Sunday, November 25, 2007

Dairy Products in Belgium

This weekend we decided to make one of our favorite meals - Chicken
fajitas! We were happy to find nearly all the ingredients that we
needed in our local supermarket - the "international" section carries
El Paso tortilla shells (both hard and soft), as well as salsa, chips, and Mexican seasonings. As it turns out, the two things that we had the most trouble with were very unexpected -- sour cream and cheddar cheese.

I know that in Canada, sour cream is translated as "creme sure", but I've read that in France it's known better as "creme aigre". We found neither of these in our Belgian supermarket, but we did see lots of "creme fraiche" and an extraordinary amount of yogurt. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to find sour cream in Belgium? Is it called something different here?
Our second hard-to-find dairy product was cheddar cheese. The most common cheese in our supermarket is "emmental", which is a Swiss cheese. It is very tasty, and I really like it, but Swiss
cheese doesn't exactly fit with fajitas. We can hardly complain with the wonderful assortment of
cheeses that we've found here, including my favorite,Boursin, and some Chimay cheeses made by the same Trappist
monks who make the famous beer, but we'll likely be making a trip to
London soon for some good cheddar. :) In the end, we chose the "gratin"
cheese mix, which tastes like fondue cheese, for our fajitas.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perfect! They don't sell sour cream in Belgium, so I am really grateful you posted this essential recipe.

Homemade Sour Cream

2 cups light cream (half-and-half)
2 tablespoons buttermilk

1. Combine cream with buttermilk in hot, clean glass jar with screw lid.
2. (A canning jar that has been heated in boiling water works well.) Cover tightly and shake gently to thoroughly mix the buttermilk and the cream.
3. Let stand in a warm place (similar to where you would place bread to rise) till thickened-24 to 48 hours.
4. Store, cover, in refrigerator.
5. Stir before using.
6. Use within 3 weeks.

Jane said...

Great, now the search is on for Buttermilk... :)

Gord said...

Yogurt actually makes a nice, healthier substitute for sour cream. Rach makes me eat it all the time, it's great!

Anonymous said...

I have used Greek yogurt as a substitute because I couldn't find sour cream or buttermilk. It's not so bad.
Any luck finding cheddar? I'd love to make some mac-and-cheese!

go to the website now said...

I don't like these products. They are not so delicious. But Belgian chocolate is really very good!