Why is this such a delicious, crowd-pleasing recipe? This courgette or zucchini bread has a smooth taste, because of the chunks of zucchini that go into it mixed with buttermilk. It’s then toasted in butter so that it gets nice, crispy and golden brown from both sides. You add some spiciness through a simple chipotle sour cream and then balance this off with a sweet tomato jam with hints of lime. It’s just a very pleasant composition of flavours, textures, ingredients and colours.

Ingredients

For the Zucchini loaf:

360g flour

1 tsp baking soda

3 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

1 tsp dried thyme (the leaves)

100g shredded Zucchini

2 eggs

265 ml buttermilk

3 tbsp sunflower oil

more salt to taste

(optional: 150g Feta, crumbled into the final batter)

For the Halloumi:

250g Halloumi, cut into 1cm slices

For the chipotle sour cream:

1 – 1 1/2 tsp ground chipotle

300g sour cream

juice of 1/2 lemon

2 tbsp maple syrup

salt to taste

For the tomato jam:

2 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic cloves, chopped finely

1 shallot, chopped into very small cubes

400g cherry tomatoes, washed and dried

juice from 1 lime

2-3 tbsp apple cider vinegar

4 tbsp brown sugar

salt to taste

To serve:

some butter

3 spring onions, finely slices

some sea salt flakes

Preparation

For the loaf:

Preheat oven to 180C.

Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, pepper, thyme and shredded zucchini in a bowl and set aside. You could also add some chopped parsley or basil, if you want your courgette bread to be ‘herbier’.

Whisk eggs with buttermilk and oil, add some salt if wished, in a big bowl. Stepwise add your flour mixture and fold into the egg mix.

Grease a loaf pan and pour in the dough. Bake for 55 minutes, until your loaf is golden-brown. When you insert a toothpick, it should come out clean.

Let cool entirely. Can be made 1-2 days before serving.

For the chipotle sour cream:

Put all ingredients in a small bowl and mix well.

For the tomato jam:

Heat a pan on medium heat. Add olive oil. Add garlic and shallots and fry until translucent and soft, but not browned. Add tomatoes and fry on higher heat until they burst and get soft.

Add lime juice, apple cider vinegar and sugar and stir well. Reduce heat to medium-low and let everything simmer for 15 minutes. Add some salt to taste – the jam should retain its soft and fruity flavour.

Cool down and store in an airtight jar or use immediately. Can be made 2-3 days before serving. Also tastes great with cheese, or simply spread onto a slice of bread.

Assembling:

Heat a pan on medium heat. Add a teaspoon of butter and wait until it has melted. Slice your zucchini loaf into 2 cm thick slices and add 4-6 of them to the pan. Fry for 2-3 minutes, then turn. Both sides should be golden brown. Take out of pan and arrange on plates. Fry the remaining slices of the bread.

At the same time, heat another pan and fry halloumi from both sides, without any fat added, until nicely roasted.

Place one piece of halloumi on each piece of zucchini bread. Add a tablespoon of chipotle sour cream and a teaspoon of your tomato jam. Garnish with sliced spring onion and a pinch of sea salt flakes. Serve warm.

The post Toasted Zucchini Bread with Grilled Halloumi, Chipotle Sour Cream and Tomato Jam appeared first on Brussels Express.

Ingredients:

The amounts depend on the number of people you’re cooking for. You can keep rillettes for quite some time, if stored well so usually the minimum amount of meat is 3-5kg.

1/3 pork belly, of which half should be salted pork belly

2/3 duck legs (with a large amount of fat)

11gr salt per kilo of meat

Some pepper

Spices such as thyme, bay leaf, rosemary, piment d’Espelette

Preparation method:

Cut the pork belly into big cubes. Heat a pan on very high heat and brown the duck legs and pork belly from all sides. Keep the fat.

Put the pork belly and duck legs in a saucepan with the fat, salt, pepper and spices to your taste. Bring everything to a boil and then, on very low heat, slow-cook for six hours.

If the meat has not become soft and moist by the fat, mix well and add a little more duck fat. Once cooked, the meat should fall easily of the bones.

Let everything cool for half an hour. Remove the bones from duck thighs and put everything into a food processor to fray out.

Put meat mixture in a container and add some fat from the cooking process, then mix so that everything is evenly moistened. Leave to rest in the fridge for 24 hours.

It’s ready to eat now. It tastes best with some fresh slices of baguette or sourdough bread.

The post Recipe for Duck Rillette by Denis Delcampe from Le Tournant appeared first on Brussels Express.

