Author Archive
Foodnuts in Flanders
January 17, 2011 | 
Author Last spring we traveled to Europe and went on a river cruise on the Rhine and Mosel Rivers. We started in Basal, Switzerland, and ended in Bruges, Belgium. We thought we’d share some of our food experiences from that trip, in no particular order. So, for our first post, we will showcase a dinner in Bruges. Belgians love to eat good food and there are places all over that serve spectacular food. It has been said that Belgium serves food of French quality in German quantities. Diners can expect high standards of ingredients and preparation but with a lack of pretentiousness of presentation. A number of traditional Belgian dishes use beer as an ingredient. For a rather small country, Belgium produces a huge number of beers in a wide range of different styles. It has more distinct types of beer than anywhere else in the world. You can drink different beers depending on whether you’re having fish/seafood, white meat/chicken, dark meat or dessert, much like you would choose different wines to complement a meal.
For our dinner in Bruges we ordered a typical Belgian dish, Flemish beef stew. Flemish beef stew is very similar to French boeuf bourguignon but uses beer instead of wine. The beer is representative of the region so the stew we had in Bruges was made with a dark beer from that area. Since there are so many different regional beers in Belgium, if you were to have Flemish beef stew in another area it would be prepared with that area’s typical beer and taste different from the one we had in Bruges. The restaurant is La Dentelliére. Their website is http://www.ladentelliere.be
Here is a picture of our dinner of Flemish beef stew.
Some diners had mussels.
And don’t forget dessert.
Here is a picture of typical Belgian waffles. They’re HUGE! No syrup. It’s whipped cream on top along with fruit or chocolate.
Posted in 
Pistachio Tart
Here is a tart I made for one of our Top Chef nights. I thought it was appropriate to make a nut tart for the foodnuts!
1 ready-made pie crust (I used Trader Joe’s)
3 cups pistachios, divided (2 cups and 1 cup)
1 cup sliced almonds
5 TBS butter
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup dark corn syrup
2 TBS half and half
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup (or more) chocolate chips, melted
Preheat oven according to pie crust directions
Roll out pie crust to fit a 9-inch tart shell. Line tart shell with crust. Bake as directed for single -crust pie until golden.
Pour 2 cups pistachios and sliced almonds over the crust in a single layer. Chop the remaining cup of pistachios, set aside.
Preheat overn to 350 degrees F
In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt butter with brown sugar, corn syrup, half and half and vanilla. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Pour the hot mixture over the pistachios and almonds in the crust.
Bake for 10 minutes, or until bubbly and golden. Let cool on a wire rack.
When cool, drizzle with melted chocolate chips (Melt in microwave in a plastic bag. Snip corner and drizzle). Garnish with chopped pistachios. I put colorful little leaf sprinkles on too because it was fall.
A word for the wise – it’s probably a good idea to put a cookie sheet on a lower rack in the oven to catch the bubbling over part. Brown sugar and corn syrup are pretty messy to try to clean out of the bottom of your oven.
Tags: “Tis Ordered”
One blue marbled timpano pan has been ordered for the Food Nuts! Hopefully it will be in stock and we’ll have it in plenty of time for food and frivolity New Years Eve.