here’s one I made earlier…

… because I was nowhere near my kitchen this weekend. Instead, I spent a lovely weekend in Belgium to celebrate my friend’s 30th birthday. She is Spanish and prepared some yummy food: tortilla, albondigas and much more. No pictures, too busy talking. The rest of the weekend I caught up with my family: chatting with mum, taking gran out for lunch and enjoying the wonderful sunshine and 25˚C weather. And stocking up on chocolate of course.

So all I’ve got right now is this salad: goats’ cheese, walnuts, apple (this time, I also use pear, dried cranberries or goji berries) and rocket with an olive oil-balsamic vinegar dressing.

S doesn’t like goats’ cheese at all, so I only make this occasionally, just for myself. And every time again I’m surprised how fast and easy this is. All you need to do is brush the cheese with egg, roll it in breadcrumbs and gently fry it in some olive oil, until the breadcrumbs are golden and the cheese a bit squishy in the middle. While the cheese is frying, dress the salad leaves, throw in some nuts, berries or whatever else takes your fancy. Plonk the cheese onto the salad, add a good twist of black pepper et voila…. an utterly delicious salad in about 10 minutes.

Happy New Year!

A bit late, I know, but in my family you can wish each other a happy new year during the entire month of January (I have a ginormous extended family, so it would usually take a while to tick everyone off). Also, getting a stomach bug is a wonderful way to lose all that holiday weight, but not such a fun way to start the new year. My stomach is back to its old good self now, but there hasn’t been much cooking in the V&C kitchen and hence not much to report either.

S and I spent most of the holidays with our families in Belgium – a wonderful week of eating, sleeping and not much else. And I was too busy chatting with everyone to think about updating my blog. We‘ve always celebrated with our little family on christmas’ eve; christmas day was reserved for a big lunch with my dad’s side of the family (fifty-odd people – told you I have a big family) and the last years is a perfect day for going to the cinema, or, even better, doing nothing at all.

The traditional christmas day lunch with turkey, cranberry, stuffing etc. is not really done in Belgium though (and we don’t have Santa Claus either – but we do have Sinterklaas, who comes on 6 December). We usually eat something nice and festive, and this year we all helped cooking. Mum did something nice with fish for starters, my brother made a lovely cream of mushroom soup, S made a beautiful gratin dauphinois and of course I was in charge of dessert.

I wanted to make something Sinterklaas-inspired, with speculoos, spices, and mandarines. And dad loves ice cream, so there had to be ice cream in it as well. And this is what I came up with: speculoos with cinnamon ice cream and mandarine caramel. Those fancy schmancy mandarine segments I didn’t do on purpose (I do have a life you know, and I don’t spend it dissecting mandarines into individual thingies); my original intention was to have large segments in the caramel and when I was trying to get the membrane off each segment, they just fell apart in these little thingies. And they looked kinda cute, so I used them like that. All the components for this dessert can be prepared in advance and are very easy to make; just be careful with the speculoos, because it burns easily.


speculoos

500g self raising flour
250g butter
350g soft or dark brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 shot glass of cognac (or milk or water)
mixed spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg etc.)

Knead everything together into a smooth dough. Leave to rest in the fridge for at least one hour. Roll dough to a thickness of 1/2 in for crispy speculoos, or 2 in for soft speculoos and shape as desired. Bake at 170 - 200˚C, for about 5 to 10 minutes (burns easily).

For this dessert I baked thin crispy rectangles of speculoos which I trimmed again after baking (the scraps mixed with coffee made a delicious spread for sweet sandwiches), but this recipe makes massive quantities of dough and, as my mum loves the thick soft speculoos, I baked a massive slab of that with the leftovers. Which disappeared in no time.

cinnamon ice cream

Find any basic ice cream recipe and infuse milk or cream with cinnamon sticks when heating it. (sneaky, I know, but my old basic recipe doesn't really cut it. Not enough egg yolks I think)

mandarine caramel
adapted from Claudia Fleming's Last Course

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup mandarine juice
1 tbsp butter
mandarine segments

combine water and sugar in saucepan and simmer until sugar dissolves (stir regularly). Raise heat and boil mixture until caramelised. Remove from heat and whisk in butter and fruit juice. Set over low heat and whisk until caramel is smooth. Let cool for at least 1 hour. Before serving, stir in mandarine segments (which I didn't have, so I just scattered my mandarine thingies over the plates).