Ingredients (Serves 2):
For the salmon:
2 fresh raw salmon filets (around 300g each)
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp black sesame seeds and/or 1 tsp sesame oil

For the shaved cucumber salad:
1 cucumber, washed
1 Granny Smith apple, washed
2 tbsp olive oil
4 tsp soy sauce
4 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
1 tsp black sesame seeds
8 basil leaves, washed and roughly chopped

For the soy Mayonnaise:
5 tbsp Mayonnaise
1-2 tsp soy sauce
optional: ½ tsp light Miso paste (if you add miso, also add 1-2 tbsp more Mayonnaise otherwise it will be too salty)

Preparation:
1. In a bowl mix soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame for the marinade. Put salmon filets in a big bowl, add the marinade and cover the fish with it, so it’s well covered. Cover with clingfilm and put in fridge for 4 – 24 hours.

2. With a peeler, cut off ribbons/ long stripes lengthwise from the cucumber. Cut apple in half, remove seeds and then cut the apple into semi-small cubes. Set aside. For the dressing mix olive oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey and black sesame seeds, set aside.

3. For the Mayonnaise mix Mayonnaise with soy sauce (and Miso, if using) and set aside.

4. Heat a pan on high heat, once hot add around 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Place the salmon in the pan and fry for 2-3 minutes from each side, or until golden brown from the outside and still a bit raw on the inside (only if your salmon is very fresh, otherwise fry for a minute or so more).

5. Place salmon on a plate. Arrange apples and cucumber ribbons next to it, put basil on top and drizzle with the dressing. Put a splash of Mayonnaise on the other side of the salmon.

The post Seared Salmon with Soy-Mayonnaise and Shaved Cucumber Apple Salad appeared first on Brussels Express.

Of course vegetables and fruit are the best source of the vitamins and minerals we need. Eat the ones that are in season – oranges, kiwis, root vegetables in order to get what is needed for this season.

However I also make a ‘magic potion’ for anyone in the family who is starting to feel a cold coming on… so I thought I would share my recipe!

It all begins with these two roots: ginger and turmeric.

Ginger has been used for its medicinal properties for over 2000 years – it is anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, antiviral and full of antioxidants… that’s a lot of ‘anti’s’ for something so good!

Turmeric: another powerful natural antiseptic with a long list of health benefits.

So I chop some of these and put them in a pan and heat and simmer them for about 10 minutes.

When it has become a nice golden colour and smells fantastic – I put it in a cup and add some lemon juice and local honey.

Drink it when warm and get well soon.

The post Winter booster: drink this and you will be ready to fight the cold appeared first on Brussels Express.

Keen to face a new challenge, I registered for the kimchi class at Fermenthings, a small shop that specializes in crafted beers, kombucha and other fermented products. Most importantly, you can buy starters for kombucha or sourdough and they also sell kimchi and miso. Classes take around 2-3h and teach you the basics about fermentation, while showing you that it’s not as difficult as you might’ve thought.

We started the kimchi class with a bottle of kombucha and some homemade 2-month-old kimchi, one 1-month-old and one made with light ingredients only, so-called “white kimchi”. We then moved to the preparation, which meant first, salting a big pot with water so it reached the saltiness of sea water and then soaking small cut white cabbage and Asian cabbage in the water for around an hour. During this hour, we chopped the leeks, carrot, garlic, ginger and some pears for the white kimchi. To the red mixture we added a lot of Korean chili flakes, honey instead of sugar and because the kimchi we made at Fermenthings was vegan, instead of the fish sauce to start the fermenting process, we used pickle juice and apple cider vinegar. After everything was poured into a big container (except for the cabbage) I volunteered for getting my hands dirty and started mixing everything so it turned into a moist, sticky dark red paste that smelled amazingly spicy and rich in flavor. We added the cabbage (the salt water drained) and I continued massaging the cabbage with the seasoning so it soaked up all the beauty of the paste.

To prevent us from leaving hungry, we prepared some dumplings towards the end of the class, filled with kimchi – not ours – and Asian mushrooms, which were boiled in a miso broth. Simple and very delicious.

Once finished we started filling the jars we brought along with the homemade white and red kimchi. I left the jars on room temperature for two days and then put some weight on the cabbage and transferred the jar to the fridge. It’s sitting there now, producing beautiful fermentation juices and ready to be eaten after two weeks minimum, or longer if you like the fermentation to be more intensive.

What I’ll do with all that kimchi? It’s super healthy so I’ll just dig into the jar and eat it like this. I might make some Tofu Schnitzels with it, or maybe some dumplings, we’ll see.

If you want to take part in one of the Fermenthings classes check their Facebook Page here.

They’re moving soon, but I’m sure there’ll be a lot of new exciting classes in the new year.

