Perfect Sunday

Yesterday labelga and I had a leisurely afternoon at a well kept secret, which I will nevertheless share with you: Sauna O. It's a small scale, cosy sauna with beautiful interior decoration.
One of the things I really enjoy there is having a cup of tea by the fireplace.

Then we set off home, where a gentleman opened a bottle of bubbles for us.

Meanwhile, the preparations for a great dinner, started in the morning, were finished: chicken broth and tamarind-coated duck, with a side dish of black beans.

And again there was this leftover Sunday pie, which I really shouldn't eat but couldn't resist.

That was just a perfect Sunday. Thanks labelga for the glorious food!

New Year's walk

On New Year's Day labelga picked me up and we drove to the seaside for a big walk near het Zwin in Knokke. A walk is a great idea for a day like this, when you're too wasted to do anything else. I vote for making it a tradition.


It was a bit misty, and you got the feeling you could be anywhere, in another world even. The atmosphere reminded me of the movie Down by law by Jim Jarmusch.
It took us a while to find the big rabbit - oh no it was a hare.

After the exercise in the cold we had to recover of course, so we went to Marie Siska, where we've spent many childhood hours.



The cream was for the waffle

the heart went onto the pancakes

you can sprinkle sugar from the big cans

but I prefer brown sugar.

Hmm, now we felt better, ready to drive back to Brussels and take another ride in the big wheel.




The new year has started well.

Tom Yam Goong

I prepared this Thai shrimp soup on New Year's Eve, according to the recipe from Weldon's 'THAILAND The Beautiful Cookbook'.

Serves 4

250 raw shrimps, peeled, keep the shells
750 ml water
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
5 bergamot leaves
3 slices of fresh galanga or ginger
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 stalks of lemon grass, only 1/3rd (the lowest part), cut in 3 cm pieces
2 shallots, sliced
50 g straw mushrooms, sliced
juice of 1 lime
2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped

for the black chilli paste:
1-2 chilli peppers
1 shallot, chopped finely
1 garlic clove, chopped finely
pinch of shrimp paste
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp sunflower oil

Make the black chilli paste: fry chilli peppers, shallots and garlic in oil for a few min. Add the other ingredients and fry for a bit longer. Set this aside.

Rinse the shrimp shells. Put them in a pan with the water and bring to the boil. Then pour through a sieve, conserve the liquid and throw away the shells.
Add garlic, bergamot leaves, galanga or ginger, fish sauce, shallots and mushrooms to the stock. Bring to the boil on medium heat and let it simmer for 2 min on low heat.
Add the shrimps, bring to the boil again and let them simmer until cooked. This takes only a few min., at most.

Add lime juice, chilli paste and coriander leaves to the soup and serve.


Notes
A difficult thing with this soup is estimating how spicy it will be. I used 2 dried chilli peppers (1 small and 1 medium size) for 8 persons and this was definitely too much. Steam came out of everybody's ears. 1 small one would have done the trick.
You might try using fresh chilli peppers, which are less hot.
You might also add the chilli paste little by little to the soup and taste in between.
The recipe doesn't mention salt, but I added some.

Fortunately I had also prepared blinis again, so we could cool our palates with those after the hot soup. Since we were 8, I doubled the quantities mentioned in the recipe and we got through most of that.



As a main course, we had two types of guinea fowl: one with the typical Belgian ingredients gueuze beer and witloof (endives), and the other one with a raisin and cream sauce. They were served with mashed potatoes and mashed parsnips. Very yummy, all of this!

Cosmopolitan

I like to drink this cocktail at L'Archiduc, but the one we got served on New Year's Eve tasted even better. And I got the recipe!


2 measures vodka
2 measures cointreau
3 measures cranberry juice
1/2 measure lime juice

Shake with ice and serve!

Note: The cocktail maker advised to use fresh unsweetened lime juice from the brand Pulco.

Later that night I tasted a great rum from Barbados.

This was after wine and champagne.
Don't know how I managed to play Jenga without making the tower fall once.

More pumpkin

Can't get enough of pumpkin, so in between the party dinners I made another pumpkin risotto. A simpler version of the recipe posted before, only with pumpkin, no onions or carrots. I used a big slice of organic muscat pumpkin and it tasted delicious. Contrary to my habit, this time I prepared it in the proper risotto way, adding small portions of water at a time and stirring a lot.

