Meat loaf

Yesterday I prepared meat loaf (pain de veau), according to my aunt A's recipe. This was a joint cooking venture with labelga from Leafy Cooking.

Serves 4

750 g ground meat (I used beef, my aunt suggests half beef, half pork)
1 egg
1 small onion (my aunt suggests 4 onions or shallots)
breadcrumbs (my aunt suggests using dry bread, soaked in milk)
a few sprigs of fresh parsley, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
pepper and salt
2-3 bay leaves to put on top

Mix everything well. Give it the form of a loaf, add bay leaves, put it in a greased oven dish and bake for 1-2 hrs at 180° C.

Note: My aunt used to add lots of vegetables such as carrots, kohlrabi, spring onion, red pepper and mushrooms. I didn't bother on this occasion. Sometimes I also add chives.
My loaf took around 1 hr to bake.

Beforehand it doesn't look all that appetizing

it needs messing about

ready to go in the oven

coming out

and served

with steamed potatoes and pumpkin ratatouille. We used sweet potato in stead of courgettes and one red pepper in the ratatouille, and we didn't need to add sugar as it already tasted deliciously sweet.

It was real comfort food, with comfort feet.

Outside the Christmas market has started, showing this view from my window.


This morning I was given two sets of 1930's door handles by a neighbour. I was very happy because in the appartment that I recently bought, most of the original door handles have disappeared, so I'm on the hunt.

Tabouleh

Tabouleh is more of a Summer dish, but it's also good party fare. Yesterday we organised a small party with our neighbours, so I prepared this dish, according to the recipe my aunt gave my mother, over 15 years ago.

250 g couscous
4 juicy tomatoes + 1 extra for decoration
2 small onions, or a few spring onions
2 lemons or 3 limes
1 cucumber
black olives
5 tbsp olive oil, extra virgin
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp chopped fresh mint leaves
pepper & salt

Put couscous in a bowl, add olive oil and lemon juice, pepper and salt, and mix well.
Peel cucumber, remove seeds, cut in small dices.
Peel onion and chop finely.
Peel tomatoes (put them in hot water so the skin comes off easily), and cut in small dices.
Add vegetables, olives, parsley, and mint to the couscous.
Mix well and let this stand for at least 2 hours in a cool spot. Mix once in a while.
Decorate with olives, slices of tomato and mint leaves.

Note: Crucial to this recipe is that you don't use water at all. The couscous gets softened by the olive oil, lemon juice and vegetable juices.
I tend to use half a bunch of parsley.

Before the party started, we had a Thai curry delivered

which tasted very nice with our first bottle of bubbles.

Brunch in Antwerp

Last weekend we gathered for brunch in Antwerp, at Tati.

It's a bistro in Borgerhout, which doesn't usually do brunch, but I asked them to cook something up. And they delivered...





We had a reason to celebrate

Delicious dishes kept coming








I really enjoyed the cosy atmosphere, delicious food and good company!

Afterwards we went to see the show Maria Pascallas by our great actor Pascale Platel, in the beautiful theater Roma.

Satellite dishes

A few days ago, I saw these guys, fixing yet another antenna for satellite tv.

Cucumber salad, red beetroot salad and potato salad

Today I had friends over for lunch: an oldfashioned Sunday lunch. So I went for oldfashioned fare.
I prepared a soup from chicken broth, as posted before, and I served the cold chicken meat with salsa verde, and with a few salads from Claudia Roden's book of Jewish food.

The quantities serve 6 persons.

Cucumber salad


2 cucumbers
salt
lemon juice
1 tbsp sugar
2-3 tbsp sour cream

Peel cucumbers, cut in half and remove the seeds.
Chop them finely, sprinkle with a lot of salt, and let this drip in a sieve for at least 1 hr until it gets soft and looses the moisture.
Rinse and dry with kitchen towel.
Mix lemon juice and sugar with sour cream and add this to the cucumber.