Gotten hungry? Try Fermenthing’s recipe for kimchi:

80g mixture Korean chilli powder and dried chilli flakes

120g of fine chopped leek

2 gloves of minced garlic

20g of grated ginger

1 shot of fish sauce (or pickle juice)

1 tablespoon of salt (seasalt, as pure as possible)

1 tablespoon of sugar (unrefined)

Mix it all together until you can make little balls out of the paste, it has to make a squichy sound and feel quite compact. Note: there is no perfect kimchi paste, it is the one you like that will be the perfect one. See this as the basic that works, add other ingredients, or change some of the proportion. I like that mine has that smell of grated ginger coming through at the end. I don’t make it to spicy, but I add chopped yellow or red peppers in it if I want to give it a certain punch.

The post The art of fermenting made easy by Fermenthings, Brussels appeared first on Brussels Express.

A beautifully filling and healthy breakfast that can be vegan if you use vegan chocolate and tastes a bit nutty and creamy.

Ingredients (For 1 person):

1 cup buckwheat

2 cups water

about 3 cups coconut, almond or normal milk

a pinch of salt

2 tbsp maple syrup

2 tbsp chopped, roasted hazelnuts

1-2 tbsp chopped dark chocolate (75-85%)

Preparation:

1. Put buckwheat and water into a bowl and let soak overnight.
2. The next day drain water and put buckwheat together with coconut milk (should be twice as much in quantity as the buckwheat) into a sauce pan. Bring to boil and then let simmer while stirring constantly.
3. After around 10 minutes, once the buckwheat absorbed the milk and gets creamy and thicker, turn off the heat. Put in a bowl, add maple syrup, chocolate and hazelnuts and eat warm.

The post Buckwheat-coconut milk porridge with chocolate and toasted hazelnuts appeared first on Brussels Express.

I love figs, because they’re such a versatile ingredient. You can eat them just plain, put them in sweet or savoury tarts, eat with cheese, make jams from them, cook them with stews and meat or simply dry them.

I discovered figs for myself during my Erasmus year in Barcelona, when Jessi and I used to buy a kilo of them at the Boqueria market for 3 Euro. Yes!! 3 Euro, but only at one stand in the back of the market just off the Ramblas, where all produce had reasonable prices. Here in Brussels I now found a spot where I get them for 6 Euros per kilo, which is still very cheap, compared to super-market prices.

With Jessi, we simply threw them raw, quartered, in a bowl, together with some walnuts, goat cheese, lambs lettuce and a dressing from lemon, honey, olive oil, salt, pepper and some balsamic vinegar. Done.

This time, I decided to make toasted sourdough slices, top them with fresh ricotta from my local market that I mix with lemon zest, salt, and olive oil, add a bunch of figs, drizzle some honey on top that I brought from Georgia and garnish with some fresh thyme leaves. It’s so simple, but so good and can be eaten as breakfast, light lunch or starter during dinner. Absolutely love it!!

Ingredients (Serves 4 as starter, or 2 as light lunch):

• 4 slices of sourdough bread, toasted
• 4 tsp of olive oil, plus 1-2 tbsp olive oil
• 350g fresh Ricotta,
• 1/2 tsp sea salt flakes
• 1 tsp (bio) lemon zest
• 8 very ripe figs
• 3 tsp honey, melted in a pan with a thyme spring
• 1 spring of thyme
• some freshly ground pepper and sea salt flakes

Preparation:

1. Drizzle 1 tsp olive oil over each piece of bread and set aside.

1. Mix the ricotta with 2 tbsp of olive oil, sea salt flakes and lemon zest and mix well. Spread even amount onto toasts. The ricotta doesn’t have to be flat and even on the toasts, it looks nice if they all are unevenly covered with the fresh cheese.

1. Cut some figs in half and some in quarters and distribute on toasts, with the red side up. Drizzle the melted honey evenly on top of the figs, sprinkle with salt, pepper and some fresh thyme leaves. Serve immediately.

The post Sunday Recipe: Fresh Ricotta Toast with Figs, Lemon and Honey appeared first on Brussels Express.

Serve the quiche with a nice herb salad with a lemony dressing.

Ingredients:

For the dough:
Either use ready made dough

or

this recipe:

120g cold Butter, diced
200g flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg yolks
2-4 tsp cold water

For the filling:

1-2 tbsp oliveoil
1 garlic, chopped very finely
1 onion, cut in small dices
150g goat cream cheese
4 eggs
225ml liquid cream
100ml milk
zest from 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 Handful mint, washed and cut into stripes
3 Baby Zucchini, 1 1/2 Zucchini cut in diagonal slices (approx. 0.5cm thick), cut the rest in dices

Preparation:

1. For the dough mix flour and salt. Add cold butter and quickly knead with your fingers or a mixer. Add yolks and water and mix again briefly, until a crumbly dough has formed. Continue kneading with your hands until an even dough has formed. Make a ball, wrap in cling film and put for an hour in the fridge.

