Tonight we enjoyed a Belgian dinner, a country four of us have been blessed to be able to see. We tried one main and three desserts.
Our dinner was carbonnade beef and Belgian beer stew paired with mashed potatoes. The stew was made with beef chuck browned and cooked low and slow in Belgian beer with brown sugar and mustard. Though this didn’t taste much different than stew we’ve had before, it was quite tasty and the meat was very tender. This is something we’ll likely make again.
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/carbonnade_beef_and_beer_stew/
We found three desserts to try this time, each quite different from the other and from our usual fare.
The first was couques de dinant, a ‘teeth breaking’ cookie that is meant to be broken into pieces and melt in your mouth. I’m pretty sure we didn’t do the sugar part correctly, but they still seemed to work pretty well. They were definitely hard and had to be eaten slowly.
These cookies weren’t too bad, though not everyone enjoyed them. Made with honey, some don’t like the taste.
Next up was for my husband and I, an omelette made with rum. This rum omelette, once popular in the 1900s, is not often on menus these days. This was definitely different than what we’re used to! Made with sugar, milk, and rum, it’s a sweet dish, but not as sweet as I’d thought. It wasn’t too bad, but I don’t think we need to try it again.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.factorytwofour.com/omelet-flambe/amp/
Finally we tried mattentaart, though that’s not what we made. Well, sort of. Mattentaarten can only be made in the Geraardsberg region of Belgium to use this name. Outside of the area must use another name as this was granted the protected geographical indication by the European union in 2006.
Whatever you may call this dish it was good. I started out by making a ricotta cheese from milk and buttermilk. This was then mixed with egg, sugar and almond flour and extract, placed in between puff pastry and baked. This was enjoyed by nearly all and will likely be made again, though next time maybe we’ll buy ricotta cheese instead.
https://www.solo.be/nl/recepten/echte-geraardsbergse-mattentaartjes/
Did you know that Belgium invented the saxophone? Their highways are lit at night and the highest point is lower than the world’s tallest building. 220,000 tonnes of Belgian chocolate is sold per annum from the Brussels Airport! Light beer was sold at school lunches in the 1970s and Brussels sprouts have grown in Belgium for over 400 years. Finally, the name for the euro currency was proposed by Belgium as was the design for the symbol.