Beef stock, I ought to fire you!

Actually, it's Bienstock, I ought to fire you, a line by Sweet Sue in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot. Nothing more than a silly association to hide that this is a month in which cooking is desperately vying for my prime concern.

Bouillon soup: the beef broth with vegetables all-in-one and eaten mostly on weekends, with different vegetables, and a lean piece of beef cooked along, nick-named bouilli (cooked): beef from a shine bone, but used boneless. The type of meat that even after having cooked so long looks somewhat grey, but is amazingly tasty and tender. Great to eat cold with mustard. Here's one from memory (a rarity in these pages). A lot of hassle to prepare, having to cut so many veggies, but the first spoonful of Taste makes this worth your while.

Vegetable Beef Soup ("Bouillon")

Serves many

1 piece of soup meat (beef), "bouilli"
1 entire green celery
2-3 leek
2 small turnips
1 kohlrabi
1 onion
1-2 garlic cloves
(optional and no item in my youth: 1 sweet potato)
2 bay leaves
a few cloves
1 tablespoon thyme
pepper, salt

Brown the pieces of beef briefly in the oven or fry them briefly in a pan, or skip this step.

Put the beef in a big cooking pot filled with water, and let this come to a boil. Remove white foam.

Cut all the veggies in desires shapes, and add them with the herbs to the soup.

Let this soup simmer for 1,5-2 hrs.

Remove the bay leaf.

Now here was my trick the next day: I had this soup with slices of avocado and a dollop of home-made tomato sauce, and a bit of celery leaf on top. Yummy!

Pheasant Extravaganza

Recently I wrote about Dutch pheasants which in snowy fields remain off limits for hunters. Their Belgian counterparts seem reckless any day.

Especially in my cousin's garden in mysterious Flemish river territory, which is an eden for birds. There is a natural swimming pool and food dangling from young trees.

Behind wall-size windows I was having coffee with two perfect bird spotters: my cousin's oldest boys. It was hard not to get tucked into the spectacle of birds landing and taking off. A few pheasants were seen in a distant meadow.

And then I nearly fell of my chair. There was "Hippoliet". "A big pheasant", my cousin's oldest son F. explained, and a regular visitor. Suddenly a bird of turkey-size proportion was seen near the water. A bird with a limp, but unmistakenly of regal demeanor.

With his parents' camera, F. deftly shot pictures. After I'd left, the super size specimen of fowl had made its way over to the terrace, so that the spectators suddenly had front row seats.

Thanks, F.!

This picture is the perfect interludium, as this blog is briefly moving its tents east of eden.

A Festive Meal

Dessert's no sweat for my sister, especially since four little helpers have been baking and helping themselves to servings during the preparations for our festive meal on Christmas Eve (for a photo essay, see next post). This is what we had:

Champagne;
My Broccoli-Pakshoi soup;
My brother-in-law's cold fish terrine with mushroom, in a chives & joghurt dressing;
Stuffed turkey with small potatoes, green beans and snow peas, Belgian endives, pears with cranberry compote (see previous post);
My sister's opulent home-made dessert plate with among others vanilla cream filled puff pastries.

Yuletide Wishes with a Stewed Pear Variant

Merry Christmas! Especially for readership from Down Under here's a variant I cooked yesterday during our Christmas Eve pot luck family meal: stewed pear, presented in halves, filled with cranberry compote. It was received well by some young and picky eaters.

Try to use pears that are inedible, best used for stewing. I used some that my mother had picked from her own tree at peril of falling into a ditch. I had them in my cellar since mid October and they were still okay. It was mother's proud contribution to the meal.

Pears, deseeded, peeled, cut in halves
a little water
a little sugar
a little butter
spices from my sister's cupboard: cinnamon powder, 1/2 vanilla bean pod (I had forgotten to bring star anise, see my previous post on stewed pear)

Put the pear halves flat side down in a cooking pot, add the water, and bring to a high boil. When boiling, add the sugar, the spices, and reduce the heat a little bit, let this cook for some time until the pears are soft. When the pears are taking some pinkish color and the water is somewhat reduced, add the butter so as to caramelize the juices very slightly. This can be done beforehand and right before the meal everything can be reheated. Fill with cranberry compote (prepared by following package instructions - also with sugar and water). Serve one filled half on each plate.

I was two hours late for meal preparations, which nearly had my brother-in-law into some serious Christmas stress, as he later admitted. But we sailed through the preparations with even keel and were done in no time.
See next post for details on our Christmas menu.

