Greek lamb and aubergine stew

Following on from the 'Indian' meal the other week, here is another in the delicious-but-not-really-authentic category: Greek lamb and aubergine stew.

Greek lamb and aubergine stew

Recipe adapted from Debbie Major. Serves 4.

- 600g lamb. (Spend at least ten minutes dithering in the supermarket, having no idea what to choose from all these foreign bits. Debbie said leg, but that does not appear to be a cut the Belgians go in for. End up choosing whatever doesn't have enormous bones in (so that the weight is right) but not the hideously expensive lamb fillet.)
- 1 large onion or 4ish shallots
- 4 garlic cloves (well, the equivalent in squishy-crushed-garlic-in-a-tube, which I love)
- 1 medium aubergine (Debbie says 200g but I think mine was about 300g)
- quite a bit of olive oil
- SPICE: Debbie used between 1/2 and 1 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and paprika. I actually used a mixture of the 'Athenian' and 'Hungarian' mixes you can see at the top of the post (Christmas presents from my awesome friend H) which include all these and more, and it was most effective, but that is not very helpful to anyone except me and her.
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- 400g tinned tomatoes
- 200ml red wine
- HERBS: 3 bay leaves and a generous sprinkle of thyme

Plus orzo pasta, green beans or somesuch, and salad. And the rest of that bottle of red you opened.

1. Cut the lamb into chunks, cut the aubergine into chunks, roughly chop the onion/shallots.
2a. Brown the lamb, either in a casserole dish (which you can make the whole dish in) or in a frying pan (with a large pot with a lid on hand for the final stew cooking stage). Depending on the fat content, you may or may not need to add oil. When it is all cooked, remove it to a plate and cook the onions/shallots on a low heat.
2b. At the same time, fry off the aubergine in another pan. This is not in Debbie's recipe, but I was worried that the aubergine would be too mushy cooked straight into the tomato sauce, and I liked the fact that the fried pieces were soft but with some integrity.
3. When the onions are soft and golden, return the lamb to the pan and add all the spices, stirring to coat the meat and cook them off a bit.
4. Add the red wine vinegar to the pan, and try not to cough as it reduces. When this has mostly evaporated, add the tomato paste, tomatoes, wine (swill out the tomato can with the wine to get all the juice out), and herbs. NB if you are not using a casserole, this is the time to transfer from the frying pan to the saucepan/pot. Cover, and simmer on a low heat for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
5. Add in the aubergines, and cook, uncovered, for another half an hour.

This is also one of those stews which is good reheated the next day. I have made this twice in the last fortnight, once for the Dutchman and I, and once for friends, who came bearing two bottles of wine and a delicious raspberry tart, so they can definitely come over again! It is very good with orzo, the Greek rice-shaped-pasta, as the little pieces get all mixed up in the thick sauce. Plus green veg, such as green beans tossed in olive oil and lemon juice, griddled courgettes, and bog standard frozen peas.

An Indian-inspired Feast

I've not been a very nice person to live with recently. Anxious. Weepy. Poor Dutchman! So last night I decided to make a bit of an effort, to cheer us both up, to bring a bit of sunshine to the table.

The source of this sunshine was India, via Nigel Slater, via Luisa. The main event was Nigel Slater's wonderful 'chicken with cream and spices', made with a blend of spices-I-had-to-hand including commercial curry powder (gasp!), slowly caramelised onion, bright tomato, and a final stir of cream. Like the lovely, lovely, Luisa in Berlin, we don't get good Indian food here in Brussels. My dinner last night was in no way authentic, in no way a proper curry (cf Slater's own title), but it was just enough, with the trimmings, to feed a need.

To accompany the chicken, I made saffron rice (curiously, saffron is one of the few things which is cheaper here than in the UK), little naans, mango chutney (both bought from the DIRTY FOREIGNERS section of the supermarket), and saag aloo.

Oh saag aloo, I do so love you. Luisa has a recipe for this, and whilst I am sure that method is both authentic and delicious, I ended up doing it a little differently. Kind of befitting the general colonial bastardisation/appropriation of the beauty of true Indian cuisine.

