

Royal Palace - back and surrounding gardens (I was playing with my camera's sweep panorama setting)

We visited the palace on Wednesday, a day that also incorporated a cable car ride, a visit to the somewhat hot Casa de Campo park, and a visit to a chocolate and biscuit shop around the corner from where we are staying (a dangerous position). I purchased quite incredible flavoured chocolate almonds, which were challenging to photograph but delicious to eat.

These insisted on reflecting light and I was to impatient to eat them to take sufficient time to care!

Wednesday evening saw us venture to my second choice of the nearby vegetarian restaurants - my first choice being unhelpfully closed from Sunday through Wednesday evenings. Yerbabuena is very close to where we are staying, on Calle de Bordadores, and refers to itself as providing vegetarian haute cuisine. As we will see, this was not a good match for Mr Bite (!), but the restaurant lived up to its reputation.

The in-store Yerbabuena menu has English translations alongside the Spanish. About half of the dishes are vegan and most of the remaining meals can be made vegan on request. It was, to say the least, a joyous experience to have a whole string of possible dinner options to choose from.

I ordered a vegan dish described in the English translation as tofu fillets with mixed vegetables. The dish was far grander than that description would suggest, with 4 palm-sized tofu fillets interspersed with roast pepper and topped with some avocado sauce. I wasn't enamoured with the sauce, but it was easy to take off and I loved the rest. The tofu was as tender as any I have eaten, without being too soft, and the balance with peppers and some spinach was perfect.

Vegan tofu fillet stack with roast vegetables

The plate also included gazpacho (cold tomato soup), some additional baby peppers, tender potato slices, and some Asian-style sauce. It was a generous dish for the equivalent of about 10 Australian dollars.

Mr Bite ordered crepes with cheese filling, which came with sides of gazpacho, guacamole, salad and the same potato slices. He liked the crepes initially but then found the cheese to be (i) too much and (ii) soft cheese rather than the stronger cheddar he prefers. He also didn't like the sides, which I suspect were there to balance out the cheese.

Vegetarian rolled crepes with cheese and various sides

Mr Bite's drink for the evening, a papaya, mango and pineapple juice, also proved too papaya-y and in all I would say the evening's meal was as much a failure for him as it was a success for me. I have concluded that my husband, bless him, is not one for fancy vegetarian food. Thursday night we had pizza, which was a safer choice!

San Lorenzo de el Escorial

Thursday itself was a day-trip to San Lorenzo de el Escorial, a monastery and World Heritage Site about an hour out of Madrid. The monastery has been largely converted to a museum relating to Spanish royalty, which to us seemed a shame (we would have been keen to hear about the monastery itself), but the buildings are magnificent and the extensive tombs underneath the monastery were very impressive, albeit a tad creepy when considering the past monarchs housed inside (truly).

We also visited Madrid's botanical gardens on Thursday evening, which proved a delightful way to pass an hour and had the bonus of providing fun photo opportunities.

Botanical gardens

Friday, today, was in some ways our last 'proper' day in Madrid. We visited two private museums, the Museo de Cerralbo and Museo del Romaticismo, both of which were well worth seeing. The Cerralbo is the former home of Marquis Cerralbo and houses his impressive and extensive collections of paintings, ornaments and decorative objects. It cost less than four Australian dollars each, photos were allowed, and we were free to wander at leisure - without so much to see that the visit was overwhelming. In all, a perfect museum experience.

Images from the magnificent Museo de Cerralbo

The Museo del Romaticismo was more like a home, set up in the context of the mid-1800s, and was thus enjoyable but less dramatic. We weren't sure if cameras were allowed and were too timid to try and ask in Spanish (especially after I got told off, albeit kindly, for drinking water inside!), so we have no photos from there.

This afternoon also saw me squeeze in some solo shopping, which was cultural in a different sort of way, but I will save details of that for another time - it started with a vague idea of buying a summer dress but morphed to predominantly food purchases (!).

Tomorrow, we plan to visit the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, an art gallery to complement the Prado, and spend some relaxing hours in the large Parque del Buen Retiro, which has 140 hectares of gardens. We then take an overnight train to Lisbon in Portugal, and in Portugal we will remain until the following week.

Are you in to museums when travelling? When I'm by myself I tend to skip over most in favour of wandering and gardens and shops, but I do like them with company and in moderation.

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