Surprize 'em with Spice: Soft Speculoos

Tomato, tomaahto, Belgians say speculoos, the Dutch say speculaas. It's not my wont, but I've been trying baking recipes out of the newest issue of Velt's member magazine Seizoenen (Seasons). Here is a recipe for soft speculoos. Very common here is speculoos ice cream.

Speculoos is a cookie from the Low Countries, dark brown, because rye flour is used, with Santa Claus spices: nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, etc, a true relic from days of yore when Portuguese and Spanish merchants opened up the spice routes. Unlike the Dutch, Belgians don't use aniseed.

Two caveats: one, this one isn't baked with rye flour. Two, extremely rich, very high in butter. I lessend the sugar content and served some pieces to the birds, because we were suddenly all wrapped in snow.

Soft Speculoos

By Emilie Heller in "Seizoenen"

Serves 4

1 kg flour
600 g dark cane sugar (I used 450 g, still too much for my taste)
4 eggs
500 g butter (this is a bomb!)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon speculoos spices (=a ready mix; I used cardamom powder)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat the oven at 170 °C.

Melt the butter, combine all ingredients.

Smear out the dough mixture in a deep baking tin.

Bake for 30' at 170 °C.

Cut the speculoos at once in smaller pieces after it comes out of the oven. Let cool, fast, in a cool place, and save in a tightcly closed tin.

Note: smearing it 2,5 cm or 1 inch thick isn't perhaps so appealing to eat - use two baking tins, and smear less thickly, and when out of the oven, try to roll the layers like little cinnamon pipes. I'd try that next time.

Endive Crust: A Great Filling

The picture of a savory crust with Belgian endive and apple or pear paste in the free magazine Puur (Pure) of this month prompted me to repeat the gesture. I prepared this for lunch the night before. While I wasn't so keen on my own rather hard crust this time, nor on this fairly sober move with steamed endive, I was very pleased with my own filling: tart and sweet at the same time. Plainly steamed endive clamors for tart sweetness. Here's the recipe with my changes.
Endive Crust

puff pastry, ready-made (hey, we don't usually do ready made!)
5 Belgian endives, halved, and steamed
4 tablespoons apple or pear paste (pictured)
100 g blue cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon rosemary, chopped finely
pepper

My -saltless- crust:
250 g flour
100 g butter
10 cl water
1 teaspoon of paprika powder from Hungary
Form a ball, let it rest for an hour, then roll it out, prebake for 15' at 200 °C.

Preheat the oven at 180°C. Roll out the puff pastry in the baking tin, and poke holes with a fork.

Steam the endives, drain well before putting them on the crust.

Divide the crumbled blue cheese and apple or pear paste over the tart. Season with pepper and chopped rosemary.

Bake for about 30 minutes at 180 °C. Sprinkle with a few walnuts or serve with a salad with nuts.

Here's my own filling:
200 g goat cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon of pickled whole lemon from a fancy food store (which does give some salt to this dish), chopped
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 big tablespoon of apple-pear paste
Combine everything, divide over the crust.

Great filling! Pickled lemon and apple-pear paste are a gesture I'd repeat.

Some Baking Laws Defied: Bread Pudding from East-Flanders

The Laws of Baking stand indomitable and tall: defying them sounds a little like questioning Newton on the apple. The quantities are precise; woe befalls the poor soul who deviates from them.

I decided to do precisely that: defy the laws on bread pudding, and I have to admit: when the pudding came out of the oven, it had the texture of crème anglaise. I was almost cursing my war on sugar, but behold: by morning, in the pale morning light, this is what had emerged.

Bread Pudding from East-Flanders

Based on a recipe on p. 158 of De keuken van ons moeder - The kitchen of our mom (Homarus)
Note: the recipe gives quantities for 5(!) bread puddings at once - some moms... Here are quantities for 1 pie.

1/5 pack of zwieback (beschuit)
5 slices of peperkoek (a specialty from the low countries baked with rye flour and spices)
50 g macarons (type of cookie) (I used 2 marzipan filled whole-wheat cookies and some speculoos)
4-5 Betterfood cookies (the type you give to toddlers in the afternoon)
800 cl milk (*)
40 g corn starch
60 g flour
120 g brown sugar (*)
1 egg
1 knifetip cinnamon
1 knifetip banda foelie
candied sugar syrup (*)

My changes (*):
Instead of milk, 800 cl oat milk "chai": oat milk flavored with cinnamon-clove-ginger-cardamom;
Instead of 120 g brown sugar, 4 tablespoons of apple syrup;
Instead of candied sugar syrup, apple-pear breakfast paste (sirop de Liège).

