Canals

The Briare aqueduct was built over the Loire in Briare between 1890 and 1896 to make a connection with the Canal latéral à la Loire The Briare aqueduct stands on fourteen piers. These piers support a single metal beam carrying a trough with more than 13,000 tonnes of water, 2.2 meters deep. The width of the aqueduct, towpaths included, is 11.5 meters and its length is 662.7 meters. Eight sluices make it possible to empty the aqueduct in the event of severe freezing.

Vermeer

As part of keeping up to date with all our tours, we went to the Vermeer center in Delf.
http://www.vermeerdelft.nl/195.pp
Every year ...I learn more ... and appreciate & enjoy his work, more .
Apart from the fantastic cruising & and the FOOD on Absoluut2 ... This is one of my favourite thing in Holland.

last of the food for a while

Heat oven to 180 C
Mix all ingredients until smooth.
Pour into cake form (25 – 30 min.) : buttered & sugared: bake till just set:
Remove from oven … sprinkle icing sugar on top
Back in oven, till set :(8 – 10 min. more )
Remove from oven. Cool And when ready to serve
Rain sugar on top & blowtorch until dark (1-2 min)
Or brown under very hot grill.
Cool … serve…. Try NOT to eat it all.


I’m not sure why I am sharing our best recipes … I guess it is a long winter … lots of snow, outside… warm inside, & spending lots of time cooking.
‘cos in the summer we are out there cruising around, & chef has to do all the work.

Lemon Cheescake

Tarta de Queso

Serves 8 : TIME. Prep: 10 min: Cook: 45 min.


500 ml (2 cups) pouring cream
155 gm castor Sugar
300 gm cream cheese ,softened
5 eggs
180 gm. Ricotta.
125 gm. (1/2-cup thick plain yogurt) natural Greek.
Finally grated rind of 2 lemons.
Juice of 1 lemon
40 ml cognac

Great Bread

PERFECT BREAD. credit to Mr Lahey
Large bowl, add dry ingredients
4 Cups plain flour
1/4 tea spoon dried yeast
1 .5 teaspoons salt.
mix.
add 2 cups warm water.
Bring together. till no dry ingredients
Cover ( cling film) leave in oven 18 hours. ( 12 – 24)
Put mix on to floured bench fold in half & half again.
Put back in bowl for 2 hours.
Pre heat oven & covered pot ( or pan) 200C ( 220C also good)
Put mix out on to floured bench and then
Drop mix in to HOT pot / pan / pyrex…
Sprinkle generously with salt flakes & any seeds,
put lid on & back in oven at + 200 C (400F)
25 min. lid on 25 min. lid off
Remove from pot - cool – eat.

Actually. Have been working on a cheese cake to die for.

Well Ienka found this one, & the bread to follow.

See tomorrow.

Better

This is A LOT better than yesterday.

& the one we use on board.

Chocolate Gourmandize...

Credit to: Patricia Wells

125g (4oz) 70% Bittersweet cooking chocolate

125g (4oz) unsalted butter

3 large eggs

1-cup sugar

1 tablespoon ground almonds / 35 g. plain flour

Butter and a dusting of flour for the ramekins.

In the top of a double boiler, set a bowl to melt chocolate and butter together.

In a bowl, whisk, eggs and sugar thoroughly and then add the ground almonds &w flour. Just mixing to blend together.

Gradually add the melted chocolate / butter, mixing as you go.

Set aside for one hour to allow the flavors to mellow.

Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F.

Pour into the buttered / floured ramekins

Bake in the middle of the oven until the edges are set and the centre is still a bit liquid... 10 minutes

Place the hot ramekins onto saucers and serve immediately with a dollop of cream.

Now I am Choc. Mouse’d out…

Have started on apple pie… just to clean the pallet.

Fondant

Variations

Baked chocolate fondant

Dilute 12g of arrowroot (or cornflour) with a tbsp of water and fold it into the chocolate mousse. Fill small oven proof moulds (buttered and lined with a 1/2 cocoa powder half 1/2 caster sugar mixture) 2/3 of the way up the mould and bake in a preheated oven (170C) for 6-7 minutes. The chocolate fondant should be cooked on the outside and melting in the centre.

MARIE’S Rich Chocolate Mousse

Serves 10.

250 g. bittersweet chocolate 70%

50g. Unsalted butter, cut into pieces

4 large eggs, separated

1 tablespoon Cognac

125g. Castor sugar

Melt chocolate and butter in a Bain Marie, gently stirring occasionally until smooth. Remove from heat.

Beat whites, & 75g. of sugar, in a large bowl, to soft peaks.

Beat yolks in a small bowl, with 50g. of castor sugar, until thick enough to form a ribbon ...2 to 4 minutes.

Whisk yolks into chocolate mixture along with Cognac.

Fold beaten whites into chocolate mixture gently but thoroughly. Transfer to stemmed glasses,

Cooks' Notes:

•The eggs in this recipe are not cooked.

Let stand at room temperature at least 30 minutes before serving.

Choc, Mousse 1

Maman Blanc's chocolate mousse

Low fat Serves 10

Preparation time: 20 mins

Cooking time: 0

Ingredients

1200g dark chocolate, 70%

240g / 8 egg whites, free-range/organic

30g / fructose sugar

Method

Place the chocolate in Bain Marie. Turn the heat off when liquid.

