Croatian Food Odyssey

I used to want to marry Giles Coren, but a few incidents recently (nothing to do with editorial hissy fits – I liked them) are making me wonder if he’s not just a bit of a knob. Don’t worry; I would never normally be as unprofessional as to slag people off, but he’s much ruder about most people all the time and his mushrooming ego wouldn’t allow him to take offence anyway.

The main thing that stopped me wanting to marry Giles quite so much was his disdain for Croatian food. IT IS WONDERFUL. He must not have eaten in the right places. That said, I didn’t eat in a single place that wasn’t incredibly good and I wasn’t even trying very hard so I don’t know how he would have managed that.

It’s a fusion of Mediterranean and Eastern European cuisine that revolves around a bountiful and diverse array of fantastic local ingredients – abundant seafood, salt marsh lamb from Pag Island, suckling pig, wild boar, truffles, hot peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, potatoes, olive oil, wine and so on. Influences from the west are pizza, risotto and seriously dreamy ice-creams, and from the east comes peka; super-slow-cooked potatoes in olive oil, garlic and herbs, with octopus or meat. And shredded cabbage.

Seriously, Giles, I want to go back just to explore more of the food (although the scenery is dramatically beautiful and varied too).  Try spit-roast suckling pig at a casual roadside eatery! Or barbecued wild sea bass with homemade chips and luscious salad by the sea. Spit-roast lamb at Tamaris in Zadar (on an industrial estate/retail park by a main road, but don’t be put off) is outstanding and comes with THE most delicious peka potatoes. I am not even a potato person but I can’t imagine eating anything more enjoyable than these soft, salty, oily, addictively ambrosial spuds.

Spit-roast lamb and peka potatoes at Tamaris

Spit-roasting suckling pig, by the roasdside

Delicious plate of suckling pig, tasty potatoes and warm pickled cabbage, 

after a starter of exceptionally good octopus salad.

The people were delightful too! Impeccable English everywhere, an eagerness to help Croatian exploration, and not a tiny whisp of the old tourist-foreigner resentment you sometimes sense when abroad was detected from anyone during the 10-day break.

We were given homemade cherry jam by our hosts; offered homemade grappa by other hosts. And the cherry jam hosts came to find us late at night when our sat nav failed to nav, drove us to their favourite restaurant the next night (at 11pm) and carried on being just as kind and friendly when they discovered we were renting their apartment in order to attend a big rave in their neighbourhood (Dimensions Festival).

A recent Croatian National Tourist Board's press release claimed that Croatia is ‘The ultimate foodie destination’. Interesting angle, because even apart from Coren’s erroneous views their cuisine has barely been covered by any foreign press and often – utterly inexplicably – it is criticised. But unlike lots of tourist board manifestos, the Croatians are making an entirely accurate claim (well, maybe ‘an’ ultimate foodie destination, anyway) and I bet pretty soon it will be ‘discovered’ as the biggest new thing in foodie travel.

Driving back to Trieste Airport through Croatia and Slovenia - 
breathtaking scenery (and wild wolves).

We stayed in one of lovely Marina and Ivan's apartments near Pula and the great top floor apartment with large sea view balcony belonging to Anita and Neven in Zadar.

London Oyster Tasting, Oyster Festival & SO Much More

Oyster Tasting, Rabbit Terrine & Terrific Steak. And Foie Gras and Crème Caramel. And More.

London is falling back in love with oysters. Of course, there have always been individuals here who have been willing to hunt down a regular supply and pay for the privilege. But the new wave of interest in oysters goes beyond the generic and is reaching out for the plethora of scents and flavours that are produced by the oysters’ species, environment and the season you're eating them in, and this is making oysters a more accessible treat. I can't tell you what good news this discovery is for me, having recently moved to London from France, especially as the current interest is focussed on UK-produced specimens.

