Chocomania! A visit to the Neuhaus factory shop

I have been ghosting you again, dear readers. Not much has been going on here, just struggling through the gloom of a Brussels winter. It got cold for a little bit, snowed a tiny amount, and now has gone back to quite warm, but rainy gloom has replaced the frosty sunshine we had in January. And it's still so dark all the time!

But not for much longer... We are almost in the final countdown to the NZ trip, less than two weeks to go. On the one hand, I kind of regret that we will be enduring most of the winter here anyway, but on the other hand, I didn't want to use up such a big chunk of holidays so early in the year, and when we come back, hopefully spring will be here. Plus, NZ in February is much nicer than January. At least, I hope so. Every time I check the weather forecast, it seems to be sunny but with rain predicted for the coming days. Not sure whether that means it has actually been sunny all the time or not...

Couple of quick things before I probably go into hibernation again and then hit you with an unending stream of posts from New Zealand. (Eeeeee!)

Our joint Christmas present to ourselves was a shiny new Magimix food processor. Points to note: my god, it takes up space! I knew the size of the processor itself (we bought online, but had seen it in a shop). What I didn't know was how much room all the blades and other accessories take up! It's true, by the time you fit the blade and clean the machine afterwards, half the time you could have just chopped the carrot yourself, but it's a lot of fun. And we've made some things like pommes de terre dauphinoise or sliced leeks or julienned carrots where I definitely wouldn't get the things as thin or uniform. And it does come into its own when you're making a big batch of whatever. We made soup yesterday with 2 cups each of diced carrot, celery and onion, and that saved a lot of grief. If you have any recipes that require a lot of chopping/slicing, send them my way!

Plus it's so shiny and red, and looking at it gives me a smug middle-class sense of self-satisfaction

About the only other noteworthy thing I've done this year is also food-related (surprise, surprise). I wanted to take some Belgian chocolates back home to friends and family, but the good ones (not cheap and nasty bulk-buy seashells) cost an absolute fortune. Like at least 25€ per box that you see in the photo below. Times it by maybe 10 people and you're looking at a cool 250€. (Geez, thanks for the maths help, Einstein.)

Luckily, I was talking to a colleague who let me in on a little Brussels secret - the Neuhaus factory shop! Neuhaus is already one of my favourites, so I was super excited to visit, especially when I heard you can eat as many free samples as you like. Basically, the boxed chocolates are not so much cheaper than what you get in the retail stores, but the real bargains come in plain, single-variety cardboard cartons. I picked up three kilos of chocolate for 40€.

You can eat as much as you want from the open boxes

And then splash the cash on the plain packaging

As far as I'm aware, the plain boxes aren't "seconds' in the sense of being defective or whatever. We were looking for later expiry dates on the boxes we bought, and they all expired by like the end of April, so I'm guessing that's more the reason why they are in the factory shop. Apart from that (I'll just assume my family will eat their chocolates quickly!) the only downside is that there's only three different varieties of chocolate in the three kilos and I'll have to fiddle around in NZ packing them into individual portions. On the plus side, it will be a lot easier to transport them than the equivalent in 10 different boxes. 

I suppose I've lifted the veil of mystery for anyone who may be reading the blog and also getting chocolates from me, but oh well. I figure most people would rather more chocolates in a less fancy package (and also that I don't bankrupt myself).

We went by car, but apparently you can take the metro to the last stop and walk a short way, so definitely an option if you're ever visiting Brussels. Beware though, we didn't have breakfast, and I would have thought I could eat basically endless quantities of chocolate, but I got sick pretty quickly! If you're coming on a mission, e.g. for the bulk-buy chocolates, make sure you taste those first, because by the end I horrified myself by having to take a bite of different chocolates and then throw the rest away. (A dark day for humanity.)

Chocolate, lobster and (no) wild pissing

When we visited Belgium en famille last year (can't believe it was that long ago already), Brussels was pronounced to be pretty much the most boring place ever by my sister, who stayed behind while Dad and I were off to Spa for the Grand Prix. So when she came for a visit back in July, the pressure was on to find some fun activites to show a different side of Belgium. Basically, as long as it involved yummy food and drink, Jess would be happy.

