Category:Food & Drinks
My simple veggie lasagna is a perfect lunchtime recipe. It’s quick and easy. This is how you make it:
Preparation Method: (serves 2)
Slice 4 thin long slices of zucchini. Use a mandolin if you have one, but if you don’t just use a very sharp kitchen knife. Place a slice of zucchini on your plate, season with salt & pepper, and layer it with ricotta, sun dried tomatoes, roasted pine nuts, slivers of basil and a generous helping of pesto. Top with another slice zucchini, drizzle with some olive oil and season with salt & peper.
Ingredients:
- 1 Zucchini
- Ricotta cheese
- Sun dried tomatoes
- Pine Nuts
- Basil
- Pesto
- Olive oil
- Salt & Peper
I love burgers. I won’t deny it: I love burgers!
Ok, I won’t always make my own patties, but it is well worth the effort. Actually it ain’t that much of an effort. And for my homemade Jucy Lucy, I like to make my own patties. Did I just say Jucy Lucy? Yep! A Jucy Lucy basically is a cheeseburger with the cheese inside the patty.
Serve on a beautiful big size bun from your local bakery and layer it with your favorite condiments. I like to mix up things: mayonnaise, ketchup, onions rings, tomatoes, advocados, salsa, pickles, … The options are endless.
For this recipe, I used mayo, lettuce, tomato, my homemade ketchup, maple syrup glazed smoked bacon and pico de gallo.
Preparation Method: (serves 6)
For the burger patties, add the ground beef, 1tsp of ground cumin, 1tsp of sweet paprika, 1/2tsp of garlic powder and an egg to a mixing bowl. Mix well and season to taste with salt and pepper. When it is mixed well, form into a disc and put in the fridge for at less to firm up.
In a separate bowl mix 100gr Emmental cheese and 150gr Cheddar cheese. Take you ground beef from the fridge. Decide into 6 equal parts. Each part will make 1 burger patty. Devide each of the parts in 2 again and form 2 discs of about 8cm with them. Put one disc on your working table, put a good spoonful of the cheese mix in the middle. Put the 2nd disc on top and close the sides to form a burger patty stuffed with cheese. Return to fridge to firm up again.
While the patties firm up, you can make the other condiments. Read all about my homemade ketchup in a previous blog post.
For the the maple syrup glazed smoked, spread 12 thinly sliced slices of smoked bacon on a baking tray. Make sure the slices do not touch or overlap. Brush each slice with a generous amount of maple syrup. Put in a pre-heated oven at 120°C for 45 minutes. This will cook and dry the bacon. Take out of the oven and leave to cool a cooling rack to further crisp up the bacon.
I made a final relish: pico de gallo. Dice up 4 Roma tomatoes and 1/2 a rede onion, chop up the chilantro, and dice the clove of garlic and 1/2 a jalapeño pepper very finely. Add all ingredients to a mixing bowl, season with pepper and salt and add the juic of a lime. Mix well and marinate for at least an hour.
We are ready to build the burger now. Slice the burger buns open, brush with olive oil and put on and high-heat grill to toast. Now grill the burger patties until they have crosshatched grill marks on both sides. About a minute or 2 before the patties are done, put the glazed smoke bacon on the grill too to warm through.
Spread some mayonnaise on the both half of the bun, add a leaf of iceberg lettuce, a slice of cœur de bœuf tomato and the grilled burger patty. Top with the homemade ketchup, the glazed smoked bacon and the pico de gallo. Close with the top half of the bun. Keep everything together with a skewer and top with a pickle.
Ingredients:
- 500gr lean ground beef
- 1tsp ground cumin
- 1tsp sweet paprika powder
- 1/2tsp garlic powder
- 1 egg
- 100gr grated Emmental cheese
- 150gr grated Cheddar cheese
- Salt & pepper
- Maple syrup
- 12 sliced of smoked bacon
- 4 Roma tomatoes
- 1/2 red onion
- 2 tablespoons of chilantro
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1/2 jalapeño pepper
- 1 lime
- Iceberg lettuce
- 1 cœur de bœuf tomato
- Olive oil
- 6 burger buns
Making your own ketchup is a lot of fun and so easy to do. You can make it to your own taste and match it to the dish you’re serving.
Ingredients:
- 6 roma or san marzano tomatoes
- 4 cloves of garlic
- Thyme
- Rosemary
- Basil
- 2 table spoons of sugar
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Olive oil
Preparation Method:
Preheat the oven at 120ºC. Quarter the tomatoes and spread evenly on a backing sheet. Crush the 4 cloves of garlic with the side of your knife. Don’t bother to peel the garlic as it will be discarded later. Add the crushed garlic to the tomatoes. Season with pepper and salt and sprinkle over 2 table spoons of sugar. Add a couple of sprigs of thyme and rosemary, and about 10 leaves of basil. Sprinkle over a little olive oil.
Put the tomatoes in the preheated oven for 60 to 90 minutes, until the tomatoes are semi dried out. After you take the tomatoes out of the oven, remove the skins, blend to a puree then pass through a strainer to remove the pips. Check the seasoning: the ketchup should be slightly sweet. Add sugar if needed. Refrigerate before serving.
