Fancy food and cooking button
by Thomas Vreriks
on 08 February 2011
I know lots of people who don't give a damn. They don't care what they eat, they just do. They don't eat to have a meal, they just feed themselves because otherwise, they would die. I'm not one of those people. I'm into ingredients, cultural cooking and differences in spices, making, graving and diving into recipes. I like the buzzing in town of good restaurants or an even better food stall.
Television and food is not a great combination. You stuff yourself in front of the telly? Hell no, never do that again. You will never have the taste of what you're eating. Take the time to enjoy your food, peel your dinner till the very fine core.
by Thomas Vreriks
on 14 December 2010
categories: dessert and menu
Did you ever dare to prepare macarons, the fancy sweet cookies from Paris? I did, last week. And I wrote an article about it in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, in the magazine for the weekend. Enjoy the pictures by Steven Ledoux.
by Thomas Vreriks
on 12 November 2010
categories: chocolate
So a friend of mine brought me cocoa beans from Oaxaca, Mexico. After roasting them in the oven (for one hour at 100° C) I had quite a job peeling them. Both thumbs heavily blistered! But good food needs dedication and offers.

Grinding the beans
I brushed out my coffee grinder to grind the beans. The cocoa beans come out as a heavy greyish-brown paste (mostly because of the cocoa butter, I guess). I put this paste on the stove, added a small tin of cocoa butter I had bought online, a spoonful of sugar and some white chocolate to get the right consistency. Very carefully, I heated this au bain marie. The smell was incredible, as you can imagine. Although I tried to clean my coffee grinder as good as possible, still some residu of the ground coffee changed the taste of the chocolate. But hey, we are making chocolates ourselves!

Finally: home made pure chocolates
I dipped some roasted hazelnuts into the mixture and let them cool off in the fridge. The magic come in... the chocolate hardens. Very tasty. I poured the mixture in a chocolate mold I bought in a great shop in Paris. Half an hour in the fridge must be enough. Out comes great, tasty chocolates, half of them with a hazelnut inside, half of them au naturel. Most of the work gets into peeling the f*cking cocoa beans, but I forgot about that when I tasted these fantastic chocolates. Let the experimenting begin.
Web
by Thomas Vreriks
on 14 October 2010
categories: dinner, menu and restaurant
We enjoyed a wonderful evening at Dôme, the one-star-Michelin restaurant in Antwerp of Julien Burlat. The evening was organised by Transguardia. Though I have doubts about the whole project of the magazine, the kick-of and its dinner on 10/10/10 was amazingly good. Julien Burlat (JB) and Gregory Marchand (GM) both prepared 5 courses, sometimes with same ingredients, sometimes totally different. Bringing back memories (though mostly French memories).

Here you can find a written memory and some pictures of the evening as well (in French).

Amuse bouche: tête de lapin
Amazingly nice, this appetizer. Brains, cheeks and the tongue of a rabbit.

Betteraves, faisselle, citron confit (GM)
Yellow beet, fresh cream cheese (nothing special) and zest of lemon. Not my favourit.

Supion, jaune d'oeuf, pomme de terre cru et iode (JB)
How a like this taste... sea urchin! Is that umami? Tastes a bit like very old camembert as well, I would say. The runny egg and raw potato goes well with it. Broth finishes it off.

Soupe aux choux de homard, chabrot naturel (JB)
'Faire chabrol' or 'chabrot' means diluting your soupe with some red wine. Apparently only known in parts of France. Wonderful tastes come together in this plate: cabbage soupe, half a lobster.

Homard, topinambours, chorizo (GM)
Lightly smoked lobster and very thinly sliced chorizo are a wonderful combination. And Jerusalem artichoke? Please wake me up at night when you are ready to prepare it!

Maquereau fumé, purée de rutabaga, salade tiède de choux de Bruxelles et blettes (GM)
Smoked mackerel with a nice wintery stew, Brussels sprouts and perpetual spinach. Too bad of the saltiness of the whole.

Maquereau tiède aux noisettes, betterave rouge (JB)
Freshly sliced hazelnuts on mackerel, accompanied by beetroot. Heavenly!

Chausson de biche aux groseilles, pierre à fusil (JB)
Doe (a deer, a female deer) with red berries, wrapped in dough, a piece of foie gras on top. Ash of leek to ressemble gun powder. Great dish, good tastes.

Dos de chevreuil, cèleri braisé à l'orange, purée de kumquat confit, trompette de la mort (GM)
Back filet of roe, puree of celery root, kumquat (very strong) and trompette de la mort mushrooms (Craterella cornucopioides, far too salty!)

Gâteau de chatâignes, mousse de bananes, crumble de cacahuètes (JB)
Cake of chestnuts, banana mousse and crumble of peanuts. I was not so fond of the mousse but the cake and crumble were divine.

Baba dog (GM)
The good old famous baba au rhum, reinterpreted.
Legoutde_leftcolumn
by Thomas Vreriks
on 22 August 2010
categories: dinner, friends and restaurant
Not the review, but a preview: we will go for a fancy dinner to Oud Sluis, the three star Michelin-restaurant by Sergio Herman. I am so looking forward to this experience! Have only eaten in a restaurant like this three times before. Will definitely keep you posted on the outcome.
UPDATE
So here it is, the full review on Sergio Hermans fancy restaurant called Oud Sluis in Sluis (Holland). And fancy it was! Though we had to wait quite a while before we could finally have dinner at all (from the day we made the reservation till we took our seats: 6 months). No problem: you can save money and prepare yourself well.

