How do you translate 'vispannetje' properly? 'Little pan of fish'?

I bought nearly 3 kg of fish filets for my birthday party. Problem was the organisation of cooking for over 30 people in our small kitchen, so we changed plans. The fish, however, was already in our freezer and we now have these fish-dish-nights to eat our stock. 

You have to be creative for doing this: my dad loves fried fish, my mum doesn't like fried fish, my sister usually hates fish and I love to eat fish in all sorts of ways as long as there is enough variation. A little too many different tastes to please all. But we try to do as good as we can, don't we? ;)

Tonight it's a Belgian classic: vispannetje. It can be literally translated as little fish pan, but that sounds a bit ridiculous. Just keep in mind it contains fish and sea fruit, is prepared in the oven and tastes lovely.

As I thought my brother-in-law Jasper was coming over for dinner, I substituted the mushrooms by leek (as he doesn't like mushrooms at all), but it turned out he only came to visit and was gone before we ate. Anyway, it'll be vispannetje without mushrooms ... Leeks taste really nice in this dish, so don't think it's only second choice!

Ingredients for 4:
- 3 or 4 small leeks  OR 250 grams of mushrooms (cut in rings or slices and fried (optionally) fried in some butter*)
- 1 carrot
- 500 grams fish filet
- 200 grams mixed sea fruit (mussels, squid, shrimps, ...)
- 3/4 cube of fish stock
- spoonful of butter
- 400 ml of milk 
- salt and pepper to taste
- 100 grams grated Emmental cheese
- handful of breadcrumbs
- dill

How to:
Grease a large ovenproof dish and scatter the leeks/mushrooms, the sea fruit and the fish in it. Scatter the chopped dill over all of this.
Now cover the dish with the cheese and the bread crumbs.
Make a light béchamel sauce with the butter, a little flour, milk, and the fish stock. Make it not too thick. It should be much more liquid than solid.
Pour the sauce over the rest of the ingredients. 

Put the dish in a 250°C oven and let it all bake for 30-45 minutes.

* You don't really need to prefry the leeks or mushrooms, but for some people the strong taste of leeks is better baked off. The only thing you need to make sure is that they are covered by the sauce while baking in the oven. They'll get tender there too.

Serve this with mashed potato or a carrot-potato mash. 

Smakelijk!

Vol-au-vent with chips, all homemade!

This is a classic dish. Very few restaurants don't serve this and I don't know anyone who doesn't like the taste.

When we were a lot smaller and I didn't cook yet, we never had this homemade. we always bought it in the shop, in these vacuum-sealed packages out of the freezer. The substance was thick and jelly-like. We liked it just because we didn't know anything else. 
It was only about 8 years ago, when I first took the challenge to prepare it all by myself, that I wondered why we never did that before ... 
Since that day, I always prepared it and I haven't heard any complaint. Haha!

This is a little more elaborate, but when you're having vacation, you don't really mind about having a little more to do in the kitchen. Besides, my sister has to be spoiled as she has to get through resits this month. 

Ingredients for 4:
- 4-6 chicken drumsticks
- 400 grams minced chicken
- 1 egg
- breadcrumbs
- pepper and salt to taste
- 2 litres of water
- carrots, leek, celery for the stock 
- bouquet garni (bay leaves/thyme/rosemary)
- spoonful of pepper corns
- 250 grams mushrooms, sliced (optional)
- butter
- flour
- 100 ml milk
- parsley for serving

Along with chips (homemade) and puff pastry cups.

How to:
Cut the carrots, leeks and celery in large chunks. Add them to the water, the bouquet garni and the pepper corns. Put on the fire. Once the water has come to a boil, put the chicken in. Let it all simmer on medium heat for at least 45 minutes or until the meat comes easily off the bones.

Take the chicken out but don't pour away the stock, you'll be needing it later on. When they've cooled down enough, you can tear off the meat (throw away the bones, but I tend to make our dog really happy with the skins of the chicken when making this!).

Mix the egg, salt, pepper and enough breadcrumbs to get an easy to handle mixture, to the minced chicken. Make small balls with this. The smaller they are, the longer it takes to roll them, but the result will be tastier looking.