You can easily spice up your ketchup with Tabasco sauce if you like it spicy or a bit of red wine vinegar if you like it tangy. I like mine sweet and peppery but with a clear taste of tomatoes, so I only add freshly cracked black pepper.
The longer you leave the tomatoes in the oven, the more they will dry out. Drying out the tomatoes will intensify their flavor and will get you a more concentrated ketchup.
Limu salad is a Hawaiian side dish, often served with as a side with Poke. Traditionally, Limu salad is made with fresh seaweed–after all limu is the Hawaiian word for seaweed–but as that is hard to find in Belgium, I replaced the seaweed with samphire.
It is a simple recipe that will get you a very tasty salad on the table in minutes.
Preparation method: (serves 2)
Blanch the samphire for a minute or 2 in boiling water and refresh it right away in an ice bath to keep it vibrant green and crispy. When cooled, drain. Half the cherry tomatoes, cut the onion and the cucumber is strips. Add the veggies to a bowl and mix.
For the dressing, crush the garlic and the pink rock salt in a pestle and mortar to a paste. Add the sherry vingear and the Shoyu sauce and fresh chili pepper to taste. Shoyu sauce should be available from Asian specialty stores but you could replace it with soy sauce if you want.
Dress the veggies with the dressing right before serving. That will keep the veggies nice and crunchy, and prevent them from discoloring.
Ingredients:
- 100gr samphire
- small white onion
- 5 or 6 cherry tomatoes in various colors
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 tea spoon of (Hawaiian) pink rock salt
- 2 table spoons of Shoyu sauce
- 2 table spoons of sherry vingear
- chili peper
I did a very quick and easy mascarpone dessert. A perfect ending to any meal, especially for a lover of Jack Daniel’s like me. Coffee anyone?
This is how I made it (serves 5):
Preparation method:
Put the mascarpone cheese in a bowl and beat it with a wooden spoon until it becomes soft. Add the chopped walnuts, vanilla sugar and the Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Mix until combined. Spoon into a glass and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours to let it set. It that easy or what?
A little side note: you can of course use store bought vanilla sugar, but it is so easy, you should make your own. Take a glass jar, fill it with sugar and as you use vanilla in your other recipes, add the used vanilla pods to the jar. After about 2 months, the sugar becomes infused with the vanilla and is ready to use. Keep on adding your used vanilla pods to the jar and don’t forget to top up with new sugar from time to time.
Ingredients:
- 500gr mascarpone cheese
- 50gr walnuts, chopped
- 5 table spoons of vanilla sugar
- 30ml Jack Daniel’s whiskey
When I bought my Big Green Egg a couple of years ago, it was because I wanted to do more than just use it as a BBQ. One of the reasons I choose the Big Green Egg, was because it can be used as a smoker. And last weekend, I tried that for that for the 1st time.
I did this duck breast marinated in apple juice and cider, smoked on wood chips of Jack Daniel’s barrels. Marinated for 24 hours and then smoked for an hour at 100˚C, the duck breast came out beautifully pink and juicy. It was just yummy.
It’s probably one of the simplest recipes in the world. One that is enjoyed by many, especially during summer: a tomato and mozzarella salad. But when you be creative about it, it can be a beauty on a plate.
Use some real good mozzarella balls, cherry tomatoes and diffent kinds of greens: watercress, basil and some monks cress. Top it with a good olive oil, a touch of fleur de sel and some pepper and you’re done. I painted some paprika tapenade on the plate befor adding the main ingredients.
Th monks cress is a little peppery and tangy. And I used different colors cherry tomatoes: orange and green tomatoes are a little sour, so you don’t need to add acid to your dish.
Here’s a nice recipe for lunch: a case-less quiche, which you could fill with your choice of ingredients, served with an herb salad. I filled my quiche with roasted peppers, blue cheese, tomatoes and a little onion, but you could also use ingredients like broccoli, mozzarella, maybe even some chorizo.
Here’s what I did (serves 4):
Preparation method:
For the quiche:
- Preheat the oven at 180˚C;
- Add a little olive oil to a frying pan over a medium high heat. Finely slice 1/2 onion, add them to the frying pan and fry them until soft. They should be softened but not browned;
- Oil the holes of a regular muffin tin with a little olive oil and line them with a slice of Parma ham. Make sure the bottom and sides of the holes are fully lined with the Parma ham;
- Cut the blue cheese into little cubes, slice 1 spring onion finely and slice the roasted pepper in long strips;
- Mix 2 eggs, 30ml of cream and 30ml of milk in a bowl and whisk them together. Add a generous amount of pepper;
- Fill the muffin holes lined with Parma ham with the blue cheese, spring onion, roasted pepper and the slivers of red onion and finish half a cherry tomato on top. Do not over fill;
- Fill up the muffin holes with the egg mixture;
- Sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top and bake in the preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes until the egg mixture has completely set.
When the quiches are done, take them out of the oven and leave to cool. If you’re not sure if the quiches are set, prick them with a metal skewer. When you remove the skewer, it should be dry warm all the way through.
