This weekend Dan Raine and Ed Dale have announced some amazing new tools for members of the 30 Day Challenge, which I would urge you to join if you are remotely interested in online marketing – and it’s completely FREE. The tools, which have been a few months coming, are designed to cut out the tedium of social bookmarking by doing it all for you automatically and will save a ton of time.

At the same time they made an enhanced version available to members of Immediate Edge and another great reason to join.

All in all 2008 is a great time to be an internet marketer – I’ll see you inside the 30 Day Challenge or Immediate Edge.

We’re currently looking to find an Australian website that sells pate, but without much success so far. This is for a Christmas gift, so any Aussies reading this can you let me know where I can buy Pate in Australia online.

Now you may have started to realise and may have not, but I do like eating. To celebrate my birthday yesterday I took Miriam out for dinner at Sikkim, a place we tried three years ago and found the mix of cuisine which supposedly follows the route of Marco Polo to suit us perfectly.

Last night we booked, but on Friday and Saturday they have an odd system where they have two sittings, the first from 8.30 to 11 and then second from 11.15 to 1. I prefer to eat at around 10 when going out, so this didn’t really fit in with my plans for the evening, but we accepted the first sitting and arrived at about 9.

The restaurant is nicely decorated, with rich clothes from the spice route and Buddhas overseeing the diners. My first course was a salad of baby spinach with mint, basil and figs, while Miriam chose what turned out to be a giant spring roll. In fact she’d been looking forward to the starter she had last time, which was a cold Thai coconut soup which was excellent. Unfortuantely although it is listed on their website it was apparently removed from the menu at the beginning of August.

For the main course she decided on seafood brochets, while I was in 2 (or 3 minds) about what to select. One of the dishes was described as tuna tataki and since I’m not really up on Japanese cuisine I asked he to tell me what it was. When the dishes arrived I was a bit aghast. While the waitress had told me about the peppercorns and sesame seeds she’d neglected one important fact; the tuna was raw.

Now I’m not that fussy about food, but one thing I don’t eat is raw fish due to an unfortunate experience in a sushi restaurant while visiting Tokyo many years ago, although I will eat it seared tuna which is quite rare. When we eventually got a waitress over she explained that it wasn’t raw because it had been marinated. I beg to differ, it was raw.

Anyway, I asked them to cook it for me which they did (probably the chief was thinking “philistine”, but I’m in charge here, I am the customer ) and it was rather bland but at least cooked. While the dish was being re-engineered for me I tucked into some of the prawns on Miriam’s plate and they were pretty good.

We skipped desert as we were both a bit unhappy with the restaurant, although I think we both had a good time. Time for a drink at l’Acensor (I’m not going to tell you how to get there, it is great because it is largely tourist free) and then home for a glass or two of wine and some music before bed.

Anyway, I have just googled tataki and the two recipes I’ve read state the tuna should be seared! If it had been done like that I’d have been perfectly content. Next restaurant; a return to Cardamon.

One thing I always make sure I do when I visit the UK is go out for a curry. It’s simply the best food ever invented and I could eat it at least 5 days of the week. Leftovers are always great for breakfast and the aroma of the spices cooking is unbeatable.

So yes, I did have a chicken curry on Saturday night, and yes, I did enjoy it. There are a few curry houses in Barcelona, but on the whole they’re not up to the standard of the UK – enjoyable enough though and I would recommend Cardomon in Barcelona; it’s nothing like in Britain, but the curries are good and they use plenty of chili to hot things up, one thing that is often absent in curries over here.

The most reliable option is to cook them myself, which I do often. Maybe I’ll share one of my chicken curry recipes with you sometime soon

Great to see a new series on BBC (now I can get it) abount Indian food. Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m famous for my curries, but it isn’t as straightforward to buy essentials such as poppadoms and some spices in Barcelona as it is in the UK where every supermarket caters for Indian food.

The  new series is called Indian Food Made Easy and we watched the first episode salivating as Anjum Anand talked food, spices and recipes and demonstrated some twiests on some of the classics. I’ve never made samosas because of the difficulty of making the pastry, but will try and give her recipe a go.

Find out more about Indian food from the BBC website, which includes the recipes shown in the programme.

Being an Englishman abroad is never more difficult than when it comes to a curry, as although it is possible to find Indian and Pakistani restaurants in Barcelona they don’t really cater too well for my tastes – usually not enough heat.

Last night we went to Cardomon with a couple of friends, somewhere we’d been for lunch one day when helping a friend move.

Opting pretty much for a bit of everything I’m glad to report that the food was as good as we’d remembered it – high quality ingredients, good flavour and nicely spiced food. Often you don’t find poppadoms in curry restaurants in Barcelona, but I’m Cardamon is an exception and once again they are nicely spiced.