Sweet roast pumpkin

I had more than half a pumpkin left from making the pumpkin and hazelnut cake. I was inspired by labelga's 19 December post of an oven-baked pumpkin cup and I also remembered a dish my friend K once prepared as part of a Jamaican meal: sweet potatoes baked with rum and butter.

So I invented this dessert:

I greased an oven dish with sunflower oil, added the pumpkin half and a few more pumpkin wedges, added a few broken cinnamon sticks on top and sprinkled a bit of sugar and quite a bit of rum over the pumpkin. I baked this in the oven at 200°C for around 40 min, until the pumpkin was really tender.


It tasted delicious. I was out of butter, but I think that would be a nice addition.
You can eat it just like this. Maybe vanilla ice cream would go well with it.

This is Babette's duck, which really does change colour when it gets hot.

Pumpkin and hazelnut cake

Recently I copied this Spanish recipe from Larousse's 'Les cuisines du monde'. I decided to try it for my yearly get together with my friends from school.

Serves 10-12

400 g pumpkin, peeled and chopped (weight is without peel and seeds)
4 eggs
40 cl sunflower oil
350 g flour
200 g sugar
200 g ground hazelnuts
a little butter
3 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt

Steam the pumpkin until soft. Let it drain in a sieve overnight.
Crush it with a fork or using a handmixer.
Add eggs and oil and whisk everything.
Mix flour, sugar, ground hazelnuts, cinnamon and salt, and add this to the pumpkin mixture.
Mix well.
Grease an oven dish or cake tin with butter and add the mixture.
Bake for 50'-1hr at 180°C, until a knife comes out dry when you stick it in the cake.

Note: Unless you have a huge party, use half the quantities mentioned.

Unfortunately my cake was in competition with 3 delicious pies from Les tartes de Françoise.


So I took some of it home again and had a piece for breakfast.

Taking a break

In between all the renovating and Christmas socializing, I finally had time for a simple drink in town, in the company of Wisteria and others.

The next day this was repeated at a cosy lounge in Gent, of which I've forgotten the name.

You do get used to bubbles at this time of the year.

Aromatic Christmas

At my third dinner (in as many days) we had takeaway lobster

accompanied by a simple vegetable soup - the picture isn't great but the soup was delicious.

My mum grew lots of herbs in Italy and dried them, and decided to distribute them to her children for Christmas.

This was my share: verveine, citronelle, tilleul, basilic, sarriette, peperoncini, rosemary, fennel seeds, oregano, bay leaves and sage.

And because this is a sentimental season, I include a picture of my mum's dog.

Blinis - small version

The festive season has started, where I get together with friends and family and there is lots of food. Last Saturday I was invited for dinner and I helped out a little in the kitchen.

I baked small blinis, prepared according to a recipe from the beautiful cookbook 'Het Gerecht' by Filip Verheyden.


It's a fast and easy recipe without yeast, so the dough doesn't need to rise as in my previous post.

Serves 4

60 g buckwheat flour
40 g normal (wheat) flour
1 egg
1,5 dl milk
butter for baking
salt
sour cream and caviar

Mix both flours, add egg yolk, milk and a pinch of salt. Whisk it into a homogenous dough and let it rest for 5 min.
Beat the egg white and mix it gently into the dough.
Heat a little butter in a pan. Add several teaspoons of dough and fry both sides for 2 min on high heat.
Let the blinis cool and serve with sour cream and caviar.


Note: We also served a few blinis with smoked salmon in stead of caviar.
You can sprinkle a bit of lemon juice over the finished blinis.


We got very spoilt: loads of delicious appetizers, next to the blinis


a salad with deep-fried mozzarella, rucola and baked cherry tomatoes, as a starter


and a fantastic fish soup



served with homemade rouille


Quite amazing that after all of this we still managed to eat my Danish apple dessert, served with vanilla ice cream from Comus & Gasterea (described in my post about Brussels goodies).

We ended the evening with a game of Colonists of Katan - very enjoyable, especially for the winner :-p

Thanks R and F for your great hospitality!