eG Foodblog: Rehovot - Prague: City of a Thousand Forks

[Rehovot]

By the way, here's our kitchen. Spacious it ain't, but everything's within reach.

[Rehovot]

That sirloin dish sounds like main course and dessert rolled into one, and therefore intriguing.  Wonder how the sweetness of the berries and whipped cream plays off the rich, savory flavor of the beef?

Done well, it's really excellent... There's just a bit of jam and whipped cream, but they're sharp accent notes, I'd say.

Are these anything like fried mozzarella sticks?

Exactly the same consistency and coating but with a different taste; hermelin, the cheese used, is Czech Brie. Instead of marinara on the side, it's served with tartar sauce.

Speaking of cream cheese:  I assume that Philadelphia is widely available in Prague.

Yes, but the local/regional version of cream cheese, tvaroch (known as "topfen" in Germany and Austria, I think), is ubiquitous in dozens of varieties (cherry-flavored, pineapple-flavored, thick, smooth, etc. ad infinitum) and is a lot cheaper.* The cheesecake-making possibilities with tvaroch are endless.

*(half the cost of Philly)

[nakji]

In Hanoi, Czech beer halls are really popular. One of the drinking snacks you could get at these places was something called "Russian Cheese". It was long strings of mild cheese that had been braided and smoked. It was usually served with a bit of mayonnaise and strong mustard on the side for dipping. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else. Have you seen anything like it there?

[Rehovot]

In Hanoi, Czech beer halls are really popular. One of the drinking snacks you could get at these places was something called "Russian Cheese". It was long strings of mild cheese that had been braided and smoked. It was usually served with a bit of mayonnaise and strong mustard on the side for dipping. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else. Have you seen anything like it there?

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Hi, nakji. Yes, we have this at home in the fridge. I forget what it's called in Czech. It's very salty and crisps up nicely under the broiler if you top lasagne or quesadillas with it. (Probably not what the czeesemakers intended, but it works.) Never seen it at a pub, though...but I'll have to try the mustard trick, which sounds very good!

Now I'm starving.

[nakji]

In Hanoi, Czech beer halls are really popular. One of the drinking snacks you could get at these places was something called "Russian Cheese". It was long strings of mild cheese that had been braided and smoked. It was usually served with a bit of mayonnaise and strong mustard on the side for dipping. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else. Have you seen anything like it there?

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Hi, nakji. Yes, we have this at home in the fridge. I forget what it's called in Czech. It's very salty and crisps up nicely under the broiler if you top lasagne or quesadillas with it. (Probably not what the czeesemakers intended, but it works.) Never seen it at a pub, though...but I'll have to try the mustard trick, which sounds very good!

Now I'm starving.

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Cool beans! Another great reason to get on a plane to Prague. Yeah, there's nothing better than cheese dipped in mayotard. My husband misses it a lot, and it's on his "must-eat" list for when we go back to Vietnam this summer. You know, some people visit Vietnam for the pho, my husband, he goes for the cheese.....this is why I'm never letting him in to Europe. We'd never leave. I'll tell him about the quesadilla trick - that's what we're having for dinner tonight. I won't hear the end of it, I'm sure - could I impose on you to post a picture so I can torture him? How do the Czechs eat it?

[Rehovot]

In the spirit of foodblog adventure, I picked up some chicken-flavored potato chips at the market, to have with lunch. These are stacked right next to the ham-flavored chips. (No doubt these are cousins of the ham-flavored popcorn you can get at the movies, here, but that's another story.) The chicken-flavored chips were remarkably...good. And sort of herby.

I strolled down the pernik (gingerbread) aisle in search of something to have after lunch. A whole aisle, you say? Yes... These small bricks of chocolate-covered gingerbread come in dozens of varieties--with strawberry, apricot, coconut, cherry, and plum filling, to name a few. I picked plum. And it's not bad at all with a cup of coffee.

There's a shot (to be posted later ) of a Colombian-chocolate and cappuccino Magnum ice cream bar, and I really had to put it down and back away slowly to avoid shrieking with joy in the frozen-foods aisle. My husband and I became addicted to these ice cream bars in Israel, but I haven't seen the chocolate-cappuccino one before.

