When I was in Munich last week I enjoyed a snack of Austernpilze (oyster mushrooms) and bread with a Schneider Weißbier.

It crossed my mind firstly that I recall a better choice of mushrooms in German shops than I find in my local supermarkets in England. Secondly it crossed my mind that the English language is very poor in describing mushrooms, we have few words without having to borrow from French - e.g. chantarelles - or going into botanical Latin! I recall my supermarket in Bavaria selling Champignons (bog standard button mushrooms), Austernpilze (oyster mushrooms), Steinpilze (no idea of the correct translation but literally "stone mushrooms") and Pfifferlinge (chantarelles).

I wonder why there are so few "real English" words for mushrooms. Is it ignorance or that we lack a foraging culture? I know that many Germans and Poles will forage for mushrooms and other edible fungi at this time of year. In France, pharmacists are supposed to be able to advise foragers on whether they have picked something edible or poisonous. Nobody I know in the UK knows how to forage for mushrooms safely. What a shame!

While in Munich I had a chance to renew my acquaintance with dunkles Weißbier. This may be a familiar drink to those who have been to Bavaria or neighbouring areas but I will explain a bit in case it is unfamiliar. Weißbier does not mean "white beer" which would be the obvious translation from school German but is Bavarian dialect for Weizenbier that is wheat beer. If you look at a bottle it is likely to be described as obergärig meaning top-fermenting (like ale). In Bavaria is is generally offered in two main forms helles (meaning light coloured) and dunkles (meaning dark). It is generally hefe Weißbier meaning "yeast wheat beer" in other words there is yeast suspended in the beer meaning that it is not transparent. In Baden Würtemberg it is common to offer kristall Weißbier which has the yeast filtered out and making the beer transparent.

Schneider Weißbier was one of my favourites when I lived in Bavaria. It has a colour that is lighter than many "dark" Weißbiers. The taste is good and the Schneider Weißbräuhaus in the Berg am Laim district of Munich is well worth a visit for the food as well as the beer. A stronger bock Weißbier called Aventinus is also offered.

My other favourite was Erdinger dunkles Weißbier. This has a more classic dark colour. The Erdinger brewery is famous for its helles Weißbier but I derinitely prefer this one. It also offers a bock Weißbier called Pikantus which is very tasty but with 7.3% alcohol should be drunk slowly.

While visiting India in July I enjoyed the hotel buffets which I attended with colleagues. I have previously written about grilled dishes and starters but did not describe some of the curries and chutneys. Some were rather different from the ones I have had at home. For example I enjoyed bhajees which were vegetable base curries with limited sauce as opposed to the bhajis that everybody seems to know about here.

After getting home I searched the net for some ideas and came across this recipe. Although I liked the final result I did not like frying aubergines in oil as they absorb so much. I gave up doing that with Italian style dishes over a decade ago and switched to grilling. My family complained that there was too little sauce. I tried the recipe again after a few weeks and this time grilled the aubergines and as I normally would; I also did considerably more sauce so 'curry' rather than 'bhajee'. Unfortunately serving the curry shortly after grilling the aubergines my family complained that the aubergines were "too dry". However when we ate the leftovers from the fridge a day or too later it was much improved.

Third time was much more popular and was as follows...

Ingredients

2 aubergines
2 medium onions
750 g passata
3 large garlic cloves
3 cm piece of ginger
2 fresh chillies
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp black mustard
1 tsp kalonji seed
2 tsp turmeric
vegetable oil
salt

Method

1. Slice aubergines into 1 cm thick slices, brush with vegetable oil and put on tray.
2. Grill aubergines until browning then turn. Remove when ready and quarter the slices when cool.
3. Meanwhile chop the onions and sweat in vegetable oil in a pot for about 5 minutes.
4. Add cumin, mustard, kalonji & fennel seed and continue to heat for 10 minutes.
5. Finely chop the garlic, ginger and chilli then add to the pot.
6. Add the turmeric, salt and passata and mix well.
7. Add the aubergines and ensure they are covered with the sauce then simmer for 5 minutes and then leave to cool.
8. Store curry in the fridge for at least one day.
9. Bring to the boil and serve.

On this trip to Austin, I arrived in the early hours of the morning and felt very tired the following day. I had no car and neither fancied eating in the hotel nor taking a walk to the downtown area in the heat. I therefore took the boring choice of looking round the block. Zax was a few hundred metres away on Barton Springs

Zax has a "shed-like" construction that is very common with microbreweries in the US; though it is not a microbrewery. The construction is not unattractive inside and the bar is light and the furniture modern. The wooden construction means that inside is quite noisy. There is a shaded courtyard area about six by twenty metres in size too.

In the mid 1980s when I made my first trips to the US, I generally found that beer tasted so awful that I never ordered it. The microbrewing movement has been a great success with the result that these days there if often a great choice of brews - many local. Zax had a wide selection of beers on draft and an even bigger choice of bottled beer.

The lunch menu was mainly pizza and pasta. I went for a pizza with pepperoni, sausage and caremelised onions. The US is the home of the heavily laden deep pan pizza which in my view is often overloaded with toppings and has a soggy base. The original italian pizza was poor people's food but the Americans certainly made it into a meal. I have had pizza meals in Tuscany which were a delight. The dough was almost baked crisp and was very thin the toppings were tasty (I recall wild boar salami) but relatively sparse.

Zax pizza was a pleasant surprise. The base was thin and cooked until slightly crisp, there was no tomato & cheese gloop but exactly what I ordered on top.

Just before I left I noticed that a lot of people were ordering cocktails served from the jar shown above. I asked what it was and was told it was a jar or chillies, garlic and sundried tomatoes filled with vodka. It looked interesting but since I had already settled up I did not try it.

I have often been dismayed at the decline of family cooking in the UK. This is despite cookery programmes on TV having a fantastic following and cookery books selling well. However, how many people eat a takeaway pizza or a ready meal when watching their favourite cookery show. Today we have a choice of fresh ingredients that was not available in my childhood so it is a shame that more people do not cook from scratch.

Cooking for yourself is an important lifeskill that is valued in many cultures - especially in the developing world. I think it was a big mistake that cookery was so widely dropped from schools in the 1980s. The food technology replacement courses might help people to prepare to work in a ready meals factory emphasizing the industrial elements of food preparation but do not impart a life skill.

I was pleased that cookery will be compulsory in English and Welsh secondary schools from 2011. This is a great opportunity to get more people proficient in a key skill and will hopefully lead to healthier and more cost-effective eating. Obviously the effectiveness of this will depend on the content.

However I was pleasantly surprised today to see the Real Meals initiative which was announced today. There is a set of 32 recipes that were developed by the British Nutrition Foundation. The recipe collection is online and a quick look suggests that they have a reasonably straightforward set of tasty recipes. They are attractively laid out and have sensible instructions on ingredients, utensils and variation.

Like last year, a fun feature of our holiday in Portugal has been taking advantage of excellent fresh fish. I also know more of the Portuguese names for things so am a little better at ordering than I was previously.

We did baked sea bream again this holiday (shown oven ready above with chouriço and garlic stuffed in the slits) but I wanted to try a few more fish that I had never previously cooked.

I have previously lamented that our town of 35,000 people has no independent fishmonger though fish counters at both Waitrose and the largest Tesco. At InterMarché in Peniche - which is about the size of our Waitrose and about a quarter of the size of our Tesco - both the fish and meat counters are serious businesses. The above photo shows about half of the fish counter at a quiet lunchtime. On a Saturday morning there were 4 fishmongers fully at work serving & cleaning fish and 30 people ahead of me in the queue.

Last year I had often looked at the metre-long cutlassfish and wondered what they would be like grilled. So I went to InterMarché and saw that both cutlassfish and black scabbardfish were on offer; they are both shown on the left of the picture above. Apparently black scabbardfish is only sustainable off the Portuguese coast according the Marine Conservation Society. Although not clear from the picture above the black scabbardfish (while having similar proportions to the cutlassfish) had bigger teeth so looked more interesting.

In the bottom right of the photo there was a fish that was unfamiliar to me. It looked like a seabream in shape but was paler and had a pink tinge - but was not as red as a red snapper. In Portuguese it was described as pargo (this might be red porgy).

I asked for half the black scabbardfish and was told that I had to buy all or nothing. Thankfully the fishmonger spoke English which greatly simplified getting what I needed. She cleaned the pargo and the scabbardfish. I actually fancied grilling the whole scabbardfish head as the mouth with sharp teeth looked cool. However she insisted on cutting off the mouth as the 'teeth are dangerous'!

She went on to cut the fish laterally through the backbone in typically iberian style into manageable, though still large, pieces for the barbeque. I was amazed that when grilled the fierce-looking scabbardfish tasted very delicate; though on reflection when we grilled moray eel a year ago it was very delicate too.

The night that we grilled the scabbardfish we also grilled sardines and the pargo. We had a grill where you could not control the airflow so ended up with a hotter grill than was ideal for fish. A lot of oil came out of the sardines when grilling - doubtless healthy fish oils - while the pargo grilled much like a seabream and had a mild but pleasant taste.

An iberian holiday would not be complete without Oregano's deep fried squid. Last year we bought about 100 gram squids and did the same on the first visit to the fish counter. Such squids are considerably larger than those I can usually buy at home and are easy to prepare. Later in the holiday considerably larger squids were on offer - approximately 400 grams per squid - at the bargain price of €2.79/kg! 

As you can see from the photo, the squids were as long as the draining board. However the method of tugging the head to extract the innards does not work with these larger squids. The innards were more messy and yucky than smaller ones. In the end I cut through the top of the body and pushed the innards out.

After the "yucky bit", I was able to chop the squids up into nice large rings and tentable pieces. The end result was good along with the usual piri-piri and tomato sauce. Nevertheless the practice of cleaning the squid and chopping into rings and tentacles that we had seen at fishcounters in Andalusia has much to commend.

Over the last week or so we have enjoyed seeing ordinary families grilling their lunches in the street in the old town of Peniche. They are obviously not fearful of an overbearing health and safety system.

A week ago this small grill was cooking fresh sardines. When we passed it about half an hour later than that time today; the owner was obviously already eating lunch; but the coals were still hot.

A street away no less than ten sardines were on the grill and there were more fresh ones in the crate behind. Obviously lunch for more than one. I had no sooner shot the picture when a granny appeared...

...doubtless wondering why a silly foreigner was photographing her lunch!

Of course in a port like Peniche, fresh fish is in such good supply that nobody would dream of buying from the tin or freezer. Nevertheless the fishermen rightly rest on Sundays and there is no fresh fish for sale on Mondays.

This Monday we smelt a grill in a side street.

This one was grilling chicken.

While no country is perfect... and Portugal certainly has some faults.. it was refreshing to see that people grill their lunch in the street without fear. Without fear of idiots kicking over their grills our of spite and without fear of being sued if some careless pedestrian burnt themselves.

During our stay in Baleal, Portugal, we have visited the Algamar Grill twice - once on our arrival day for a late lunch as we awaited our villa to be vacated and secondly for an evening meal.

The first time, most people ordered either beef or pork steaks. Beware in Portugal when you see bife on the menu as it means "steak" regardless of meat and has nothing to do with beef. My father ordered a beef steak which was rather tough. My pork steak was rather better though nothing spectacular.

On our second visit, my son abolutely wanted his first experience of snails (which I had not even noticed on the menu). He was served a plate of at least 300 tiny snails - much smaller than the littl'ns in our garden at home! There appear to be few song thrushes here...

The waitress duly demonstrated how to get the flesh out from the tiny shells with a cocktail stick while making it clear it was something she would not touch! I have not often eaten snails but I think if you can eat shrimps you can eat snails. They were even part of the 18th century British diet for poorer people who could not afford meat.

It was not easy to pick out the snails but they had been cooked in a garlic sauce and were quite tasty. At about 50 snails each, both Mrs O and I gave up. It was not the taste but we wanted space for the main course.

My brother-in-law and I ordered arroz de tamboril (monkfish rice) and got a bit pot on the table which I think would have been fine for 4 people! There were plenty of shellfish (in shells) and prawns (shells on) as well as rice and monkfish. However it did taste good. Mrs O went for the grilled sea bass done in a typical Portuguese way with boiled potato and salad. It too was well prepared.

My son also had some after he had finished his grilled chicken so we impressed the waitress by finishing almost the whole pot. I do not understand why they did the same size of portion for 2, 3 or 4 people. It risks waste - though not in our case.

The restaurant rewarded us with a great view to the west.

While not unique to this restaurant the sunset was stunning.

We decided to revisit the Restaurante Popular this year in Peniche, Portugal with the family. The restaurant which last year had a lot of the tables under an awning has been completely renovated. The fish fridge from which you can choose what you would like grilled has moved from beside the main door to the centre of the restaurant. Instead of the awning there is a more permanent structure.

As before, there is an excellent choice of fresh fish from the nearby harbour including sardines, sea bass, sea bream, pargo, cutlassfish and scabbardfish.

Last year I went for swordfish which, while good, did not look as good as the skewers ordered by most of my family. Two sorts of skewer were on offer - the two at the top were mainly squid, while the lower two were mainly monkfish and cherne which the restaurant translated as 'black jewfish'. Doing an internet search suggested that black jewfish is a japanese fish which I find confusing as I am sure everything was from the local catch. On online dicttionary translates it as white grouper; though it seemed like seabass to me. So much for the mysteries of translated menus.

A thing I like about this sort of restaurant is the ability to pick from the fish fridge. Apart from the skewers, the menu is priced per kilo so if say you choose a piece of salmon it is weighed fresh and you are charged according to the weight.

This shows our meal on the way. I loved my grilled fish and veg which was served with an excellent rice and salad. The standard accompaniment is boiled potatoes but most of our party opted - in true British style - for chips! Those who ordered the squid skewer were a little disappointed. It was very chewy but tasty. However, I think to grill squid just the right amount to remain tender is extremely challenging. Most prefered Oregano's deep fried squid which is usually tender.

Our bill including seven starters, seven main courses, two desserts and drinks came to 130€. Excellent value for money in my view!

We should also try some of the other similar restaurants in Peniche harbour if we go there again.

The other day we had our first look at the centre of Lisbon. We had walked down from the Moorish Castle and were going down Rua de Santo Antonio de Sé. This street is well known for the trams that trundle up and down its slope. We had almost reached the level of the Baixa when we saw an unnamed restaurant at nr 18.

It was not a conventional restaurant, more of a café with unusually a small supermarket at the back. It had a nice brick vaulted ceiling and was not overcrowded so we gave it a try.

Prices seemed lower than usual though since my brother-in-law picked up the bill I cannot quote an accurate figure. There was no table service but you queued up at a canteen-like counter where there were menu cards. Behind the counter was salad, rice and fried fish fillets. The menu offered typical portuguese fare including grilled fish (sardines, mackerel, swordfish, etc) and grilled meat.

Mrs O and I ordered the fish fillet and it was brought to our table with rice and salad almost immediately.I do not know what the fish was - definitely not cod or haddock but a white fish - fried in a delicate batter. The rice was mixed with garlic, onion and finely shredded white cabbage that I think had been fried in olive oil. It all tasted good - even though white cabbage in rice was not something I would have thought of combining with fish.

My sister- and brother-in-law ordered grilled sardines and were less happy with the service. What we think happened was that a couple who arrived 10 minutes after us, also ordered grilled sardines and got their order. They were served so quickly. We evenutally complained and the sardines finally came. They were apparently worth waiting for.

An amusing thing about the restaurant was that it was close to the tramline outside. Traffic would build up outside the restaurant when a nearby traffic light further down the street went red. Sometimes a tram would stop on the doorstep of the restaurant as shown here.