Café-restaurant de la forêt -Overijse/Jezus-Eik

If you're looking for some easy, good value for money brasserie food and you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Overijse/Jezus-Eik/Tervuren then this is the place to go. Offering a wide variety of brasserie classics as there are; cheese croquettes, mushroom toast, eels in green sauce, côte a l'os, dame blanche and many more...

+ an often changing suggestion board.
















Toast Champignons - baked mushrooms on toasted bread

Escargot a la bourguignon - Snails in a garlic sauce

Delicious Mort Subite Geuze on draft -  Ideal to work up an appetite!

 Entrecôte nature bleu chaud - medium rare prime rib

 

The waiters are allways friendly and will adress you in 'Brussels', a language somewhere between French and Dutch. Athmosphere is lively and decoration is authentic brasserie style, don't expect  any Pinto here!

Golden brown crispy french fries with Vol-au-vent and my daughter's smile ;)

 And don't leave without having some nice dessert like ;

Profiterolles with chocolat sauce

Cheesecake with speculoos and red fruit coulis

Warm apple pie with vanilla icecream

Prices are all reasonable for the good quality you get so please,......

Enjoy,

Kev

Mussels in white wine sauce

Lovely mussels recipe and a typical Belgian/dutch way of serving them. Good quality seafood, some vegetables, seasoning and a splash of wine....that's all it takes!!

This is a dish for 2 persons, so about 1.5kg per head. We're big mussels eaters but you can count about 1kg. per person normally!

Estimated preparing time: 30 minutes

Ingredients: 

• 3kg. of mussels
• a big glass of dry white wine, +/- 20dl
• 2 big onions, cut in rings
• 3 celery stalks, chopped roughly
• 2 carrots, chopped in thin rounds
• 1/2 bush of flat parsley, chopped up
• 2 chillis, chopped finely and deseeded
• a pinch of dried chilli powder
• salt and pepper
• 6 spring onions, chopped roughly
• handfull of cilantro, chopped finely   Keep this aside together with the spring onions

Prepare the mussels in 2 pots, so divide them in 1.5kg servings. Divide the greens and wine in 2 equal amounts.

heat up some olive oil in the pots and throw in the onions, carrots, celery, parsley and chillis.

Add the mussels, dried chilli powder and the white wine and turn up the heat. Put the lid on the pot and let this cook for 5-8 minutes, add the spring onions and cilantro and season with salt and pepper, shake well and serve!

Enjoy,

Kev

Halloween pumpkin risotto

A nice rich and creamy pumpkin risotto to be served as an appetizer or as main dish. Ideal for cold fall weekend days ;)

Ingredients:

• 600gr. of pumkin, cleaned and seedless and diced in small cubes(+/- 1cm)
• 1,3lt of chicken stock
• 300gr. or risotto rice - Arborio or carnaroli
•  about 50gr. of grated parmesan cheese and some slices for decoration
• a couple of sage leaves
• 1 challot, finely chopped
• a glass of white wine
• couple knobs of butter
• salt and black pepper
• olive oil

Make sure the chicken stock is warm.

Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry the diced pumpkin until soft. Keep about a third apart for later and put the rest in the blender.

 Blend until you get a fine pumpkin puree, add some water if necessary. Season this puree with black pepper and salt and keep aside.

Heat up a couple of drops of olive oil in a large pan and fruit the challots.

 Add the risotto rice and stir firmly. As soon as the rice starts to get translucent you add the glass of wine and just let the alcohol cook out, this won't take long.

 Then you start to add the stock, ladle by ladle. You add one ladle and when the risotto starts to get dry you add another one. This takes about 15mins to get the rice 'al dente'. Make sure to taste from time to time, you don't want this to be overcooked and mushy but not undercooked neither. The grain should be soft but still with some bite. Now add the grated parmesan and let it melt under the rice.

 Add the pumpkin puree and diced pumkin and stir well. 

Throw in some knobs of butter, taste and season with salt and black pepper to your liking.

