Artichokes, updates, and pictures

This post is mostly about my new found excitement for artichokes and also an update of sorts. It's easier to post pics and recipes then tell you about daily/weekly/monthly happenings.  So first, artichokes! I bought an artichoke and couldn't believe how delicious and easy it was to cook up and eat, especially when you serve it with some garlic butter. You simply wash them, trip the thorns off the leaves, rub the cut parts with lemon, cut the top third off, and trim off the stem, then steam them for about 30-40 minutes until the leaves are soft and can be pulled off.

I've been noticing a lot of healthy looking spring goods at the area markets including Belgian asparagus (which is white and plump), artichokes, strawberries, and alpine strawberries.  Leuven and its surrounding areas have 4 farmers and crafts markets during the week, much like the Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough - except these markets are all within biking distance and are open almost all day.   The farmer's markets in the US really want to show off locally grown foods, and coming from an ag state such as NC, you can show off something nearly year round. The markets here contain pretty much everything you could by at a grocery store, so it made me really happy to see some farm-fresh looking produce around.  The markets also sell sewing supplies, games, crafts, clothes, shoes, jewelry and of course, lovely flower and vegetable plants. The produce tends to be cheaper than the grocery stores, and this weekend we really came away with some excellent finds including ewe's milk brie and yogurt (from this sheep's farm: La Bergerie d'Acremont ), artichokes, and some delectable alpine strawberries which tasted like mushed up strawberry, grape, and raspberry.

A few posts back I mentioned starting a sourdough starter. I named Starter 1 St. John, and never got around to starting Starter 2. This was in inherent fail, and went downhill very quickly.  The smells went from being lightly fermented to puke, and I couldn't imagine that it would come back from the puke smell, so I discarded it (and as Karl knows, I am generally lazy about throwing out stuff).  I'm going to attempt Starter 2 at some point, but will not write about it again until it is successful. In the mean time I will stick to my regular outings to Patisserie Dirk.

My spring garden is out and has been for a few weeks. The best thing about gardening is how infectious it is.  Someone in the building has set out pots next to mine. Sugar snaps, spring onions, lettuce, radishes, and swiss chard are all coming up and growing slowly. The seedlings of summer veggies I started inside are doing much better than I anticipated and will be transplanted to smaller pots.

window box with sugar snap peas and green onions

radishes, lettuce mix, and spring onions

some modest pots

view of the shared patio

As May has arrived, we are getting ready for visitors. Roma will be arriving in 2 weeks and so I've been looking into things to do and places to see.  The job search is going slowly so no exciting news to report, but this means that I will get to spend some quality time with our many visitors. So visitors, plan on home-cooked meals, lots of sleeping in, bike-riding, and listening to me attempt Dutch. Hey now, I do this for you.

Since we are nieuwe inwoners or new residents Leuven's City Hall Council invited us for a welcoming at the historic stad huis (city hall). This welcoming was done to tell new residents about the history of Leuven, tell them more about the population and city, and of course, answer any questions that new residents may have. The majority of the meeting was run in Dutch, and I was able to pick out snippets, but am finding that I'm understanding a lot more than I did in Jan. For instance, Leuven hosts a Badminton Tournament in September, the city used to have one of the largest beer guilds during the Middle Ages, which the French destroyed, the city is proud of Katholiek Universiteit Leuven and beer, and they gave us a tour of the city council rooms, including the mayor's office. They had a reception where they had passed appetizers and served beer from Inbev (Stella Artois, Leffe Blond and Bruin, Belle-vue Kriek, and of course other cola products).  I can't imagine a US city serving new residents alcohol and then letting city hall foot the bill. Amazing. 

