Wafels van Moniek

On a recent visit to Belgium, I bought a wafel iron (also called, I believe, a waffle iron).

Having lived in Belgium from 1971 to 2006, I am partial to most things Belgian, such as my wife, chocolates, fine patisserie, chips, and wafels (amongst other things). I also enjoy baking, so the purchase of a wafel iron (wafelijzer) was hardly a great step for mankind.

Mind you, finding just the right wafel iron proved to be harder than I had imagined.

When we got married, we were given a wafel iron as a wedding-present, and in those days you had a choice of a Nova or a… well, there really wasn't anything else, at least not in the electrical ones. You could, of course, have the non-electrical ones, but then you also needed a Leuvense stoof with a special wafel-iron-holding lid, so that sort were rapidly becoming nothing more than quaint decorative items (heck we threw out several that we had managed to collect, but which were useless without that Leuvense stoof). Nowadays, however, the choice of electric wafel irons is overwhelming. Well, it's overwhelming in Belgium; here in Spain, we had the choice of a single model, which made only small wafels, with fixed plates and which was not reversible. In Belgium we must have had a couple of hundred candidates: removable plates, non-removable plates; duplicate as a croque monsieur machine; different patterns for the plates; different wattages; reversible or non-reversible; plastic covered or full metal; thermostatically controlled or fixed temperature…

In the end I plonked for a FriFri Wafelijzer WA106A 4x7, which seemed likely to produce a sort of happy-medium waffle of both the Brusselse and the Luikse variety and would allow me to install different shaped plates later on, should the urge arise. Strangely, it closely resembles the Nova we received 46 years ago as a wedding present. Good designs don't disappear…

I prepared the first wafels following a recipe from Laura Vitale. I had already tried this recipe with the Spanish wafel iron and wafels they are, and quite pleasant, too, but Belgian wafels…? No, nothing like either Brusselse or Luikse. They did, however, prove that the new iron worked, and worked well. The mission now, then, was to locate a decent recipe for real Belgian wafels of either the Brusselse or the Luikse variety.

Fortunately, when chatting to a neighbour in Belgium, Moniek, I mentioned the new wafel iron and asked if she knew any decent recipes. Moniek assured me that she had an excellent recipe for Brusselse wafels and that she would email it to me. This she did and, upon arriving back in Spain it was not long before Moniek's recipe was put to the test. I prepared just a half of the amount, and just as well! That was sufficient for no less than 17 wafels and they were as close to the genuine as-sold-in-the-Belgian-patisserie wafels as you can get with a non-professional iron. Of course, we could not eat anywhere near all of them at one sitting, so many were kept for the next day, and the next… Easy to store and re-heated in the wafel iron or toaster they are as good as or even better than freshly baked.

In case you don't know, wafels are eaten covered in butter and brown sugar, or with cream and fruit, or with chocolate sauce and… well, whatever.

Bedankt, Moniek!

Here's Moniek's recipe (I have halved her original quantities):

• 500g self-raising flour
• 0.5 litre sparkling water
• 125ml milk
• 2 eggs
• 50g brown sugar
• 2 packets vanilla sugar
• 250ml corn oil or groundnut oil (I used sunflower oil)
• pinch of salt (I did not use any)

Mix the beaten eggs with the flour, sugar, salt, and oil. Gradually add the milk and sparkling water. This results in a liquid dough that can be used immediately.

Now I have to find a really good recipe for Luikse wafels. Anyone?

Some sense

Belgium's a great place. I'me Welsh, so I'm also supposed to be British, but I spent 35 years of my life in Belgium (more than in any of the other three countires in which I have lived, Wales, England and Spain), so I feel as much Belgian as anything else. I left the country for health reasons and miss its tidiness, its completeness, its pastries…

Belgium has had it rough during the last few months, having been shown to be a spawning ground for terrorists and now, just this week, being itself the target of some major terrorist attacks.

Sadly, the growth of terrorism has been matched by a growth of right-wing tendencies, with foolish non-thinkers jumping onto the easy solutions of "keep out the refugees," "down with Islam," and other nonsensical nationalistic propaganda.

Thank goodness, then, for some good old common sense, as demonstrated by Anwar, a young schoolboy, when he was interviewd at his school gates on the day after the attacks in Brussels for VTM News:

Here's a translation:

Reporter: Indeed, the attacks do not represent true Islam, says Anwar.
Anwar: Muslims are not like those that you see; Muslims are people that love peace and not killing.
Reporter: That's an important message.
Anwar: Yes, a very important message. Thank you very much.

Unexpected visit

Field where ashes of Julia Neetens were scattered

So there we were, enjoying the warmth, the dryness, and the sunshine of Guardamar, when Elise's mother, back in Belgium, takes a turn for the worse and we have to make a hasty way north. We thought we'd take a few days to drive the somewhat more than 2000 Km that separates Guardamar from Heusden (Oost Vlaanderen), and our first night was spent in Jaca, in the north of Spain, just before the French border. The next morning, however, we received a message that Elise's mother had suddenly become a lot worse. By the evening we had arrived at about 500 Km from our destination, so we checked again, only to learn that she had died earlier that same day. She was 90 years old.