As part of their Oyster Festival (November 2011 – April 2012), Boisdale and Wright Brothers teamed up to host the Oyster Tasting Championships 2011. A panel of epicurean judges picked six winners, including three native and three rock:

Rock Category
Gold – Poole, Dorset supplied by Dorset Oysters
Silver – Maldon Rock supplied by Maldon Oysters
Bronze – Portland supplied by Fleet Oyster Farm, Dorset

Native Category
Gold – Loch Ryan supplied by Rossmore Oysters
Silver – Duchy of Cornwall supplied by Wright Brothers
Bronze – Maldon supplied by Maldon Oysters


Native oysters at Boisdale


For the duration of the festival all Boisdale restaurants and Wright Brothers Soho are serving all six winners on Boisdale’s ‘Six Medal Plate’, so oyster lovers - or anyone who is curious - can enjoy a tasting session of their own. It’s the only way to fully appreciate the differences between each variety. They are also half price from 5-6pm Monday to Friday during the festival.

This will take us a little further along the way towards oysters becoming commonplace and therefore more accessible for everyone (cheaper). Not that I want to devalue the wonderous oyster or its farmer - but a booming mainstream industry would fund itself nicely.

Anyway, I went to try the platter of winners at Boisdales in Canary Wharf, and had a great time. The only drawback as an oyster-explorer was that we weren’t able to establish which oyster was which. Boisdale & Wright Brothers, can your chefs supply labels? I’ll gladly go back and try them again, possibly on multiple occasions, if my oysters came labelled. I want to not only taste the difference but learn which one tastes of what, please.

Way More Than Just Oysters

For me, an oyster-tasting session is extremely exciting in itself.

Foie gras is also enough to animate me, and ditto top-notch steak. So, I was quite overwhelmed by consuming the following menu at Boisdales, after the oysters:

Generous slice of foie gras (sadly a bit over-cooked for my taste but nice to have anyway) with a truly fantastic rabbit terrine, containing all sorts of perfectly placed surprises, like pistachios and fruit.

Wonderful rare filet steak and trimmings – can’t remember the trimmings as the steak stole the show, just as it should.

Delicious (if inappropriate after such a heavy meal) crème caramel with a rich chantilly.

Each course was served with a well-matched wine, starting with champagne with nibbles and finishing up on sauternes with dessert.

Oyster Farming Village & Steak, South-West France

I got to France for the last weekend in August, and went on a road trip to the beach for a mate's birthday celebration. A big load friends that go waaay back got together for a couple of days of sun, sea, camping, booze, oysters, steak and booze. It was iconic.

One morning, feeling hungover, we cycled in the fresh morning sun to an oyster farming village, made up of lots of tiny wooden houses, with sand-filled alleyways serving as streets. After exploring the nooks, and chatting to locals, we settled at a seaside restaurant that serves only oysters and wine. My 25 or so oysters went down such a treat. After them and a few glasses of crisp white, my hangover was much more manageable, and the beating sun was calling me to the white sand beach for a nap.




One evening, we cycled through the pine woodland of the Landes national park, to go to the outdoor steak-and-chips restaurant that is a regular beach stop-off for a few of us. 20 round a long table, we were served a selection of different barbecued steaks that had been cut off the carcass just before going on the grill.




Thick, juicy, full of flavour, tender and very rare - everyone loved it! It's so refreshing to be with a big bunch of people, including a lot of Brits, with no-one being fussy about eating beef or the level of cookedness. We just ordered steak and chips for everyone, and let Fred (owner and chef at Chez Fred) do what he does so well.



After putting away my own body weight in meat, chips, ice-cream, wine and cognac, the cycle home in the dark, through woodland, on a narrow path, with no proper lights was a challenge. I wobbled around, couldn't manage to cycle in a straight line, squealed a few times and might have had a tiny tantrum, but I was glad of the ride (and sober) by the time we got back to the campsite.

The food and setting for those couple of days were heavenly, but the best thing was catching up with so many good friends. :)

Monaco, Cannes & Cuttlefish

A couple of days working in Monaco last week meant parma ham and hot peppers for lunch, whilst watching superyachts and listening to the regular roar of supercars.

