Belgium, but no chocolate

B is for Belgium. Chocolate, waffles, moules frites. I made none of those this week, though I was tempted to take a shortcut and get takeout from Chambar. 

The Meal

For appetizers I made Belgian endive wrapped in ham au gratin - Lot Met Ham en Kaas. There's a typo in the recipe I used, as my tiny endives certainly didn't need 20-30 minutes to cook. Unfortunately I realized it should be 2-3 minutes around minute 7, so they were definitely boiled. And I should have used Gruyere, but I had some cheddar that needed to be used up. I also had very thin slices of black forest ham, so I doubled them up. 

The other challenge I had is that I only really have two decent pots, so my timing got a bit off as I was boiling various vegetables for my other two dishes:

Chicken Waterzooi and Stoemp

As a result both the endives and stoemp had got a bit cold by the time the soup was ready. It didn't do the melted cheese on the endives any favour, but I can enjoy potatoes at any temperature.

You can apparently include all kinds of different vegetables in stoemp, so I divided up the massive carrot and leek between the two dishes and then added in some cabbage left over from last week. It was a lot of cabbage (and I still have a half a head, so I'm thinking I'll revisit Dimlama later this week), though it eventually mixed into the potatoes somewhat unobtrusively.

Despite the temperature challenges, it was enjoyable and I had leftover stoemp to keep me happy for several days. Next time I'll moderate the amount of cabbage to really let the potatoes shine...