Odds and ends
On Sat we had a colleague of Rick's and his family over for lunch. The family is here from the states for two months. Knowing as you do my issue with the supermarket here, during the week before I'm sweating a bit over what to serve. At least it is an american family so they won't be expecting a european lunch which is basically dinner, but still, I'd like to make a nice impression. So I spend a couple of days (literally) in the supermarket and decide just on a simple cold cut platter. Of course this isn't all that simple because there all these crazy kinds of cold cuts and I didn't want to serve them horse loaf or something by mistake (I'm not kidding they eat horse meat) and then to figure out how much to buy in grams as opposed to pounds (not that big of a deal). So latter in the week I mention to Rick to ask the guy if his kids have any special food requests/issues whatever. So Rick comes back the next day and tells me the family doesn't eat meat. "What?!" "They don't eat meat." "You're kidding me, right?" "No." Heavy sigh, back to the damn supermarket.
On Monday I went with some friends to the Asian markets in Antwerp. We were given a tour by a local who frequents the area. It was really fun. The funny part was on the way back we couldn't figure out how to buy a ticket for the tram. We get on the tram and the driver was not selling them. (On the way there we bought the ticket from the driver.) Not knowing what to do really and having to race back to pick up our kids we just sat down. About half way home the tram police get on and ask to see everyone's tickets. What else could we do, we acted dumb, handed our ticket from the trip into town and kept our fingers crossed. We must have looked pathetic enough because he looked at the tickets and just handed them back to us. Phew! So now I know where to get all these fresh ingredients for some great asian dishes and how to get there even if I haven't figured out the getting home part yet but the bad thing is I don't really have any recipes. If anyone has any they would be willing to share please email me.
posted by Lyn and Rick at
1:45 PM
1 Comments:
Lyn,
Boy, you're really having quite the adventures there, huh? I'd be happy to give you some recipes if I knew what kind of stuff was available. I'm guessing that these asian stores are mostly stocked with chinese supplies. Is that correct? I'm assuming there is soy sauce, how about sesame oil? hot red bean paste? ginger?
If you have soy sauce and sesame oil you can stir fry just about anything. Do they have corn starch there?
That's good to use as a thickener for stir-frys. If you can get some bean paste you can start making some more interesting dishes. Do they have molasses there? Soy sauce mixed with molasses and a little vinegar and sugar makes a good tereyaki sauce. Have you been able to find any ex-pat web sites with recipes with local ingredients?
It seems kind of ironic that you're in Belgium cooking asian cuisine. Have you considered writing articles for the local english language newspaper? Your stories are very funny and I'm sure most ex-pats could relate.
I remember that in Prague they didn't have spaghetti sauce, just plain canned tomatoes. I remember that I had to make my own sauce which was hard when I didn't know the Czech words for the other necessary ingredients.
Good luck with the cooking!
Deb
By
deb, at October 7, 2004 at 8:01 AM
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