Saag aloo the Belgian way*

For 2, as a side.

- 2 potatoes
- A pinch of saffron
- 1/2 tsp each tumeric and cumin
- 1 shallot
- As much garlic as you desire (I put in a massive squirt from my garlic paste tube, probably about 3 cloves, which was delicious but quite garlicky)
- SPINASH. About 150g.

1. Peel and chop the potatoes into small cubes. Add the potatoes and tumeric, cumin, and saffron to the cold water and boil until tender.
2. Finely chop the onion and gently fry in oil, along with the garlic.
3. Add the drained potatoes to the onion mix and leave aside. Be careful as soft boiled potatoes will fall apart if handled too roughly.
4. Heat a very tiny very small amount of water in a saucepan and start adding spinach, a handful at a time, bashing it about with a fork until it wilts. WILT AT MY POWER.
5. Prepare for serving. I sort of gently layered and folded alternate spoons of spinach and potato mix into a bowl.
6. Eat, and feel well smug cos of all the iron and vitamins and health innit.

* I dread to think of what an actual Belgian interpretation of saag aloo would be. Endive instead of spinach? Speculos to spice? Cooked in beer?

Meat free Friday doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

Here is a moan: grocery shopping in Brussels requires the GDP of a small African nation. In England, there are always supermarket own brands and deals and cheap options. Here, there are no cheap options. You can't look at the shelves and think 'ooh I'll treat myself to the organic Duchy Originals baked beans rather than the Tesco Value this week', it's all Duchy Originals all the time. (Do Duchy Originals do baked beans?) (It's not actually Duchy Originals. Charles hasn't invaded Belgium. But you get my drift.) So we've decided to do at least one dinner a week without meat. Meat free Mondays has been a thing for quite a while now, I believe, but I'm a free spirit and won't be tied down by alliterative demands.

Butternut Squash is something I love. I love all kinds of squash, pumpkin, etc., and the markets have just started bringing in the weird looking orange things in all shapes and sizes. I shall investigate further, but for now, the sweetness of the butternut works well here.

Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagna

Recipe adapted from Recipe Rifle, who got it from Pippa Middleton. (My dinner is less than six degrees away from royalty.) Extreme exegesising all my own. Serves 4.

- a medium onion or three shallots so strong they make you WEEP

- a smallish butternut squash, about 750g

- fresh sage leaves

- 2 garlic cloves, depending on your allium love, or some squirts from a garlic paste tube (the greatest invention of ALL TIME)

- 200g fresh spinach

- 8 fresh or dried lasagna sheets

- nutmeg, salt, pepper, olive oil

- white sauce (made with about 60g each butter and flour to 400ml milk)

- as much parmesan as you like (see 3a of method for REASONS)

You will also need some sort of tin to cook this in. Obviously. I used a 7 inch springform cake tin, because it was the only thing I had that was about the right size. Cake tins are round and lasagna sheets are rectangular. Tessellation, bitches!

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

2. Peel the butternut squash, discarding the seeds, and cut it into very thin rounds (Esther says to cut to about the thickness of a pound coin, which is much thinner than you think). Cut the onion into similar rounds.* Roast the butternut and onion, drizzled with a fair amount of oil and torn sage, for about twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. If using garlic paste, stir this in when it's cooked, or it will burn.

* The Dutchman cut my shallots for me, because this batch cause much weeping, and he did a rough dice, which worked fine.

3. Whilst this is cooking, make the white sauce. People seem to be scared of lumps in making white sauce. I've never had a problem with my mum's method. I'll not post anything here as people usually have their own ways of making white sauce, but if you follow the link to Recipe Rifle above, Esther has a fool-proof method that you might like to try if you're unsure.

3a. I did not add much cheese to my sauce. I also made it with soy spread and almond milk instead of butter and proper milk. This is because I have recently been diagnosed as intolerant to dairy. I think this is a bit of a wanky thing to say, it always makes me think of Americans saying 'could I get a soy latte?' and as it isn't an allergy I try to 'make good choices' but don't eliminate it from my diet completely. I know that proper allergies are a terrible thing - coeliacs, for example, can really suffer if you're not careful and it's great that there are so many alternatives on the market, but I find that I manage my body's intolerance best by just restricting dairy. Using a strong parmesan means that you don't need to add that much anyway. I also didn't put extra cheese between the layers, as the original says, but I did sprinkle some on top. I also added the nutmeg to the cheese sauce rather than to the spinach, basically because I forgot. End of ramble.

