One of my employees is following bakery courses because apparently data governance is not hype enough anymore.

She shared with me some recipes and daaaaaamn those are delicious.

I’m torn between losing her as an employee once she launches her bakery and enjoying her newfound expertise.

We call these babies « croustillons » and those are typical carnival donut here in Belgium.

Making the dough is super simple;

250gr of flour 150ml of tepid milk
1 egg
7gr of dry yeast
20 gr of sugar
20 gr of softened butter
4gr of salt
1 small pack of Vanilla sugar

Beat the crap out of it for about 5 mins

And after a while it has doubled its volume:

Deep fried for a couple of minutes

And then add a lot of icing sugar -------

I slow cooked some pork shoulder & beef shin over the afternoon.

And we set the table up with everything so that everyone could compose whatever they wanted;

And it was glorious.

Not legit karaage as I did a batter, not quite tempura either but a mix of both.

Chicken was marinated about 2 hours then floured before being dipped in liquid batter tempura style.

Then for added crispy goodness I dipped them partially in panko

Before deep frying them till cooked

Rested and served with a mayo tweaked with soy sauce, lime, sriracha and some cucumbers on the side :)

Near Maastricht. Definitely my favourite spot all around.

Dozens of perches, pikes… and the scenery is lovely.

Truely a beautiful place

Tried to make karaage today. Dipped in the delicious soy sauce based sauce.

I still prefer the Korean version though.

Tough step this one. Their are imperfections here and there but poorly accessible and hopefully inconsequential given we will tile over.

The pump

Now is time for some panicky wait time. I’m really hoping I did not forget anything critical. If everything goes to plan we’ll be 4 to man the gigantic pump I requested and reel the cement mix in place. I have some shovels, rakes and I rented a vibrating ruler to help the finish.

weather is back to seasonal normals at around 25 after too many weeks over 30+.

Still I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something.

It’s that time of the month. Chicken and dashi based broth shoyu ramen style. Kids were delighted.

I’m not sure I’m so much a fan of this. Maybe the recipe isn’t the best there is but it felt not that creamy and lacked acidity despite my attempts to adapt with some more apple cider vinegar.

Damn :(

Step by step :)

I now have one last water evacuation to place where the exterior faucet is and the. I can lay the metal wire mesh.

Saw this recipe at some point on a Korean cooking yt channel and I wanted to try it since I love miso.

It was a banger. This chicken will be hard to top.

I had a fun time today, tracking those babies.

At the request of kid #1 we did spring rolls for dinner. This time I got one of the kiddo to roll his own rolls and they actually looked fine.

Some with shrimps and most fully veggie.

And with large quantities of peanut butter sauce.

With rice, cucumber and kimchi :)

I had some eggplant laying around so I made them in a side with a miso glaze.

Today time was in short supply with my partner visiting customers and me experiencing full speed managerial bullshit so I put together a simple curry.

After an eternity using a laser and making sure we have a slope of 1cm per meter we now have the base layer done :) If I understand correctly I now need to rent a machine to compact everything tightly before putting the visqueen layer and the armature.

It’s been a while since I could cook due to the horrific weather here in Belgium the last weeks. A quick meal to resume the cooking adventure :)

I'm trying the Loops thing :)