in between America and Australia

It's been a while since I posted, but work has kept me quite busy, what with a business trip to New York and all. It's a yearly thing and it's always nice to go - NY is starting to feel a little bit like home, I have friends there, and, last but not least, it's good for some serious SHOPPING!
As usual, S came with - every year he says "I don't think I'll come this time", but every year he changes his mind and comes anyway. Which I don't mind at all of course. Last week Friday, while I was at work, S roamed the Big Apple with his camera and took this lovely picture in Central Park - 6 inches of snow last Friday, so beautiful. If this had happened in London, the whole city would have come to a standstill and the public transport would have gone all haywire. But it's NY, so everything kept on working just fine. Although getting a cab was near impossible.

Last Sunday I had the day off, so I went on my yearly pilgrimage to (the holy shrines of) Kiehl's and Aveda - a bit like going to Lourdes I would imagine. Maybe it will not bring salvation for my soul, but salvation for my skin is a given. It was a nice and sunny day, so S and I walked, and who else did we run into but Tim Robbins, speaking at an anti war demonstration. How cool is that. And we ended the day with a lovely home-cooked dinner, at our friends' home in Harlem. They have a ginormous flat (to NY standards at least) and it was nice to visit an area where tourists normally don't go. Still a bit rough around the edges (but then again, so is East London, where I live) but lovely open spaces and river views.

Apart from Sunday, work kept me quite busy, so I didn't have much time for fooding. Most of my food experiences were limited to Midtown, within five blocks of my hotel and work place, and are not really worth writing about. Apart from saying I still cannot get over how big American portions are. It's a good thing I only stayed a week, any longer and I might not fit in an economy seat on the plane any more. There was a whole list of places I would have loved to try, but didn't get the chance to. I did manage a cocktail or two with friends, and a lovely Japanese sushi dinner at St Marks Place though. Oh, and I did fit in a quick trip to Williams Sonoma and Wholefoods, where I finally found cocoa nibs (I've been searching high and low for those in London, but to no avail), some Scharffenberger Serious Chocolate (serious as in 99% cocoa) and vanilla bean paste.

Off to Australia tomorrow (I know, I have such a hard life), for a long holiday and a friends' wedding. No big foodie plans for Oz, but I'll be meeting up with W, an old university friend in Singapore, who will finally introduce me to the pleasures of chilli crab. And Jen from Milk and Cookies gave me some nice suggestions for Sydney food places.

easy-peasy midweek curry

My kitchen hasn’t seen much action in the last few weeks; even at weekends the oven and hob stay woefully underused. Last weekend was filled with DIY and a necessary shopping trip. Believe me, I can think of much nicer ways to spend my Saturday than to join the masses of shopping people in Central London, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? In this case: the girl had to find a dress for a wedding. And a suit for S, also for the wedding. And holiday stuff. Funny how much stuff you think you’ll need before setting off on a holiday. Weekdays are just too busy with work and last-minute preparations for a business trip to New York, followed by a visit to the gym; the exercise does wonders to clear my head after a long day at the office, not to mention my waistline, but when S and I finally get ourselves home around 8-8.30pm, neither of us has much energy left to start cooking things from scratch. So I end up nibbling cheese, salami and chocolate, hereby undoing what the exercise has done for my waistline…

All this gymming, shopping, and DYI-ing does not do much for a blog about food of course, so here’s an oldie from the archives (god that sounds ancient): the easy-peasy midweek curry. Of course there’s a bit of prep work involved and a bit of waiting around until it’s ready, but while waiting you can read the paper. Or solve a sudoku. Or think about your holiday. There’s no exact recipe; just mix about 50g of curry paste with a tin of coconut milk and heat it in the wok. Add whatever you like and let simmer until done. I like to add carrots, onions, peas, beans, red peppers and potatoes – no need for lots of preparation, I just peel what needs to be peeled and cut it up in big chunks – but something meaty of fishy would work just as well. While your curry is simmering away, cook some rice et voilà: a delicious meal in about 30 minutes.

It tastes even better the second day when all the flavours have fused together, so you could make it in advance and have a healthy ready-meal super-easy-peasy midweek curry. And there’s no law against making it at weekends. In which case, you’ll have an easy-peasy weekend curry.