Stad Huis or City Hall

During the meeting, I attempted to ask questions. Since most of the sessions were being conducted in Dutch and some English, I figured it would be fine to ask in some Dutch and English as well. Now, if you know me, I talk fast. When I'm nervous, it gets even faster, it's like I'm spitting words out because I can't figure out how to put them together in a sentence. The first question was asked in Dutch, I think it had to do with biking and roads. As a side, there are 30,000 students in Leuven, and about 90,000 residents. It's a huge student town.  My questions were about Dutch courses, allied health professional organizations, and community gardening.  I started off my questions in Dutch (Ik heeft drie vragen. Mag kan ik spreekt en engels? Then I shooted them off in English) The following 5 questions were all asked in Dutch. I'm feeling like a royal jerk at this point.  The majority of the questions had to do with student bikers. They have really worked up a bad reputation in this town.  During the reception I was approached by some very nice people that came up to express their gratitude at congratulate me on my attempt to speak and learn Dutch.  Isn't that nuts? I didn't even really speak any Dutch. I just said, "I have 3 questions, but may I please ask them in English?"  That really sums up how people are here though, if you try and speak and make a genuine effort they really are kind and thank you for attempting, but then, they speak to you in English. Come on city, speed up my ID card process. 

Last weekend we went to Cantillon Brewery for their Quintessence tasting. It is a slow foods-esque beer and food pairing and features lambic and gueuze beers. Karl also wrote a blogel (blog+novel?) on Cantillon at Leuven Groovin'.

Cantillon Quintessence Tasting

Other adventures include a visit to the Royal Greenhouses in Laeken, a quick picture and frites stop at the Atomium, and the Leuven Botanical Gardens. The Royal Greenhouses, built in the 19th century, were commissioned by King Leopold II and were an architectural innovation in that time period because they were constructed of metal and glass. They are, quite simply, beautiful. These greenhouses are only open to the public 3 weeks out of the year.  The botanical gardens in Leuven are in full bloom and the tulips cannot be missed. 

Royal Greenhouses and Leuven Botanical Gardens

Ahh and finally, an update on what I've been cooking and eating these past weeks. I baked a Yeasted Sugar Cake that I found in my Deborah Madison cookbook, but also here.  It's cake that is denser, lighter, less sweet, buttery soft, semi-leavened cake which tastes excellent with whipped cream or yogurt and fresh spring strawberries. I cooked some five-spice Chinese-style noodles and vegetable stir-fry, aloo parathas with channa masala, red-lentil kofta's with a saffron rice pilaf, savory mushroom crepes, and nachos with refried beans.  Links to recipes should be underlined and highlighted above.  Visits will be welcomed with food. Hope everyone is doing well and, of course, eating good food. 

five-spice Chinese style noodles

aloo paratha

Leuven, Brussels, Cantillon

Pictures from Leuven's Covered Market, Brussels Central Plaza, and Cantillon Brewery:

Covered Market & Cantillon

Stroopwafels

It's tea time here, and to help with that I have been gifted with some stroopwafels from Ellen in The Hague. She and Silke visited Leuven last Friday and brought these delicious goodies plus a lovely cyclamen as a housewarming for us. Stroopwafels are hard waffles (similar to pizelles) but have honey sandwiched between them. Delicious!

So this past week has been a lot of fun. Last Thursday we played ultimate with a group here called Jet Set (but I think we played with their intermediate team called the Propellers). We went for practice and scrimmaged. I have never played on such mud-ridden fields and laughed about how many emails would go out on the Carrboro list-serve advising everyone to back off the fields in the condition these were in. The practice was run in English, and was similar to some of the Pleides practices in Chapel Hill, so lots of drills and techniques and general team building. Since it is a team, players are required to show up since we need numbers to scrimmage. Everyone was SO NICE and welcoming to us. It felt great to meet the ultimate community here, and we were invited out to a "ski" party this weekend, where everyone was supposed to show up in ridiculous ski gear, the more 80's the better. There are enough women that play since it's co-ed and a fairly diverse age group. We played 2 small fields splitting up the group into 6 vs 6, 1 sub each side. It was a fun, albeit, muddy game, which made pivoting extremely (dangerous) and difficult. My flicks were fine, and I got to handle a bit, throwing a hammer half-way up the field. I know, what was I thinking? I think Karl and I are going to play with them and try to head to some tournaments here.