General impression:
Staff is friendly, charming and never over the top, rude (of course not) of overly polite (I hate that as much as too rude). The place is not too big, has a nice terrace near a market place and is quite modern and light. Tables are set wide apart to have a private meal. Staff is always everywhere, which makes it a very busy place. But you can easily imagine why there are so many people: so many things to carry around! Not only plates and glasses, the food is served on pebbles, stones and shiny shells as well.

The food has its favourites from the sea, which is not good or bad at all. I like the palate, which is always surprising (mussels and curry, aniseed and eel, etc.) and never too rich in use of butter or cream. Sometimes there’s a little too much flavours on the plate, but then again: I am not complaining. Just enjoy one small fork or spoonful at a time. Thinking of that: I rather eat half a fillet of a calf that was raised outside a barn, had a good life and enjoyed itself, than a whole fillet of a miserable animal. I think you will taste the sadness, by the way.

Appetizers are amazing, both in presentation as in flavours and combinations. Beautifullydressed plates, pebbles or shells. Almost all of the flowers, herbs and spicesare still identifiable. Wonderful, sizzling, real good openers.

A la carte eating is interesting, bur not when you have waited half a year to come around. Then, you want nothing but the real thing: the menu. Unfortunately, one participant in our group had to skip most of the wines. The rest of the company took the option to take the wines accompanying the food. For most wines, that was interesting and tasty. Only the second wine in line was a flaw: a Lebanese choice, accompanying eel. It left us puzzled, mostly because it was tasteless, without enough body to company whatever dish.
More to come, and pictures to add …
by Thomas Vreriks
on 05 August 2010
categories: books
I don't consider myself a geek, but I think this is an excellent way of bringing the world of the kitchen to them: Cooking for Geeks, Real Science, Great Hacks, Good Food. I would have thought geeks are not at all interested in putting a meal together, but maybe that's just my prejudice. Don't they just shove a pizza in the oven from the nightshop, tweeting about their latest greatest hack? Or forget to eat, since they're all so skinny?
Maybe I should step up to it: I even might be a geek myself. Or at least an Apple-freak. I knew the iPad has nice things, but do I really need it? Epicurious is nice on the thing, showing you, as the app on the iPhone, a list of ingredients for a recipe, making you a shopping list, sharing your experiences with friends and fellow-cookers. So if I am seduced by the shiny marketing campaign and decide to buy the machine, does that make me geeky? Maybe it does.

Anyway, I am plain interested to read this book. Are you?
Cooking-for-geeks
by Thomas Vreriks
on 14 May 2010
categories: menu and meat
For a dinner coming Saturday, I am planning this meal:


Green apple sorbet, langoustines, shrimp cocktail in cherry tomatoes

Carpaccio of scallops, truffle oil, crumble of bacon

Cheek of veal, jus de voilalle, mashed potatoes, glaced carrots

Melon soup, vanilla icecream, nut bar (caramel, chocolate, nuts, crunch)

Panna cotta with cranberry glacé

Coffee, macarons with saffron butter

It will be the first time that I am preparing cheeks of veal. Any ideas? I am thinking of braising them slowly in the oven, in my French pot. I am looking forward to make and serve all this, it seems like ages since I cooked a fancy dinner! Any tips for wines or drinks? I am thinking to squeeze a scroppino in.


tags: DIY and veal
by Thomas Vreriks
on 27 March 2010
categories: meat
I wrote an article for a Belgian newspaper about the famous wagyu beef.
tags: wagyu
by Thomas Vreriks
on 02 March 2010
categories: healthy and vegetables
We all know that what we like to eat, is not always the most healthy food. But what is?
Oily fish is, people say. And my doctor does. Why, I asked? Is it really, or is it just a good thing to eat less meat? Most of all, because it's healthy fats. Salmon, sardines, mackerel and anchovies are all full of the famous omega-3 oils, which seem to make platelets in our blood less likely to clump together and cause a clot. Which is, of course, good for our brains, heart and other organs. Healthy blood makes healthy people.

Fresh parsley is good to forget about bad breath, contains a lot of chlorophyl and vitamin C. A not very well-known fact about vitamin C is, that it helps protect sperm from free-radical attack. Hurray for our little swimmers! Meanwhile, add a handful of chopped parsley to your salads, omelets and other vegetables.
by Thomas Vreriks
on 26 February 2010
categories: dessert
So it's true. Hervé This did this wonderful invention: chocolate mousse without eggs, cream or sugar. I tried it today and it worked. The chocolate mousse is less rich of course, but great for a real light dessert.
Ingredients
270 ml water
350 g dark good quality chocolate

Heat the water and add the chopped chocolate. If melted, take the pot, put the mixture into a bowl which is placed on another bowl with icecubes. Whisk, whisk and whisk some more. Until: all of a sudden, it's there. Great low calorie chocolate mousse! ;-)