Belgian cuisine

Hi,

A friend of mine recently told me that Belgium cuisine is "really good". OK, ... ??
I realized I know absolutely nothing about it except that it is influenced by the French (seems obvious).

What is unique about it?

I will be visiting a friend in Belgium and want to prepare and American meal one night and a Belgium speciality the next. Browsing the web I found some recipe sites like this one

Does anyone have any experience with making truly special Belgium meals?

Lots. Enough that I had to diet for a couple weeks due to those cream sauces.

The differences between Belgian and French cooking:

• Belgian dishes aren't terribly fancy-shmancy
• Belgian food is heartier and normally cooked for 1-4 hours
• Belgian sauces are almost always based on a roux
• Belgian sauces use normally use regional beers rather than wine
• Belgian food is normally served with thick-cut Pommes
• Belgian food is often fried

The only decent Belgian recipes on-line are in Flemish or French. Anything you find in English or German is a bad adaptation. I know this for a fact since Blondie worked the search for more than two months, and even the best recipes on-line had to be tweaked.

woof.

I used to have a Belgian manager - near Brussels. When I visited him & he took me out for dinner that was GREAT!
Those were the days

thought moules was a pretty trad Belgian dish?

moules and frites (mussels and french fries/chips)
salad liegeois
the two different types of waffles (brussels and liege, but these are snacks and not meals)
frites and the multitude of sauces

i just woke up otherwise i'd have a more extensive list for you.

Baddoggie,
Thanks, can you point me to a site with the recipes in French as you recommended?


what is more commonly used there? A lighter or darker roux?

Has anyone mentioned the beer yet?

The thread is about the food. You know, that stuff you jam in your mouth that isn't beer? You must've tried it once or twice.

woof.

The way I'd describe Belgian cuisine is a mixture of the best of French, German and other European cooking without making a fuss about it. A diet is definitely recommended afterwards though! Here's a few things that jump to mind:

- cheese or shrimp mousse croquettes
- chocolate mousse to die for
- filled sea-shells
- Gentse waterzooi (translation anyone?)
- vlaai (strange pudding)
- countless pastries and cakes (big overlap with neighbouring countries though)
- rich meals with interesting combination of food
- fresh Brussels waffles with cream/fruit
- sugar waffles hot off the griddle
- pancake, from simple to elaborate
- countless different cheeses, on their own or in recepies

will add some more if I get time ...

So what do they drink with their meals, then, clever clogs? Water?

if you get gaufre liegeois (the sugar waffles Dreamer mentioned) you can also get them with cinnamon- yum! if you're actually in Liege proper i can tell you heaps of restaurants, bars, cafes for great food/drink.

as for Beer if you see Jupiler it's one of the more mass produced beers.

Belgium

good chocs
...then expensive Mussels

...sod all to say about the rest

cheese or shrimp mousse croquettes
Breaded extra-thick Bechamel sauce (double the roux) with cheese or shrimp+bullion. I've made them; pain in the ass.

filled sea-shells
Filling is the same stuff that the shrimp croquettes are made of.

Gentse waterzooi
There is no translation. It's a Ghent-style waterzooi, basically deboned chicken soup with veg, the broth is thickened at the end in a way that "breaks" incredibly easily unless you cheat and use a roux. Makes Hollandaise sauce look like child's play.

Waffles and cheese are hardly "cuisine".

woof.

True, but how I do love them!

EDIT: If you're really keen on making Belgian dishes and can wait a day or two, I'll ask some contacts and get back to you when I get the chance.

sure, thanks I have a few weeks to plan and hopefully practice before I go.

ok so, I'll start interrogating a few Belgians then!

Depends on the sauce. You wouldn't wanna cook out a roux to nut brown for a cream sauce really, it'd knacker the colour.

Also known as Limburg pie (Limburgse Vlaai), it is served in Belgium but is Dutch.
Can be a fruit, mostly apricot or cherry, pie, sometimes it is like a rice pudding pie. Some have lattice tops, some don't, all are serious stodge.

Knacker the flavour, too. You want most of the flavour from the beer and herbs, so most sauces are cooked with a light roux. While a dark roux can give a really nice nutty/earthy flavour, it overpowers the Chimay flavours in a pot of stofvlees.

woof.

apparently my Southern affinity for making gravies will come in handy..
good, I like sauce. The French don't eat enough of it.

Vraiment?

Oui! Vraiment! They really don't eat as much sauce as I thought. You can get a red wine or caramel sauce with duck, Steak au poivre and blue cheese sauce with steak but I observe most of the French eating their meat strait from the grill without sauce. Especially the men...

hmm, they have a word for that (for steak from the grill, no sauce) but I can't think of it...

Sans sauce?
Sorry, just kidding. Please post if you remember, I can't think what the word might be.

Kay, it the expression refers to enjoying a steak with the taste of grill fire to it... damn..I just heard it a couple of days ago!!

Actually, yes. Or more accurately, sans souci, the name of a once-legendary Capitol Hill restaurant.

woof.

I will be going to Brussels for four days in about three weeks. I will have a bit of extra time there and so can anyone recommend a "local" restaurant that is a must to visit? To give you an idea of what I mean by local, the Alter Wirt in Moosach is probably one of the best local establishments in Munich. I would go there before I would go to the Augustiner.

