Koken Eten: Veal in a jacket of cheese with Leek

Okay, so you all might know the Cordon Bleu, a piece of veal wrapped with ham and in a cheesy crust.  Now tonight, I wanted to do something more challenging from yesterday, and so I decided on a `cordon bleu deluxe` style of dish.

Now, to make it that bit more special, I was going to produce it using nothing more then typical Belgian specialities, so if you want to give it a go, you might want to look for local alternatives.  Without kidding, if I execute this plate well, we are talking about something a restaurant easily charges you 20 to 25 euros a plate for...

These are the main stars of today`s dish: veal, leeks, oven roasted cooked ham, Passendale cheese, and Affligem, a 6.8 degrees high fermentation `hop` beer.

Of course, I would only need about the bottlenecks worth of the beer...

The first thing to do, as I, like I said yesterday, prefer to have my vegs stew for a few hours on a light fire, is to put together the vegetable dish.  I started with a spoon of butter, glaze a small onion in it, and then put in rigs of leek.  For the two of us, I used a single one of the three shown above, the rest put in cooling for something on a later date.

Added to this, I did about half a can of tomatoes, some pepper and salt, and the beer.  And then it went on the stew (lowest setting on my fire) for almost 3 hours with a cover.  That way, the alcohol spreads nicely and gives a fresh `umph` to the stew.

Now, the meat.  I baked the veal just so slightly that it coloured on the outside, then put it in an oven scale.  On top of the veal, you put a slice of ham, and then over that you put the cheese. 

Now it is VERY important that the cheese on top covers the ham, that way it`s prevented from drying out in the oven.  This has to go in the oven at 180 degrees for between 10 to 15 minutes, just make sure to look in to prevent the cheese from baking, it needs to melt around the meat without becoming hard and crusty.

Serve with a simple cooked potato, and it was time for the jury...

Labout rating: 6 - the timing is the hardest on this, as you have to manage in particular the cheese getting ready together with the potatoes.  So it all depends a bit on the sort ot taters you prefer and then synchronise the timing of the meat with it.

Girlfriend rating: 9.5 for the meat, slightly less for the vegetables as it turns out she is not to wild about beer (or alcohol in general) in food.  I didn`t know that, ah well.

But the bottom line is, mission accomplished, and that will be 23 euros then madame ;-)


PS: when we discussed the dish during dinner, I did a rough calculation of the dish.  It costs me about 6 euros to get all the ingredients, not to shabby if you ask me!

But what happened to the rest of the beer then, since I only needed about a quarter of it?

As we say overhere: Schol!