Food notes
Brussels
It’s nice to be home again after a long weekend seeing my sister and brother-in-law in Brussels. All of the windows are open to air the stuffy flat out, and because it’s a little muggy here. The third load of washing is on and the dinner dishes are all cleaned up. I didn’t have to go to the supermarket when we got home from the station because there were a few small bavette steaks and things for making a big salad in the fridge. I have cleaned up the 1 Euro a pop Weck jars that I bought at the Brussels flea market this morning, and the little yellow bowls with a brown rim that I bought for dips, and the big terracotta coloured casserole dish that my sister bought me when we played the Flea Market Game. Now that I have made lunch for tomorrow and packed by work bag and caught up on my dinner diary, I can pen a few notes here.
Last year when we were in Brussels for an early Christmas with T and S we played the first round of the Flea Market Game. Each of us had a budget of 10 Euros, and had to buy for the person we pulled from a hat. We did the draw at Muche, the cafe on the edge of the market that we always go to, and agreed to be back at Muche in 45 minutes. T, S and I were on time; Phil was 15 minutes late. Even though it is not Christmas, and there isn’t any other real cause for celebration, we decided to play the game this weekend anyway. We didn’t do a draw this time - just made sure that we weren’t buying for our respective dearly beloved, and that we were buying for someone different from last time. I bought my brother-in-law three records for his growing collection: Elvis, Shirley Bassey, one called International Cocktail. Phil bought T two of the ceramic eggs that she collects. S bought Phil a beautiful set of bone handled salad servers and a little pouch for coins. I got the casserole and two ugly pizza plates to add to my ugly pizza plate collection (these will be the plates I happily take up to the roof this Summer - I will not cry if they break). Food was a theme of the Game, naturally.
I went to the flea market three times over the course of the weekend. I just love it. On Friday T and I had breakfast at Muche before fossicking through treasure. We’d seen the breakfast the last time we were there and decided we’d go back (normally we just have coffee or booze, you see). We both had scrambled eggs which came with a little side salad and some baguette and butter. Mine came with slices of gouda, T’s with smoked salmon. The baguette was on the stale side, but if that had been good, it would’ve been the perfect breakfast for me.
It’s funny how we just go back to the same places we love in Brussels now. The bar by the pond that does really good glasses of chardonnay for 3 Euros a glass. The fish market where you can never get a seat but eventually you nab one, and where the crumbed, fried cod is really good (so is the mackerel cooked on the plancha, as I discovered this time). The bakery across the canal from T and S’s place where they do really good bread. But we also went to some new places this time.
On Friday it was 25 degrees and the sky was endlessly blue. It was amazing. After we’d had fishy things and glasses of white wine, T and I got a metro out to the neighbourhood where all the EU departments are based. It’s a weird part of town - sterile and quiet, but kind of fascinating and surrounded by amazing houses. We went to a beautiful little Friday afternoon market in a park in Schaerbeek. We drank glasses of wine and bought harissa marinated olives and sunflowers and plump strawberries and little glass pots of thick yoghurt with different fruit compotes in the bottom of the jar and little plastic pottles of riz au lait. Our favourite stall was the crepe stall, even though we didn’t have crepes, just drinks. It was our favourite because the daughter of the stall owner, a little girl named Alice, maybe 8 or 9 years old, who wore round glasses and a plastic frangipani in her hair, was the most clever little crepe maker. She was a whizz! In the space of maybe 40 minutes I reckon she made about 20 crepes. She took our drinks order very earnestly - handwriting on a little slip 1x rosé, 1x beer. My sister tipped her 1 Euro, she beamed and pocketed the coin. I love that.
We ended up eating dinner late on Friday night, outside on the cute little street that T and S live on. We had rosé spritzes and I cooked Merguez sausages and T made a big salad and S picked up cones of frites from the shop nearby. Each of us making an important contribution, and perhaps a contribution reflective of us as individuals? We had dinner on the street on Saturday night too - Chinese takeaways, just before it absolutely pissed down. When we moved inside each night we played endless games of Skyjo (new favourite) and ate my homemade gingernuts.
Because the weather was so good we got to spend a lot of time in parks. We sunbathed and played cards and played Mölkky, which basically involves throwing a piece of wood at other pieces of wood. The parks in Brussels are great because every Summer there are temporary bars set up, called Guingettes. They do really good and reasonably priced drinks and perfectly decent looking food too. I did better at drinking the rosé on offer than I did hitting pieces of wood with another piece of wood.
On Sunday, T, Phil and I went second hand clothes shopping. Well, mostly Phil did and T and I just traipsed along (lol) because Phil is the king of second hand shopping. We ended up having lunch at a Spanish tapas place that we have all walked past many, many times and always talked about going to. When we walked in we thought we’d arrived at a pub where everyone had gone to die - it was a bit grim and lifeless - but at the back of the pub was a big, light dining hall that had the vibes of a sports club. It was run by old people - some of them grumpy, some of them lovely and in sensible aprons. We sat at big communal tables and ordered what we wanted to eat on little slips of paper. We got a chorizo-based stew, fried chicken wings, chips with mayo, deep fried calamari, a plate of queso and a basket of bread. It was all very beige but all really delicious and generous. Phil also ordered pork ribs, which was total overkill; he conceded that it was a decision “[he needed] to own”. We had cheap booze and found the whole thing quite good fun, though by the end we were in need of something pickled or fresh. We sorted that out by just going to another bar for another beer.
After a few drinks on Sunday afternoon, Phil, S and I went to a hammam. Well, S and Phil went and had a proper hammam, but I ended up getting a massage. When we got home T had made us all chicken and vegetable rice paper rolls for dinner, with a homemade chilli sauce and a homemade satay sauce. T’s rice paper rolls are elite. They are packed to the brim but have very good structural integrity. We drank a bottle of cremant, unpacked why Phil Collins is my favourite singer, talked about whether we want to be buried or cremated (for the record, 3 of us cremated, 1 of us will donate their body to positive/reasonable scientific research), and two of us sang songs from our Catholic school girl upbringing (Shine Jesus Shine). Then we played more Skyjo and ate riz au lait.
It was just Phil and me for most of the day on Monday. We went back to the flea market. Back to Muche for coffee. We went to the Palais du Justice and bought ourselves Skyjo. We bought the most amazing sandwiches from La Sardine for lunch - the King Spicy baguette, filled with chicken cotoletta, spicy mayonnaise, rocket, tomato and lots of sliced green olive. We ate our baguettes at the bar next door overlooking the flea market and sipped on beer and wine and sparkling water and then we had to leave for the Eurostar. Shame to have to, really. But like I say, it’s nice to be home.
I’ll leave you with this entry from my physical dinner diary:
Dinner 120: 30 April
M & S chicken and tomato pasta salad. Eurostar.
En route to Brussels - solo. P comes tomorrow. I ate my crisps before I’d even left the house and the olive and cheese pot before I got to board the train. The man sitting next to me got up when I pulled out my small bottle of rosé. I thought he was just going to the loo or the café for a sandwich for his dinner. He never came back. Not bothered.