Month: June 2016

The (Romanian) Cassoulet

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For the first time, you only see one lunch box and this is not even mine; it’s my man’s. It contains a serious portion of (Romanian) Cassoulet and some cornishons in brine (which are amazing, we buy them from Polish supermarkets; dzięki Polish friends!).

I never liked this dish; as a child I even had a horrid aversion towards it. To this day, I just can’t. I have, of course, tasted it and, yes, it does taste good enough, but I can’t bring myself to actually eating a full serving. It’s one of those things, you know, that don’t make any sense, but where you consciously indulge and say: what the hell, I’m just quirky like this (because quirky sounds better than idiotic).

So yes, the Cassoulet. 20-30 minutes on the clock, almost zero effort and, as some say, super-delicious. A wintery dish again, but have you look outside your window today?!? Yes, dear rest-of-the-world, we’re fucking freezing here in Belgium! Breathe in, breathe out, here comes the recipe!

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(Indoor) BBQ time

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Barbecues are great and I absolutely love them. It seems that BBQ season is in full swing, but for the less fortunate ones who don’t have a garden…well, for them BBQ season goes all year round!

And doing BBQ food on a grill is satisfying enough and veeery easy to implement. There’s not much to say about what I made, the picture itself is quite self explanatory. But here goes… Read More

The Impostor Quiche

DSC03512This “impostor quiche” has become one of my staples. And it has the funniest story.

When we first moved to Belgium, about 8 years ago, I bragged to my man that I would bake a quiche lorraine for dinner. All good, until I realized I had almost none of the ingredients I needed to make the much-anticipated quiche…so I just invented a new recipe and whipped something up. Luckily, my man had no idea what a quiche lorraine was! We kept calling this cheese tart “quiche” until I came clean and confessed. Like most fabulous inventions of our time, this fake quiche was born out of necessity, a bit of laziness and a fundamental lack of known & tested ingredients. I’m super happy to share the recipe with you: it is so delicious that I replicated it sooo many times!

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Cutting-board food for Saturdays

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Less than a meal, more than a snack, we love cutting-board food on Saturdays! Fresh Americain preparé from the butcher, pumpkin bio bread (from Delhaize), ruccola, capers, cherry tomatoes, emmental & provolone, olive oil, salt & pepper. Everything my heart desires to start the week-end in glory.

People outside Belgium might be wondering what the filet americain preparé is. Well, how can I put it? It is nothing less than the best thing to eat that was bestowed on mankind. Raw ground beef, with a secret mix of various ingredients: anchovies, capers, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, paprika, egg yolk…it really varies! I only buy this from my dear butcher, M. Gaston, you’ll find him on Chee. de Waterloo, no. 142, in St. Gilles ….his filet americain preparé is to die for. As are all the other products, for that matter.

Enjoy the week-end, but don’t forget to plan your food for next week 🙂

In praise of SNACKING

DSC03554I’m a major snacker and I’m not afraid to show it! Usually people mention they love snacking with a guilty look in their eyes and somehow excusing themselves for such blasphemy. Snacks are evil, that’s a no-brainer, right? Well…not quite! Read More

The Secret

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After many years of packing and enjoying my own lunches, I’ve learned a thing or two about the art of the perfect lunch box. The secret? Simply enough: killing two birds with one stone…which translates into cooking two meals in one go! Because time is never enough (am I the only one out there with this problem?!?).

What did I put in here? Leftover burgers from the eve before, 2 baked potatoes that I threw in the oven while making a stew (more on that soon)- added some goat cheese and few chunks of blue cheese on top. These will melt in the office microwave and become the BEST topping for the above potatoes. Next to all this, an avocado salsa, which literally took me 3 minutes to assemble in the morning.

Not the most summery meal, I’ll give you that, but when you live in Belgium, you don’t really get many summery meals…

The.Best.Burgers.

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I absolutely LOVE burgers!

Having lived in the US, I got very familiar with this delicious dish first-hand: from home-made, on the barbecue, under the Montana starry sky to some of the world’s best unknown burger joints. Eaten at the bar’s counter with a cold beer or on white linen table cloth, the burger was (almost) always mighty.

After I moved back to Europe, I continued the search for the perfect burger…and I have found none! The Brussels burger-scene left me with a sad, unaccomplished, melancholic feeling and always frustrated. Given, I have not tried all burger places in our fair city, but I had my share of burger-tears. The worst I had, no need to be calling names and pointing fingers sounds something like this:

* small white fluffy bun, sad thin dark-brown-grayish meat, one slice of bright-orange cheese…you know, the type where each slice comes wrapped in plastic (advertised as CHEDDAR, btw), onion slices from two days ago, one chunk of tomato with zero taste, some sour-vinegary cornishons, iceberg salad (yuck!) and, icing on the cake (or shall I say on the burger)(hold your breath for this one, I hope you’re sitting down): all drenched in…cocktail sauce. The horror!!!

On top of this, burgers get such a bad reputation, because we’ve been wired to associate burgers with the fast-food industry. And always with fries. Always. I’m not gonna go into the whole fast-foods discussion, I hope everyone who’s reading this text knows better. We don’t need this sort of crap in our lives, just as much as we don’t need a rotten onion for breakfast everyday (come to think about it, I’m actually inclined to raise my hand for that onion…).

So these are the rules of the perfect burger:

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Love your lunch

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One of the most important guiding principles in my life is to absolutely love what I eat. Yes, simple enough and very intuitive, but if you really think about it, how many of the things you eat you actually, genuinely love? No one loves the club sandwich, drenched in mayo with two-days-old salad. Nobody really loves the sad M&S microwave dish that they heat up in the office kitchen. And absolutely no one loves the cafeteria meal that they get in their office cantine?!? …Well, you get the point. Lunches should be glorious and satisfying! So when you wake up tomorrow morning and stumble in the kitchen for coffee, consider this: what’s your lunch gonna look like?

What have we here?
Leftover crunchy chicken (from a crunchy chicken burger I made the previous eve), a lentil stew, a green salad with bell-pepper and a (rather large) piece of cheese. The perfect lunch box: good protein, more than half veggies, lots of greens. Easy to heat up and enjoy.

PS. As a side note, I never dress the salad from home, but I keep olive oil & balsamic vinegar at the office.