2. Heat a small pan, add olive oil and fry onions and garlic until translucent. Let cool down. Heat oven to 180C.

3. Mix goat cheese and eggs in a bowl until combined. Slowly pour in cream and milk until incorporated. Add lemon zest, lemon juice, salt, pepper, nutmeg and mint. Also add the Zucchini dices (not the slices).

4. Oil a springform. Take dough from fridge and roll out on a space dusted with flour. It should be a bit bigger than your cake form. Put dough in cake form, press firmly to bottom and sides and pierce in several places with a fork.

5. Add the liquid mixture into the middle of the springform and spread evenly. Arrange Zucchini slices in a circle on top. Put into oven for 50 – 60 minutes until the quiche is set and still a tiny bit wobbly when you move it.

6. Serve warm with a fresh salad.

Bon Appétit

The post Sunday recipe – Baby Zucchini Quiche appeared first on Brussels Express.

… so here you go!

Pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, poppy, hemp, chia, flax (linseeds), mustard, cumin, coriander… the list is long and no matter which seeds you prefer they are all little powerhouses of goodness and make a great addition to any meal.

Many of them can be processed into oils, but the process involves heat and quite a bit of effort, so personally I like to use a cold pressed oil such as olive oil and eat the seeds in their whole form.

A seed is no small thing. Each and every one has the potential to grow into a plant and produce fruit with more seeds in it. If that is not a ‘living’ food! Just imagine what that does in terms of energy for your body.

I am not going to write the long list of nutrients, minerals and good fats for each of these seeds – check out these links for sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cumin seeds, mustard seeds and linseeds.

How to get more seeds into your day?

Put a spoon of hemp or linseeds into a morning smoothie

Make your own muesli or porridge and soak overnight in almond or rice milk for delicious breakfast ready to eat when you wake

Sprinkle on the top of salads (I put them on raw not roasted to maintain all of their benefits)

Use mustard, coriander or cumin seeds ground up in a spicy dish 

Make a sweet treat – seed biscuits (see below)

Recipe: seed biscuits (5 mins to mix, 1 hour to cook)

100g oats

100g mixed seeds (sesame, linseeds, pumpkin, sunflower, poppy)

50 ml olive oil

1 dessert spoon of honey

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and then press firmly into the base of an oiled cake tin. Bake in the oven at 150 degrees for 1 hour.

Enjoy with a nice cup of tea!

Putting a few seeds to soak in water overnight and then draining them and leaving them to sprout (keeping slightly moist) is a great way to see how fast a seed springs to life… fun to do with kids and great to eat them. For more tips on sprouting seeds and beans, see here

The post Seeds of change – how to get more seeds into your day appeared first on Brussels Express.

These pancakes are so fluffy and thick, you’ll think you’re eating a piece of cloud. Just better and with maple syrup. So good, you’ll want to eat it every morning. They’re quite filling though, so the risk is to feel the huge urge to jump into bed again after preparing these. 

Ingredients (8 pancakes, 2-3 servings):

130g flour
2 tbsp sugar
pulp from half a vanilla bean (optional)
1 pinch of salt
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1/2 tsp Baking powder
1 tbsp butter
2 eggs, separated
150g buttermilk
1 tbsp sugar
butter for frying

Additional:

Maple syrup
Extra butter
Optional:
Bacon
Bananas
Strawberries
Blueberries

Preparation:

1. Sieve flour. Mix flour, sugar, vanilla pulp, salt, baking soda and baking powder.

2. Melt butter and let cool. Separate eggs, whisk egg whites until stiff, carefully mix in buttermilk. Mix egg yolks with sugar and then mix in with the egg whites and buttermilk.

3. Carefully mix in flour in 3 steps until a quite thick batter has formed. Let sit in fridge for 15 minutes.

4. Heat a pan on medium heat. Add butter and let melt, then add 3-4 tbsp of batter per pancake. Depending on how big your pan is, you can prepare several pancakes on one pan. Turn pancakes only when small bubbles have formed on the surface. Turn and then fry for about 30 seconds, until the pancakes are golden brown. Continue until you’ve used all batter.

5. Serve warm with maple syrup and butter.

The post Saturday Recipe – Crazy Damn Fluffy Pancakes appeared first on Brussels Express.