You could of course roast your pepper yourself, but for this recipe, I used store bought jarred peppers. They are very tasty and the keep for weeks in the fridge if you close the jar propperly.
For the salad, mix the rocket, watercress, coriander and basil in a bowl. Quarter 4 cherry tomatoes and add them to the herb salad. Finely slice 1 spring onion and add that too. Dress the salad with a little olive oil, a generous amount of freshly ground pepper and some salt (I prefer fleur de sel). Mix to get everything coated with the oil. Plate the salad and add a few petals of homemade pickled onion.
Making pickled onion is simple, but if you don’t want to be bothered with that, you could use fresh thinly sliced onion instead. Add a little chardonnay vinegar to dress the salad.
Ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 30ml cream
- 30ml milk
- 4 slices of Parma ham
- 1/2 small red onion
- 2 spring onions
- 1/2 roasted pepper
- homemade pickled onions
- 6 cherry tomatoes
- a handful of rocket
- a handful of watercress
- fresh coriander leaves
- fresh basil
- olive oil
- salt & peper
- grated Parmesan cheese
I have another strawberry dessert recipe. Not as extensive as the Red Fruit Filo Tartlet recipe I posted earlier, but just as luscious and delicious. This is my take on strawberries and meringue.
Preparation method:
For the meringue:
- Separate about 5 eggs until you have 150g of egg whites;
- Beat the egg whites with 90g of white sugar. After a couple of minutes add another 90g of white sugar. Finally add 90g of icing sugar and beat to stiff peaks;
- Spoon the the beaten egg whites in a piping bag and pipe in little circles on a baking tray lined with baking paper;
- Bake in a pre-heated oven at 100˚C for at least an hour (up to 75 minutes). Turn off the oven and leave the meringues in the oven to dry while the oven cools down. Do not open the oven during the baking process.
For the sweet & sour cherry gel, mix 100ml of cherry vinegar—I use vinegars from Oil & Vinegar—and 100ml sugar sirup(*). Set aside a little bit of the mixture, pour a the bulk of the mixture into a sauce pan over a high heat and bring it up to the boil. While waiting for the mixture to boil, dissolve 1.2g of agar agar it the mixture you set aside. As soon as the mixture in the sauce pan is boiling, add the agar agar mix to the pan and leave to boil for another 5 minutes stirring to make sure the agar agar is fully dissolved.
Leave it cool for a little while, then poor it in a squeeze bottle and set aside to completely cool. By the time is has completely cooled, the mixture should have turned into a translucent gel.
I make whipped cream in an espuma bottle and since this recipe has meringue, I don’t add sugar to my whipped cream. If you make your whipped cream by hand, add a little sugar, it helps to stiffen the cream.
Plate up the meringue, strawberries, whipped cream and the sweet & sour gel to make an attractive plate. Finish with a few sprigs of mint.
(*) sugar sirup is equal quantities of water and white sugar that you heat up until the sugar has fully dissolved.
Ingredients:
- 150g egg whites (about 5 eggs)
- 2 x 90g white sugar
- 90g icing sugar
- 100ml cherry vinegar
- 100ml sugar sirup
- 1.2g agar agar
- Whipped cream
Strawberry season is happening in Belgium right now: a great time to make luscious desserts.
This is my homemade red fruit filo tartlet filled with a mascarpone cream and strawberry & habanero jam. Maybe a good idea for tonight’s dessert?
Preparation method:
For the filo tartlets:
- Preheat the oven to 180˚C and grease the holes of a muffin or cupcake tin;
- Cut the filo pastry into squares that are big enough to fit in your tin. Brush each piece of filo with metled butter. Layer 3 pieces of filo on top of eachother;
- Please the filo cases into the oven for about 5 to 10 minutes (until golden brown);
- When baked, take the filo cases out of the oven and set a side to cool. Be careful when removing the cases from the tin as they tend to break.
For the strawberry & habanero jam:
- Quarter 500gr of strawberries and chop the habanero pepper;
- In a saucepan set over a medium heat, add 400gr of white sugar, the juice and zest of 1/2 an orange. Let the sugar dissolve in the orange juice;
- Turn up the heat to high and add the strawberries and the habanero pepper. Boil, stirring often, until the mixture reaches jam consistency. Set aside to cool.
For the cream, mix 200gr mascarpone, 50gr cream and 25gr of white sugar together in a bowl until it becomes thick & creamy.
Now fill the cooled filo cases with a good spoon full of the mascarpone cream, drizzled over some of the strawberry & habanero jam and top with your favorite red fruits and strawberries. Finish with a sprig of mint for decoration.
I like my jam to be nice and spicy. If you don’t like the spice, use half a habanero pepper. (serves 4)
In case you’re wondering: yes, I made this myself. And yes, I did the photo too.
Ingredients:
- 50g melted butter
- 150g filo pastry (store-bought)
- 200g mascarpone cheese
- 50g cream
- 425g white sugar
- 500g strawberries
- 1/2 orange, zested and juiced
- 1 habanero pepper
- assorted red fruits
- a few mint leaves