belgium

Back in Bruges

Posted on by vlatsou

Well, not literally, but we tried to recreate the “authentic” Bruges experience at home by making chips, drinking local beer and watching “In Bruges”.

Have you seen “In Bruges”? If you haven’t, you should. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry. Not sure about the crying actually, since I do cry quite easily (like a big gay baby), but I don’t see how you wouldn’t be moved by it. And you will certainly laugh. It’s quite a dark film involving a good amount of black humour. And swearing.

And if you haven’t been to Bruges, you should go. We went this July, as a part of a road trip to Belgium and Germany. It’s quite a small place and we more or less saw most of the town in the two days that we stayed there, although I certainly wouldn’t mind staying for longer. Very quiet, you won’t find a great amount of nightlife but the food and the beers are great. It’s a beautiful town to walk around, if you’re into that kind of thing. And if you’re not, I’m sure it’s nothing a beer or two won’t fix.

Anyway, the chips. We had the best chips at the chip museum, at the cafe in the basement. We also watched a video on how to make the perfect chips and- of course- I kept notes. So, yesterday, we decided to give double-fried chips a go, although we have failed many times in the past.

The idea is to cook them for 10 minutes at 130 degrees, take them out and, just before you want to eat, cook them for a further 3 minutes at 190. Since we haven’t got a sugar thermometer there was a lot of guess work involved. For the first stage, we wanted the oil to fizz up just slightly when they went in, but the chips to stay as pale as possible throughout the 10 mins. For the second stage, we just got it as hot as we could. We used a combination of vegetable oil and olive oil and, although I could pretend there is a scientific reason behind this, the truth is that was all we had in the kitchen. The chips turned out perfect; really fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside. Dare I say we made Belgium proud!

It wouldn’t be a real Belgian night without a lot of Belgian beer. We drank 3 big bottles of local beer we picked up from the Bruges brewery. A blond one, at 6% was the weakest but by no means weak. The brune version was a double fermented one at 7.5% and it was actually my least favourite, although not bad at all. The highlight for me was the triple fermented one and the strongest (surprise, surprise) at 9%. Blond, strong tasting and hoppy but really really smooth. It went down a bit too quickly actually- was feeling a bit headachey this morning!

Getting ready for July…

Posted on by vlatsou

…when we are going to Germany to watch the Grand Prix. It is going to be a road trip and anyone that knows me and my obsession with Formula 1 could imagine how excited I am about it. I am now wasting half of my life thinking of ways to meet Sebastian Vettel.
Anyway, we are going to make this a road trip round Belgium for a few days and then head to Nurburg. I’ve been preparing myself by sampling a few belgian beers. Last week, I was in a pub up north and, to my surprise, they had a good collection of them. We decided to sample a few and share.
But before we did that, we thought we’d get in the mood by having lots of nice Fruli, which I would recommend to anyone who doesn’t like beer. That probably says a lot about it, very fruity and not very beery. But still really yummy. As Alex said, you just expect to find loads of strawberry puree at the bottom of the glass!
The favourite was Kwak. It was recommended to me by someone I can’t remember a few weeks ago, mainly because of the entertaining glass. We were advised that there is £7 charge if we break it, which kind of made sense when we realised how thin and fragile it was and that it was their only one!

It looked good, it was fun to drink (although I was a bit scared about breaking the glass) and it tasted great! It was actually surprisingly smooth and drinkable given the high alcohol percentage (8%). Well, I suppose that is low for a belgian beer, but it did help towards my hangover then next morning.
We also tried Rochefort 10, a strong 11.3% trappist beer that I have had before but in that case it just smelled a bit of cleaning products. Not great. When I had it in the past it was dark and bitter, and very very rich. I remember enjoying it, so maybe there was something wrong with that particular one!
We had a nice Chimay Blue for a bit of reference really since I knew I was going to enjoy it. Chimay is good, pretty and dark and just a bit bitter.
The Delirium Tremens that we had, was ok, although the highlight was probably the entertaining name and the “manly” glass with the pink elephants! It was tasty, but not exciting. I’d rather have a Hoegaarden!
Anyway, today I made a strawberry cake and got a sudden craving for strawberry beer. Unfortunately, out local Wine Merchants didn’t have any, so I had to settle for some interesting looking honey beer, called Barbar.
The smell is very sweet and you can really tell there is honey in there. Fortunately, the taste isn’t as sweet and it is very smooth. I will be buying that again!
Anyway, I might just go back to reading F1 news now. Crazy things happening there nowadays. The beer diary shall continue…..