Nakji, I'll get a shot of the cheese at home... I've never seen anyone eat it out, but we eat it just like string cheese.

[JTravel]

There's a shot (to be posted later ) of a Colombian-chocolate and cappuccino Magnum ice cream bar, and I really had to put it down and back away slowly to avoid shrieking with joy in the frozen-foods aisle. My husband and I became addicted to these ice cream bars in Israel, but I haven't seen the chocolate-cappuccino one before.

OHHHHHHHHH Magnum Bars. Wherever we have traveled we have enjoyed Magnum bars as our "energy is flagging.....need a pick me up" afternoon treat. The huge sign with all the choices shown just pulls us in. Have introduced fellow travelers to them in gas station stores from Thailand to Estonia. The BEST.

Thanks for blogging about a place I know too little about. Anyone I know who has been there loved it. I know it will be a great week.

J

[therese]

What is the purpose of the photo array behind the scale in this photo?

Those photos are on buttons attached to the scale; you plunk down your bananas, hit the button with the photo of bananas, and bingo: the machine weighs the item and spits out a price tag for it. Unless, like me, you buy some obscure thing, can't find the picture or the number for it, and then you hold up everyone else in line.

Or even if it isn't that obscure an item the picture looks a lot like something else. Stone fruits can be particularly difficult to distinguish. Sometimes the picture just doesn't look much like that actual item (figs in Salamanca were problematic---I managed by running the various written possibilities through my linguistic rolodex), and sometimes there's no picture, just the name.

If I'm not feeling up to the task I just buy pre-packaged stuff with the weight already posted.

[nakji]

OHHHHHHHHH Magnum Bars. Wherever we have traveled we have enjoyed Magnum bars as our "energy is flagging.....need a pick me up" afternoon treat. The huge sign with all the choices shown just pulls us in. Have introduced fellow travelers to them in gas station stores from Thailand to Estonia. The BEST.

I enjoy the mint flavoured ones, which I can only ever seem to find in Hong Kong. Classic Vanilla is always nice, too. I can't imagine what I'd weigh if I actually lived in a country that sold them.

[Dr. Teeth]

Great pictures. Following with great interest. Any chance of a beer tasting?

[DCP]

Wonderful photos, Rehovot. So many other eG food bloggers make do (and work magic) with small kitchens; seems to be a common thread.

Czocholate. Studentska, milk and dark chocolate studded with nuts and candied fruit. Tasty! I should eat less of this, but it's addictive. I blame my husband, who grew up on it.

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"Czocholate" - outstanding. Thanks for the chuckle.

[Kouign Aman]

I like your kitchen. Light and airy. You've made it very cheerful with the brilliant rug. One caveat - that is the smallest sink I have ever seen in a kitchen and it would drive me nuts.

What are the white strands above/behind the sink, that look loosely knotted together?

I second the applause for czocholate.

[Megan Blocker]

Ooooh, Prague! Yay!

Erin, I'm curious - what are the major trends, restaurant-wise, in Prague these days?

[Rehovot]

Great pictures.  Following with great interest.  Any chance of a beer tasting?

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Yes, indeed. Beer tonight; wine tomorrow.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[Rehovot]

Hello, I'm back from dinner...

First, breakfast... Bananas + yogurt + granola + blackberry jam + honey. The granola is half rolled oats and half dried-fruit muesli, spiked with nuts, ginger, nutmeg, and ground flax seeds. If the jar of granola ever looks empty, I throw in something. In lieu of a sourdough starter, I guess I have a granola starter.

That's white yogurt from Moravian Valasska (Wallachia), near the Slovakia border. We used to use white "selsky" yogurt, and I can't really tell the two kinds apart--but my husband can.

That black oozing goop is really homemade blackberry jam from family in Austria... My aunt-in-law, provider of jam and all culinary advice, makes great apricot jam from the trees in her backyard in the Wachau Valley (where Bailoni apricot liqueur is made).

There's definitely coffee in there. I have to leave for work by 7:45 am...not nearly enough time for waking up over a long, slow cup of coffee and the paper.