I was staying with a friend in Cannes, and the evening meals included a pizza, valpolicella and limoncello in the local Sicilian-run pizzeria, plus two beach picnics. So nice to be on the beach at night and warm! Isn't that what summer is supposed to be like?

Superyachts and swimmers, Cannes

Beach picnic parties consisted of champagne and rosé, all sorts of perfectly ripe French and Italian cheeses, baguettes and olive bread, fruit and olives. There was a plum tart, too, with crumbly pastry and a thick layer of almond paste - mmmmm-m! There was even candlelight, music (a Michael Jackson extravaganza), and dancing!

Camembert by candlelight

On my last day, I had time for some sun-bathing and lunch on the beach, before catching my flight. Attracted by the bustling open kitchen and the sight and smell of the seafood dishes, we picked L'Annex as our beach-side restaurant. I chose the cuttlefish which I had seen being prepared for other diners and looked amazing. My companions chose another cuttlefish and tuna steak. We sipped ice-cold rosé and nibbled light baguette slices as we waited for the griddled seafood to arrive.

We were not disappointed! The seafood itself was perfectly cooked and super-fresh. The pungent garlic and basil sauce that was poured all over it was absolutely mouth-watering. Ideal! Ideal food, ideal to be eating it on Cannes beach! This is one of my favourite ever meal memories.





After the food and wine, my lovely friend hired sun loungers, and I soaked up the rays for as long as possible. We drank sparkling mineral water and cava. When the empty cava bottle was discovered, we were repremanded like naughty school children, for bringing our own drink. This, despite paying a fortune for the loungers, and spending €90 on the meal for 3. Oh well, I forgive them due to the idyllic day and the perfect lunch.

Snail Feast

June spent in France was wonderful; catching up with old friends, enjoying the novelty of the amazing produce, re-acquainting myself with my kitchen and garden, and proper hot summer weather.

When I first arrived, my herbs were being munched by a plague of snails. So I decided to resolve the problem by munching them. Previously, I had been put off by unsuccessful snail-cooking attempts, and there were never that many of them to cook. This time there were dozens and dozens, and I was determined to make them delicious. I had three weeks to purge them (fed only on bread followed by days of nothing at all), before serving them up to friends as a goodbye meal at the end of my stay.

Three weeks of culinary adventures and good times went by. The day of the feast arrived hot and sunny, and I drove my blue banger to the village to get some still-warm baguettes, wine, salad, a massive bunch of parsley and butter. Then, back to my little beauties...

I boiled a huge jam pan of water, rinsed off the snails, shook them to make them retreat into their shells, and winced as I chucked the lot into the boiling water. Job done, the worst bit over. After a few minutes, the snails were draining and cooling and definitely dead. I extracted each one from its shell and removed its twirly gut end, before boiling the meats with herbs and stock veg for 3 hours. The shells were rinsed, boiled in fresh water, and left in the sun to dry.

Meanwhile, I chopped the mountains of garlic and parsley, stirred them into soft butter, and seasoned the mixture with plenty of salt.

Then came a few hours of stuffing each snail back into a shell, each squadged in with a load of the persilade (garlic and parsley butter).

Preparing snails

Next, I dressed the table, mixed the salad, opened the wine, and set out nibbles. Once my guests had arrived, and were having aperitifs, I put the snails in a hot oven for 20 minutes. Out they came, sizzling and smelling fantastic. I dished them up at the table and finally found out that my snail adventure had been a success - they were absolutely delicious, and this was confirmed by my guests, who were Dutch, English and French. The Frenchman commented that he hadn't had snails in ages, and it was funny that this time they had been cooked by an English person. The Dutchman had never eaten snails, and was delighted by them. The Englishman had tasted my previous attempts and was relieved that these were not only edible but extremely palatable and moreish. Hmmm even more salt with the butter next time, though, I think.

Tasty snails

I was thrilled that I had been able to make these slimy creatures tasty at last, and that I had put my snail glut to such extremely good use. All the effort and man hours had been worthwhile. I will definitely be making this a regular pest-control exercise/snail party.

