All posts tagged: herbs

A look inside shop Horeca Totaal (1), Bruges

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Shop review #13 – I have visited Horeca Totaal a couple of times. It’s a very large shop aimed at food professionals at the edge of Bruges (just around the corner from organic supermarket Bioplanet). There’s also a Horeca Totaal shop in Ostend. In one of my previous blogposts you can see the tea box that I have bought at Horeca Totaal. Chefs and other food professionals come to get their supplies at Horeca Totaal, but even if you are not professionally engaged in catering bussiness, you can also shop here. When I go to Horeca Totaal, I am still overwhelmed by the place. It is huge! I have too many photos to put them all in one post, so there will be a sequel to this post, focusing more on interesting products for vegans in Horeca Totaal. My impressions from Horeca Totaal – To be clear, it is NOT a vegan shop, and it also has a large butchery and fish section (photos are at the bottom of this post). These are in a seperate – fridge like chambers – of the shop, so you don’t …

#33 Our lunch at vegetarian resto Lokaal, Ghent **

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Restaurant review #33 – Lokaal is a new vegetarian restaurant/tea house (opened at end of 2014) in the city center of Ghent. It’s about a 5 minute walk from the Kouter, and is located at the corner of the glass alley (red light district). The name Lokaal reveals the restaurant’s concept: using local product (from within Europe) as much as possible. There is always a vegan dish standardly available. In a newspaper article I also read they wanted to grow herbs in the restaurant room and use these in the dishes. Lokaal also offers a couple of dozen sorts of tea. Sounds promising! So we were eager to check it out. Our lunch Options are indicated on the chalk board high up and above in the restaurant. The only thing that wasn’t vegan was said to be the quiche (I specifically asked about the bread and it was said to be vegan). The soup wasn’t red beet soup as indicated, but red cabagge soup. We ordered the soup (4,5€) and then the sandwich with Brussels sprouts and hazelnuts (6€), and the …

De Olijfboom (The Olive Tree), shop Bruges

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Shop review #4 – De Olijfboom (The Olive Tree) is a small shop close to ‘t Zand. The place is packed with spices, chutneys, salts, a selection of Japanese products, vanille (from many different countries), a wide variety of olive oils and more. And not the regular brands that are available in other shops, but rare and exclusive specialities. At least, we think they are rare, because we haven’t seen any of their products available anywhere else and the owner gave us information on the exclusiveness of some of the brands. It’s not an all vegan shop (eg some of the Japanese products contain fish), but a lot of the products are commonly used in vegan cooking. The owner told us the majority of De Olijfboom’s clientele are restaurants and catering businesses, and there is a selection of their business cards stalled inside the shop. Among which Michelin star restaurants like Hof van Cleve*** (Kruishoutem, 53km from Bruges). There’s a wide selection of olive oils available, bottled, but also tapped: We bought two different types …

Homemade: braised seitan, kale, brussels sprouts and sundried tomatoes

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This is a pretty straightforward one pot meal, which doesn’t take too much work. And with kale from our garden! It is from one of our favourite cookbooks Veganomicon (Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero). You can serve it with couscous or quinoa, or even with rice if you prefer. Kale is not so easy to find in Belgian shops (‘boerenkool’ in Dutch), so we grow it ourselves! It is a winter vegetable, and this variety (Westlandse Winter) can stand frost. We haven’t had a hard winter in Belgium this year. In fact, we haven’t had any real ‘freezing’ day at all, which is a new record again. Still plenty of kale in our garden. These are the ingredients for “braised seitan, brussels sprouts, kale and sundried tomatoes”: 2 tbs olive oil 6 shallots, sliced 2 cups seitan (homemade is the best!), in pieces 1/2 pound Brussels sprouts, quartered (= 2 cups) 4 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 ts dried thyme 1/2 ts dried basil 1/4 ts dried tarragon 1/2 ts salt pinches ground black pepper 1/2 …

Zaboer Asian Food, shop Bruges

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Shop review #1 – After our restaurant visit to restaurant Chang Ton Thai (review will follow) we accidentally stumbled upon this Asian shop just around the corner, next to ‘t Zand: Zaboer Asian Food. Quite a surprise, also because it was still open at 21:30 (which is quite unusual for shops in Belgium, most close at about 6 or 7 pm). UPDATE: see below! It’s not very big, but has some specialities which are not so common to find, and may interest vegans: a wide variety of dried beans and lentils, some brands of coconutmilk that I’ve never seen before, and a good collection of spices and herbs (eg, I saw different kinds of kardemon pods, which are not so commonly available in regular shops around here). A bit messy and untidy place though, not all items were clearly labelled. Also noticed some items which were past their expiry date, eg a tiny flacon of coconut extract (yeah! never found this before!) which was a bit overdue, and as such I got it for free, thanks! …