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...

Memories of Belgium

Technically, I have been to Belgium, though it was really just a drive through when I took the bus between London and Amsterdam in 2005. There were rest stops, but I mostly dozed or read through the country. My only real memory is of hearing 3 Doors Down's Landing in London for the first time through the haze of half-sleep, which admittedly has absolutely nothing to do with Belgium. What I do know is that the combination of sleep deprivation, slight paranoia (because I'd smoked some weed before getting on the bus in Amsterdam and there were still two more borders to cross through), and hearing Bob Seger's voice unexpectedly in the duet, created an intense aural memory of past and present blended. So much so that when I watched the official video the other day, which doesn't feature Seger, it didn't just feel wrong, it didn't feel like anything. And then I listened to the original single version and I was back on the bus driving through darkness to my own landing in London.

The Kingdom of Belgium

Aside from the foods mentioned at the top, Belgium to me is Jacques Brel, Hercule Poirot, Leopold II and the atrocities in the Congo Free State, and Albert I's defiance of Germany at the start of World War I. Though my most recent discovery is Professor T, which is crazy in all the right ways.

Belgium is divided into three autonomous regions: the Flemish Region, Wallonia, and the Brussels-Capital Region. Unlike the flag, the regions are divided horizontal, north and south, with Brussels smack dab in the middle of the country. Flemish Dutch and French are spoken by the majority of people, but German is also an official language. Belgium is one of the six founding countries of the EU and Brussels is home to the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Council, and is one of the two seats of the European Parliament.

Belgium has been brutally hit by COVID-19, with the highest number of deaths recorded per million population. Part of the reason for the high death toll is because many deaths, especially in care homes, have been recorded with COVID-19 as the presumptive cause.