Vin Perdu ... the missing restaurant star!!

I always considered Vin Perdu (Turnhout, Beglium) a restaurant, which deserves at least one star. It has the right decor, the right service quality and the food never disappoints. The style is of modern French inspiration. Lately, we have seen improvements. Better quality. Something more in the flavors, I was telling myself ... is it going to be even better and yet without a star? Well, the food on our last visit on Saturday was simply sublime. I wonder when these Michelin guys will for real pay a visit in this part of Belgium and give Vin Perdu the deserved first star. I would give it two already!

What did we eat? We started with an amuse traditionally composed by foie gras brulee (a signature here), a lemongrass and mussels soup (refreshingly new) and dutch haring with a tomato mayonnaise. Tasty and light, served with a nice Cremant from Savoy. This was good ... but what followed was great: mackerel cooked at low temperature with a cucumber tsatsiki. The fish was melting in the mouth with the tsatsiki beautifully complementing it. A great dish with such a poor fish!! The food simply got better and better from there: great sea bass with a gray shrimp mousseline sauce (a twist in a very classic dish), a really tasty baby turbot with roasted red peppers and a beef reduction sauce (sounded weird, but tasted really good) and a koekoek (no idea of the English here) with morels and summer truffles ... this was fabulous! Only (relatively) low point was in the dessert. We got three small desserts based on passion fruit: a sorbet (fantastic!), red fruit with a Passoa cream (simple but delicious) and a mousse ... well, the mousse was not that tasty and quite heavy. Pity it was the last thing I ate!!

Would I go back? If I could afford it ... every week!!!

Pasta with peas pesto and gray shrimps

I saw this recipe in an old "Sorrisi e Canzoni: In Tavola" I literally stole from my mother a couple of years ago. I took me so long to come around to try it and, as usual, I did not really try the recipe as written. I decided to got for a sligthly lighter version and to use gray shrimps instead of the much less tasty pink ones. Tasty dish and healthy too!! Again a mix of an italian recipe with a belgian twist ... the grijse garnalen or gray shrimps.

Serves: 2 as a main course
FlexiPoints: 6 or 5.5 with pasta integrale

Suggested wine: I love a sancerre with shrimps. In this case also something lighter like a pinot grigio should be perfect.

Ingredients:
- 200g short pasta, possibly "pasta integrale"
- 200g peeled gray shrimps
- 300g peas
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 6 tbsp 8% single cream
- 5 basil leaves
- 1 garlic clove
- Salt and pepper as needed

How-to:
1. Cook for peas in unsalted boiling water for 5’ or until tender.
2. Put the (peeled) garlic, peas, cream, basil and some seas salt in a kitchen robot and whiz it until a chunky cream is obtained.
3. Boil the pasta in salted water. Incorporate 2 tbsp of the cooking water to the peas pesto.
4. Stir-fry the shrimps for 5’ with the oil. Add pasta and keep cooking for 1’. Remove from the heat and add the pesto. Season with pepper and stir well until the pesto is uniformly distributed.
5. Serve immediately.

Little pannacotta with raspberries

It was a long time I wanted to try this recipe from the book of Fabio Marangon from the restaurant Cucina Marangon. One of the few times I actually use my dutch in trying to understand a recipe. This said, I have to admit that the recipe is actually a fairly standard one. There is not twist or changes. Yet, we loved it so ... I post it. And I just had the last one few minutes ago!!! Ops, I was forgetting ... do not eat the spaghetti as well, it is only decoration!

Serves: 8
FlexiPoints: 4.5

Suggested wine: ... nothing !!!

Ingredients:
- 450g double cream (40%)
- 1 vanilla pod
- 70g sugar
- 54 rasperries
- 2 gelatin sheets
- 4 dried spaghetti

How-to:
1. Mix the cream with 50g sugar. Split the vanilla pod in two and remove the seeds with the help of a little knife. Add the seeds and the pod itself to the cream.
2.In the meantime, rinse the gelatin sheets in cold water.
3. Cook the cream on gentle heat for 15’ stirring frequently with a whip. Add the gelatin sheets and whisk well.
4. Distribute the cream among 4 small ramekins and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours.
5. Just before serving, make the raspberry coulis by mixing together 30 raspberries and 20g of sugar. Pass it through a sieve. Distribute it among the ramekins to make a red layer on top.
6. Break the spaghetti in two and make little kebabs of three raspberries each.
7. Serve with the kebab on top.

Fusion tuna tartar

It was a while my fiancee was asking for some tuna and today we saw a nice piece of (unfortunately farmed) tuna. Quickly, we decided to do something with it. We had some ginger, soy sauce and lots of basil. Thus, I went for a twist in the classic oriental flavours of soy sauce and ginger. Please note I really like the crunchy ginger bite. If you don't, use grated fresh giger instead.

Serves: 2 as main course or 4 as a starter
FlexiPoints: 3 or 1.5

Suggested wine: ... German riesling from the Mosel area !!! Nice, light and refreshing!

Ingredients:
- 300g tuna (possibly from the belly of the fish)
- 2 tbsp (fruity) olive oil
- 20g (unpeeled) ginger
- 10 small green basil leaves
- 1 tbsp japanese soysauce
- Salt as needed

How-to:
1. Chop the tuna in small irregular cubes.
2. Peel the ginger and cut it in a small julienne
3. Mix together the tuna, oil, soya sauce, ginger and some salt. Stir well and let marinate for 20’.
4. Rinse the basil leaves and let them dry. Break them by hand in irregular pieces and add them to the tuna marinate.
4. Serve immediately using a decoration mould to give it a nice shape.