In an electric mixer, (not on full power) whisk the egg whites and fructose until they form soft peaks.

Whisk in 1/3 of the egg whites to lighten the mixture and immediately fold in the remaining egg white with a large spatula. Do not over mix at this stage as you will knock all the tiny bubbles of air out and be left with a dense mousse.

Pour into individual glasses and leave to set in the fridge for 2 hours or until required.

Now this was very good….

But I wanted more.

And now we are back to some more tasty matters.

We are working our way through the menu… looking at every dish to see if there is any thing we can do better / different.

Being sure of the wines to be served with each dish.

(Including desert wine with … well, the desert.)

Naturally we started with our chocolate mouse.

I have to say that I thought we had the best Choc. Mouse in the world.

But Sarah, our Chef in France, last year, did a fantastic. Quenelle of mouse with fleur de Sal and Capsicum Jelly cubes.

So we started our comparative cook off.

Main ingredient is the 70% cacao

Results are.

For very Low cal…

Paint for sale

Last week our daughter Jaci, who we have not seen since Christmas, decided on 4 days mini break, back home, with her parents. (I don’t know what the airfare was, but it was less than the long-term car park)…

And that brings me to the point of this blog.

As you may be aware she is a celebrated commercial artist.

By commercial. I mean she sells everything that she paints.

www,jacihoganart.com

And to think, as a parent, I tried to dissuade her from being an artist.

She works out of her studio, in the Cotswold’s.

And is having her first ever on line sale.

Palma

Winter may be all around us, but that makes it a good time to catch up with friends.

One of the great things about living in Euro land. Is the fact that one can be in an exotic “foreign” country. In an hour or two, for 30$-50$ .

I mean it costs more to drive to the airport. And 3 times as much for parking as it costs for the airfare.

We took a week in Palma (to visit our son Luke ) cost 25€ pp . ( 2 hrs flying)

What a great place… I think I could live there .

Especially with access to “Cappuccino” a small chain of coffee shops.

If you are in Palma don’t miss Cappuccino

Portuguese

A lot of interest from Portuguese speaking people lately.

Firstly there was a family from St. Palo Brazil,

One forgets how big a population they have.

And an intrest in Driving Porsches around a race track.

I am looking at the possibility of adding this as an option on all cruises if there is an interest. ( let me know)

and now an inquiry direct from Portugal, for this year.

And an ex Portuguese family from America, for next year.

It must be the year for them to go barging.

Vegetables

AS spring turns to summer on the European cruising waterways, its time to revise

the menu. As usual assorted salads remain of the lunch table, but for the garnishes

on the evening main courses, we introduce a variety of mashed vegetables like peas or

broadbeans, cauliflower or roasted mashed beetroots, and pre-roasted mash of sweet

potato all great accompliments to the beef, veal, pork, duck and fish dishes offered on

the evening menu on AB2.

A stack of ships

This was seen in Rotterdam harbour ... 13 ships all welded together & to the barge .

Built in China to fuel the explosion in cargo needs. before the recession... now they are all lying around unfinished & un paid for. But it is impressive to see them stacked up like this.

French Internet

Sitting on the deck getting our new French internet working properly.

Even though we all live in the vast new Euroland.

Every country still has technology that can not pass borders.

But I feel sure that its only a matter of time.

So we have to have phone contracts & Internet contracts for every country that we cruise through.

Still it does all work.. WiFi all over , even from the deck of a moving ship.

And it gets cheaper every year.

So Life is great on the cyber waterways.

Chelsea flower show

As parents of adult kids, isn't it a pleasure to take pride in some of their achievements.
Last week was the week of the Chelsea Flower Show in London
and our daughter Jaci exhibits her art ( huge canvases Georgia O'keefe style)
and a wonderful range of giftware decorated with her original designs.
art@jacihoganart.com
Onboard Absoluut2 we love to feature flowers in many ways, especially the spring flowers
on our dutch cruises in April and May. There are some spectacular desplays of all varities
of flowers as well as the garden designs. But for us, one of our favourite displays in the pavillion,
was the gold medal winning vegetable stand, spectacular indeed.
One of our eco-efforts for this year on AB2, is to source our produce from the local producers
in each of the areas that we cruise through, both in Holland and France. Thus we really appreciate
the European way of merchandising, where they are focusing on offering, in fact competing for
the products grown closest to where they will be sold to us, by giving provenance by the kilometer.

Historic car rally Ypres

It never rains, that it pours.

I have just been asked to be the mobile hotel at the Ypres Rally

So I have to decide if I would prefer to be at a Jazz festival or a Historic car rally.

Now I love Jazz, and have been to many Montreux Jazz festivals.

But CARS....

My ideal house, would be a 12 car garage with a view & somewhere to live.

So lets see what pans out.

Jazz festival.

Ab2 has been invited to be present at the 31 st. Django Reindhardt Festival.

June 23 - 27 in Samois sur Seine.

And we are thinking that this would be a good way to spend a week , tucked in behind the island on the Seine, with all the music wafting over the decks.