Stewed pears in mulled wine

Day 2 and step 2 to a festive dinner: chicken stock, pears stewed in mulled wine, caramelized onions (Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food). The pears are refined. I had this at Oleandri's last Sunday. She read aloud the recipe over the phone so I could make them myself. We each worked with a different kind of pear, but they were from our mothers' gardens.

8 small pears or 4 big ones (a variety for stewing)
300 ml red wine (not more)
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
1 teaspoon sirop de Liège (pear/apple syrup - stroop)
2 tablespoons balsamico vinegar
juice of 2 limes (or 1 lemon)
100 g sugar (ever strict, I halved that: only 50 g !)
peel of 1 orange

Combine all ingredients except the pears. Bring them to a boil over low heat.

Meanwhile, peel the pears, remove cores, and quarter them.

Add pears to the liquid, and stew for about an hour until done. Let them cool in the liquid.

Even better the next day with some vanilla ice cream.

Fish and fourspice

For the first time after two weeks, a period with disciplined workers in half of my home replacing windows and producing dust, I could regain a moment in my kitchen that didn't look too much like an encampment. And on summer solstice day, of which the eve was marred by heavily overcast skies, my newspaper delivered the most incredible: that a summer high was nigh.

Having come home with some fish at 7 pm I suddenly felt elation. A pressing urge was telling me that vitamin D was waiting on my porch and that I was to take full advantage. Cooking fast was key. So I threw together fish, four spices, and young thin carrots, and bingo.

Fish and fourspice

2 fillets of white fish
liberal sprinklings of: turmeric, ginger powder, curry, and chipotle chilli
olive oil, salt and pepper
young carrots
rocket/rucola salad for decoration

Preheat oven at 180°C

Place fish in oven pan, and liberally coat them with four spices. Turn the fillets around, and make sure they're evenly coated. Season with salt (careful) and pepper, and sprinkle with olive oil.

Steam carrots a little (which I didn't), then place them around the fillets. Take some foil, and cover the oven pan. Place in oven for 10-12 minutes (turn heat a bit lower) or until done. The fish is steaming in juices.

Wash some rocket salad, cut it, and decorate the fish. Serve at once.

Note: be careful with salt. In fact, next time I won't use any.
The ginger powder does wonders here for taste and is good against fishy smells.

Dash to the terrace and soak up that Summer Solstice Day Sun until it ends!

Quick curry

The pic is not that great, but while cleaning house I stumbled upon a recipe for a quick curry, I think by Livia Claessen and Henri Kleinblatt, from the magazine Feeling. Food on Saturday cooked extra muros.

olive oil
2 red onions, thinkly sliced
2 crushed cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon of chopped ginger
400 g chicken breast or freshly peeled shrimp
400 g canned tomatoes
6 tablespoons joghurt
1 tablespoon garam masala
cilantro (or my addition, parsley)

Stew onions until browned.

Next add garlic, ginger and chicken. Stew for 6 minutes. Note: for chicken breast I deemed this a bit short-I precooked the chicken somewhat in plain water.

Next, add the tomatoes and garam masala and stew for 10-15 minutes.

Before serving, add joghurt and cilantro or parsley.

Note: I steamed potatoes until tender and added them to stew with the chicken.

A few quick sandwiches

For lunch time in between two meetings with contractors, I had foreseen a few sandwiches for my architect who drinks English tea. I had the sandwiches ready in the fridge in plastic wrap. But he forgot to jot it down in his agenda, and didn't show. So I ate some myself, and have some to spare. And then led the meetings myself.

A few quick sandwiches

Buy Belgian soft sandwiches ("sandwich"/"sandwichen")
Butter them

Sandwich #1: Cooked ham-Mustard-Tomato

Add ham, spread with mustard, add a peeled and deseeded tomato piece.

Sandwich #2: Fenugreek and cheese (cheese with fenugreek seeds)

Either cheese with fenugreek seeds in them or cheese with ground fenugreek seeds on top.

Sandwich #3: Paprika cottage cheese and chervil (see instruction)

Mix 1 tablespoon of linseed oil with 2 tablespoons of cottage cheese and 1 teaspoon of paprika powder (or any spice of choice). Taste, salt a little if needed. Whisk well. Spread on sandwich. Finish with chopped chervil.

Paprika Chicken

Paprika is our word here for Bell Pepper, but also for the bright red and sweet goodie that fellow blogger Oleandri brought from Hungary last year. Time to put the spice to good use. For stewed chicken no one has been a better guide to me than Claudia Roden, whose chicken recipes are easy. From the book on Jewish cooking.

Paprika Chicken (Claudia Roden + from memory)

1 chicken, in four (or a variety of chicken pieces)
olive oil
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 big red bell pepper, deseeded, chopped roughly
1 big yelllow bell pepper, deseeded, chopped roughly
1 teaspoon of sweet paprika powder

Fry the chicken pieces in a pan in some olive oil until golden on all sides. Remove the pieces and set aside.

In the same pan, fry the onion and the garlic, and when soft, add the bell pepper. Stew for a bit, then add the chicken and the paprika powder and stew over moderate heat until the meat falls of the bones, and is done, about 45-60 minutes.

The bright color of this heartwarming dish and the sauce combine well with boiled potatoes.

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.

Enamor them with lunch

Preparing copious lunch salads is always a treat, and double portions come in handy when visitors surprize you unannounced. Although this Bean Salad from my favorite book Super Salads (Dutch ISBN 90-5920 164 7) by Michael van Straten can also serve as a small appetizer before a meal, as main dish it managed to captivate my guest on a sunny high noon in October.

Bean Salad with Eggs and Curry

4 hard boiled eggs
1 can (300 g) of green flageolet beans
1 can (300g) of white beans
2 tablespoons curry powder
6 tablespoons of mayonaise
1 red onion
2 tablespoons of chopped cilantro

Prepare and combine all ingredients.

Note: I used parsley instead of cilantro, and only white beans. Generous amounts of curry powder give this dish pizzazz. I used Budwig mayo instead of real one (with linseed oil and cottage cheese). The salad is said to stimulate blood circulation.