That actually means without a care. That went for the apartment complex that I used to live in in Knoxville by the same name and the gardens in Potsdam.

You don't mean charbonnade, by any chance?

When they do make a suce, they always reduce it down to a drip anyway, so you get bugger all.

saint, what kind of recipies do you want? i have heaps of belgian recipies (especially from Wallonia and more specifically Liege, but all of Belgium too) some from cook books others are passed down through family (my host family when i lived there).
If you let me know what you're interested in let me know. please also indicate if you want them translated or not

Oh Mere, I love you.

Ok, an hor'dourve (did I spell that correctly?) recipe would be nice as a start..but for the main course, something with meat and starches. Something men would like. Hearty food..the kind that leads to heart attacks...

when do you need it by? all my belgium stuff is up at my parents house and i'll be up there this weekend so if i remember i can grab it and bring it back to my apartment for you, unless you need it asap...

I have a few weeks Mere, you can take your time. Thanks for that!

I dont know why Belgian as a country excists. the 2 sides hate one another. i would split it up and give one half to Holland and the other to france. There is no such thing as Belgian cusine.

well, perhaps becuase the country "Belgian" doesn't exist, but Belgium/Belgie/Belgique, does (Belgian people and things do too).

If you split the country what would you do with the German speakers? give them to Luxembourg? What's the point of Luxembourg then? or should we just make the belelux region into a country.

good one!

All these small countries are just tax heavans for the Germans, French and Italians. The Leaders being the Swiss of course.

What does that have to do with this thread? This thread is about cooking, so get to fucking discussing Belgian Cuisine or open a thread on tax havens

The libations one drinks with the meal are as important as the dish one eats.

Anyway, we're mostly in Bavaria here, where beer IS considered a food.

Belgian beer is among the best and most varied in the world IMO, and you should definitely try a few dishes which are made with a beer sauce.

A nice banana or coconut beer goes well with dessert, barring those rare brands, you could go with a Framboise, Kriek, or Peche beside a nice piece of chocolate something-or-other.

FYI un hors d'oeuvre, les hors d'oeuvre.

Thanks Honeebeez, I'm writing that down in my French notebook along with petite amie and other words that I continually misspell in French.

AFAIK hors-d'oeuvre takes a hyphen in French.

hmm... i've never seen it hyphenated. that doesn't mean it shouldn't be though, but wouldn't honeebeaz know, isn't she French?

I double-checked in Le Petit Robert before posting.

i didn't say you were wrong. i simply stated i haven't seen it that way and I thought a Francophone would know.
but, good for you for checking Le Petit Robert.

She is, thanks mere... and it is hyphenated, but I forgot! Mea culpa.
I was focusing on the fact that the plural, well, was the singular. As in it is one of those compound nouns that is invariable.

Plus just like in English, we would tend to simplify when we are writing quickly and get rid of accents or hyphens, a bit like in English the apostrophe would disappear on a regular basis. So it didn't look wrong when I typed it!

Anyhoo, carry on on the food topic, it is making me hungry. (It is a good thing)

BELGIAN CUISINE IS TO DIE FOR

I often make a duck breast in cherry beer sauce with morello cherry dressing after a belgian chef I worked with It is gorgeous and as a starter try making prawns with a mustard,cheese and geuze (wild) beer or cider sauce. finish of with a chocolate marquise I have never tasted three such heavenly dishes. If you are in Devon go to the restaurant of Jean Paul Salpetier. He is the originator of these dishes, and his food is out of this world, when he was working in a pub in Brighton he was booked out for christmas food a year in advance.

Belgian food is the best in the world.

Traditional dishes I'd recommend include:

- Flemish rabbit stew (it's usually braised slowly in a trappist beer to give a really rich thick gravy). There's also a version with beef which is good too.
- Baked Seafood - there are various of these dishes around the coastal area - usually it's fish oven baked in an aromatic creamy sauce
- Mussels and chips - the classic, though make sure you go for the white wine rather than the creamy sauce
- Do take a look at the salads too...especially the seafood ones. They have exceptional shellfish in Belgium
- Lamb - usually grilled simply with a salad and chips - but the meat is very good quality in Belgium. Same goes for the steaks
- Eel in green herb sauce - this is fantastic
- The Belgian Chippy... just pick from the glass case. Try the Frikandel Speciaal, the Vleeskrokett, Kaaskrokett, etc. And don't forget to order some of the different sauces to go with it. The chips are great too - fat and crispy - yum!
- Finish off with the Belgian chocolate mousse or the Dame Blanche... always a winner!

In my limited experience of Belgian and French cuisines I've noticed that the Belgians go easy on the garlic.

The French, who do of course cook very well, seemingly throw in the world's supply of garlic every time. Overwhelms the flavour of everything they cook.

Although I'm not allergic to garlic I only use a little in my cooking and prefer it that way.

But just thinking about Belgian food makes me happy

There's a recipe for Belgian chips here

The reason they come out so crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle is the double frying techique. And of course making sure you use the right sort of potato and fat.