Young gods

Tonight I had the privilege of assisting a private concert of Gabriel Rios, Jef Neve and Kobe Proesmans at Flagey, a favourite location.

Three young gods on the stage, thoroughly enjoying themselves - what a delight!

Almost Friday the 13th

Once in a while it still happens: I burn my food...


Fortunately we had a nice dessert to compensate: a bolo de arroz (rice cake) from a Portuguese bakery in Brussels. I served it with a cup of coffee with a pau de canela (cinnamon stick), which I brought from Portugal; I think they use it there to stir in their coffee but as I'm not a coffee drinker I'm not sure. I prefer herbal infusions like cidreira (citroenmelisse in Dutch, not sure what it is in English).

The day after, on Friday the 13th, things went better. Finally a day of Summer weather in Belgium after weeks of rain and cold. I went to the Blue Note Records Festival in Gent, to see India.Arie and Guru's Jazzmatazz. It was in a fantastic location, the garden of a former abbey, and the festival setup was very stylish. You could drink sparkling rosé wine in the proper glasses! The concerts were great - Guru esp. got the tent shaking - and in between them our Belgian stars Tom Barman and Mauro Pawlowski did a fantastic job at their turntables.
It was a beautiful night, and in the morning, nothing better than a nice brunch to deal with the effect of al this sparkling wine.

The dish in the middle has mussels and potatoes and courgettes and tomatoes and garlic and parmezan.... it was delicious! Maybe R can tell us the recipe?
Next to it are a salad with rucola and a fruit salad.

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!