Buenos Aires

Biddy, left; me, right.

After an eleven hour flight from Madrid, we landed in Buenos Aires late afternoon, to start begin our adventure...

We caught bus from the airport, across town, getting out and getting lost halfway to change buses. Scabby looking grassy ‘parks’ with kids playing football, stray brown dogs everywhere, districts of street sellers, and busy high streets. Nothing glamorous so far, and the Don Sancho Hostel was in dodgy-seeming back streets, with pavements covered in dog shit and broken slabs. The beds looked filthy, but the threadbare sheets were clean, and the inmates friendly.


The incredible view of the grid layout of BA and most other South American towns - we hadn't even heard about it before.

We showered and found our way through the dusk and trams, to an Italian bar, and sat outside to drink a litre of beer each. We didn’t realize that people normally share these large bottles. It was quite cold, but the chilly breeze would probably seem warmer during the day. We moved on to a restaurant selling local specialities (Pan Y Arte, Bar Resto, Boedo), which we had heard all about from an Argentinian student, who we had cross-examined on the plane. But the food was rather stodgy, not very exciting, not warmed right through, and all seemed to be based on the Cornish pasty (e.g. empanadas). Not quite the amazing Argentinian steak I had been salivating in anticipation of. The wine was good, though – Santa Julia 100% malbec, with blackberry, blackcurrent and violet flavours.

We shivered briskly back to the hostel.

Next morning was a delight! We got our coffee, bread and dulce de leche (or confiture de lait - the condensed, caramelized milk, that you would use for banoffee pie), and took them into the sheltered terrace area of the hostel. We managed to find a seat at the top of some steps, where we could soak up our first South American rays of sun. They were lovely and warm, and we felt that we had definitely ‘arrived’.


The terrace - where we had our first South American sun.

But out of the sun and shelter, the streets were damned cold! We only had one set of warmish clothes, which we had travelled in, so we started to feel a bit skanky. We trudged the streets, trying to avoid the shit, and bought little savoury pastries, from a fantastic bakery, and enjoyed them with a beer at a pavement café. The weather was closing in, and we wanted to see some of the glitz and grime that everyone seems to love about BA. We asked a local-looking girl who turned out to be a Londoner. She said that she hates the city, and is only there for the tango, but that there is one sight worth seeing; the massive cemetery. We found it on the map, and began the very long walk to get there.





The cemetery was indeed incredible.





We saw other sights, too, like a massive market selling expensive gifts. We got caught in freezing rain, and sheltered in cafes, and at the end of a knackering day, we finally made it through the wind, rain and dark, to a steak-selling restaurant (Los Portenos). Delicious, but nothing to write home about. Damnit!



We did enjoy the homemade chips enormously, the steak was tasty and juicy but overcooked, and more malbec (Estancia Mendoza) washed it down a treat. Very warming.

After showering at the hostel, we once again trudged wet, cold streets in search of the smoky, frisson-loaded tango bars of our imagination. We had directions to recommended quirky dens of dance, from friends who had been there, and the hostel was actually in the tango district. So it should have been quite straight forward. But we found nothing!! Nada! All the bars we had the details for seemed to have closed down, and everything else was shut. The streets were silent, apart from a few people who had come out to rummage through that day's bins for goodies. We asked various locals, but no-one could help us find our tango lair. No amazing steak, no sun, no tango – it was time to move on, and head north for warmth.

On the very long way back to the hostel, we kept an eye out for a hidden den or nice bar to warm up in, but didn't see any that were open. So we went to the only thing that was open; a weird cafeteria that had clearly not changed since being very trendy in circa 1982. We ordered a cognac for me and a Tia Maria for Biddy. They took AGES to arrive, and we were being cynical about the staff, who were fiddling about and didn't seem to know what they were doing. About 15 minutes later, Biddy was served the hugest Tia maria I have ever seen, and my absolutely massive glass of cognac arrived with the waiter heating it in a contraption, over a candle flame, and a doily around the base. We felt bad for being so negative about the waiters' apparent confusion, when it was actually just that they had a certain way to serve cognac, and they were making sure it was done properly. All that effort, and each drink only cost about £1.50. They were certainly warming.

