Author: dolcevitaspinelli

Not all coffee is just coffee

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Coffee is often seen wrongly. Lots of people see coffee as something that helps you to stay awake, to make you warm, etc… But for me coffee is so much more, I see it as a harmonization of smells and tastes. And just like wine or beer it is the master blender who puts all his love and knowledge in the making the perfect coffee for all of us to enjoy.

This is also why I was more than happy to accept the invitation from Douwe Egberts to learn more about the magic and especially craftsmanship that is behind the making of Coffee.  For those who don’t know Douwe Egberts, it is a major Coffee brand that was founded in 1753 (YES, 1753), so if there would be somebody knowing how to make coffee, I’m sure they are having all the experience. Eventhough Douwe Egberts is a very large company, they still succeed of keeping the quality of their product! Which to me is one of the most important things (besides keeping is simple).

Something important to know about coffee is actually that 99% of ALL coffees produced in the world, are either ‘Arabica’ or ‘Robusta’. The big difference between both would be that if you like a strong coffee with a kick, you would be going for a Robusta (I would go for this coffee). Like I said coffee is all about the flavor and smell, the first thing that influences the smell and taste might seem normal. Depending on where the coffee bean comes from it will be having a different taste (normal I would say). For example a Colombian bean will give your coffee a more lemony flavor.

Anther very crucial part of preparing the perfect coffee or ‘blend’ is the burning of the beans. Depending on how long you let the beans burn, you will be getting a different taste.

My favorite part of making the coffee (before drinking it) is the grinding of the coffee… the smell that comes free at that moment is just soooooo wonderful. I’m sure people driving on the Ring in Brussels will have already had the pleasure of smelling the freshly grind coffee from Douwe Egberts (so you know I’m not lying). You just can’t ignore it as it smells so good. It always makes me so happy and actually crave for some coffee 🙂 . Did you know that depending on which coffee maker you use, the coffee beans should be grind differently!? If you are for example using a fresh coffee maker  the beans have to be grind  rougher, whereas for when making an Italian coffee with a Bialetti coffee maker the beans have to grind more finely.

Of course, making coffee really needs the hand of the master blender like André Hoinkis to make the perfect blend of coffee. Although for some of you this might seem like a very easy job, I can assure you that it takes a lot of experience and research to find the perfect combination of beans and the time it should be burning. If not a balanced well you will get one crappy coffee 🙂

You might have already seen the new commercials on TV or in magazines about the new types of coffee Douwe Egberts has launged. What André Hoinkis together with the other master blenders  they have tried to create 4 types of coffee, these 4 types should cover and please all the types of coffee drinkers. These 4 all have their own character, going from very strong and complex (Black) , a normal milder tasting coffee (Delicate) to a very balanced blend (Original).

The fact that I could drink all these coffees without sugar, really means they are good, otherwise I would have added so much sugar you could straighten your spoon in it . Now it is up to you guys to see what kind of fruits, nuts, etc… you taste or smell in these coffees. You will be  surprised what you will find.

The last thing I really want to share with you is actually how Decaf coffee is made.  Something Important to know about decaf, is that it is never 100% decaf :-), there is always still 0,1% of caffeine in it as it would be impossible to take it all out. The taking out of the caffeine already happens with the Green bean (so almost immediately after picking it and removing its holster). As this way they can take the caffeine out and still keep most of the flavor. There are 2 ways that are mostly used. The first is the water-carbon method (H2O/C)  where water will stream over the green beans for as long it takes to dissolve the caffeine in the water (they reuse the water, so nothing gets wasted). The second way would be the dichloromethane method (DCM). Here they will be using dichloromethane to dissolve the caffeine.

I know this might seem very technical, but I really needed to share this with you guys!

I really would like to thank Douwe Egberts and André Hoinkis for revealing some the secrets of making the perfect blend of coffee!

My birthday weekend part 2

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So as you could read in my previous blogpost, I’m a real spoiled boy! The first part of my birthday was already mind blowingJ. For who thought it stopped there, I’ve got something coming. This year my fiancée really had outdone herself to make it something great.  She had a family and friends part, which are both very important to me. I can reassure you that they really made my day(s). Ok the looooots of gifts I got (like a Le Creuset pot (I’m too cheap to buy it myelf) didn’t make my weekend worse 😉

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After the amazing dinner with my family and a brunch with my best fiends (I’ve got the best friends ever!), I actually thought that was it. But noooooo sir, as cherry on the cake my girlfriend had booked a table at restaurant Veranda. You cannot believe how long I’ve already tried to get into this restaurant!!

