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.

Simple delights

Tonight I had a simple and delicious meal: a quiche with steamed courgette, endives lightly fried in butter and smoked trout, prepared with 1 egg and cream according to my basic recipe

and preceded by the first artichokes from my mother's garden.

Simple broccoli and courgette soup

Sometimes a simple soup turns out really delicious and it's worthy of taking along when invited for gnocchi.


I used my basic soup recipe again, with a sprig of broccoli, 1 courgette and 1 leek, and also 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, a bay leaf and dried basil. At the last minute I decided not to mix the soup.

Meatballs in vegetable sauce

Yesterday I went to see two of my old schoolfriends. My friend suggested to cook together which I thought was a great idea. So we exchanged recipes by email and got our shopping lists organized. And yesterday I took the train to Ghent armed with two cookbooks and a bunch of ingredients.

We made our own version of Claudia Roden's kubba bamia, which are meatballs cooked in a vegetable sauce.



Serves 6-8

500 g minced beef
2 onions
2 tbsp oil (olive oil or other)
2 garlic cloves, chopped or crushed
1 small bunch of celery
1 small bunch of parsley or coriander
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp sugar
pepper and salt
1-1,5 kg vegetables such as okra (ladies fingers), courgette & pumpkin

Chop 1 onion finely and add it to the minced beef. Add a little chopped parsley and pepper and salt. Mix this with your hands and make it into small balls.
Fry the other onion in oil until it's golden. Add garlic and fry a little longer. Add the chopped vegetables (including the celery) and fry for a few min. Add enough hot water to let the meatballs boil in it.
Add the meatballs, sugar, lemon juice, chopped parsley or coriander, pepper & salt and let the dish boil. Then lower the heat and let it simmer for about 25 min, until the meatballs are cooked.
We served it with steamed potatoes.

Note: Claudia Roden suggests that you can use other vegetables such as tomatoes and aubergines. Use just one of the vegetables mentioned or just any mixture of them.

For dessert, I made the Danish apple dessert again (see previous post).

At night I went back to Brussels and saw the Michael Franti show, which was just terrific! It was the last concert of the Yell Fire tour in Europe. The band was very animated, the concert was sold out and the whole public was going nuts. After the show, Michael Franti was shaking hands with the fans and even came down in the public. Labelga managed to get hold of his hands twice, wouwww!

Before the concert, labelga brought me one of her juices, made with the recently bought extractor: apple - carrot - mint, yummmmy!

Pumpkin ratatouille

I still had half a pumpkin left, so I made this dish, based on a recipe by Nigella Lawson.


Serves 2-3

1-2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 peppers, one yellow and one red, chopped
2 courgettes, sliced
500 g pumpkin, chopped (weight without seeds or skin)
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp ground coriander
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp sugar

Fry the onion in olive oil for a few min. Add garlic, cumin seed and coriander and fry for a few more min.
Add peppers and fry on medium heat for a few min.
Add pumpkin, courgettes, sugar, pepper and salt and fry for a few more min.
Cover the pan, lower the heat and let the dish simmer for 30-45 min until the vegetables are soft.
One day later, this dish tastes even better!

After the meal, we went to see the Sara Tavares show in Brussels. It was great!

Stuffed courgettes

After a busy week and week-end, today I finally had time to cook again and I got inspired in the supermarket. I bought lots of vegetables:


Stuffed courgettes - zucchine ripiene

This is how I usually stuff courgettes, based on an Italian recipe.

Serves 2

2 courgettes
180 g ground meat (e.g. pork or beef)
chopped parsley
grated parmesan
bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
pepper & salt

Boil the courgettes for 3-4 min.
Slice them in half and take out the flesh with a spoon. Cut half of the flesh finely and put the remainder away for another use.
Mix the meat with the zucchini flesh and the other ingredients.
Fill the courgette halves with this mixture and put them in a dish, greased with olive oil.
Put in the oven at 180°C until the meat is cooked (around 40 min.).

Notes

If you use round courgettes, let them boil for a bit longer. They also need to bake longer than the long ones.
Tonight I left out the parmesan and I added a little bacon, but I prefer it without bacon.
If you make bigger quantities, don't use more than 1 or 2 eggs.


I had the stuffed courgettes with a carrot, turnip and yellow pepper tzimmes (see Fennel tzimmes on previous post, with cumin seeds and a little sugar) and steamed potatoes coated in olive oil.