On travelling
I’ve been on holiday. To the same place we’ve been on holiday last year. And the year before. And the year before-before! (Are you already raising your eyebrow?). This is an article for all the people who dislike travelling.
Month: August 2016
OOO
The week-end tartine strikes back: raw meat at its best
If you’ve been here before, you are probably familiar with my week-end tartine ritual. And my love of raw meet. Pictured above (in very bad lighting, but have you looked outside? We live in Belgium!!!) is raw meat at its best. I only swear by meat bought from my lovely butcher, M. Gaston, all his products are amazing and fresh and delicious…OK, OK, I stop here. This time, my man went for filet américain nature and I opted for rosbif. We collected these goodies and fantasized about the tartines-to-come on our way home. Back in the kitchen, my man started opening a bottle of wine (yes, it’s OK to drink wine before lunch…we’re Eastern Europeans, after all!) and I was getting busy on the assembly line. Read More
Warm soup for cold days: Irish pepper soup
The weather has been shit for the past week, we actually got 0’C two nights ago…so I figured it might be time for a nice, warm soup. Dear rest of the world, please ignore this, you probably don’t need warm soup. Dear Belgian friends, please read on and rejoice! 5 ingredients and less than 30 minutes: this soup is the best!
Lahmacun, Iraqi flatbread: the best damn thing we’ve eaten lately
Yes, I can say hand-on-heart this Iraqi flatbread with lamb & veggies was one of the best things I’ve eaten all year! I’ve always loved Middle Eastern food and I do cook it often at home, but this really left both me and my man speechless.
The whole experience was triggered by the fact that some of my colleagues will be travelling for business to Iraq. Everyone started asking the usual questions: is it safe to go to Iraq, how are things over there and so on. The first question on my mind was: what do people eat in Iraq? I have to confess, I didn’t know much about it in particular. My Food Atlas of the World doesn’t say much on Iraq, but Wikipedia came to the rescue. I learned that, along with all the other great things, Mesopotamia was also a land of culinary delights and advancements. They gave us one of the world’s first cookbooks, written on a clay tablet in cuneiform writing: it describes the dishes served during summer festivals. Now, this needed further (practical) investigation!
The kitchen door: an analysis
t appears that the world is split up in two types of people: the ones that love their kitchen door and the ones that prefer an open kitchen. The kitchen is the beating heart of the house; I think there’s an ontological connection there: we keep our food in the kitchen and the food is what keeps us alive. On top of this, there are a ton of cultural, social, or even geographical or political elements that come into play…all of this changing with the times. Looking back, the kitchen is the genesis of everything. Starting with the Middle Ages, the majority of the population had only one room which served as a kitchen (with an open fire), bedroom (for the entire family) and living area (for people and animals alike). The wealthy 1% of the population had the luxury of distancing themselves from the kitchen which meant hard manual labor, horrid heat, pungent smells, garbage, unwanted leftovers and so on. All the things that needed to be kept out of sight and out of mind. Things change, but the kitchen (and the door controversy) are here to stay. So where does this leave us? Read More
Another (rainy) day, another (warming) lunch
What’s going on with the weather in Belgium? Is it November or what?
On a cold, rainy, windy, shitty day like today, I can only dream of an instant warm-up lunch: our famous chili con carne. Hot, spicy, flavorful, delicious, incredible; it’s the ONE dish you wanna eat on a day like this. With wild rice and a small salad…because you’ve gotta eat your greens, hehe! I’ll come back with the recipe, you definitely need to try it.
Do you salmon much? No, I have no idea how to cook it!
I have to confess: I was never big on fish and for a long time, the only fish I ate was canned tuna. Then I moved on to sushi (somehow raw fish was better) and smoked salmon. I also started eating fresh salmon, but curled-up in cannelloni with a ton of butter, sour-cream and parmesan. All that is history now and I’m slowly embracing fish. Yet, never having liked fish, I realize I don’t really know how to cook it. Oh, the shame! What I did? Well, I’m never afraid of food or of screwing up a recipe, so I just threw myself in there. Anything for the perfect weeknight dinner, roll up your sleeves, Buttercup!
the pickled spruit. 