We arrived at our apartment in Belgium at close to midnight and the next morning started arrangements for the cremation, clearing out the room in the home in which she stayed, and initiating the necessary legal procedures. The cremation was held one week later at the Westlede Crematorium in Lochristi. The next day, my own mother, who had been showing signs of illness for several days, had to be taken into hospital. She remained there for two-and-a-half weeks. She came back a few days ago, but requires help, so we have arranged for assistance in the form of home-nursing and home-help (shopping, ironing, laundry…).

In the interim, we have had a large triangular window in the apartment replaced. Its double-glazing seal had perished and air was getting in between the individual panes of glass, causing condensation and discolouring.

The exercise was carried out by the company De Grom of Erembodegem and it was both spectacular and successful. The team of some eight men worked well together in horrible conditions (it was pouring), removing the old window and placing the new one with hardly any damage to the surrounding structure: only the tiniest piece of plaster was knocked out of the surrounding sloping ceiling and this I was easily able to fill and paint over.  De Grom's achievement is even greater when you realise that the apartment is on the second floor. Here's a series of photos, showing the removal of the old glass and the placing of the new. Look carefully, and in some of the photos you can see the rain (pijpenstelen is how we describe it in Dutch, "pipe stems").

Lorry, crane and suction caps

Old window pushed into apartment, ready for turning and removal. It was here that the small damage was caused by the corner above the chappie's hand to the right of the picture.

Old window-pane pushed right into the apartment and turned, ready for removal.

And down it goes…

New glass brought into apartment ready for turning and placing

Set in place. Well done!

We really would have liked to keep the window free of the two "decorative" wooden bars that can be seen in the photo of the old window, above (very first photo). Unfortunately, however, community regulations regarding the "aesthetics" of the buildings in the complex, insist that the bars be in place, so a few days after the event, when the glass had dried completely, the bars were replaced and a beautiful panoramic view was destroyed. Here's a photo of how it could have been:

Rain? We've been in Belgium for over four weeks now and have seen rain on just about every day. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, as there must have been at least one day on which it remained dry all day long. But, really, dull, grey, cold, wet, that's just about all we've experienced. And when there is a bit of warmth, it immediately becomes humid and close (doef and horrible). No wonder people here say they don't like the heat! Let's hope we shall soon be back in Guardamar…

Where did March go?

Nope, I don't understand it, either, but we are now already a fair way into April. So, where did March go?

Well, SWMBO and I went back to Belgium for a couple of weeks in March, so that, together with the preparation and recuperation (you can't believe how tiring it can be, visiting different people each day) took care of a good deal of the month in question. Miracle of miracles, in the two weeks that we were actually in Belgium, it didn't rain once! That's some sort of record, I'm sure, and I am also sure that the boeren (farmers) were on the point of complaining about major drought conditions when we left to return home to Spain, though their wailing was pre-empted by a sudden return to more normal meteorological conditions (dull, cold and wet, in other words). It was quite warm during our stay, too, but it was that unpleasant, clammy sort of warmth that one gets in the north of Europe whenever the temperature dares to exceed about 20ºC.

Anyway, March was also glorious for the success of the Welsh rugby team in the Six Nations Championship. Not only did Wales beat England, a feat frequently accomplished, but always relished, but the fine young team also won the Triple Crown (beating all the national teams of the British Isles), the Championship itself, and (are you listening muvver?) the achievement of achievements, the Grand Slam (beating all five other teams in the Chapionship). Total and utter winners. All together now: "We are the champions," no, no, better a verse or two of Calon Lân.

We left for Belgium on the day of the coach accident in Switzerland, in which over twenty Belgian children were killed. Very sad, of course, but sadder still, perhaps, was the exaggerated attention paid to the event in the Belgian media and the way that the tragedy was exploited by politicians and clergy. Probably just as many children died that same day and every other day from illness and disease in Belgium, yet these were ignored and the hype that was instead built up and maintained over several days was, in many ways, an insult to all the unfortunate children and their parents, relatives, and friends.

Back in Spain now and Semana Santa is all the go at the moment. Yesterday, one of the time-wasters on the news was an item about the pope person washing some feet in Rome. Well, big of him. I wonder if he will also wash the feet of the Spanish nun who has been charged with stealing a just-born baby from its mother thirty-odd years ago to give (give? For how much?) to someone else. Numerous such charges have been attempted, but this is the first to be accepted by a judge. It is thought that thousands of babies were estranged from their birth parents in this way and only now is anything being done about it. And will he also be washing the feet of his minions who abuse the children in their care? Probably not. Semana Santa, my foot!

Oh, and did I mention that Wales won the Six Nations Championship, including the Grand Slam?