If I would have to describe this restaurant in a few words I would say that this is a restaurant serving highly gastronomical food (Michelin star level) with no nonsense attitude, in a normal brasserie I might even say bar  like setting (which actually makes you feel more comfortable ) for a very normal price.

I did have high expectations as many great Chefs had told me so many great stories about this restaurant… I do indeed have to confirm what they said, as it was a very nice experience. The restaurant only has one menu that changes every x days, but also the wine list changes constantly.

Our menu for the night was Rouget with fennel (served with  white Bastingage from the Loire Valley 100% Chenin) . Followed by Encornet  (a kind of calamari)with green asparagus  (served with a Bellotti Bianco, even though it is a table wine I still liked its rich taste). As a main course they served a lambs shoulder served with Grenache from the Languedoc (with the dish it worked, I wouldn’t drink it without food) called  Matin Calme . We finished off with getting 2 different dessert (yes per person, we’re greedy I admit 😉 )

A true petting of the tongue (I think the pictures speak for themselves), this is definitely a restaurant I’ll be returning. (If I manage to find a free spot). A true price – quality value! So thank you to the team of the restaurant and also to my fiancée for making this all possible. One restaurant less on my to do list 🙂 jeeeeeeeej

Restaurant Veranda

Address:

Guldenvliesstraat 60

2600 Berchem, Belgium

Phone n°: +32 (0)2 18.55.95

 

My birthday weekend

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I really consider myself very lucky, especially after I have seen how much my girlfriend, my family and my friends have done to give me a wonderful birthday weekend filled with lots of friendship and a looooooooooot of food!

My birthday weekend or I might even say week, as last already started last week J. Last Wednesday I already celebrated it with my dad. My dad suggested  a Spanish or rather for Basque cuisine at restaurant Comocomo. yes,that is right, an Italian going to eat Spanish, funny stuff 🙂 )

I can only say that this restaurant really surprised me in a very positive way! The first time I passed the restaurant I thought it was a sushi place (without looking at the name that is), because there is a long flat-belt conveyor (transportband in Dutch).Just like at Harvey Nichols in London at the top floor.

The way it works is actually the following. Comocomo have  7 different colors of plates, every color stands for the type of dish. For example Yellow was for dishes with cheese, blue for dishes with fish, green for veggie dishes….

At the end of your meal they’ll just count the amount of plates you have in front of you, the more plates you eat the cheaper it gets 🙂

They have about 60-70 different pintxos and if you saw something on the blackboard that you didn’t find on the carrousel yet, you can just ask for it… FYI, they have their hams, etc…. imported from Spain!

And don’t worry, you’ll eat more than enough, in fact I think you’ll eat even more as there are soooo many yummy things passing by (I had to stop, because my girlfriend started giving me a ‘ didn’t you have enough’ look… so I stopped, but I could go on and on and on 🙂

Also the wine lovers will like this place as Beatriz has made a very nice selection of some of the best Spanish wines (most of them can also be taken per glass). To help people to know where a certain Spanish wine is from, they added a map that indicates all the great Spanish vineyard regions (so you can even learn something about Spanish wines). We went for a Tempranillo by Aranleon  (we had 3 bottles, so I think  we liked it)

So if you want to have a nice evening with friends and try something different, Comocomo is definitely something for you!

 

Restaurant Comocomo

Antwerp restaurant:

Kammenstraat 75
2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Phone n°: +32 (0)3 232 02 10

 

Brussels Restaurant:

Antoine Dansaertstraat 19
1000 Brussels, Belgium
+32 (0)2 503 03 30

 

Stay tuned for the second part of my birthday…..