[Rehovot]

Some catching up:

Morning snack... Hazelnut cookies. (Underneath, it says, "Good morning!" I like a snack that greets you.) These also exist in chocolate, plain, and with dried fruits. Ground up, they make a great cheesecake base.

Off to the supermarket, during lunch! I tell myself the walk is good exercise, but I mainly go to gaze lovingly at the chocolate and convince myself that I can't last until 5:00 pm without some. Right to left: horcice (mustard for grilled meats--and there's a tube of horseradish mustard tucked in the back), Kozacka mustard ("Cossack" mustard--incredibly hot), and kren (horseradish).

Misa ice-cream bars. Chocolate-covered icy cream cheese. Nearly every kid (big and small) in the park seems to have one of these, in summertime.

Russian ice cream, popular for as long as my husband can remember. (It's two waffle cookies/wafers with ice cream in the middle, aka an ice cream sandwich.)

Magnum ice cream bars, including the Colombia cappuccino one...

Chocolate-covered, plum-filled gingerbread. Afternoon snack. The more I think about it, the better it tasted.

Dinner, coming right up.

[Rehovot]

For dinner, we (my colleague, Mr. Rehovot and his colleague, and I) went to the Tynska literary cafe. My colleague and I were starving after a 45-minute commute from work into the center...

This place is difficult to find. If you miss that door in the middle, you'll just wander around Old Town Square for hours, dreaming of relatively cheap beer.

Bernard dark beer, 13 degrees. (13% alcohol.) You can order beer just by ordering in degrees: "desitku" is 10 degrees (10% alcohol), "dvanactku" is 12 degrees (12% alcohol).

(My husband and his friend were drinking dainty little half-pints of 10-degree Pilsner but then switched to pints of dark beer when my friend and I showed up and ordered them.)

Nakladny hermelin: Czech Brie marinated in vinegar and oil, with red peppers, onions, and (occasionally) bay leaves. The Brie rounds are sliced in half horizontally and spread with some spicy chile paste. My friend pointed out that there are as many ways of preparing this as there are pubs.

Served with baskets of Sumavska bread to sop up all the sauce.

This is what you see after you emerge from the cafe and walk for about two minutes.

You can probably gather that dinner is not that big a deal, here; the main meal is lunch. (A friend once asked me what the biggest cultural difference was between me and my husband; I told her, "Dinner," which took some explaining. In the U.S., dinner is an institution; here, lunch is the institution. We negotiated a happy compromise and do American-style dinner (that is, what I think of as dinner--meat, fresh veg/salad, grain/bread) during the week and Czech-style lunch (what my husband thinks of as lunch--meat, fresh veg/salad, grain/bread). It just took some adjusting on both of our parts. Ok, it took a lot of adjusting. It's surprising how much cultural baggage you can fit on a placemat.

Edited April 22, 2008 by Rehovot (log)

[Megan Blocker]

It's surprising how much cultural baggage you can fit on a placemat.

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Excellent line.

And the cheese and bread look so good...

[Rehovot]

I like your kitchen. Light and airy. You've made it very cheerful with the brilliant rug.  One caveat - that is the smallest sink I have ever seen in a kitchen and it would drive me nuts.

It is pretty small. I can't really fit baking sheets into it; I have to wedge them in at an angle. Luckily for me, God invented baking paper.

What are the white strands above/behind the sink, that look loosely knotted together?

They're the cords from the lights under the cabinets. I look at them and think, "Gee, is this to code? Or am I going to get zapped (and that's 220 volts, not 110) while doing the dishes? What a way to go." It's one of a few kitchen fix-it projects...

[Rehovot]

Erin, I'm curious - what are the major trends, restaurant-wise, in Prague these days?

Hi, Megan! Hmm, this is a great question. I'm not sure I can answer it fully, but here goes. Probably the biggest news currently (to my view) in the Czech restaurant world is that, as of last month, the country now boasts a restaurant with a Michelin star: Allegro, in the Prague Four Seasons. Allegro's chef is Italian.

Aromi, Brasserie M, and Le Terroir also received Bib Gourmand awards. The first is a neighborhood place in upscale Vinohrady (with good fish); Brasserie M is in Nove mesto (New Town) and seems to have the monopoly on reliable classic French dishes. I have fond memories of Aromi as the place where friends and I would occasionally (*very* occasionally) go for long lunches (back when I was teaching and had free time).

