Roast peppers with anchovy

This Italian recipe, peperoni alle acciughe, is a nice starter for a warm Summer evening.

Serves 4-5

4 anchovy fillets (I used tinned)
3 peppers (you can use different colours)
1 tbsp oregano (dried or fresh)
1 garlic clove, very finely chopped
1 tbsp capers, very finely chopped
salt
olive oil

Wash and dry the peppers and cut away the stems and seeds.
Cut them in 3-4, put them in an oven dish greased with 1 tbsp olive oil, add salt and dried oregano and roast at 200°C for 20-30 min until they are soft.
Let them cool, then transfer to a serving dish and sprinkle with garlic, capers, anchovy and olive oil.
Let this stand for 2h before serving.

Note: if you use fresh oregano, chop it finely and add it at the end together with garlic etc.

Summer at the Belgian seaside

We had been promised fabulous weather and tropical temperatures for the weekend, so I went to visit my family at the seaside. Once again the weather forecast had been a bit misleading, because this was what we got:

A lot of wind and not a lot of sun. During one of the sunny spells we ventured out to the beach and had to flee within 10 min because it started raining. And then friends call from Portugal telling they're enjoying the sun on the beach with live Brazilian music and caipirinhas.... I'll have to go back there soon.
What can you do with this weather at the seaside?
You can get an ice cream at De la Poste in Knokke (the best) and you can look for fossils.
Here's my cousin's collection of shark and ray teeth:

Stoemp me sossis

Because of the cold weather last week I got a craving for a Belgian speciality and typical winter dish: sausages with a mash of potatoes and other vegetables.

I made the stoemp with andijvie (no idea what it's called in English, not endives, that's something different). It looks like a long lettuce with curly leaves and the taste is a bit bitter.
I steamed the potatoes and cooked the andijvie separately in butter; then mashed everything together and added more butter, pepper and salt. It tasted great, esp. with a Belgian brown beer to go with it. Lots of butter is the key to a nice tasting mash.
Afterwards I checked a traditional recipe which recommended to boil the andijvie together with the potatoes.

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.

Quick lentil curry

Yesterday I had some soup left over from the day before and I wanted to prepare a quick dish to go with it. So I improvised this lentil curry which tasted real good. Forgot to take a pic though.

split red lentils
1 potato, peeled and chopped
green peas (I used frozen)
1/2 tsp curry powder
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
olive oil
chopped parsley

Fry onion and garlic in oil. Rinse lentils in water and add them together with the potato. Add curry powder and a lot of salt. Cook for 1-2 min. Add enough boiling water to cover the ingredients well. Bring to the boil, add the peas and wait till it boils again. Then lower the heat and let the dish simmer until it's cooked and most of the liquid has been absorbed. This takes about 20 min. Add parsley in the last minutes of cooking.

Note: afterwards I thought that it could be nice to add some dried raisins, grated coconut and perhaps a bit of chilli. Perhaps in that case it's better to use sunflower oil in stead of olive oil. You could also substitute the parsley for coriander leaves.

Potato and onion pizza

After a few days of eating out, I was craving for a home made meal with lots of vegetables.


Serves 2

1 pizza dough (I just bought it ready made)
2-3 potatoes, peeled and sliced very thinly
1 onion, peeled and sliced very thinly
1-2 tbsp capers
1 tbsp dried oregano
olive oil
smoked bacon or anchovy, chopped

Put potatoes and onions in an oven dish, add some olive oil, salt and oregano. Mix this well with a spoon. Roast in the oven for 10-15' at 200°C.
Roll out the pizza dough in a pie dish. Pierce it with a fork. Add potatoes and onions. Cover with capers and small pieces of bacon or anchovy. Add pepper.
Bake for 25' at 200°C.

I served this with three ajlouks: carrot, seasoned with red chilli paste, sweet potato, with parsley, and courgette, with garlic and parsley.

Linzer Torte

Lots of work, travelling and headaches kept me from blogging. But here I am again.
I had Linzer Torte when I was in Süd-Tirol last autumn and I simply loved it. So I got the idea to make it myself one day.
I found a recipe in a German cookbook and I also checked an Italian recipe for crostata de marmellata, which was fairly similar. The result wasn't quite what I remembered from Süd-Tirol but it still tasted very nice.


Serves 4-6

125 g butter, cut in dice
200 g flour
125 g ground hazelnuts (or almonds)
80 g sugar (recipe said powder sugar, I used cane sugar)
1 egg
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch of vanilla black spots (from inside a vanilla pod)
200 g raspberry jam

Mix flour, hazelnuts, cinnamon, vanilla and sugar in a bowl.
Make a hole in the middle and add butter and egg.
Mix this with your fingers until you get a firm dough. Add more flour if necessary.
Cover the bowl and let the dough rest in the fridge for 2h.

Cut 1/3rd of the dough off and set it aside.
Roll out the remaining 2/3rds and transfer it to a greased pie dish (this is a tricky part).
Pierce it with a fork, then cover with jam.
Roll out the remaining dough and cut it into strips. Decorate the jam with the strips of dough.
Bake at 180°C for around 30 min.