 

 

My first ‘official’ slow food experience

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Yesterday I had my first official ‘Slow Food’ experience. What is Slow Food you might ask? ‘Slow food’ is a ‘movement’ that try to show and teach people that there is more than only Fast Food, as for some people that is where the gastronomy stops. They do this by putting cultural and traditional cuisines and the picture in the picture prepared with ecological and/or artisan products.  This movement actually originates from Torino and was founded around 1986 by Carlo Petrini.

I had already heard about Slow food and had already seen some restaurants in Torino that are proud being part of the Slow food movement. I k now I make it sound like some kind of religion, but it’ not, it is just a way of respecting what nature gives us and handle it with lots of respect and care.  Technically speaking most of the elder Italian mothers and grandmothers prepare their food like this every day, so looking at it like that I have already tried it, but not really at a restaurant. Not until yesterday and I didn’t even try it in Italy, but at restaurant (or rather trattoria) Rossi in Leuven.  It might have not been in Italy, but the interior, food and chef make you actually feel that actually are in Italy.

Let me give you an example, you can choose between dishes the ‘à la carte’ menu or you can that the ‘Sorpresa’ menu (aka surprise menu) that the chef changes every day according to what he can get hold of that day. But funny enough, sometimes nothing on the ‘à la carte’ is there, so you just have to take the taste menu 🙂 If this would be in a regular restaurant, people wouldn’t be amused, but in this kind of place it is just part of the Italian experience (this is really how it also happens in Italy).

Yesterday’s menu was Zucchini Flower filled with ricotta and parmesan cheese, followed  Asparagus ravioli ‘al burro e Salvia’ and as main course Cod fish served with  Panzanella

You could really taste the freshness of the ingredients used and that the chef knows ‘de kneepjes van het vak’ as we say in Dutch (meaning that he really knows what he’s doing). I have enjoyed every bit of every dish. The food that Rossi serves really shows what I’ve been saying in lots of my blog posts, the simplest things are always best! You don’t need millions of ingredients to prepare a tasty dish, just a few ones from a good quality.

So basically if you feel like enjoying a night with great company (which I had) honest food  (REAL Italian food) for an honest price (30EUR pp for a sorpresa menu) in a normal environment (not posh), this is your place! Booking a table is recommended.

Hope you’ll be enjoying the slow food as much as me!

FYI, this is also one of the only restaurants where they make and serve their coffee with a traditional Bialetti

Restaurant Rossi

Address:

Standonckstraat 2

3000 Leuven, Belgium

Phone n°: +32 (0) 16 62 48 48

Apéros Vintage de Bordeaux 2012

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Step by step the summer is coming closer, but my summer wouldn’t be complete without another edition of Apéros Vintage de Bordeaux. I really liked last year’s edition, not only do you learn to appreciate Bordeaux wine, you also get to try some of the new upcoming places in some of Belgium’s greatest cities (no I’m not only talking about Antwerp 😉 )

Last year’s edition was only in Antwerp and Brussels. For this year they chose to add a few cities like Genth and Leuven. I can really recommend everybody to go! I hope I’ll get there this year!

Below you can find this the dates of this year’s edition and in case you need more persuasion, you can just read last year’s blog posts I have written:

Wednesday 6 June – Potemkine

Avenue du 2-4

1060 Sint-Gillis (Brussels)

Métro Porte de halle

Concert by : Big Noise

 

Wednesday 13 June – Bobar

Walpoortstraat 17, 9000 Genth

Concert de Hannezingt

 

Wednesday 20 June – Rodins

Oude Markt, 3000 Leuven

Bus Leuven Zeelstraat

Concert by:  Douglas Firs

 

Wednesday 27 June – Felix Pakhuis

Godefriduskaai 30, 2000 Antwerp

Bus Van Schoonbekeplein or

Tavernierkaai

Concert by Sam Vloemans & co

 

Wednesday 4 July – Barbeton

Rue Antoine Dansaert 114, 1000 Brussels

Métro Dansaert

Concert de Joy Wellboy

 

Wednesday 29 August – Le Fontainas

Marché du Charbon 91, 1000 Brussels

Métro Gare Centrale

Kong&Gratts DJ set

 

Wednesday 5 September – Hungaria

Baron d’Eynattenstraat, 3000 Leuven

Bus Vaartkom

Concert de Up High Collective

 