4. Wilt the spinach. I don't add any water in the pan, just put it on a low heat and hit it with a spoon for a bit. Then for this recipe it is important to get as much water out of it as possible, so stick it on a bit of kitchen towel and smoosh it about a bit.

5. Layer up the lasagne. Esther blanched her dried pasta sheets first, many of her commenters said they didn't need to. I used fresh because they were cheaper than dried (wtf). Lasagna on the bottom, then a third of the butternut and onion mix, then a third of the spinach, then a bit of sauce, repeat until done. I ended with pasta, which means needing a bit more sauce on top to ensure it doesn't dry out. 'A bit more' turned into 'a fuckload' but the Dutchman did not complain. Sprinkle with cheese.

6. Bake for half an hour, or until the top is nicely browned. I served this with a green salad (with honey mustard dressing) and cucumbers (sprinkled with vinegar) to balance the sweetness. We ate half last night and then half this lunchtime, reheated, which seemed to work just fine, if making the pasta a little crispy.

EAT! Brussels Restaurant Festival

And what is a restaurant festival when it's at home, then? Well, EAT! Brussels was a chance for restaurants in Brussels to show off and attract new customers, all collected together in the Bois de la Cambre, a forest park area (which includes a man-made lake complete with its own fancy restaurant, Chalet Robinson [warning: website plays music and may inspire feelings of extreme envy]).

From top to bottom: Tibetan fried tasting plate; Indonesian chicken curry; Hungarian goulash.

The Dutchman and I felt that some were more successful than others. Our first stop was the Le Tibet booth, who gave us a mixed plate of fried things with the hottest, spiciest, most lip-tingling sauce I have ever encountered. The one at the top of the photo - essentially a Tibetan Cornish Pasty - was excellent, the others kind of forgettable. The Indonesian chicken curry felt lacklustre, as if someone had just dumped some pieces of chicken in coconut milk and left it for a while, and if that's the level of cookery you're presenting as a lure for people to come to your restaurant, then I'm certainly not going to make the effort to visit you. The third photo above is of the quite frankly marvellous Hungarian venison goulash. YES. We ended up licking the sauce - with juniper and red wine - from the plate when we'd finished. But the potato dumplings were a bit stodgy and an unappealing grey colour inside, and I think it would have been better with bread for mopping, but perhaps I'm just greedy. We also attempted to get Congolese food (goat curry, chicken wings, fried plantain) but after standing for ten minutes whilst the eight women behind the booth ignored us, we gave up.

But there were some delicious delicious positives...

Babdar: lamb m'rouzia:

Fork-tender lamb, slow slow slow cooked so that the spices and meat are completely fused. There's a multi-layered taste - cumin, ras al hanout, a sweet burst from the raisins, crunch from the almonds, and the cous cous soaking up the gravy. Whilst I'm very glad that we shared the plates, as it meant we got more tastes, for this one there was a bit of a battle to keep the forkfuls even. We will definitely be heading to Babdar to see what else they've got to offer.

Strofila: baklava cigars (with champagne!)

I do love a good baklava. These had a touch more clove than I would usually go for, but they were full of pistacho and deliciously sticky from the honey, and tasted wonderful. Unfortunately, we could not do the planned taste test between these guys and O Liban (a Lebanese restaurant we've been meaning to go to) because they had run out! Oh woe. But there was champagne! We'd bought a pass which included a number of extras, such as water, coffee, and an Aperol Spritz (fizzy, bright orange, bitter, strangely compelling) and champagne. I felt that these little things added to the experience. I wouldn't have paid for a glass of champers on top of buying the food, but by getting this deal we ended up with a glass of something with every plate, AND to round it all off, SECOND PUDDING in the form of a scoop of salted caramel icecream from La Coupe which was absolutely gorgeous.