Red beetroot salad


500 g red beetroots, boiled, peeled and chopped
1 onion, chopped finely
salt & pepper
lemon juice
1 tbsp sugar
2-3 tbsp sour cream
3 tbsp dill, chopped finely

Mix sour cream, lemon juice and sugar.
Add the other ingredients.
Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Potato salad


1 kg potatoes
salt & pepper
olive oil, extra virgin
1 onion, chopped finely
3 tbsp parsley, chopped finely

Wash potatoes and steam them. Peel them immediately and slice them. Add olive oil, salt and pepper to taste while they're still warm. Mix well. When they've cooled, add onion and parsley.

Note: you can add capers, anchovy, black olives, boiled egg etc. Today I omitted this because I also served salsa verde, which contains most of these ingredients.

We had a great bottle of wine with this meal.

Vive le roi!

I'm not really a royalist, although I don't like this idea of splitting our small country up.
But today I like our monarchy, because as a public servant I get a day off for the celebration of our royal dynasty ;-)

Days like this give one the occasion to meet up with old friends, have coffee on the heated terrace of Hotel Mêtropole in the last sunshine and watch the passersby, buy beautiful gloves at an oldfashioned glove shop in Galerie de la Reine,


buy speculoos at Dandoy, in anticipation of Sinterklaas on Dec. 6, and stop at Le Cirio, a Brussels institution

where you must have half-en-half, a Brussels speciality which is a mix of white wine and sparkling wine,


and pick up a book at Passa Porta, a favourite bookshop.

And sometimes, on days like this, you get really lucky and already receive beautiful roses for your birthday, weeks in advance. Thanks N!

Sunday dinner

A while ago, I was invited for a delicious Sunday dinner. I really enjoyed hunting for premeal snacks, spying on the preparations,


eating a delicious meal in good company, letting myself go on the pies, left over from an afternoon visit - a Flemish tradition, pie on Sunday afternoon -

and after this enormous meal, still stuffing our faces with the most vicious sweet in het world: AUTODROP!

Celebration

I haven't commented yet on two small causes for celebration. The first one is this blog's first anniversary, on October 21st. So one year already of recording fun in the kitchen, delicious food, and also some fun in Brussels and in general.

The second one is that I received the Nice Matters award from labelga at Leafy Cooking. Thanks a lot!

Red pepper and walnut paste

Last month, when my friends came to dinner, we prepared this paste and served it on small toasts as a starter. You can also use it as a sauce to dip vegetables in. It's another Claudia Roden recipe, called muhammara.

Serves 6

2 red peppers
red chili paste
1 slice of bread without crust
90 g peeled walnuts
1/2 garlic clove, crushed
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
olive oil

Roast red peppers in the oven at 200°C for 30 min. Turn them once. Let them cool in a plastic bag, then peel them and remove stem and seeds.
Blend all ingredients into a paste using a blender.
Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

The walnuts were deftly and painstakingly peeled by hand using Mono Pico, a very simple device which my cousin brought me from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.


We forgot to take pictures of the result - which was delicious. So instead a few pics showing the view from the kitchen in the evening.

Pumpkin and quince stew

Last month I had friends over for dinner and now I'll finally share a delicious recipe with you that I prepared that day. It's a sweet dish with pumpkin and quince that accompanies a couscous, in stead of oignons confits for instance. The recipe comes from Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food' and she calls it 'Hlou aux coings et potiron'. I love quince almost as much as pumpkin, so I really wanted to try this combination.


Serves 4-5

2-3 tbsp sunflower oil
100 g sugar
1 big onion, chopped
250 g pumpkin, peeled and chopped
2 quince, peeled and chopped
juice of 1/2 lemon

Heat oil with sugar until sugar starts to caramelize and get brown.
Add onion and fry for 5 min.
Add pumpkin and quince and lemon juice, add water until everything is just covered.
Let the dish simmer for 45 min.
The mixture should be thick, like a jam.
Serve hot or cold with couscous.

The taste was fantastic and the dish was a great success with my guests.

I prepared the couscous according to Claudia Roden's basic recipe, which I won't copy here.