More Summer

I was offered special sepia pasta and a great bottle of rosé from Süd-Tirol (Alto Adige), which together with a few more courgettes from my mother's garden made for another delicious Summer meal.

Thanks F. & I. for your gifts!

Summer delights

Finally a few tropical days in Belgium. I prepared the first of the courgettes (and its flowers) from my mother's garden, just lightly fried and served - with love - on toast with olive oil.

Today was a day for roaming the countryside of my youth, visiting a mill, where a brave guy was challenged to climb up and change a sail

and later a content millner was spotted looking out his window.

Seaside cooking

Last weekend I spent at the seaside. On Sunday I did an early morning walk along the beach in a heavy gale and I saw a curious guy sitting on the 'golfbreker'.


After that I was picked up for a day of relaxing, fighting the wind, buying Dutch specialties such as Autodrop and plenty of cooking. You can find a full report at Leafy Cooking.

We had a well equipped kitchen at hand and exploited its facilities

such as this steaming oven,

a first with a great result.
Thank you labelga for a relaxing afternoon in enjoyable surroundings.

Apple crumble

Recently I tasted a special crumble, made with speculoos, which worked quite well. I was asked for my own recipe and apparentely I haven't posted it yet. So here comes my friend K's delicious recipe, without picture because I haven't made it in a while.

Serves 6

6 apples
200 g dried raisins (or raspberries)
125 g butter
250 g flour
75 g light brown sugar
25 g dark brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Mix flour and butter, then add sugar.
Peel apples, remove core and cut them into pieces.
Grease an oven dish with butter, add a layer of apples, then raisins and cinnamon, and repeat.
Sprinkle the pastry on top.
Bake for 30 min at 200°C.

My addition is to soak the raisins in rum before adding them.
Of course this tastes great with vanilla ice cream.

Clafoutis

For our annual neighbours' party, I made a clafoutis. I consulted a recipe in 'Het Gerecht' by Filip Verheyden, but I decided to stick to a very quick and light recipe from my mother, which probably comes from the magazine Elle.

500 g white soft cheese (platte kaas)
125 g flour
100 g sugar
a little vanilla sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
400 g fruit (cherries, red- or blackcurrant, plums, ...)

Wash fruit.
Beat egg yolks, sugar and vanilla sugar until the mixture gets creamy.
Mix baking powder with flour, and add flour and cheese gradually to the mixture.
Beat egg whites and add.
Pour half of the mixture in a greased tin, distribute the fruit over it and cover with the remaining mixture. Keep the fruit 2 cm from the border to avoid leaking.
Bake for 30-40 min. at 180°C.

The recipe in Het Gerecht uses these ingredients:
100g flour, 4 eggs, pinch of salt, 175 g sugar, 2 packets vanilla sugar, 4 dl milk, 450 g cherries.
Everything just gets mixed, with the milk last, except for the fruit.
They gave the useful tip to leave the cherry stones in the fruit for extra flavour.