All in all, I really enjoyed myself. It was nice to wander around, choosing what we were going to spend our tokens on, looking at all the options available and planning future dinners out. Brussels seems to have a lot of festivals or special weeks (I'm keeping my eyes peeled for Chocolate Week coming round again) and it just feels festive and fun. And it gave me the gift of m'rouzia. NOM.

GREY.

Brussels is a strange place: simultaneously so beautiful and so so ugly. Yes, there are a lot of Ugly Belgian Houses, but this city is full of Victor Horta buildings, wrought iron balconies, little details and grand facades. The metro stations reek and most of them would not look out of place in post-Apocalyptic East Berlin, but there are also parks and palaces and sweeping vistas. Not to mention the chocolate, beer, and frites which can distract you from looking up. But there is one thing which I find hard to cope with: the grey. In the light, with a blue sky, the grey stonework and paint looks chic. I've never seen so many different kinds, tones, and shades of grey in one place before, and it works, sometimes. It does. Tall houses with slightly fading grandeur; elegant shopfronts; imposing official buildings. But then, when the sky is grey and the pavements are grey and the buildings are grey it is hard not to feel grey, too.

So today I wanted some sunshine, which severely lacking in this environment. The Indian summer has given way - to either brutal downpours or that annoying rain where it's patchy and not heavy enough for an umbrella but give it ten minutes and you're soaked (man the fuck up, rain, commit to it or go away). I have completely bastardized a dish I love from Al-Shami, a Lebanese restaurant in Oxford (I cannot recommend their sharing mezze menu enough): baked fish in a tomato sauce. Vibrant red. Aromatic. Warming.

Served with green beans and rice, and a large glass of Riesling:

And afterwards? More sunshine:

Lebanese-ish Baked Fish in a Spiced Tomato Sauce 

Recipe made up out of my own head and not much like a proper Kousbariya or Samaka Hara Ma'a Banadora at all. Makes dinner for two with leftover sauce.

- 200g firm white fish, such as cod (oh god all the names of things in this place are odd and I don't know what I'm doing staring at nondescript pieces of fish and trying to guess what is what)
- a small amount of flour
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, crushed (depending on your love of the stuff)
- 4 ripe tomatoes (I used San Marzano, de-coring the white part but keeping the juice and seeds)
- 1 red pepper, sliced
- 1 heaped tsp cumin
- 2 heaped tsp each fresh parsley and coriander
- plus olive oil and salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan. Dust the fish with flour, and fry it off for a minute or so each side so it is nicely browned. Remove and place in an ovenproof dish.
2. Wipe out the pan and add more oil. Gently fry the onions, peppers, and garlic, adding the tomatoes when the peppers start to soften. Add one generous teaspoon each of cumin, parsley, and coriander. Cook this sauce, bubbling, for about five minutes. Taste and season as necessary.
3. Pour this sauce over the fish, enough to cover it. (At this point I kept about a third of the sauce back in order to make another bastardized dish - huevos rancheros - for lunch the next day, but the important thing is to generously cover the whole fish. You will also notice from my photo above that, at the edges of the pan where the sauce is thinner, it may burn. Combat this by using a smaller pan. I didn't have anything suitable. *Cue ungrateful my-kitchen-is-soooo-ill-equipped moan*)
4. Bake the covered fish for around 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of your fish.
5. Either sprinkle the rest of the parsley and coriander over the top, or bring the herbs to the table so that people can add their own to their portion. But do bring it to the table in the cooking pan, so that you can do a nice cheffy flourish when breaking through the sauce to reveal the white fish below!

Delhaize Dinner

In an attempt to revive my quite frankly lacklustre French skills, I have decided to try and cook at least two dishes from the supermarket magazine every month. The current rentrée edition includes ideas for exciting packed lunches (draw faces on quiches) and an article on that cool new trendy foodstuff, the crumble.

The results? Well, I think my kitchen French came through for me, although how much of it was actual textual comprehension and how much of it was looking at the pictures and basic reasoning I don't know.

