Dinner of the Day.

With these restaurants they have lots and lots of things on the menu but they are very much subject to availability, what they bought in the market that day and how much of each thing the customers have eaten and so on. Today I fancied langoustines but they weren't available - possibly for the best cos they work out very expensive - and girlfriend was also unlucky with razor clams. One thing that both Ramiro and Marisqueira do Lis have on their menus but which they've never had when I've asked for it is slipper lobster... has anyone ever had that? I'm always intrigued by it but every time they tell me that it's not available I do feel a kind of relief cos I believe it's an endangered species. I assume that it is legal to sell them - maybe it's like in Finland where restaurants can sell a certain amount of bear each year or possibly it's like those companies where you pay to shoot a lion and they claim that the money is used to breed more lions and so ultimately you are doing a good thing for the species (although why you would want to shoot one even so I don't know)... or maybe they are just something that is left on the menu from when it was more common.

Your post makes me want to eat seafood immediately.

Lots of good seafood here of course. Interestingly a slightly different focus from in the UK... in Leigh-on-Sea and Southend used to love eating oysters, cockles, winkles and so on pulled straight out of the sea and sold from a hut only a few metres from the shore. Also scallops in the restaurants and so on just a bit further into town. None of those are really popular here (in Lisbon anyhow... there are so many regional variations in Portugal that for all I know they may eat mountains of them ten miles down the road).
Here these are replaced by octopus, squid, cuttlefish, tiger prawn and giant tiger prawn, scarlet shrimp and so on.... various crabs and lobsters and langoustines and hundreds of different sizes of prawns. Most of those are pretty much available in the UK I'd say but not with the kind of casual abundance that you get here.
Also, sometimes they have sea urchin, I've never eaten it but it appears every now again on menus here, again it's an availability one and although I have seen them occasionally actually in the places, the only times I've gone for it it's turned out to be all eaten unfortunately. Then again one time on Broadway Market they were selling them in the fishmonger there so it's not that exotic.
But there is one thing that any Lisbon seafood place worth it's, er, salt will have but which as far as I know, you never ever get in the UK, and that's percebes. Lovely stuff... anyone know what I mean?
And when you coming to Lisbon Dan?

I love the idea of having a pork sandwich for 'pudding'.

IdleRich said:

And when you coming to Lisbon Dan?

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This summer maybe? Perhaps when I get a f...ing new job and have some spare income again? Hopefully that won't be forever.

And no, not heard of percebes? I'll message you about visiting. Could deffo be an option later in the year.

IdleRich said:

But there is one thing that any Lisbon seafood place worth it's, er, salt will have but which as far as I know, you never ever get in the UK, and that's percebes. Lovely stuff... anyone know what I mean?

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this is a big thing in Spain too, never had it though - nice?

Yeah very nice... reminds me a little of oysters in the way that they taste of the sea. Also called goose barnacles cos apparently at one point they thought that they grew up into barnacle geese... also called dinosaur feet cos... well they look like dinosaur feet.

I think we need a food thread to try and find something that Rich won't eat.

More like drink of the day, but I'm gonna be making some of this later

I've had that JA drink before, it was rough. Good luck mind! But - yeah.

I made dum aloo last night and it was amazingly good. Parboiled, peeled and fried baby potatoes. Drained off the oil (most of it) added chilli paste and yoghurt covered and simmered. Plus ground roasted fennel seed, caraway seed and some whole spices. This is the "dum" bit, cooking it like this, covered. The mixture split but I stirred like fuck and it sort of recombined. The main thing was it was delicious - spicing I don't normally use, and it came out like a powerfully mutton-y curry. It's the same spicing used in a lot of meat dishes. Was well happy. On rice with some spinach. Would've been nice to make some chapatis but I couldn't be arsed and it was carb city already.

catalog said:

More like drink of the day, but I'm gonna be making some of this later

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This looks like something I'd have ordered off some sketchy website in my seemingly never-ending quest to find new ways to get high ca. 2006-09.

Last night I made this, in the spirit of European friendship: Italian pasta (yes, it's two different kinds: the ends of a pack of linguini and a pack of tagliatelle) with Polish smoked bacon and English mushrooms (winter chanterelles and ceps), cream and blue cheese (must've been Blacksticks Blue, from the orange colour it went). Pepper and lemon juice to serve. Well fit.

Yeah my friend came to visit me from down south and was obsessed with trying to find some mauby but they only had the syrup, which he scoffed at. So I've popped into this shop in town run by a Jamaican guy and today they had the syrup and nothing else as usual, but he went in the back and found me this. I have had it before from a place in Croydon and it's truly disgusting but you can get into it. Like most bitter things, it's apparently quite good for you. It did feel like I was buying some iboga or khat tho lol.

What's mauby? What's syrup? What the fuck is that stuff?

No pics again but we are eating a kind of tagine style thing with chicken legs and raisins mixed in couscous and almonds all over the top. For the second day in a row but it's pretty tasty.

IdleRich said:

What's mauby? What's syrup? What the fuck is that stuff?

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It's a West Indian/Jamaican bark drink. It is very bitter, but good for you. It tastes awful but you get used to it. The syrup is like the cordial version I suppose. You can get it fresh probably very easily in parts of London, but I've only got the bark and have to make it myself by boiling the bark up. Doubt you'll find it in Portugal

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauby

In Jamaica shops sell cartons of pure cane syrup in drinks section. I guess it's intended for use in mixed drinks with rum and stuff. People there generally have a massive sweet tooth because sugar is just ubiquitous. Even bread is sweet there.

IdleRich said:

No pics again but we are eating a kind of tagine style thing with chicken legs and raisins mixed in couscous and almonds all over the top. For the second day in a row but it's pretty tasty.

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Lifetime ban from this thread for eating savoury food with raisins in it.