Leaving Lakka - 26th August 2007

I slept deeply again - that sea air? Pure food? Exhaustion from bumpy roads? After a breakfast of toasted baguette and Nescafé with powdered milk, I sat on an old wooden beach lounger and talked to some local boys, while I waited for my lift. They took me on a tour of lovely Lakka village. It is nestled in the forest, where mudbrick and corrugated iron-roofed houses and huts are scattered in glades between palm tress and the sweet-smelling flowers of creepers. It wasn’t the best time to visit, apparently, because most of the villagers were at one or other of the various churches – it was Sunday. My guides weren’t at church, because they were Muslim, apart from Augustine, who had decided to take the day off because it was his birthday.





My dad arrived and took me away from Lakka, which had begun to feel like home, even though I had only seen it for the first time two days earlier. I felt sad to leave.

Nevermind, we were back off to Sussex for lunch. I still didn’t see the beach, but the groupa carpaccio was fantastic, and I had a glass of chilled Chardonnay – the first wine I’d had in soooo long. I felt the nectar trickle down my throat and got that warm feeling as it spread out in my stomach. Wine is of course especially wonderful when you’ve been deprived for a while. The main course was barbequed angelfish with chips and salad.





After the tiring journey back to Freetown, we decided to eat our evening meal at the hotel. Their rooftop restaurant has good views over the sea and nearby buildings, and the wall is made of windows, which we opened up to hear the sea and feel the breeze. After being such greedy pigs all weekend, we both ordered a small mixed salad, which was nothing special, but nice all the same. Also, to settle our full stomachs, we enjoyed G&Ts.

Countryside & Roadside Snacks - 27th August 2007

Monday morning, and we were off to the hydroelectric dam project that my father is working on, in Bumbuna. First we had to get through Freetown’s traffic mayhem, which meant sitting in stationary traffic for quite a long time, watching people selling, delivering, shouting, greeting, carrying and hanging out. Then there was a terrific downpour, and umbrellas of all colours burst into flower, whilst stalls were quickly covered in plastic.

Eventually, we left Freetown behind, and I spent the four hour drive upcountry enjoying the sights of palm plantations and my first African thatched houses, as well as returning the many greetings from villagers and fellow road-users (on foot, in cars, in buses, on motorbikes and in lethal-looking lorries). I was taking in scenes so typically African that I felt like I was in a fibre-glass-based safari park.



Lunch on the road was sweet green bananas, and char-grilled corn on the cob (tasty but could have done with some salt and butter), bought from street sellers. We also purchased some strange fruit that we were told were plums, but looked nothing like them and were inedible raw.

As we got further into the countryside, children outside mud and straw houses would go berserk waving, laughing and screaming “O Poto, O Poto, O Poto!” (Meaning ‘European’/ ‘white man’) at us as we went past. We’d get to what looked like major places on the map, but the settlements themselves were no bigger than a small village. The mud, thatch and tin cottages and huts, with chickens and goats milling about them, looked restful and solid after the slums of Freetown.



The Range Rover climbed up ochre dirt tracks, further into the jungle. We eventually arrived at the dam project worker’s camp by early evening, just in time for some pre-dinner drinks with freshly roasted peanuts - which tasted exactly like peanut butter. Without a doubt the nicest peanuts I’ve tasted, I vowed to try and find raw peanuts in Europe when I got back, so I could re-create the home-roasted flavour.

I asked the barman for the best places to drink in Bumbuna village, and he told us about Mabinti Johnny’s bar, where you can also get good food. We’d have to search it out the next day…



Being an Italian-run project, the camp’s cafeteria serves Italian-style food. ‘Camp’ makes it all sound very basic, but actually it’s a collection of bungalows and communal buildings. It was a nice change to have red wine and a meal of meatballs, potato, cheeses, charcuterie, and salads. ‘Specially the wine. ☺