Dutch Apple Pie (Oma’s Appeltaart)

This recipe is for the traditional dutch apple pie, found on a Belgian website. It can be served both warm or cold, usually with whipped cream (but ice cream tastes great as well 😀 ). You will need a *springform* cake pan, or a lot of patience, or you will not be able to get the pie out! Because Dutch recipes generally use grams instead of cups for dry ingredients, I have included the measurements in grams as well. The dough is shortbread-like and may take a lot of time to get right. It took me ages to get it to form a ball, but it worked out fine in the end. If you’re getting tired of it, add a little milk, but don’t despair for with or without the milk, it *will* from a ball in the end. If you want, you can prepare the apple mixture the previous day and keep it in the fridge, the flavors will blend wonderfully. If you want to prepare the dough in advance, take it out of the fridge in time, because it’s really hard to work with when it’s just been in the fridge for a whole night. The preparation time is a rough estimate and assumes that you peel the apples while the dough is in the fridge. I’m quite slow at preparing so it could be anywhere between 1 and 2 hours for you. Last but not least, *do* make sure you have a bit of dough left over for the third to last step – you deserve a little something for all that hard work! 😀

Parsley Peppercorn Ground Beef Steaks

These taste great, even without the sauce! Good served with buttered sliced carrots. From Woman’s Day magazine. The English and French both used lots of cream in their recipes.

Ahoy There! Moules Marinières – French Sailor’s Mussels

I adore moules, mussels, and this is the classic French recipe for them. Moules Marinières is also commonly known as Sailor’s mussels or Mariner’s mussels. The dish consists of delicately steamed fresh mussels in a white wine, garlic, parsley, butter, onion and cream sauce. Moules Marinières can be served as an appetising starter or even a light main meal. It is delicious served with fresh crusty bread or with frites (chips/fries). There is nothing more mouth-watering than a huge bowl of artistically presented mussels, yet the fun part is eating them. The best way is to use an empty mussel shell as the “spoon” in which to pick the remaining mussels from their shells and then eat them. It’s a brilliant excuse to use your fingers to eat rather than the usual knife and for – very tactile! A traditional French recipe will use butter, however the butter may be substituted for a few tablespoons of olive oil for a healthier option – I sometimes use a mix of butter and olive oil I hope you find the step-by-step photos helpful, this recipe was used in the September 2008 Cooking School for the TOTM – hopefully, the photos will debunk the myth that mussels are hard to prepare and cook, NOT so! Bon Appétit!

Veggies Dream Cucumber Sandwich

This is a scrumptious, out of the ordinary sandwich, that will tickle your taste buds! Popular in England, Scandinavia, and all over the USA (especially California)

Belgian Carrots

Here’s an interesting carrot recipe — If you can, try making it a day ahead of time & give the flavor time to develop! They do reheat well!

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