The restaurant itself is in a converted wine bodega and it looks like no expense has been spared – it looks like a much more expensive restaurant.

So, if you’re visiting Barcelona and missing a curry head to Cardamon. You can find it at Carrer Carders, 31, just off Via Laietana. Call +34 93 295 5059 for reservations.

I first came across espresso many years ago when I was fortunate enough to be sent to the Italian island of Sardinia for work when I was in my early twenties. I was there fior a week or ten days at the end of July and beginning of August and I was lucky enough to find that we’d be working mornings only due to the heat. – so what was supposed to be a business trip in fact turned out to be a good deal of all-expenses paid holiday too.

One of the great Italian habits I was introduced to was the coffee break, where a few times a day people make their way to the nearest coffee bar and drink a minute quantity of blackest of black coffee followed by a glass of water. I so loved the espressos that when I got back home I began my search to produce good espresso at home.

But it was one falso start after another, with stove top makers that produced unfailingly bad coffee, a Krups espresso maker that was perhaps even worse and so eventually  just gave up the chase.

Then one day my brother mentioned that he’d just bought a Gaggia coffee maker after sampling an espresso made by a Baby Gaggia at his friend’s house – his friend is married to an Italian so good espresso is both essential and guaranteed.

When I visited my brother one day I had free access to his new toy. He showed me how to work it and then produced the best cup of espresso I’d ever had outside Italy. At that moment I knew I had to have one – the only problem was that I’d just resigned from a highly paid job and was about to move to Barcelona. So I waited again…

…until for my birthday last year, what should I receive but a Baby Gaggia!

It’s a pump driven machine, which means it is slightly noisy, but don’t let that put you off as the coffee it produces is amazing.  Although the machines you see in cafes are steam driven, a pump-driven espresso machine is ideal for home as you can switch it on and produce coffee 6 minutes later – the pump ensures that the water is delivered uniformly at the optimum pressure.

I usually use Illy coffee, although I can’t always get it in Barcelona. I’ve also tried Lavazza, which isn’t quite so good but much cheaper, as well as Alto Grande from Puerto Rico and Jamaican Blue Mountain, although the latter is a bit strong for my tastes.

The Baby has recenty been updated slightly by Gaggia, although the differences appear to be cosmetic. They’ve also added the ability to use coffee pods, but I don’t see this as an advantage at all – yes, they produce less mess, but you’re tied into the type of coffee you use and that is a huge disadvantage for me. I’ll also add that I tried coffee from a pod machine – I don’t remember the brand, but it wasn’t Gaggia – and the coffee was terrible. I don’t know whether it was because of the type of coffee thay had or the machine itself, but I was glad I had my Gaggia tucked up at home.

So what don’t I like about my Baby? Not a lot really, it requires a bit of maintenance and a good clean, but other than that it produces excellent espresso when I want it.

More about the Baby Gaggia

The other day I talked how bad RENFE’s website is when I was trying to find a train to Valls, near Tarragona.

My reason for going was as close to a pilgrimage as I think I’ll ever get; the annual calçotada, which this year was on Sunday 28th January. A calçotada is simply a feast of specially grown spring onion called calçots, which are cooked over vines and then devoured with a sauce. Usually grilled meats accompany the calçots too.

I first came across calçots maybe 20 years ago in Meson del Conde in l’Escala on the Costa Brava. It was a cold February and many of the locals were served with a red brick roof tile containing some very charred looking vegetation of some kind. As I wanted to find out what it was they had I also ordered what turned out to be called “calçots”. I loved them and the presentation and that day marks the beginning of my obsession with calçots.

As we coundn’t find a train to Valls I decided to drive instead, and it turned out to be a good choice as Valls is around 75 minutes from Barcelona. Of course parking was a little more difficult, but once we were on foot we found that although Valls isn’t particularly pretty is is small. Armed with a map of the town provided by the organisers, complete with a timetable of events, we made our way to one square where they were demonstrating how to make the sauce. Since they were also giving away the sauce on pieces of bread there was a major scrum too, but I did managed to get two pieces for us.

After that we found the square where they were burning the fires to cook the calçots, and they even had a section available so that you could take along your own meat and cook it yourself and even though it was Sunday, all the butcher shops were open – next time we go I’ll take along some meat too I think. After watching the calçots being cooked we found a queue where we could buy a ticket to get the real purpose of our visit – to eat calçots.

Once we had our tickets we went back to the square where they were cooking the calçots and joined another queue, but after a few minutes I had in my hand what the pilgrimage was about – a bag containing 12 calçots, a half bottle of wine, a slice of bread, a pot of sauce and an official calçotada bib (I didn’t say how messy calçots are, did I?), all for just €6!

Anyway, there were a number of squares with benches set out for you to devour your feast and so once we had found our spot we laid out our food and drink and tucked in.