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…

Antwerp

Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Kathedraal in Antwerp

Last Friday after work, I left my apron, oven and baking tins behind for the weekend and went to Belgium for a quick family visit and a (tiny) bit of retail therapy. Whenever I’m in Belgium I like to spend a day in Antwerp, where S and I used to live. And so on Saturday, I dragged S out of the warm coziness of my parents’ home to a grey and rainy city. Antwerp is a really small town – certainly if you’re used to cities like New York or London – and it is very easy and manageable to walk everywhere. While the main shopping street (the Meir) is like a mini-Oxford Street, with all the big chains and identikit shops, Antwerp does have a lot of small, independent shops and boutiques, which are worth a visit. But you have to know where to find them of course.

One of my favourite shops in Antwerp is Huis A. Boon (Lombardenvest 2-4), a delightfully old-fashioned looking timewarp of a boutique that has been around since 1884. They sell gloves in every shape, material and colour imaginable – long opera gloves, fingerless ones, buttery soft leather gloves that fit like a second skin, lined with cashmere or satin, from neutral browns and greys to the most exuberant colours – all neatly stacked away in little labelled boxes that line the shop walls. I buy a new pair there every other year or so and I’d say if you don’t find what you’re looking for there, it probably doesn’t exist.

Bazar Bizar (Steenhouwersvest 18) is a veritable Aladdin’s cave, full of little trinkets that you absolutely don’t need but that would be so nice to have. Their ever-changing assortment ranges from Moroccan tea glasses and tagines to Vietnamese lacquer bowls and Indian textiles. Above the shop is a tiny B&B, quite unlike any other. They do have a website and even an on-line shop (which is rather unusual for Belgium – even Ikea in Belgium has no on-line ordering), but it’s in Flemish only. Bazar Bizar is in the street where S and I used to live, in a beautiful old flat with high ceilings, wooden floors, marble fireplaces and an amazing view of the cathedral from our bath. There are lots of other interesting shops in the street – one specialising in cognac, another one dealing in 20th century design classics, a few art nouveau specialists and more – but there’s only so much you can do in one day.

't Koetshuis, Kloosterstraat 62

I also like a good rummage around the ‘juntique’ shops of the Kloosterstraat (most of the shops here don’t open until 2pm though). S always patiently undergoes my browsing – interior-wise, he really likes clean lines, modern and minimal stuff, while I love old junk and am always on the lookout for bargains. Or things that have ‘potential’. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately – for S) there was no way I could get that giant wardrobe, lovely cabinet, or Victorian school desk from Antwerp to my parents’ place, let alone pack them in my tiny suitcase and drag them onto Eurostar back to London. What I did manage to bring back were three glass jars for the princely sum of €2.25.

De Vagant - café and shop

One of Antwerp’s little drinking holes, where I have spent many a pleasant evening, is ‘jenever café’ De Vagant (Reyndersstraat 25). This café serves more than 200 ‘jenevers’ (schnapps), all sourced from about 40 producers in either Belgium or northern France. They have numerous sorts of grain-distilled schnapps, ranging from very strong to even stronger, but they also have fruit schnapps (apple is a traditional one), creamy schnapps and liqueurs (chocolate, coffee and vanilla) and even more exotic things such as cactus or rose schnapps. All their schnapps are listed on a menu of which, by the way, copies are sold, because their menus used to ‘disappear’ all the time. The café has a few large communal tables that will most likely be sticky, as the only ‘right’ way to serve schnapps is to put a shot glass on the table and fill it to the rim. De Vagant also has a shop, located right opposite the café, which sells practically everything you’ll find on the café’s menu, in different sized bottles. I still had to drive that day and drinking driving is never a good combination, so we skipped the café, but we did buy a bottle of chocolate schnapps for a cocktail loving, chocoholic friend’s birthday.

pizza quattro staggione and spaghetti carbonara from restaurant Verona

All that running around Antwerp made us really hungry, and we ended the day at ‘our’ old Italian neighbourhood restaurant, Verona (Oude Koornmarkt 28). Nothing spectacular, but they do pretty decent pizza and pasta at very reasonable prices. And they still recognise us and treat us like regulars, even though we moved away more than five years ago.