Wednesday 12 September – Soho Winebar

Marnixplaats 6, 2000 Antwerp

Tram De Vrière of Geuzenstraat

Concert de Nathan Ambach

 

Wednesday 19 September – De Vooruit

Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 23, 9000 Genth

Bus Zuid

Olivier Tjon DJ set

 

Wednesday 26 September – Bar du Marché

Rue Alphonse De Witte 12, 1000 Brussels

Tram Flagey

Concert d’Anoo

Homecooking without cooking at home

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Just two weeks ago Mama Kookt opened its doors. Mama kookt is a caterer/delishop that focuses on making home cooked meals. Mayda andBeatriz ( owners) are of the opinion that people don’t take enough time to eat a decent meal (I fully agree with them), which often results in eating fast food or unhealthy food. Eating a good home cooked meal is so much tastier (I sometimes dream of home cooked meals, I really do 🙂 ). That is why they decided to change this by offering a home cooked meal for a modest price of 9,5 EUR, that you can either pick up or get delivered at home. Mayda and Beatriz  prepare their home cooked meals with a Hispanic twist as Mayda is from Venezuela and Beatriz from Spain.

Just in a few clicks or via the phone you order your home cooked meal either per day, a week or a whole month. FYI, the menu also changes every day and for what you can see on their website looks very yummy :-). Every day you can choose between meat, fish or veggie always accompanied with vegetables (so you even get your daily vitamins) and for those who want also some desserts. You can also just pass buy their shop in the trendy Antwerp fashionstreet Kammestraat. In their shop they also cell imported Spanish, Italian and English deli products.

So if you’re in for a nice home cooked meal with a southern influence, you should definitely check out Mama kookt!

I’m sorry for my foreign followers, for the moment it is only available in Belgium… but who knows, maybe someday they’ll be thinking of expansion 🙂

Mama kookt:

Website: http://www.mamakookt.be

Address:

Kammenstraat 79

2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Phone n°: +32 (0)3 232 03 10

One step closer to feel like a top chef

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Louis XV, Bras, Hof van Cleve, Chez bru, Oud Sluis ,… some of the best restaurants in the world and they have one thing in common, they all use plates from a Belgian (Antwerp) company called Serax maison d’être. I have to be honest, that had already heard talking about Serax, but I didn’t know they were this big. Even lots of airlines use these plates to serve their food in first class… who knew?

Eventhough they are world renowned for their plates, the initially made flower pots :-). What actually made them famous. Around the 1980’s the owners from Serax (Serge and Axel) took over their mother’s pottery business and decided to take the pottery one step further…  (they of course also still design pottery)

What Serax tries to do is bring and create affordable design created by artist who respect the rules of the art like Pieter Stockmans (he’s the one who designed the plates used for the wedding of Prince Albert of Monaco), Ann Van Hoey (for Belgians, she is Mrs Mark Uytterhoeven), Antonio Sciortino, ….

What I noticed in all the elements that get designed for the tableware, pottery or even the glassware, is that all designers get their inspiration out of nature or just objects that nobody ever thought of giving a different function. So basically they have the same motto as me, Keep it simple! I couldn’t agree more, as the simplest things are usually the most beautiful.

Sometimes designers work together with chefs to make an own plate line. Like Michel Bras and Roos van de Velde for example. Take a look at the picture below and tell me what it reminds you of?

Yes, it reminds you of cabbage

I know it might frighten you, the fact that they design tableware with famous chefs (especially for the price),don’t be! As I already mentioned Serax makes and wants to make affordable design in which they succeed

Yet again a products that makes you proud to be Belgian and will help you to get one step closer of being a Masterchef with Masterchef material 🙂

Il macho bien soigné

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You can really see that people like it to go out for dinner, as even during the week it is so difficult to find a restaurant that is not fully booked! Even with a long list of restaurants I want to try, it still stays difficult. Thanks to my guarding angel, I managed to get a spot at restaurant ‘Il Macho’. I have to be honest, that I had never heard about this restaurant, I actually discovered it while looking on the website of restaurant ‘Bien soigné’ which is of the same owner. The pictures I saw from Il Macho looked very inviting, so I figured, why not try it… My fellow eater and I got a spot at the bar, I know lots of people don’t like this spot, but for me this is one of the best spots in a restaurant

Yummy food, friendly staff (not sure who of both guys was the macho 🙂 )and a relaxing interior with a good price-quality-quantity value, that is how I would describe restaurant Il Macho.  Although they have nice dishes on their ‘à la carte’ menu, my friend and I choose something the suggestions on the blackboard, where you could clearly see that Il macho only wants to work with products in their season. My friend took the grilled asparagus, with smoked salmon and beurre blanc. I on the other hand took the garden salad with Gambas, what was nice that they also put grilled/in oil marinated paprika in the salad which gave it a nice extra flavor.

