Subcribe
Recipe
See Ingredients

Flemish Vol-au-Vent

A vol-au-vent is the French name for a baked puff pastry batter. The name means ‘windblown’ and describes the lightness of the pastry.
A round opening is cut in the top and the pastry cut out for the opening is replaced as a lid after the case is filled. In Flanders the pastry is filled with a chicken, meatball and mushroom sauce.

Instructions
  • Make small meatballs from the minced meat and boil them in the stock until cooked
  • Rub the mushrooms clean and fry them in little butter or margarine
  • Season the mushrooms with salt and pepper
  • Remove the bones, grease and skin from the boiled chicken
  • Cut the chicken in small pieces
  • Make a white sauce with the butter or margarine, flower, cream and stock and add the egg yolks and lemon juice
  • Mix in the mushrooms, chicken pieces, meatballs and grated cheese
  • Heat the baked puff pastry batters in the oven
  • Remove them from the oven and fill them with the hot sauce
  • Serve with fries or rice.
Recipe

Ghent Waterzooi

Waterzooi is a classic stew of Flanders. Its name is Dutch, ‘zooien’ meaning ‘to boil’. It is sometimes called Gentse Waterzooi (in Dutch) which refers to the city of Ghent. The original recipe is made of fish, either freshwater or sea, though today chicken waterzooi is more common. The most accepted theory is that rivers of Ghent became too polluted and the fish disappeared. The stew is made of the fish or chicken, vegetables including carrots, leeks and potatoes, herbs, eggs, cream and butter and usually serbed as a soup with a baquette to sop up the liquid.

Recipe

Apple Strudel

Strudel, štrudl, štrudla and štrukli – these are the names given by our neighbors in Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to this sweet dream of light pastry and its juicy filling. But in English, the only word which has made it into common use is the German “Strudel”. That is a powerful signal of just how famous the Viennese Apfelstrudel has now become internationally. But it’s all too easily forgotten that this fine pastry once traveled an extensive route from Arabia via the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, before becoming resident in Vienna. However, the long journey was worth it!

Ingredients

  • 4 baked puff pastry batters
  • 1 boiled soup chicken
  • 250 g/8,8 oz minced meat
  • 150 g/5,3 oz grated cheese
  • 250 g/8,8 oz mushrooms
  • 100 g/3,5 oz butter or margarine
  • 100 g/3,5 oz flower
  • 1 l/1 quart chicken stock
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1,5 dl/0,15 quarts cream
  • juice of 1,5 lemon

Serves

  • 4 people

Preparation time

  • 10 minutes

Cook time

  • 40 minutes

Want to know more about Europe?

Sign up to our newsletter here: