Sometimes an obvious food-wine combination comes along and all you can think is: Why did I never try that before? That's more or less the culinary epiphany Skat and I had in Prague the first weekend in December.

Since our 2nd year together, we have had our very own birthday ritual, just like many other couples. Ours stems from the fact that our birthdays are only 8 days apart AND both in December. Which means that December is potentially a month fraught with 'What do I give the man/woman in my life I already live with, for 2 occasions within one month'. We solved it by forgoing any big presents (and give each other smaller sillier ones) but opting for a weekend away, generally somewhere cold, Christmas-y and with lots of mulled wine. Thus we've made it to New York /Washington D.C, Strasbourg, Geneva, Stockholm and now Prague. Oh, how decadent we are!

For the past 2 years we opted to go back to Denmark instead for a weekend, to have some yule-time with Skat's family, seeing as we spend Christmas with my family in France. But this year, Mother-In-Law is coming to France, which means that we could splurge on a romantic weekend away again!!! And Prague had been on my wish-list for the last 10 years...

I'll spare you all the tourist clichés, as this is a food blog, but if you haven't been to Prague yet, I cannot recommend it too much. Only, be prepared to stop in your tracks every 3 steps to ogle at YET ANOTHER beautiful building. Or the Charles Bridge in another light, from another angle. Or the Castle. Or the... You get my drift, but in case you don't:

I'm told that it's Stag-Party Hell in the summer, but in December we had none of that, only Mittel-European loveliness and beauty. My particular gratitude goes to those clever people in Prague who decided that Christmas decorations should only go up once it's December, and not in October as is the case in London and many other capitals. When we arrived on 30 November, there were none and 2 days later there were amazing and tasteful decorations everywhere and each little square was boasting a Christmas market, awash with roasted chestnuts, candied apples, mulled wine, mulled cider, roast pig, sausages, local 'pizza-like' thingies and Skat's favourite: TRDLO (no, I have NO idea how to pronounce it). Trdlo appears to be thin rolls of dough, rolled around a large metal pin, rolled in sugar and cinnamon, then 'grilled' over a flame while (you guessed it) rolling around. Once 'baked', they are... rolled in sugar and flaked almonds before being rolled off the pin and (sadly not rolled) handed to the customer. Maybe Trdlo means Rolled?

So here are a few of the delicacies sampled:

After 2 days of pig and pickled cabbage, our stomachs and palates were crying out for different fayre and we decided to try one of the modern cuisine restaurants. The most famous one, Kampa Park, is a celebrity hang-out and therefore MUCH too imtimidating for us. We chose one of its 'sister' restaurants called Square and it was scrumptious! I had a cloud-light vitello tonnatto where the thin and butter-tender slices of pink veal were resting on a not-too-tonnatto-y sauce, followed by a local speciality: duck. The foie gras was superb, the breast was perfect but sadly the confit was too dry. Skat had a risotto nero which matched any of the best ones in Italy, followed by another local speciality: venison fillet. I'm not a big fan of game, but that one was masterly. And compared to London prices, it was VERY reasonable.

Sausages and Champagne? Ah, I see that you have been paying attention. Well, when in Prague... Czech out the sausages, haha. We opted for a red variety called (funnily enough) Prague Sausage, which turned out to be one of the tastiest I have ever encountered. And I'm pretty sure they're hand-made too, as the meat-to-fat ratio was sky high, the mustard seeds were cracking between my teeth and I came across a whole garlic clove. Oh Yum! They were good! While eating (actually sharing) our first sausage, we noticed that the sausage ladies were also selling the local bubbly: Bohemian Sekt.

Well, we had already sampled it abundantly since our arrival, as it is simply dirt-cheap and in many bars only marginally more expensive than the local (EXCELLENT) cheapissimo beer (Favourite: Urquell) and still cheaper than coke. That's my kinda place! And to our surprise the first morning we came down to the fantastic breakfast smorgasbord in the hotel, there was a chilled bottle of said Sekt on hand to be mixed (or not) with orange juice and make a celebration of the breaking of each fast. At the risk of sounding senile: my kinda place!

The day after our first sausage-day was also our last day in the lovely city, so we decided to part in style and shlepped all the way to Wenceslas Square to our sausage stand where we ordered 2 Prague Sausages and a whole bottle of Sekt. Well, you'd have thought we were the first people ever doing that! The Sausage Ladies asked us laughingly if it was a special occasion, people on the side walk stopped in their tracks and ogled. PFF!!! If they sell it, it must be because people buy it. No? Anyway, the combo is worthy of a repeat performance, but I fear sausage stands around other world cities don't live up to this standard, so we'll just have to go back...

PS: Notice the guy in the background. I had no idea he was there when I took the picture...

In mid-August we went to our usual Saturday morning haunt, the Borough Market . We had our shopping list at the ready, written on the back of the coming week's menu. It does sound terribly boringly organised, but I find that it's the only way to guarantee (more or less) that we cook every night, instead of improvising something less tasty or settling for something ready-made. It also cuts down on impulse 'Yummy that looks good' purchases which will not be cooked (because other ingredients, such as TIME, will be missing from the store cupboards).

Unless of course the 'Yummy that looks good' happens to be live crayfish, crawling all over the fishmonger's counter, poking the red snapper in the eye, pinching the octopus and generally making a mad dash for freedom. Moreover, they were dead-cheap (even though they were very much alive). The next day we saw a sign in a Swedish restaurant in Marylebone advertising a plate of 12 crayfish for the price of the 2 KILOS we bought.

Poorer in sterlings but richer in nasty little beasts, we arrived home where foresight (and Mum-in-Law) told us to keep the Houdinis somewhere they couldn't escape from: a big iron-cast pot and a lid, held down by a chopping board. As we went out to buy some missing ingredients, I had visions of returning to our nice little flat, transformed into a scene from Gremlins with the crayfish in the starring role. I had given them sunlight, after all...

Lunch thus incarcerated, we set about preparing the court-bouillon: onion, selleri, bay leaves, dill and peppercorns in water with a glass of white wine (for the pot, not the cooks!).

Once the bath was at a pleasant (aka boiling) temperature, we lured (aka threw) the little b****** into the cauldron (a much nicer word than pot, don't you find?) and watched the magic unfold: the brown/greenish/bluish shells gradually turned a vivid hue of red. A bit like Scandinavian humans in a sauna. Same shade.

The only difference in this case being that instead of throwing the scarlett beasts into a frozen lake or rolling them in newly-fallen snow, we dipped them in a dill mayonnaise and drank white wine instead of akvavit . This is the point where our Swedish friends would scream, saying that Kraeftor (Crayfish, in Swedish) should only be accompanied by ice-cold akvavit. Preferably one shot to every claw, or one to every tail if one is a wimp... I may be a Super-Wimp, but at least I didn't wear a bib while eating them! And now you know why Swedes always sing when they eat crayfish...