Boil the meatballs in the chicken stock. Once they come to float, they're ready. Take them out of the stock and keep aside.

Now make the sauce: Melt a spoonful of butter in another pot and add the same amount of flour to it. Stir continuously as this mixture easily sticks. Now pour in the milk. keep stirring quickly, béchamel sauce binds very quickly!

Pour in a ladle of the chicken stock (only the liquid, no chunks) in the pot. Stir again. When the sauce begins to thicken, add some more stock. You should have about half to 3/4 of a litre of sauce in the end (approximately, no scientifically proven measurement!).

Now you can spice up the sauce with salt and pepper to taste.

You can add the sliced mushrooms, the meatballs and chicken meat also. Stir carefully and set aside. This is much better prepared a few hours in advance, the taste gets much better.

What with the left over stock? Don't throw it away yet! It's really good for soup. I made tomato soup with it for example:

To serve, you bake off the puff pastry cups and fill them with the sauce. Decorate with a little cut up parsley.

Make homemade chips and a salad, and you're ready to dig in!

Smakelijk!

Konijn met pruimen (rabbit with plums)

Today real Belgian classic cooking: rabbit in a sauce of red wine, onion and dried plums - or konijn met pruimen as we call it. 

It's more of a Winter's dish, but the weather permits cooking like this these days. It's actually pouring rain all day. We have these glass doors across the back of our house, facing the garden, and we can't see anything but rain splashing down. Belgian weather it is!


Ingredients for 4:
- 1 whole rabbit in pieces
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 onion
- bouquet garni (bay leave, thyme, rosemary, ... bound together)
- 75 grams bacon
- 12 (or more if you like) dried plums
- butter
- 75 cl red wine
- salt and pepper to taste
- Maizena express (or something the like)


How to:
Fry the rabbit pieces with the bacon in a pan. Season it with pepper and salt. Take them out of the pan and fry the onion and the garlic in the same pan. Put the fried ingredients together in a large enough pan or pot and pour in the wine and add the bouquet garni. Put on the lid and let it all simmer on low heat for about 45 minutes.
Then add the dried plums. Let them simmer along for another half hour.
Take the pot off the fire and let it stand for a few hours (the longer the better). The taste will be better.
Thicken the sauce of the rabbit with some Maizena.


It's wonderful with pears cooked in red wine scented with vanilla sugar and a cinnamon stick. 


Ingredients for 4:
- 4 pears, cut in half lengthwise
- 4 tablespoons vanilla sugar
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 50 cl red wine
- about the same amount of water


How to:
Bring the pears and the rest of the ingredients to a boil and let them simmer until the pears are tender. They'll have taken up all the flavour and colour from the wine, cinnamon and sugar.

I served it all with fresh chips. It's so much better to make your own chips. The chips you buy in the supermarket - frozen and prefried - doesn't ever get the right taste. In Belgium we are known for our chips, and this is the right way to prepare the chips:


Ingredients for 4:
- 1 kg potatoes, peeled
- oil for frying
- salt for serving
- sauce (mayonaise, ketchup, ...)


How to:
Cut the potatoes in sticks of about half a centimeter on each side. Rinse them under some cold water.
Heat the frying pan at 140°C. Put the potato sticks in the hot oil and let them simmer for some minutes. You have to stand close to check whether they're ready (when they are tender inside (check with a fork or knife!) but still whitish in colour). Take them out and let them cool.
Heat the oil now at 175°C. Put the chips you've fried already once in the oil for the second time. This time they're supposed to get their right colour. Once they're golden brown, take them out and serve them with salt and a sauce you like.


If you do your chips this way, you'll never want the frozen kind again!


Smakelijk!

Petit beurre cake

Petit beurre cake is the most nostalgic recipe I can imagine. My grandmother has been making it for ages. She makes them as a big cake, from which you can cut pieces off. But I made smaller, individual cakes. With the different coloured plates they look funny too!


The reason I made them is because of my dad. He complained that I made too many strange dishes. I had to return back to traditional meals for him. This week I did so, and as this is the dessert his mother makes for family parties, I guess he'll like it.

It's the easiest way to make a dessert. 