I intended to make the rosemary chicken skewers, but lacked one vital element: the skewers. Instead I fried off chicken pieces with onion and rosemary, which was perfectly pleasant but nothing special or particularly complicated to write more about. To accompany this, I went for green beans (the Dutchman's favourite) and a spinach and chickpea warm salad/side dish/thing. There were two elements of this (recipe below) which made it stand out. First, the chickpeas are flavoured as they cook by the additions to the water. This is a simple idea which I'd never heard of before - ok, yes, you add chickpeas to stews and so on, but just plain boiled chickpeas? It added a little something. In this instance the flavourings were garlic and bay, but I think they could be played around with: lemon and thyme; garlic and sage; white pepper and basil? And that's not even considering the flavourings of the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Levantine traditions of chickpea wizardry. The second element was the vinaigrette. Very simple, just oil and vinegar, but I think it brightened and lifted the spinach.

And now to the good stuff. Those process and food porn shots at the top of the page? That's a salted caramel and apple compote. OH YIS. Very easy to make and very easy to eat. It was part of an article in the Delhaize magazine which included a blackberry and cuberdon compote. Cuberdons are a Belgian sweet sort of like a jelly baby with a liquid centre. They are incredibly sweet and are one of those things which taste amazing at the first bite and then rapidly fill you with sugar and regret. Probably won't be trying that one... But! Salted caramel and apple! That totally counts as one of your five a day, right? It is made from fruit! We ate it warm, poured over a slice of plain vanilla sponge, accompanied by crème fraîche. (I may also have eaten it straight from the pot. Ahem.) Although I think there is something in the apple's cooking juices which lengthens the sauce, and stops the caramel from hardening, the photo above makes the caramel look a lot thinner than it was. I think this tastes like it was a lot more effort - three ingredients, plus water, and ready in under half an hour.

Ragout De Pois Chiches Aux Epinards

Recipe adapted from the August/September Delhaize magazine. For two.

- 125g tinned chickpeas
- 1 spring onion
- 250g spinach leaves
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp vinegar (original recipe called for sherry; we had red wine)
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 clove garlic
- olive oil, salt and pepper to taste
(the original recipe also called for 100g soft goat's cheese to crumble over the top, which we didn't do but I would definitely try another time)

1. Simmer the chickpeas in water flavoured with the garlic and bay leaf (for cooking times use tin instructions). When cooked, drain and place in a bowl.
2. Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan and add the spinach leaves - you will probably need to do this in batches, waiting for the first to wilt a little before adding the next. Mince the spring onion and add it to the pan. Cook together on a low heat for a few minutes.
3. Prepare the vinaigrette by whisking together the oil and vinegar.
4. Combine everything and serve!

Compote De Pomme Au Caramel Au Berre Salé

Recipe adapted from the August/September Delhaize magazine. Makes one pot, or enough as part of dessert for four people.

- 500g Cox apples
- 100g caster sugar
- 20g and 30g salted butter
- vanilla pod

1. Peel the apples and cut into small dice. Melt 20g of salted butter in a saucepan, add the split vanilla pod, and lightly stew the apples for about fifteen minutes, or until they reach a consistency you like - I've made it with apple pieces that still had a bit of crunch and with pears which went from rock hard to deliciously slumped in the blink of an eye.
2. Whilst the apples are cooking, make the caramel. In a (heavy-based) saucepan (with quite tall sides) melt the sugar into 2 tbsp water (about 20 ml). Once the sugar has melted completely, watch the liquid until it turns a 'caramel' colour. The darker it is, the more intense the flavour, but be careful as it can go from golden brown to burnt very easily... Take the pan off the heat and add the 30g butter, whisking it in. This is where the 'pan with tall sides' caveat comes in: the caramel will bubble up when you add the butter. It will be HOT so please be careful. Salted caramel is a glorious thing, I don't want anyone to have to go to casualty before getting to taste it. (Incidentally, if you are as much of a fan of salted caramel as I am, check out David Lebovitz - both this recipe and the other links beneath it.)
3. Add the caramel sauce to the apples and mix together. Serve either warm or cold. Or keep it all for yourself.