Notes:
You can add grated lemon rind in the dough and decorate the tart with sliced almonds. You can also paint the strips of dough on top with a bit of egg yolk for extra colour. I didn't bother with any of this.

I used two types of jam: one was strawberry-raspberry-pineapple, a leftover in my fridge, and the other one was home-made blackberry jam, which was offered to me in Portugal and which I managed to bring to Belgium without breaking the pot.

Saturday dinner in Brussels

Last Saturday we cooked a simple dinner.

First we had appetizers with the view at the front of the building.

Then we moved to the kitchen at the back.


This was the result: baked fish with spring vegetables.

Nice sunset with live salsa music coming from a nearby street party.

Ricotta and spinach soup - Zuppa di ricotta e spinaci

Yesterday I went to visit my friends who have a holiday home in the countryside. It's a small wooden house, like a cabin, with a fireplace and it's surrounded by ponds and trees and lots of beautiful wildflowers. It's very idyllic, you have the feeling that you're completely away from everything and it's hard to imagine that you can find places like this still in Flanders.

There's a vegetable garden and yesterday we had artichokes from the garden - delicious.

My friends brought ricotta and 'warmoes', an oldfashioned vegetable similar to spinach but not as soft. I offered to make a soup with this.

Serves 6

300 g ricotta
600 g spinach, torn in pieces
1 big onion, peeled and chopped
4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
vegetable stock
ground pecorino or parmesan
olive oil

Fry the onion on low heat for a few min until golden. Add ricotta and fry it while stirring for 15 min, until it also gets coloured.
Add pepper and salt, tomatoes and spinach. Add 1,5 l boiling water with a bit of vegetable stock.
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and let the soup simmer for 15 min.
Serve very hot with extra olive oil and ground cheese.

Note: I tend to add a small dried red pepper (peperoncino) to spice it up a little.
You can use the spinach stalks; I cut them off but I add them with the torn leaves.

This is the soup with the view:

We also had some home made elderflower juice, made from the flowers in the garden. I photographed it in a small herb patch:

and on a seat made from a tree that was cut off.

Truly nice getting away like this for a city gal like me!

Wiels

This WE a new centre for contemporary art opened in Brussels. It's called Wiels and it's housed in the former brewery of Wielemans Ceuppens, a beautiful modernist building from 1930 by architect Adrien Blomme. I went to have a look.

I saw some beautiful tiles, that would go well in my new bathroom:

There were several contemporary art exhibitions. I particularly liked the piece by Saâdane Afif called 'Le Bar des Héros' which had a sound installation with pieces of music which played in a bar in Marseille in 1999, and flashing lights like in a club, and this poem:

It reminded me of Marseille, a city I love.

Rape caramellate - turnip 'tzimmes'

Today I bought turnips and I meant to add them to a lamb stew. But when I peeled them I noticed that they were so young and juicy that I decided to prepare them separately according to an Italian recipe called rape caramellate.


Serves 6

1 kg turnips, peeled and chopped or sliced
2 tbsp butter
salt & pepper
1 clove
2 tbsp sugar

Fry turnips in butter on medium heat for a few min. Add a little water, the clove and salt & pepper. Cover the pan, lower the heat and let this simmer until the turnips are done.
Add sugar when most of the liquid has gone en stir for 2 min. until the sugar has caramelized. Serve immediately.

I had this with a lamb stew (basic recipe with onion, carrots and courgettes) and steamed potatoes. For dessert, strawberries again, this time with a mixture of sour cream and cane sugar, hmm.

Fish curry

For mother's day my cousin and me invited our mothers over for lunch, together with our brothers and sister.

My cousin made a mozzarella and tomato salad which I forgot to photograph. She made a delicious sauce to go with it: she fried pine nuts in olive oil and added soy sauce in the end.

I made a fish curry, from a simple recipe that someone gave me years ago. You can get most of the ingredients in an oriental supermarket. Taste the dish to adjust the quantities.


Serves 4

1 can of coconut milk (400 ml)
same amount of water
800 g fish fillet, cut in pieces (I used haddock)
lime/bergamot leaves
fish sauce
thai basil leaves
fresh coriander, washed and chopped
thai aubergines
1,5 tbsp cane sugar
juice of 1-2 limes
1 tbsp green curry paste
2 onions, chopped
sunflower oil or butter

Fry onion in curry paste in sunflower oil or butter.
Add everything else, bring to the boil and let the dish simmer for 15 min.
Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

I served this with (Tilda) basmati rice.

My mother brought beautiful flowers from her garden.


For dessert we had strawberries of course

with vanilla ice cream


and tiramisu. My mother made it and my cousin B. grated the chocolate on top. As you can see, he got fed up in the end ;-)

Broccoli, potato & sweet potato all' acciuga

Italians often prepare broccoli or cauliflower with anchovy and garlic. I added normal and sweet potato.

Serves 2

small sprig of broccoli, cleaned and chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1-2 tbsp breadcrumbs
4 anchovy fillets (from a tin), chopped
olive oil
pepper & salt
lemon juice

Steam broccoli and potatoes until just cooked.
Stirfry garlic, anchovy and breadcrumbs in olive oil for a few min.
Add steamed vegetables, pepper and just a little salt and cook on low heat for 5 min.
Sprinkle some lemon juice over the dish and serve.