Friday was sunny all day so it was my goal to spend the day outside. Ellen and Silke were in town so I met them at a Nepali/Indian restaurant called Namaste. Then headed over to a 2nd hand shop called the Spit. It's like PTA, or wherever you take items you want donated. I don't have a rack on my bike yet, nor a basket, so whatever I found had to get packaged very carefully in a side bag/purse. I like to think I'm not picky about furniture, but that place was a dump. I think the Ikea will be much nicer (and probably only slightly more expensive). Craigslist isn't big here so I'm wondering if there is some other web site that is similiar to Craigslist that would be good for furniture and other house things.

On Friday evening (Vrijdagavond) we ate at a vegetarian (vegetarisch) restaurant called Lukemieke. They featured a lot of organic or bio things, and had a fairly extensive menu. We got the meal of the day which started with a bitter greens creamy soup and sesame grated carrot salad. The main entree came with 5 sides. The most filling were a phyllo dough spinach and leek casserole followed with a lemongrass rice croquette, with sides of creamy saffron cauliflower, a beet, potato, and black-eyed pea salad, and finally a rather boring mixed salad (which was weirdly enough, shredded lettuce that you would use for taco filling), but was drenched in a flavorful olive oil. There wasn't much for protein in the dish, and I wish vegetarian restaurants gave that a little more thought (there is the nutritionist in me coming out).

Saturday morning (Zaterdagmorgen) in Leuven is wonderful! The main city square has a humongous covered market. Vendors include florists, olive vendors, cheese vendors, spring roll vendors, escargot vendors, fruit and vegetable vendors, and bread vendors. Karl found a wonderful coffeehouse called Cafe Onan so we have been getting some good coffee. The plan that day was to head down to Brussels and sightsee and visit the Cantillon Brewery.

I know that I keep writing about the bike-friendliness of this place, but I just cannot get over it. They have AN ENTIRE covered "parking garage" or "Fietsenplaats" for bikes. This covered area probably goes on for 1 mile...and hundreds of bikes. Not like 1,000 dollar road bikes either, i'm talking beaters, cruisers and in general bikes with crazy painted colors, and kid seats, and crates and just everything. And just to rub it in some more, there are bikepaths everywhere. Every road has a bike path and walking path. You can get anywhere and everywhere on your bike!

After securing our bikes in the fietsenplaat we got on the train to Brussels. Here we got off at the Central Brussels station, and walked into a central market area which led into some pedestrian paths. There was also a covered market here, but was closing down as we arrived. I think we were heading towards Grand Place or Grote Markt. After passing through some of the walkways (I think we were on the Rue des Bouchers), we came upon the Galeries St-Hubert which is basically a huge domed glass building with very nice shops inside. This building was put up in the 19th century during the time of King Leopold I (1847). From some of my travel books, I have gathered that this was designed in the Neo-Renaissance style by the Belgian architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar. Their are 3 buildings, called arcades. It is well known that Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas once resided within the buildings. Walking slightly further, we passed many modern day shops including some beer stores, specialty olive-oil stores and candy stores. The candy stores look like they are straight out of Daigon Alley from Harry Potter.

After a snack of curry frittes - we set off for the Cantillon Brewery. The brewery is located near an ethnic neighborhood. So you pass a bunch of warehouse looking shops and some Indian/Pakistani/African stores, and then when you feel like you're lost, you stumble right upon it. Cantillon is over a hundred years old, and the building is as much. They brew lambics, I think one of a handful (or maybe one of 2) within Brussels to brew in the true lambic style. The tour itself is self-guided, and most of the staff are either family members, or probably family friends. They must get a number of tourists becaue they always ask if you understand that the beers are fermented and so on and so forth. Lambics are a helluva beer. They are remarkable and probably medieval if not somewhat ancient in the process. True fermentation. They brew during the week and invite you to come back to watch the brewing process, but on a Saturday, they were fielding questions and serving some of their famous Guezes.