The restaurant also has a nice selection of wines all for a normal price, per glass you’ll pay between 4-6 EUR. We started our Macho adventure with for me a spumante from the in Friuli based Tenuata Pinni and my friend a prosecco from piemonte by Araldica. The fact that they took sparkeling wines from these regions, shows that they really try to be different than all the other restaurants. As Friuli is more known for its white wines and Piemonte for its red wines and not really for their sparkling wines! Good job guys!

We continued our dinner with for me Cod fish with asparagus, samphire, apple and hollandaise sauce. My fellow eater had risotto of wild king scallop, asparagus and lamb ears (the vegetables, not the animal).

I still had some room left (surprise surprise) and took the apple tartlet as a dessert (I love apple desserts)

I can only say to try this restaurant yourself… and I’m sure you’ll like it

Enjoy!

Restaurant Il Macho

Website: http://www.ilmacho.be

Address:

Graaf Van Egmondstraat 19

2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Phone n°: +32 (0) 3 293 63 81

Boy meets local products

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Like you could already read in yesterday’s post, Belgium has a lot of great products, but sad enough not too many people realize this… So Didier Bastiaens of ‘Vrienden van de smaak’ thought it was time to change this and show everybody what kind of  treasures we have in Belgium by putting local products in the spotlights.

Last Sunday I experienced the first edition of a ‘vrienden van de smaak’ dinner. The concept of those dinners is based on what Southern European countries like Italy, Spain, Greece, etc…  have already been doing for years. Just picture a long table, somewhere in an open field, in the middle of a vineyard or even in a little town, where they only serve local dishes or dishes made with local ingredients…  The only difference is that the mothers who make the dishes in Southern Europe are replaced by some great Chefs like in this case Giovani Oosters from restaurant Vous lé vous.

The region for the kickoff was Haspengouw,  that is at its best during spring (as then all the fruit trees are flowering up). Normally the dinner was going to be at Kasteelhoeve De Kerckhem (outside), but due to the great Belgian weather they decided to do it a different location and did it at the garden of taste greenhouses.  I really couldn’t imagine a better location! As they had put the tables right in the middle of the Greenhouse 🙂

A lovely sight, ain’t it? To make this concept even more fun, they asked every guest to bring a plate with a motto or pledge on it, which they would put on the table and you were not allowed to sit at your own plate… this makes that you’ll be siting with new people you don’t know ( the social person in me loooooves this 🙂 ). I was sitting next to the lovely Marta aka Princess Misia who until now I only knew virtually, so thanks to ‘vrienden van de smaak’ I finally met her in real life 🙂

This was the plate I had in front of me

Food time, as that was the purpose of being here :-).  I can only say that one dishes was even better than the other one we started off with some white asparagus (the season has just started) with some dried meat (originating from Alken) with a walnut dressing and a salad of fresh herbs  (from the Mombeek valley) and some freshly made rye bread.  This got served with a Belgian chardonnay ‘blauw’ from Genoels-Elderen

After that they gave us some lamb ‘Hampshirre down’ (also local product) with pommes chateau and a spinach salad with goat cheese from ‘De Levende aarde’. This was really the BEST lamb meat I had EVER have, it really melted on your tongue (just picturing it makes me want more).   This got accompanied by a nice Belgian red wine (that had a really light color for being a red wine) ‘De vroege Loonse’ from Cohlenberg .

And the dessert was a pannacotta made of goat milk, rhubarb and hibiscus. This got served with I think the most special wine I have drunk in a long time, this wine was made of blueberries from Blueberry fields

The only thing that wasn’t really local, were the Coffee and Tea assortment (with thank to Barista Roel Driesen)  they served us. And again all different cups 🙂

This has been a true experience Didier, Chef Giovani Oosters, sommelier Harald Oostenbach, Puur Limburg and their team have really outdone themselves!