sweets for Diwali

Diwali was actually celebrated on the 9th of November this year so I’m an entire week late, but I’m sure Ganesha’s appetite for sweets is the same all year around. And as for Lakshmi (even though she’s a tough cookie – my friend’s words, not mine), surely my rice pudding is sweet enough to sway her.

Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated big in the area where I live, with lots of fireworks. My friends who celebrate it make sure their house is spic ‘n span clean from top to bottom, in anticipation of Ganesha and Lakshmi’s visit. These Hindu deities bestow wealth, success and happiness, but only upon clean households. In addition to all the cleaning, there are also sweets. Lots of them.

Now why would I be celebrating Diwali - blonde Belgians and Indian festivals, surely that’s a strange mix? Well, blame my friend S, a crazy (in a lovely way crazy) Mauritian girl, from Indian descent. She not only decided that I was going to be half Indian, but also introduced me to Bollywood music and films, textiles, henna, and of course Indian sweets. Which, with all their spices, are absolutely perfect for this time of year. And after restraining myself with the custard last week, I was itching to make something else with a mix of heart-warming spices.

Many moons ago I made gajjar ka halwa (carrot halwa) – an extremely sweet dessert with grated carrots and lots of cream, butter and milk – which was delicious but took me an entire afternoon to make, and I just didn’t have that much time on my hands. Ras malai is my absolute favourite – it’s a sort of milk curd ball in sweetened milk with pistachios and rose water – but I have absolutely no idea how to make that myself. And so I thought I’d give my gran’s rice pudding a go.

A bit nerve-racking, considering her rice pudding is heaven on a plate (and that’s a lot to live up to!), and also a bit of a challenge, with the vague instructions she gave me. It turns out her vague instructions are absolutely spot on though, there’s no way to make them any clearer. Gran only adds saffron to her rice pudding, but I added a bunch of spices. Other than that, I stuck to her ‘recipe’. And the result? A very Flemish dessert, with an Indian twist.


recipe
1 cup of rice (I used Arborio, but any rice that is suitable for risotto will do)
a knob of butter
full fat milk (about 1 litre)
a squeeze of honey
1 teaspoon vanilla bean extract
half a stick of cinnamon
a pinch of saffron
1 star anise
5 cloves
3 cardamom pods
a pinch of nutmeg

Melt some butter in a saucepan, add rice to pan and make sure it is coated with butter. Add enough milk to cover rice and add all the spices. Keep on stirring and adding milk (I added a tiny squeeze of honey halfway through) until the rice is soft, about 45 minutes.

It’s basically like making a risotto, so it takes some dedication, but the results are more than worth it. The spices I listed are the quantities I used, but you can of course adapt according to preference (S tasted and said it was ok, but he thought the star anise was too overwhelming), add some cream instead of only milk, and sweeten it as much or as little as you like.

weekend breakfast crepes

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not a morning person. Never have been and never will be. Mind you, I’m not moody or grumpy in the morning, it’s just that in between my stumbling out of bed and actually being awake, a fair amount of time can pass. I don’t mind people talking to me, so long as they don’t expect coherent replies. Or replies at all, for that matter. As my mum knows all too well.

S, on the other hand, opens his eyes and is wide awake, ready to start the day. Which makes me a very lucky woman, because when I get up at weekends, breakfast is always ready. I even get to choose what I’d like for breakfast: bacon & eggs, French toast, or crepes. And yesterday I was the lucky recipient of the latter.

When I was growing up, crepes were a rare occurrence and a real treat. Mum would bake them once in a blue moon – for my birthday, or when my girlfriends came over for play dates. Which is why, even though I can eat crepes every weekend now if I like (if I ask nicely), it still feels like Easter, Sinterklaas, birthdays and Christmas all rolled into one!