Of course there are so much more nice places to shop, eat and drink in Antwerp (if anyone needs recommendations, I’d be more than happy to e-mail some suggestions), but we couldn’t possibly fit all those in one day . And we had to leave some room in our tummies for my granny’s birthday lunch the day after...

p.s. I got a comment on my previous post, yay!

mini-madeleines (with oomph)

After reading Bea’s latest madeleine post, two thoughts went through my head. One was: I really should start reading Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps perdu again. In our French lessons in high school, we read an excerpt that I really loved. The page-long sentences, endless thought associations, and of course the madeleines dunked in a delicate tisane. Notice though I said ‘start reading’ and not ‘read’. Have you seen the size of this book? Daunting, to say the very least. I must have been in a world-conquering mood the day I bought the book. Needless to say, I have not yet conquered it (the book that is, not the world – I might do that some other time). I started reading it at least five times now, but never get past the first few pages.

The other thought that went through my head (and quickly drowned out the first thought) was, of course, ‘yum, gotta get me some of that’. Somewhere in the back of the kitchen cupboard there was a spanking new mini-madeleine tin, which I had bought it ages ago but somehow hadn’t got around to using yet. And I kind of made a deal with myself not to buy any new bakeware until I used everything I have at least once, so this was a perfect occasion. Also in the cupboard: a jar of chestnut honey, bought for the sole purpose of madeleine making. The recipe I had in mind is from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course, one of my favourite recipe books – the chestnut honey gives them just that little bit of extra oomph.

I was just a tad nervous about the whole thing. After all, I had never made madeleines before, someone long ago told me they are incredibly difficult to make and then of course there’s that elusive bump. But I shouldn’t have worried. After three minutes in the oven, I sneaked a quick peek (my oven doesn’t have a glass door and is not very accurate with temperatures, so I was a bit concerned) and there were beautiful little bumps on all of them. And after five minutes in the oven, they were just perfect: slightly bronzed and just a tad crunchy on one side, beautifully pale gold on the other side. Yay. So there. I made madeleines. I MADE MADELEINES! For the first time in my life. And it worked! Of course they taste best straight from the oven – let them cool just a bit, flip them over in the tin and eat while standing at the kitchen counter. One or two tiny bites (depending on how big your mouth is) of lovely airy and oomphy fluffiness and they’re gone. I enjoyed them with a mug of coffee.

After the baking (and tasting, and then tasting some more), I dug out the camera to take some pictures. Now I’m not at all good at photography and I don’t know anything about all the technical stuff. Usually I take a few snaps, quickly get fed up with it and think ‘Ah, sod it, there will be something useful’. And that’s it. But not this time. I had taken some pictures and was about to put everything away, when S tiptoed into the kitchen and took over. S is a keen amateur photographer and a bit of a gourmet himself, but I never thought he’d be interested in combining the two. And yet there he was, snapping away, re-arranging things and even exclaiming ‘we need white mugs!’ (if you’re wondering why: the white mug in the picture has its ear turned to the left, because it has an image on the other side). I’m starting to think this whole food bloggy thing is contagious. Hmm, imagine. We are blog. You will be assimilated, resistance is futile…

pignola

Lately, I’ve been on a breakfast mission. I’m not talking about long, lazy, relaxing weekend breakfast or brunch but rather the hurried weekday ‘oh no I’m going to be late for work why didn’t I get up earlier’ breakfast. Getting thoroughly fed up with eating the same muesli every morning, I decided to embark on a quest to assemble a breakfast repertoire of all things healthy, filling (so I’m not starving at my desk come 11 am), interesting and, oh yes, delicious.

Toast, yoghurt, jam, granola and fruit all passed the revue, in various combinations. Banana-walnut loaf (or cake, or muffins) I’m undecided about; while it has all the goodness of fruit and nuts, it also has a lot of sugar and fat. Earlier this winter I ‘discovered’ porridge, which is apparently the best breakfast one can eat. Low GI and slow-release energy and takes you right through to lunch. Porridge being a quintessentially British breakfast staple, and my being not British, it took me some time to getting used to, but now I really love it. Especially on a freezing cold and crisp winter day, then it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I prepare mine in the evening (allows me some extra time in bed in the morning) with organic oats, milk and a drizzle of honey, and reheat it in the microwave.