As a self-guided tour, you receive a small pamphlet and go through the brewery. The smell is amazing, similar to white wine fermentation at a winery (mom and dad just like the smell at Chateau Michelle). First you visit the Mashing House where you see the mash tun and big old equipment. This isn't a fancy new place, so the age of the machinery becomes quite charming.
The next room, is up some narrow stairs into the hop boilers and crushing machines. The hop boilers are are huge tanks with large red coils snaking through them. The wort is heated through steam circulating through the red coils. They have added in a 10,000 L stainless steel tank as a hot water reservoir. They add 3-year old aged hops for qualities of preservation. From here the wort will travel to a large and shallow copper pan. This pan holds up to 7,500 L of wort. Basically this maximizes cooling and allows the wort to come in contact with the air. The pan is basically on the top level of the building (3 levels), and contains rafters to circulate air. Cantillon utilizes the weather and the local ecosystem (they will never remove cobwebs or spiders, and they have a brewery cat that was lounging on some grain bags) for it's beers. They brew from October until about mid-April. To get the wort chilled, they cool it overnight and open the rafters. This allows inoculation of wild yeasts (Brettanomyces, Bruxellensis and Lambicus) that occur in the area, and causes spontaneous fermentation. Their are up to 86 known yeasts that are present in lambics! I'm not sure how long the wort is allowed to sit there, but it is then moved into a huge stainless steel container, which allows the brewer to control temperature and sugar content (I think a cooling tun).

Next the wort is placed in oak or chestnut barrels. They tell you that during the first days of fermentation it can get pretty violent as CO2 escapes, and some of the wort spills out (the actual brochure states bunghole). In about a month slow fermentation begins in the barrel, and after this point the barrel is closed/sealed, and allowed to mature for THREE YEARS! I think you can drink it after 1 year, but it's weak. The Guezes and fruit lambics are what I found the most interesting.

Gueuze is a lambic that contains a blend of 1, 2 and 3 year old lambics. Basically the brewer is the taste-tester and judge and figures out what blend of these will make a Gueuze. Usually out of 10 barrels, half of them will be picked.

For the fruit beers, they take fruits like cherries (kriek), raspberries, or grapes (the wine making kind), and macerate (again a word in the brochure) it into a 2 year old lambic. It takes about 3 months for the fruits to macerate - where the beer takes up color, taste, and sugar from the fruits. Then they add in a young lambic and filter and bottle the beer. The fruit lambics made in this way are not anything like a "lambic" that you may have tried that are marketed and sold as Framboise in the states. I'm not putting these down, I just want to make the distinction, that this is a time-old tradition that is probably the closest thing to how beers were once made. They are pleasingly acidic, but pick up the fruit tannins or phytochemicals for the taste and character, so they can have a bitter finish. I really enjoyed the raspberry one (Rose de Gambrinus) , and picked up the Saint Lamvinus which contains lambic and merlot grapes - Sara this is the one that you had tried that had grapes on the cover - and a bottle of Vigneronne (which is made of white muscat grapes). Touring the brewery felt like a field trip. They had some Slow Foods stickers up on the wall and you can see photos of past Cantillon family members that headed the brewery. It was just quaint and fantastic.

We each brought back 3 bottles, including several beers which we had picked up in Brussels including some fancy olive oil and white truffle salt. This made for an interesting bike ride home as we were literally balancing all our bought goods off of each shoulder (Karl's being a backpack and probably more efficient).

I think the plan is to visit Bruges this weekend - we have snow in the forecast for the next 2 days, and rode through some flurries just yesterday evening. All in all, we are staying warm and quite happy.

Pictures will follow this post - I am multitasking the remaining adapters.