This was Carbonnade à la Flamande, Belgian beef, beer, onion stew, served with buttered egg noodles.
We cooked this basic but stunning stew for our friends. I followed a recipe from Cooks Illustrated as usual. We couldn't find top blade steaks, which was Cook's first choice, but chuck eye, which was Cook's second choice worked beautifully. The recipe was straightforward -brown beef, saute onion, and simmer onion and beef in beer until beef melts. The result was excellent. None of extra steps or ingredients could find a role to play here. Minimalism was a key.
A salad bowl was a side. I wanted to keep Belgian theme and found a recipe of
Salade liegeoise - a traditional Belgian salad from the city of Liege - potatoes, green beans, onions and bacon dressed with warm wine vinaigrette dressing. It sounded nice but I was looking for something like fresh green salad. So my compromise was tossing spring mix green, grape tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, blanched green beans, boiled purple baby potatoes together and dressing the mix salad with homemade wine vinaigrette made with my new white wine from Spain, Dion mustard, shallots, olive oil, black pepper and salt. The salad was pretty and refreshing between bites of the hearty meaty stew.
Without desserts, dinner never completes, in my opinion. According to J's request, I made
Fondant aux noix de pécan - melting chocolate cake with pecan on vanilla custard cream, or Crème Anglaise again. That was a perfect choice because Belgium is a chocolate capital in the world, in my opinion. I must confess I used 70% cacao chocolate from Ireland; cocoa powder was from Belgium. Moreover, the recipe of the dessert came from a Japanese-French pastry book.
Well, I assume nobody cared about the authenticity of the dessert. We were simply full up at this point. The party ended on a happy note!