Ingredients for 5 4-layer cakes:

- 20 petit beurre biscuits

- 250 grams butter

- 4 tablespoons powdered sugar

- coffee (or milk for children and people that don't like the coffee taste) for dipping

- a pinch of cocoa powder

- chocolate sprinkles

How to:

Stir the butter until soft. Now add the sugar and the cocoa powder, mix it with the butter until it's completely incorporated. 

Dip a biscuit in the coffee or milk. Put it on the plate. Spread some of the butter mixture on top. Repeat this until you have used up all biscuits and all of the butter mixture.

Put the chocolate sprinkles to decorate. 

Store in the fridge until you serve.

Smakelijk!

P.S.: Don't start counting the calories here! It's a very rich and heavy snack, but you can't be strict for yourself all the time :)

Home made vlaai

Ever heard about 'vlaai'? It's a very special kind of Flemish dessert. Many different recipes occur, and some of them are protected - including having secret ingredients and recipes - but my mum has her own.

It's always made out of milk, speculoos (a light brown biscuit made with different spices) and peperkoek (a kind of breakfast cake with yet again many spices) and syrup. My mum also adds raisins for taste and from time to time we also add coconut macaroons (a delicious biscuit made almost entirely out of grated coconut).

peperkoek

speculoos

candy syrup

As you see, this really is a regional dessert, with all these native ingredients.


The recipe here is my mum's. In Belgium all bakeries and town have their own, so I'm not claiming the truth about vlaai.  But it's worth trying, simply because it's so good and incredibly simple to make. You really can't do wrong in any way!

Ingredients:
- 1 l milk
- 1/2 pack of peperkoek (about 250 grams)
- 100 grams speculoos
- a few spoonfuls of candy syrup
- raisins as many as you want (if you like)
- coconut macaroons to taste


How to:
Put all the ingredients (except the raisins) in a large pot and crush them with a potato masher until you get a kind of brownish liquid. You really have to make sure there are a few lumps left, it sounds not very good but it's essential for the texture. 
Butter an oven tray or an aluminium baking tray. Pour the mixture in and scatter some raisins on top. Push these down with a fork so that they won't burn in the oven. 
Put the tray in a 180°C oven for 45 minutes. Take the vlaai out of the oven and let it cool. 


When first taken out of the oven, it tends to be still a bit wet. But it sets after cooling down.
It's also best eaten a while after baking. The taste gets more intense. 
We usually make it the night before or early in the morning. During hot days like these I put it in the fridge for extra coolness and it sets more easily too.


For serving, you just cut out a square piece. No fuss at all :)


Smakelijk!

Typical Belgian meatballs: frikadellen met kriekjes

I'm born and raised in Belgium. Belgian cuisine is really nice and mostly quite easy to prepare.
One of the things I really like is the following dish: meatballs with cherries. It's served with bread at my house. 
It may seem a strange combination, having warm (!) cherries as side dish with it, but in my country it's a traditional meal, and one of my personal favourites.

Ingredients for 4 people:
- 800 grams minced pork or a combination of minced pork and beef
- 2 eggs
- a dash of breadcrumbs
- pepper and salt
- nutmeg
- butter
- large bowl of conserved (sour) cherries
- 3 tablespoons of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
- bread (we prefer French bread)


Preparing the meatballs is the hardest part of the job - so I can tell you that the difficulty level isn't that high. 
Combine the minced meat, the eggs, breadcrumbs (as much needed to get a firm mixture). Add salt, pepper and a little nutmeg to taste. Form meatballs. The size really doesn't matter. Some people make them small, others form one large meatloaf. We make them mostly the size of a mandarin. Melt some butter in a pan and bake the meatballs slowly on low heat. 

To prepare the cherries, you pour the preserved cherries with all their juice and the sugar in a pot and put them on the stove to cook. Once they cook, you add some cornstarch (dissolved in a little water) to thicken the juice. Taste before you put them off the stove. Maybe it requires a little more sugar.

You're ready to serve! The thing with this kind of meal is that it's really a sociable meal. The pan with meatballs and the warm cherries are put in the middle of the table for everyone to grab as they like. The bread is cut into large chunks and dipped into the cherry sauce. Nothing fancy about it, but really tasty.


Smakelijk!