I really hope you guys have the change to go to one of the following dinners by Vrienden van de smaak. You can find the dates on following link . You can see ‘Vrienden van de smaak’ as a travelling restaurant only working with the products that it finds on its way.

Fyi, they also do this for companies…. (hope my boss reads this 😉 )

For the US version of the vrienden van de smaak, you can look on Jim Denevan’s outfields website

Filliers, glasses filled with joy

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This weekend I really had a wonderful weekend, a weekend that made me even prouder to be a Belgian! Sometimes I really forget that we have so many great products. One of these products we Belgians can be proud of is ‘Jenever’, in English it is known as Gin (don’t confuse with English Gin, which has the same base, but herbs are added) or juniper. This weekend I was lucky enough to visit the distillery of Filliers, one of Belgium’s biggest ‘warm’ distilleries. Why do I say Warm distilleries, well there are2 sorts of distilleries warm and cold distillers. You can compare it like you have what we call “warm” bakeries and ‘cold’ bakeries, where in the warm bakeries they make their bread, pastries, etc… from scratch. Whereas a ‘cold’ bakery will get everything delivered.  In case of the distilleries a warm one will make its own Malt wine, (is like a kind of rough beer) that is the base used to make ‘Jenever’.  Just to give you an idea, in Belgium there are less than 10 warm distilleries and most of them are in the East-Flanders region and not in the Limburg as most people (including me) have always been thinking.  You might really be surprised the big Jenever brands that are actually not producing their own Malt wine.

Filliers is one of Belgium’s biggest warm distilleries and is good for around 1,6 million liters of Jenever a year…  and is already existing from 1880, which gives that the current owners are already the 5th generation of distillers! So you can be sure that they have all the knowhow to make some good stuff 😉 and is also the reason why I wanted to visit this Belgian monument.

We do have to make a big distinction between the ‘grain jenever’ and the ones you find with fruit flavors.  As the production of the ‘grain’ ones is much more complicated and time consuming than making the ones with fruit flavor. As for the ‘Fruit’ jenever they will just mix the alcohol with the fruit. For the grain jenever the malt wine will be distilled 2 times (1st time in column kettle and second time in alembic at 85°C as alcohol heats quicker than water), wrests in barrels (bourbon and Sherry barrels) and after this has been done, and only after this has happened they will heat the ‘alcohol’ (as you could call it) together with the famous Gin berries that will give the particular taste to the Jenever.

I’m sure you guys have already heard talking about Old and Young Jenever. The big difference between both is actually that that Old one is made in the old way of making Gin and the Young in the new way… it is as simple as that 🙂 So not really the age of the Jenever as you might think.

What gives the different color to the older Jenevers is the type of wood of the barrel, not what has been inside the barrels (as for Jenever they always re-use barrels previously used for Bourbon or sherry). Once the Jenever is bottled, it will NOT age anymore, so basically 8 year old jenever will always stay 8 years old 🙂

My (and I’m sure everybody’s) favorite part of the tour is the tasting 🙂 Ok, the tasting was at 11 in the morning, but I’m sure it was 5 pm somewhere else in world  🙂 :-).  On top of that I didn’t want to be rude or offensive against the people of Filliers.

The first (yes, there were more) I tried was the traditional grain jenever or ‘druppeltje’ as people used to call them.

My second tasting was actually one on request, as during our tour, I was told that Filliers does not only make Jenever, but also makes one of the few Belgian Whiskeys… (Again, I’m sure somewhere it would have already been afternoon). I’m not really a whiskey drinker or expert, but I did like the aftertaste of this 12 year old malt whiskey… it had tones of vanilla.

I must say that my tour at Filliers was very interesting and I would really recommend it to everybody and not only the tasting ;-). Even if you are not really into drinking alcoholic drinks I’m sure that Filliers will have a product of your liking, I know I found a few :-). I have to thank Philippe (the Guide) for giving me a taste of the wonderful world of Jenever!  (FYI, if you visit the distillery, 1 euro per visit goes into funds for handicap people)