Summer in Brussels

My neighbours came up with a good solution for the Summer weather we've been having.

Brussels goodies

One week ago I had friends over from the UK, so I stocked up on a lot of goodies from Brussels, before fleeing with them to the countryside. One night we had a big dinner.

One speciality here are 'grijze garnalen', a small type of shrimp. I got a salad with these and another one with crab from a renowned fishmonger. We had this on toast as an appetizer.

One very small hand was tucking in:

As a main course I prepared a chicken stew. I've posted it here before, just used carrots and parsley in stead of Jerusalem artichokes and coriander.

This is what was inside the pot:

And this is what it looked like on a plate:

In Belgium this is the season for strawberries. Labelga brought some along:

I had also gotten ice cream from the adventurous ice cream maker Comus & Gasterea, just around the corner from my appartment in Brussels. His ice cream is excellent, made from top quality ingredients, and he makes strange tastes such as curry, ginger, rose, chocolat sorbet...The owner has a rather oldfashioned approach, so I wasn't surprised not to find a website. I did find a few sites mentioning him though, such as this article in the newspaper Le Soir.

I went for classics: vanilla,

strawberry


and mango.

Everything met with success ;-)

Thank you labelga for all the pics!

Old books and bluebell forest

On April 13th I went to visit a library of old books and made a few snaps.

The first ones are miniatures from a manuscript of a medieval religious song book.

The next ones are from a book by Dodoens describing herbs en vegetables: fennel

I particularly like this one of the 'patissons':

and this one is garlic:

After this visit we had lunch on a sunlit terrace - we've been having Summer in Belgium during April. Labelga from Leafy Cooking had invited us over; you can see one of the delicious dishes she prepared that day on her blog.

After that we went to the Halle forest. At a very specific moment this becomes very spectacular with a carpet of bluebells. As you can see in the pics, we went at exactly the right moment.


Our next stop was a landmark in Brussels: the ice cream maker Zizi. One of my favourite spots.
We finished with a bottle of champagne, an appropriate ending for a day like this...

Ricotta artichoke pepper and bacon tart

Finally I'm back to blogging. But without recipes for the time being.
Yesterday I made this tart. I bought a pastry, spread it in a baking dish, spread some ricotta on top, then added yellow pepper; small, young artichokes - which my mother brought from her garden; she told me Italians eat them raw like that but I preferred to bake them - one shallot; some smoked bacon - all of this finely chopped -, a little olive oil and pepper & salt.
I baked this for 30 min in the oven at 200°C.

Today I also made a simple soup: onion, shallot, carrots, leek and potato, according to my basic soup recipe.

Shallot tart

I like dishes with lots of onions or shallots.


Puff pastry
500 g shallots, peeled and sliced
red wine or red wine vinegar
vegetable or chicken stock
200 g smoked bacon, in small cubes
125 g mozzarella, in cubes
1 tbsp sugar
butter

Fry the shallots for a few min. in butter.
Add sugar and fry this for 1-2 min.
Add a little wine (or wine vinegar) and top up with stock; the shallots should be just covered.
Add very little or no salt.
Let it simmer for 30 min. until the shallots are cooked and all liquid has evaporated.
Roll out the puff pastry in a baking tin, add bacon and mozzarella, put the shallots on top.
Bake this for 30 min at 200 °C.
I served it with a salad of mixed lettuce, raw fennel and roast pine nuts, seasoned with gomasio, pepper and olive oil.

Note:
I used red wine, it's delicious.
I sliced the shallots but you can also leave them whole.

Butter bean casserole

I ate a lot at restaurants lately and then I got fed up, so yesterday I bought a lot of vegetables and cooked myself a meal again. I decided to try butter beans. I researched a few recipes and came up with this simple dish. No quantities recorded, so use your experience ;-)


butter beans, rinsed and soaked overnight
green celery, washed
mushrooms, washed and cut into pieces
runner beans (? the green ones), washed and cleaned and cut into pieces
1 potato, peeled and cut into pieces
shallots, peeled
garlic cloves, peeled
parsley
pepper and salt
bean herb??? (in French: sarriette)
olive oil

Rinse the butter beans, add fresh water and bring them to the boil. Let them boil vigorously for 10 min. without cover. Add a few stalks of celery and of parsley, 2 whole shallots, a few garlic cloves and peppercorns. Bring to the boil again, then lower the heat, cover the pan and let the dish simmer until the beans are soft. This takes 1h - 1,5h.
Pour off the liquid and collect it in a pan. Remove celery etc., just keep the beans.
Cut a few more shallots into pieces and fry them a few min. in olive oil on medium heat. Add celery, cut into pieces and fry a bit more. Then add mushrooms and fry 1 min more. Then add runner beans, potatoes and butter beans. Cook this mixture for 5-10 min in a covered pan on medium heat.
Meanwhile heat the stock that you collected from boiling the butter beans. When it's boiling, add it to the vegetables. Bring to the boil, add salt, lower the heat, cover the pan and let this simmer for around 45 min. Add some chopped parsley during the last min.