The other big news was the arrival in early spring of Gordon Ramsay's MazePrague, in the Hilton (Old Town). Jason Atherton and Philip Carmichael head the kitchen.

In general, I think the trend at upscale restaurants here is to try to incorporate more inventive European, American, Asian, and East Asian trends and styles, but I don't think anyone is channeling Ferran Adria. It's just my opinion, but the kind of experimenting and equipment involved in the cutting-edge stuff in Western Europe is considered extremely expensive by central European standards... On the other hand, Czechs now travel a lot, and they expect international trends to be mirrored in Prague--including food trends. The average pub, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be changing its menu all that much...

But cookbooks from nearly every cuisine you can think of seem to sell very well, here; there are also dozens of cooking magazines (I'm hooked on the Czech edition of Bon Appetit, which has a Spanish and Thai focus, this month); and a greater variety of ingredients (and ingredients of better quality) are now available to the average home cook... That all adds up to a demand for more diverse offerings at restaurants, I think. I'll sleep on it and let you know if I come up with anything else.

By the way, folks, for great photos of Prague and of Prague eats, check out Megan's posts from Prague.

[TongoRad]

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Bernard dark beer, 13 degrees. (13% alcohol.) You can order beer just by ordering in degrees: "desitku" is 10 degrees (10% alcohol), "dvanactku" is 12 degrees (12% alcohol).

(My husband and his friend were drinking dainty little half-pints of 10-degree Pilsner but then switched to pints of dark beer when my friend and I showed up and ordered them.)

...

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Great blog so far- everything looks so great, especially that beer and the cheese (and the bread)! I can just smell it all from here, I swear I can. We get so few examples of your tradition of dark lagers over here in the States.

Apologies for offering a correction on the beer, though- but I'd wager any amount that those percentages don't refer to the amount of alcohol. The Balling (or Brix) scale uses degrees as well, each of which realtes to a percentage point of sugar dissolved within a liquid-in other words a beer brewed at 13 degrees balling would start out with a solution of 13% sugar. For a rough estimate of how much alcohol is in there just multiply by .4, or 5.2% AbV in that case. 13% is just crazy-high for a beer (but not impossible), and that just doesn't seem like what is in the glass (I told you I could smell it )

Allright, geek-out over, and back to the blog...

[cathrynapple]

Oh my goodness, Magnums! I haven't had a Magnum ice cream since the last time I went back "home" and now I'm craving one.

[judiu]

Blog on! It'll be a wonderful trip for me... I don't even have a passport except for online!

[Rehovot]

Apologies for offering a correction on the beer, though- but I'd wager any amount that those percentages don't refer to the amount of alcohol. The Balling (or Brix) scale uses degrees as well, each of which realtes to a percentage point of sugar dissolved within a liquid-in other words a beer brewed at 13 degrees balling would start out with a solution of 13% sugar. For a rough estimate of how much alcohol is in there just multiply by .4, or 5.2% AbV in that case. 13% is just crazy-high for a beer (but not impossible), and that just doesn't seem like what is in the glass (I told you I could smell it  )

Thanks, TongoRad, you're absolutely right. I goofed; a ten degree beer is about 4% alcohol and a twelve degree one, 5%. 13% alcohol sounded weird as I was writing it, but, then again, many weird things seem reasonable to me after one pint.

Thanks, and let me know where to send the beer.

[Rehovot]

I have today off, so I slept in. Mr. R. had to fend for himself for breakfast, but here's what I had... The sherry in the background is for a Spanish almond and golden-raisin cake I'm hoping to make, later this week.

I'm meeting a friend for coffee, this morning... This evening, there's a wine tasting at U Zavoje, which should be fun. The U Zavoje passageway* is right off Old Town Square, and it conceals a wine bar, restaurant, cheese shop , and cafe.

*Remind me to tell you more about Prague's passageways!

The sign reads,

"Fast food

Soups

Quiche

Salads

Smoked salmon

Cheeses

Fresh sandwiches"

Here's what's on the calendar... I hope I get to all these places, today. I'd better start moving.