Preheat the oven at 200 °C.

Bring all bakery goods in milk to a boil over high heat. Stir well, the cookies will dissolve.

Add the rest of the ingredients: egg, sugar, spices, corn starch flour. Don't stop stirring, and mix really well. Cook for a few minutes longer. Remove from the heat, let cool au bain marie in cold water.

Before putting the mixture in the cake tin and in the oven, add the candied sugar syrup to the mixture.

Bake for 60 minutes at 200 °C.

Note: bread pudding is mostly made with stale bakery pastries or stale raisin bread.

Retro 2: Rabbit with prunes and dark ale (Orval)

They say crises make people hark back to The Old & The Traditional. Hence perhaps my fascination with the Homarus cookbook, The kitchen of our mom - De keuken van ons moeder. My first rabbit dish from this book is a true retro move.

"Do cut it in pieces," I begged the Fowl & Game specialty store, when the lady behind the counter pulled a long, skinned and blood-stained rabbit from the fridge. I was too squeamish to take home the head.

Notes:
I used an abbey dark beer, Orval. An amateur of this beer told me that a less pronounced amber-colored or dark ale may better suit the strong-tasting rabbit.
And I did not follow the recipe of this mom, Nicole van Geel, faithfully: no vinegar, no sugar at all. So my sauce did not have the brown consistency of molasses. I give the recipe as is, with changes.
Rabbit with prunes and dark ale (Orval)

1 rabbit
2 big onions, sliced
2 dl vinegar
butter (2 tablespoons)
5 bay leaves
2 tablespoons mustard
2 zwieback (I used 1 slice of bread)
a swig of vinegar (I used lemon juice)
salt and pepper
250 g dried prunes
dark instant binding agent (I used flour)
200 g dark candied sugar (*)
My addition: 25 cl dark ale (Orval)
My addition: some slices of bacon, some mixed mushrooms

Cut the rabbit in pieces, put the pieces in a bowl, coat with the slices of onion, drench with the 2 dl of vinegar and let marinate overnight in the fridge (I skipped this part).

Remove the rabbit from the fridge, drain, pat dry. Melt some butter and brown the rabbit pieces on all sides.

My addition: after frying the rabbit, I briefly fried the bacon and the mushrooms, then transferred that with the rabbit to the cooking pot.

Add water (and ale) to the rabbit until nearly submersed. Add the bay leaf, the zwieback or bread coated with mustard. Bring to a soft boil, then cover, and let simmer for 1-1,5 hours.

Add the swig of vinegar when the meat is almost done, and season.

Bring some water to a boil. Turn off the heat, add the dried prunes to the water to soften them (I skipped that - I added the prunes towards the end of rabbit cooking time).

Remove the rabbit from the cooking pot. Bind the sauce with the binding agent and check the seasoning. Add the sugar, and mix well. Pour sauce and prunes over the rabbit, and serve.

(*) I did not add sugar, but reduced the existing sauce somewhat.

D'oefs et de lait fait on flans et matons

October is month of the yearly Fair. Itinerant salespeople from all over flock Main Street and its surroundings with RVs to sell their ware, from cows to potato peelers. True, the tradition is in peril. Live animals have become scarce, and so has the visiting public. Still, I buy Belgian blue grapes and have typical Fair food for lunch: a bun with fried white or black sausage, a piece of vlaai (flan) or a mattentaart (maton): Belgian baked goodies worthy of a Bread Baking Babes challenge.
The phrase "Of eggs and milk on makes flans and curds" - D'oefs et de lait fait on flans et matons (Van eyeren ende van melken maect men vladen ende wronghele in Middle Dutch) was in the Bouc van den ambachten - Livre des mestiers, or Book of trades, a Dutch-French word list dating from 1370 and produced in Bruges, a Berlitz guide for traders and salespeople in the then extremely prosperous town.
Mattentaartjes (little matons) filled with milk curd would be entirly out of my reach, were it not that 3 weeks ago I laid hands on the Homarus cookbook devoted to Belgian culinary history: De keuken van ons moeder - The kitchen of our mom (ISBN 978-90-77695-66-1). Although I eschew baking, this volume on my counter with recipes for flans and matons by Moms Who Know the Drill has been quietly making its presence felt. To be continued.