So on the Saturday, I booked us in for a chocolate-making workshop at Zaabär. I've had my share of fairly cheap and nasty Belgian seashells bought from tourist trap shops around the Grand Place, so I thought this would be a fun way to learn a bit more about how chocolate is made and, more importantly, get to make our own creations. The class started with a brief demonstration of how chocolate is tempered, before we got to go to work making our own chocolate bars, mendiants and truffles.

Tempering chocolate the traditional way, by spreading it out on stone

Jules all frocked up for the workshop

Making some non-traditional mendiants

Making truffles

Our tray of truffles

It's not the world's most flattering look

My very own chocolate bar

Overall, I would say it was a fun activity and good value for money (20€ for the hour and of course you get to take your chocolate home). It's not the sort of thing you'd go and do any old time, but for an activity with visitors, or if you're a tourist yourself, why not? The chocolate bar and mendiants were done with individual piping bags, and it was pretty fun making different mendiant designs and choosing the toppings. The truffles, on the other hand, were made by dipping a truffle centre into a bowl of liquid chocolate (using tongs) and then rolling them in nuts. Our bowl of chocolate was shared with a couple of kids aged around 7 and 10 or so, who had the unfortunate habit of losing their tongs in the chocolate and fishing them out again with their hands. I'm not usually the most squeamish person in the world, but I also view children with a general suspicion, so the truffles we made are actually still sitting in my fridge uneaten.

A big bonus to the chocolate workshop was going into the factory shop afterwards. There were abundant bowls of free samples, and nobody bothered us as we duly sampled pretty much every type of chocolate (whether they're as welcoming if you've just come off the street, I don't know). They specialise in exotic flavours, so it was great to sample chocolate made with all kinds of crazy things, from thyme to jasmine, to chilli to sage to curry powder and many more. Not all of the herbs and spices quite worked for me, but it was fun tasting them. I went home with the less adventurous choices of plain, macadamia and tonka bean (although I looked up tonka beans on Wikipedia later and found out that they're banned in food in the US because they're poisonous in large doses, so that's quite exotic).

Jess doesn't eat meat, but luckily Brussels has some great fish and seafood restaurants, so in the evening we headed to François restaurant for some lobster. I've had lobster before, but this was actually my first time eating a whole (actually a half, but you get what I mean) one rather than in a salad or a soup etc. It was nice, but I don't think it's amaaazing. It came as part of a fixed-price menu, so it was a case of "might as well order lobster" rather than getting cod or something for the same price, but I wouldn't pay squillions of dollars for it.

Fashion tip: always try to match your shoes to the curtains

It was a good day for protective clothing

On Sunday, we went to the Gentse Feesten, a street festival in Ghent. Allegedly, this is one of Europe's biggest city festivals, attracting around 2 million visitors. All I can say is, there was not much going on when we were there. Not many visitors, but more importantly, not much festival. Maybe we were there too early, maybe it was because the previous couple of days had been hot and sunny, whereas the Sunday was a bit grey and drizzly, maybe it was because it was a Sunday (although the next day was a Belgian public holiday). We walked around a bit, had a yummy lunch, a few drinks, and saw the famous van Eyck altarpiece, and that was pretty much that.

Didn't even have the chance to do any wild pissing

Me and Jess in Ghent

So maybe that was not the most exciting event either, but I tried! Before we knew it, it was time to drop Jess back off at the Eurostar, to send her back to the land of Lewis Hamilton.

Is that a pain au chocolat in your hand, or are you just happy to see Lewis?

Chocolate and things

I would like to say that I haven't blogged in a while because I've been SO BUSY, but that would basically be a dirty lie. Yes, obviously I'm settling in to the new job, but the truth is in the evenings I find myself with almost *too* much time on my hands. Sure, when I was getting home at 8.30 pm after being out of the house for nearly 14 hours, I dreamed of having more time to myself in the evenings, being able to relax instead of rushing to cook dinner and then fall into bed - and trust me, I'm not complaining that things have changed - but turns out I kind of adjusted to not having any spare time. So going from that to having a solid 4 hours or so till bedtime, with no social life to fill them with, is a bit of a shock. So I know, I know, the answer is to throw myself in to finding new activities to fill my time (particularly before I readjust to a life of comparative leisure). I should be getting out there and meeting people, taking a class, whatever. And yes, I SHOULD do that, but there's always a fight between the part of me that is a bit bored and lonely and the part of me that really would rather just lounge around in my PJs than do something daunting like going to a meet-up where I don't know anyone. I'm hoping when the summer break is over I can start up some language classes... That gives me a couple of months to pluck up the resolve to get out there, at any rate.