The crepes from my childhood were made with a ready-made mix. But making them from scratch isn’t all that much more work. And of course they taste a million times better. S likes his with sugar, I like mine with syrup (a kind of molasses, treacle-like thing that I stock up on every time I’m in Belgium). Either way, they are utterly delicious and a wonderfully indulgent weekend breakfast. Did I mention how lucky I am?


S's crepe recipe
200g self-raising flour
30g caster sugar (half of which vanilla sugar)
500ml milk
2-4 eggs (to taste)

Mix everything together and pass batter through sieve to make sure there are no lumps. Butter or oil pan (make sure pan is hot) and add one ladle-full of batter. Swirl batter around into crepe shape. When baked on one side, flip and bake other side. Repeat and then eat.

oops

Pressies! A whole bunch of cook books and other goodies.

I woke up one morning and suddenly realised it’s October already. There was also this nagging thought in the back of my head - something to do with chocolate. And vanilla. And then it dawned on me. My little blog! So woefully neglected this past month! Oops.

Well, I guess that’s what happens when one spends weekends in Belgium visiting family (and stocking up on chocolate), frantically doing DIY preparing one’s house for a visit of said family, attending talks by certain food bloggers, and organising a big birthday party for oneself (my thirtieth, but shhh, don’t tell anyone).

Which didn’t leave much time at all for kitchen experiments. Or for the Daring Bakers September challenge, which completely passed me by. Check out all the other DBs cinnamon and sticky bun rolls here.

On the plus side, I now have beautifully oiled ‘dark Jacobean oak’ stained floors, which - I have already discovered - provide a perfect backdrop for food pics; the family (who all came over from Belgium especially for the birthday party) were suitably impressed with our house renovations and it was wonderful having them all here to celebrate with me; and, throwing yourself a birthday party of course means getting lots of presents, some of which will make appearances on vanille & chocolat in the not too distant future...

afternoon tea

It seems I’ve been neglecting my little blog a bit the last few weeks – mainly because some work issues that are dragging me down, a ginormous pile of laundry that I seem unable to get rid of, and the never-ending DIY. On the bright side, S and I have found the perfect colour wood stain for our floors and a nice finishing oil that doesn’t lift the stain out of the wood and turns the colour into something really nasty.

Also, last weekend, my parents, auntie and cousin were visiting, which meant S and I got to play London tour guide for a few days. We joined the hordes of tourists for a look inside Buckingham Palace, went on the London Eye and had a very posh afternoon tea at Brown's hotel. Which was every bit as good as I remembered it from the previous times.

As we were so busy doing touristy things and catching up, our kitchen didn't see much action, but I’ve got a few sweet things lined up for the next few weeks. If I ever get all that laundry done, that is.

my granny rocks!

She makes the best rice pudding ever. I put in my order with her three weeks ago, well in time for my quick weekend trip to Belgium.

After spending Friday night and Saturday morning in Brussels to catch up with my bestest friend A whom I hadn´t seen for ages (this catching up included a really good dark beer and a sweet breakfast of Portuguese pastries at Pastelaria Garcia), and a rainy Saturday afternoon of shopping in Antwerp and catching up with my mum, mum and I headed straight to my granny´s flat, where three lovely plates of rice pudding and freshly brewed coffee were awaiting us.

I have not yet managed to get a proper recipe out of my gran, but I do know she adds a good knob of butter to the milk and rice, doesn´t sweeten it at all (the sugar goes on top) and puts in a good spoonful of saffron threads, all of which results in heaven on a plate.

family lunch

For her 80th birthday, my granny organised a big party at a local restaurant and invited her extended family and close friends. That day, she got a tiny bit tipsy on champagne and we made her promise to have another birthday party the following year, just for the close family. And ever since then it has become a bit of a tradition to have a birthday lunch with her. She always tries to get out of it, claiming she needs to save her money for when ‘she’ll be old’, but of course we won’t let her. Her birthday was last weekend and, after that little shopping excursion in Antwerp on Saturday, we had her birthday lunch on Sunday (‘we’ is my granny, my aunt & cousin, my parents & my brother, and S & myself).

