As I promised in my previous weblog, I will tell you more about the new menu of Ciel Bleu this time. Actually it’s about the spring, which starts the 21st of March. For me and chef de cuisine Arjan Speelman, spring is a great source of inspiration. Not only the Dutch spring, we also allow ingredients from distant lands, which are on their best in this season.

For example the lamb which we serve as main course in our Alliance menu. Not the Dutch lamb or the French “agneau” but the Suffolk lamb from the East of England. I did some research on the history of this sheep with his full beige coat and his jet-black head. This history goes back to 1786! When farmer Arthur Young crossed the Norfolk Horn Sheep with a Southdown ram, a new race was born. After two centuries of refinement, a high quality meat was delivered.

Anyway, we run a restaurant and not a sheep farm, so back to the menu now. We combine the Suffolk lamb with star anise. This gives a mild flavor because we smoke the meat slightly. Parsnip accompanies the shank of lamb, the vegetable that is not that old fashioned anymore.

Before we serve this main course, we first reintroduce an old friend: foie gras with langoustine. A true “signature dish” of Ciel Bleu, which is still very popular. And why wouldn’t we reintroduce it? Never change a winning team!

The entremets of the Alliance menu is red mullet, baked on a plancha, with Mediterranean spring vegetables, a sauce of dried tomatoes and - to remain in southern spheres - an addition of Spanish chorizo.

For dessert, we have our selection of fresh strawberries. They are called Lambada's and they are grown in the east of our country. The strawberries grow on the ground, under glass (otherwise it is too cold), which gives them nice complex flavors. You should really come and taste it, because they even taste better than our summer strawberries!

And then the new Ciel Bleu menu. That will be a daring series of eight courses in total, something that was already in the mind of Arjan and me for quite a long time. Unfortunately we were not ready as a team yet. Because our restaurant was open every day we were too busy surviving, we hardly had any resting points. Since January we are closed on Sundays, so the kitchen is much more quiet; we could develop the new menu rapidly. You become more attuned when you’re more often side by side at the stove. And because of that, you become more creative.

Do you want to know more about the Ciel Bleu menu? Okay, in a nutshell. First you get the appetizer of oyster with three presentations of cucumber. Especially with whipped jelly gin tonic, this is poured out of an original bottle over the dish, at the table. Really great! Equally spectacular is the first dish of crab and caviar. This creation is called ‘Black & White’, a cylinder of black squid ink, filled with the white meat of that great king crab, avocado, an ice cream, beurre blanc and caviar. Black, white and black again. It is a wonderful dish for the eyes. And of course for your mouth!

The third dish is again a ‘signature dish’, even featured in the first book of Ciel Bleu: halibut covered with lobster, foie gras and truffle. And then our now famous golden box follows, with its pasta à la carbonara, served in our own way.

For the main course of pigeon, we were inspired by the Japanese spring, ‘haru’. The poultry is baked à la minute with a mixture - Japanse people call this ponzu - of rice vinegar, mirin acid, soy and kombu, a seaweed. We blend this ponzu with pigeon gravy and varnish the pigeon meat just a long time to create a damp of beauty.

For the sixth course (cheese) Arjan and I choose the Pyrenean chèvre Cabri Ariégeoise. It's a bit like the more famous Vacherin, but this one is made of milk from goats, which graze on 600 meters altitude. It is a really high quality product that we process in a small quiche and savory snack with sweet mandarin and panna cotta. But to be honest; we also allow you to taste it as it is.

The pre-dessert will be a cacao bean filled with Schwartzwalder Kirschtorte, but how we manage to do that is a secret. The second dessert we serve is peche melba. A classic natural creation of master Auguste Escoffier. But he would not believe his eyes if he could see our performance.

In short, quickly come and taste what we have thought of. In the mean time, we will start thinking about the upcoming summer menu!

Enjoy spring, Onno Kokmeijer and team

PS. Next week we will talk about our visit to the Flemish Primitives, the culinary exhibition for all young talents of Belgian gastronomy. We'll keep you posted…