Another new addition to my breakfast menu is pignola – a sweet, Italian breakfast bread which gets its name from one of its ingredients: pine nuts (pignoli in Italian). How authentic this is, I’m not sure – my Italian boss had never heard of pignola and a quick google search didn’t return any results. Incidentally, I left out the pine nuts, so I’m probably not allowed to call it pignola any longer. But hey, it’s my blog and my bread and I can call it whatever I like. In any case, my pignola turned out to be utterly delicious. A wonderfully fruity nutty loaf, crumbly yet not at all dry, it goes well with butter, jam or lemon curd and of course that essential first cup of coffee of the day.

Recipe
Adapted from Linda Collister "Bread. From Sourdough to Rye."

2 3/4 cups wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 stick of butter, diced
2 large eggs, beaten
1 packet of yeast
1 cup raisins, dried apricots and goji berries
juice of one two small oranges
1 cup hazelnuts and walnuts, lightly toasted
icing sugar, for dusting

Put raisins, apricots, berries and juice in a bowl and leave to soak overnight. The next day, mix flour and salt in a bowl, rub in butter with fingertips until mixture resembles breadcrumbs then add yeast. Make well in centre, add beaten eggs, raisins, apricots and berries and mix everything together. Turn out dough on floured work surface and knead for 5 minutes. Return dough to bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size (about 3 hours). Turn out risen dough onto floured work surface and work in nuts until evenly distributed. Shape dough into ball then disc and set onto baking sheet. Slip tray into large plastic bag, inflate slightly and let rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour). Bake at 375˚F for about 35 minutes until golden brown. Transfer to wire rack to cool and dust with icing sugar. Enjoy.

the ultimate carrot cake

This is the first carrot cake I’ve ever baked, so whether it’s really the ‘ultimate’ one, I couldn’t say. Delia claims it is though, so ultimate it is. Now I have a little secret to confess: I’m not a big Delia fan. Ever watched one of her programmes on tv? She’s got such an enthusiasm for life (feel the irony here) and I find her annoyingly pedantic – telling people how to boil eggs or peel tomatoes. But maybe British people need to be told these things, I don’t know. The woman knows how to cook though, I have to admit that, and over the years I have become a huge fan of her recipes.

mise en place

A few years ago, someone at work who had just met me – and quickly figured out I liked cooking and baking – gave me Delia’s Vegetarian Collection as a christmas gift. This quickly became one of my favourite cookbooks and I, in turn, have given copies to quite a few friends, who all love the book as well. Every single thing I make from it just works, whether I follow the recipe to the letter, or muck around with it. I now trust Ms D to such an extent, I would even risk trying a new recipe from this book for a dinner party, since I know it will turn out well. Well, I wouldn’t actually, because I’m a Virgo and hence a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak, but you catch my drift.

Back to the carrot cake now. When I was a child, we used to have a ‘carrot cake joke’, which goes as follows: a rabbit enters a bakery and asks the baker: ‘Do you sell carrot cake?’ (this bit has to be said in a rabbit-like voice, of course). Baker says no, he has never even heard of carrot cake, rabbit leaves. This scenario repeats itself daily, until the baker one day decides to make a carrot cake, because the rabbit might be on to something there – after all, rabbits know their carrots. So the next day, when the rabbit enters the bakery and asks: ‘Do you have carrot cake?’, the baker proudly replies yes. To which the rabbit says ‘It’s disgusting, don’t you think?’. Silly, I know, but it seemed hilarious when I was young(er). When I told my brother on the phone I was making carrot cake, his initial reaction was something similar. Until I told him what goes in it. Not that much carrot. And it doesn’t taste the slightest bit of carrots. I wonder why it’s even called carrot cake at all. But I guess that must be a British thing.

I tweaked the original recipe a bit – I left out the orange zest (yuk) and dessicated coconut (yuk again), added some dried apricot, forgot to add the goji berries I had planned to throw in as well, substituted walnuts for pecans, added some oats, and used molasses alongside the soft dark brown sugar. I threw the whole lot into the oven, and an hour later a mountain of moist, yet crumbly deliciousness emerged, which I brushed with a lemon-orange syrup to moisten it even more. One word of advice, when Ms D says to line the cake tin with baking paper, there’s a very good reason to do exactly what she says. Otherwise, after you’ve doused the cake with the syrup, it will stick to the tin. And fall to pieces when you try to exact the cake from the tin. How do I know that? Hmm, let’s not go there. And no, the fact I wrapped my cake in paper for the pictures has nothing to do with this piece of advice whatsoever …