Both these images are from the restaurant's website (www.jachthoorn-kontich.be/foto/jachthoorn_algemeen)

The restaurant we always go to, De Jachthoorn, is located in a picturesque old farmhouse, set in a large garden with playground. It has a function room, caters lots of weddings and other parties and is very popular with local people – at weekends it is always packed to the rafters. The food they serve is traditional Belgian fare (a bit like French, but simpler) – not Michelin star worthy, but on the whole quite decent. Apart from their market menu, which changes weekly, the restaurant’s menu never ever changes. And I really mean never: in the four years that we have been celebrating my granny’s birthday there, the menu has remained exactly the same. Not very imaginative, but the owners probably adhere to the mantra ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. And why should they, the place is always full, so they must be doing something right.

I think we caught them on a particularly bad ‘off-day’ last Sunday though, as a lot seemed to have gone wrong. Personally, I find their food a bit too salty for my taste and, although their dishes sound really good on paper, there is always seems to be ‘something’ that doesn’t work as well as it should. Having said that, I have to admit I’m not that easy to please. And, based on my past experiences there, I know they can do better than what they served us last Sunday, so I won’t be too harsh. Like I said, on the whole their food is quite decent. Here goes.

Granny insisted we all have the ‘market menu’, which changes weekly, and which sounded really nice:

aperitif (sparkling wine)
-
amuse-bouche
-
goat’s cheese wrapped in bacon with walnut and pear salad
or
salmon tartar with sour cream and potato crisp
-
leek and shiitake soup
-
sorbet
-
cod with herb crust and celeriac mash
or
entrecote with chicory and red wine reduction
-
dessert

goat's cheese parcel

salmon tartar

The amuse-bouche I forgot to photograph and none of us were sure what it was, but we think was sliced (smoked? carpaccio?) duck breast with shredded red cabbage and orange. I had the goat’s cheese starter, which was faultless and absolutely delectable: the soft, mild, tangy cheese contrasted nicely with the salty bacon and sweetness of the pear. I didn’t taste the other starter, but it got the thumbs up all around.

The soup, I’m sorry to say, was so salty I couldn’t eat it. It was an attack on my taste buds, I couldn’t even taste what vegetable the soup was made with, all I could feel in my mouth was the salt overload. ‘Too salty’ was the general consensus at our table, but everyone except me ate theirs. My dad, who loves his salt, liked it, but even he had to admit it was rather salty.

After the soup came a sorbet. I think it was raspberry, which I found a strange choice. As a dessert, this would have been perfect, but as a palate cleanser I found it too sweet. I would have chosen something more fresh and tart – lemon or even apple perhaps?

entrecote

herb encrusted cod -or how I discovered how difficult it is to take a decent photograph of food in a restaurant with strange lighting

My main course was the entrecote, which came as a delicious slab of ‘saignant’ perfection, with some cress and tomato. The chicory was a bit on the salty side (I told you they like their salt there) but I absolutely LOVE chicory so I happily gobbled it all up. S’s portion of chicory also found its way into my tummy, as he’s not a big fan. There was some sort of grated potato cake on the plate as well, which must have ended up there because of a space-time continuum rupture or something like that. Not only was it completely dried out, it also had a fishy taste. Literally. The thing tasted of fish. Maybe someone didn’t clean the pans very well? The other main course was good (again, I didn’t taste it) but apparently the sauce (hollandaise?) was too sour and overwhelming.

Dessert was a little plate with cake, ice cream and fruit. The cake was some sort of sponge with vanilla cream (at least, that’s what I think it was), which was kind of heavy and so cloyingly sweet I could feel myself sinking away into a complete sugar coma after one bite. Luckily the fruit and coffee ice cream saved the day.

The verdict: not too great, almost every dish seemed to have something or other wrong with it. There are better restaurants out there in the same price category serving similar food. But, at the end of the day, we had a nice family get-together, my granny likes this restaurant very much and was really pleased to have her entire family around her, she was radiating happiness and enjoying every single moment of it. And I think that’s what’s really important…