So things are ticking over. Nothing much exciting to report for the moment, although my sister's coming to Brussels this weekend, and with any luck this hot, sunny weather will stick around for it. I joined the library, which I'm pleased about since it had been years since I was a member of a library and that always makes me feel guilty (support your libraries BEFORE they're threatened with closure, people! By going there and borrowing things, not by tweeting about how awesome you think libraries are), especially since there's actually a decent selection of English books in the central branch.

Here's a few old(ish) photos from the camera, and then I'll introduce Jules' and my inaugural chocolate dégustation, mmm!

Me, Caro and Liz at Vitiloire

And at Caro's place

I feel this is representative of the way I look a lot of the time

The Tours monster claims another victim

Rosé and strawberries on the balcony with Bob

Our view of the fireworks for Luxembourg's fête nationale. Over the top of a 5-storey building, people. Tsk

So, when moving to Belgium, you'd be crazy not to sample some of their finest frites and chocolates (probably not together). And I suppose beer and waffles too, if you're that way inclined. (I am not inclined to beer, I am kind of to waffles, but they're probably not a treat I'd cross the street for if there was chocolate on my side of the street.) In an attempt to class things up and justify eating a ton of chocolate, Jules and I staged the first of hopefully many chocolate dégustations together.

Our first chocolatier was Mary, recommended in the "Secret Brussels" book my old colleagues gave me as a leaving present. The book claimed that their shop on Rue Royale was recommended as one of the 1000 places to see before you die. I was expecting ornate chandeliers, crystals, velvet, whatever. I actually can't remember what it looked like and didn't take any photos, but as far as places to see before you die go, the shop itself was evidently a bit meh. But that's not the important part, the important part is how did it taste?

We originally planned to buy 5 * 2 chocolates, but ended up getting six since it was so hard to pick. Plus we got an almond praline each thrown in for free, which was a nice surprise. The 12 (14) chocolates came to 10.50€, which seemed reasonable, although I suppose each chocolate is pretty expensive if you really think about it. After some discussion of how to rate the chocolates (Jules was rating them vis à vis each other, whereas I couldn't quite decide whether to go with that idea or try to rate them against some sort of platonic ideal), it was down to business.

Our 12 contenders line up on the grid

Caramel dominoes

Jules - 5
Gwan - 4
We started with the one I would rate as my least favourite, which is always a good way to go. I thought it was too runny and not caramelly enough, although Jules thought it was fun sucking the caramel out of the crunchy shell.

Milk chocolate truffle

Jules - 6
Gwan - 7

I thought these tasted a bit like they were flavoured with raspberry liqueur - "not bad, but unexpected".

"Gianduja with a fancy name I forget but starts with A"

Jules - 9
Gwan - 8.5

High scores from both of us, but then I do always like a gianduja (who doesn't?). I noted its nice smooth filling and that I drooled a bit while eating it. Not sure if that's the chocolate's fault.

Dark chocolate lady 2 mousse 48% bitter

Jules - 3
Gwan - 7

Opinions divided on this one. Jules thought these were "really boring". He thought maybe he just needed a rest before continuing on, so I called him a chocolate baby. I thought they had a nice cocoa-y aftertaste and the consistency was more like what I expected the truffle to be, not really "moussey". I'd like to try one of the darker ladies. Extra points for the pretty picture (matches my plate!)

Raspberry

Jules - 8
Gwan - 9

This one was my favourite - I love raspberries! It was a dark, smooth chocolate ganache centre flavoured with raspberry, rather than a raspberry-coulis-type affair. Yum.

Manon hazelnut praline

Jules - 9
Gwan - 7.5

I described these as "unsubstantial", but Jules disagreed, describing them as light but soft and smooth, with a moussey texture. I thought the flavour was nice, but I think of a praline as being a bit denser, whereas this was more like a light cream. An extra point for the whole hazelnut though.

All gone, so sad

It was actually a lot of chocolate for one sitting, and I say that as someone who can put away her fair share. Overall, they were nice, but I don't know if I'd go back. I mean, I might, I really like chocolate, but it wasn't an experience that made me think "oh no, I'm going to be blowing my whole pay cheque on Mary" (heh heh). But nor did I think we'd stumbed into a yucky, over-priced tourist trap. We'll just have to keep looking for Brussels' best chocolates!