The Italian Potato Gateau

The ultimate party food: the potato gateau!! A dish that can be prepared well in advance and served either cold or warmed-up. A filling dish ... which leaves little space for anything else and help in saving in other dishes. But, most importantly, I dish I loved and craved for since I am a kid. There are various ways of making it and I am sure that each family has its own version in my country. I propose the recipe I got from my mum ... well, almost since (as usual) I changed something ... just some ingredient proportion.

Serves: 5 as a main course or 10+ as a starter
FlexiPoints: 10.5 or 5

Suggested wine: That's a dish I can't pair very well ... or better it should go with almost any wine.

Ingredients:
- 800g potatoes
- 60g butter
- 40g grated parmesan cheese
- 40g grated pecorino cheese
- 100g of roasted ham in one thick slice
- 2 free-range eggs
- 1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
- 200g mozzarella cheese
- 50g smoked cheese or gruviere
- Salt, butter, pepper and bread-crumbs as needed

How-to:
1. Boil the potatoes in their until cooked. Peel and mash them. Work the mash with the butter and parsley till uniform. Season with salt and pepper. Let cool down.
2. Chop the ham slice. Slice the mozzarella and the smoked cheese (or gruviere).
3. Work the eggs, ham and grated cheeses in the mix.
4. Grease an oven tin or a ceramic oven-dish with some butter and dust it with bread-crumbs. Make on layers with half of the potato mash. Distribute the sliced cheeses on top and cover with the remaining mash.
5. Dust the top with more bread-crumbs. Season with little EVOO and bake at 180C for about 40’.

Pizza di Carne (Meat pizza)

Back home and ready to cook something! We have been dreaming to make this dish for a while, basically for as long as we started the diet. It is a weird way of making pizza by replacing the bread base with meat. I am giving you the real recipe and not what we did at home, which is basically the same but with mozzarella light, less meat, no yolk etc ... all changes aiming at reducing the calories (we managed to get to 9 FlexiPoints per portion ...). It was tasty, but the original recipe is way better!

Serves: 2 as main course & 4 as starter
FlexiPoints: 26.5 or 13

Suggested wine: go for a good bodied red wine form the New World or South of Italy. A Salice Salentino or an Aglianico would be delicious with it.

Ingredients:
- 200g minced beef meat
- 200g minced pork meat
- 10 basil leaves
- 180g buffalo mozzarella
- 150g tomato sauce (passata)
- 80g grated parmesan cheese
- 1 whole egg
- 1.5 tbsp of olive oil
- Margarine, pepper and salt as needed

How-to:
1. Work together the meat, 50g Parmesan cheese, egg, some pepper and salt.
2. Grease a 24cm baking tin with some margarine. Distribute evenly the meat mix on the base of the tin.
3. Top the meat with the tomato sauce, basil leaves and the sliced mozzarella.
4. Season with the remaining parmesan cheese, some salt and oil.
5. Cook in a hot oven at 250C for 20’ for well cooked or 15’ for a pinkish meat. Serve immediately.

Back from Hong Kong and Shenzen

I have not been in Hong Kong for 16 years! My memory of this city was of something awful with a beautiful secret temple. My current feeling is ... well this is a crazy city. Full of contrasts but much cleaner than expected. the shopping streets (and I am talking about Nathan Road) are a great contrast between lots of lights and old buildings. Shop windows full of everything at the most amazing prices !!! I still regret not buying a Canon 30D at 8000 HK$ (about 820 euros) or a Motorola Razr v31 at 1300 HK$ (about 130 euro) ... and this with almost no bargaining. I was amazed by how clean the shop selling food on the streets were! People being served with gloves!

Food-wise it was a great surprise! The first place we visited was Quarterback near the Ferry stop. We celebrated there my birthday and it was fabulous! Oysters, mussels, king prawns, BBQed squid and little octopuses, lobsters ... really tasty. We have visited also twice the Rainbow restaurant on Lamma island, where we could choose our fish or seafood when still alive! The taste couldn't be fresher despite their large use of garlic sauce with every dish (baby lobsters with garlic sauce, prawns with garlic sauce, scallops in garlic sauce, etc.). The price even more amazing ... about 120 euros for 4 people with lots of fresh fish!! Incredible!



However, the most amazing experience was at the Aqua restaurant and the Aqua bar ... on the 29th and 30th floor of the Peking One building! the view is fantastic! The atmosphere is really great despite the very loud lounge music in it. Food really good despite being european and japanese (in the wrong setting). I had a very tasty stir fry of lobster and mushrooms in a rucola salad as a starter, the main dish was squid ink pasta with sea urchins and the dessert was a carpaccio of pineapple with a honey, truffle and ginger foam ... fantastic! Something I would have never expected ... and some of my friend got a black pizza where the base was colored by means of the squid ink! Great idea to steal!!!

What I did not like in Hong Kong? Soho ... it feels like a dirty place full of mostly westerners.

We also spent a couple of days in Shenzen (China) to visit a couple of companies for our MBA course. We visited Wal Mart ... what a difference from the one in the states and so clean! I was amazed to see how respectful people shop there and by respectful I mean

No Comment ...

Finally back home and to internet ... my trip in Hong Kong and China could not end better !!!! Forza Azzurri!!!