Heat up some olive oil in a small pan and fry the sage leaves shortly.

Take a big ladle of risotto and plate it on a dish, decorate with slices of parmesan and some sage leaves.

Enjoy,

Kev

Chocolate mascarpone cake

An easy Chocolate cake recipe, based on a creamy masacarpone and fresh cheese filling. The chocolate is flavoured with powdered ginger but you can also buy chocolate with ginger allready in it if you can find that!

Ingredients:

• 250gr. mascarpone
• 200gr. fresh cheese
• 150gr. dark chocolate
• 50gr.melted butter and some more for greasing the form
• 150gr. JulesDestrooper butter waffels (or ginger bisquits or any type of hard cookie...)
• 2 eggs
• 35gr caster sugar
• 1 tsp. powdered ginger
• Springform of 20 Ø

Preheat your oven at 190°.

Break up the waffles in pieces and put them in the blender, pulse and grind to a fine crumble.

Mix the crumble with the melted butter  and spread this in the springform. Press well with the back of a spoon, certainly on the edges. Bake this in the oven for 5 minutes. Take it out and let it cool down and turn down your oven to 170°.

Mix the mascarpone with the fresh cheese to a smooth cream. Break the eggs and put them in the cheese/mascarpone cream together with the sugar.

Melt the chocolate 'au bain marie' and add the ginger to it.

Add the melted chocolate to the mascarpone/cheese mixture and pour it in the form. 

Put in the oven for 50-60 minutes. Take it out and go around the edges of the form with a thin knife to cut the the cake loose from the side of the form. Let the cake cool completely down in the form. 

Don't worry if the cake collapses a bit, that's normal.

Enjoy,

Kev

Junkfood Deluxe by Quentin

'Junkfood Deluxe by Quentin' in Bxl is a small burger joint in the hip Châtelaine neighbourhood offering a nice variety of tasty burgers. Not your average beef-patty-on-bun-burger but something to satisfy both the hunger of a  burger aficionado and the epicurean.





The burgers may be a bit small but that gives you the opportunity to make up a combo and taste more than one burger. These combo's will also make it easier on the wallet but lest not forget....we're talking burgers here, not Guy Savoy dishes and the check will never be painfull!

I took a Reblochon burger in combo with a Boursin chicken burger and some french fries(deepfried in olive oil) on the side. The Reblochon was a pure beef patty with melty reblochon cheese, peppery pepper sauce, frisee salad, crispy bacon and crispy onions on a brioche bun. Very good and nice combination of flavours.
The Boursin had a crispy patty of ground chicken beef with chinese cabage, fresh estragon and marinated bell peppers on a sesame seed bun. A good mouth full of fresh estragon! Yummy!

Wash it down with a cold,crisp blond Vedett or have a glass or bottle of wine from the short but filled winelist.


Have a nice dessert to finish your meal, crème brulée - chocolat moeulleux - homemade icecream......
Cost?? 2 (small) burgers, french fries and a beer = 13€. ;)

Service is like the neighbourhood, easy-going and that's no problem at all!!

Enjoy,

Kev

Fluffy Chocolate mousse

This is a recipe to make a nice fluffy/light chocolate mousse. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking about skipping calories but only texture wise! Mixing this with beaten eggwhite snow gives this a nice light texture. And all kids love this dessert!

Ingredients:

• 200gr. pure dark chocolate
• 6 eggs, separate the whites from the yolks
• 100gr. sugar
• 375ml of cream, 40%

Estimated preparation time: 30 min + a few hours in the fridge.

Melt the chocolate au bain marie.

Beat the yolks with the sugar to a foamy texture. Add the melted chocolate under this mixture.

Beat the eggwhites to stiff peaks and gently spoon them under the yolks/chocolate mixture.

Whip the cream lightly, you don't need whipped cream but lightly beaten cream and mix this under the rest. Pour in cups and set in the fridge for a few hours.

Take out half an hour before serving.

Enjoy,

Kev