Bite: Cheese in a basket
One father-son duo is keeping a long cheese-making tradition going in the Pajottenland of Flemish Brabant
Robyn Boyle on Flemish food and drink
With regional beers like gueuze, faro, kriek and lambic, Beersel’s draw is obvious. A few glasses of the local nectar – wonderfully tart, spontaneously fermented brews – were as much a part of Sunday as morning mass.
This weekly ebb and flow of city folk did not go unnoticed by the farmers of Pajottenland, a fertile strip of Flemish Brabant just west of the capital. For centuries they’ve been loading up cars with their wares to take to market where they would sell, among other things, little wicker baskets of fresh cheese, a type of quark known as plattekaas or maquée (de Brabant).
The name mandjeskaas (literally “basket cheese”) was used to specify the fresh, soft cheese strained in baskets made from woven branches of the knotted willow tree that’s ever-present along Flanders’ creeks and rivers. The cheese itself is made with pasteurised milk from Pajottenland cows.
After the milk has been heated, rennet is added to start the curdling process. Then it is pressed and allowed to rest for 48 hours. Finally, layer upon layer is spooned into each basket so that the whey gradually runs out, resulting in a hunk of cheese so dense it can be wrapped in parchment paper.
As luck would have it, mandjeskaas and lambic beer go really well together, and it didn’t take long before cafe owners started serving the cheese to their customers. To this day, you’ll find boterham met plattekaas en radijzen (bread with fresh cheese and radishes) on menus across the region, but only a few spread their bread with true mandjeskaas, and not just any old plattekaas.
Before the Second World War, there were about 140 producers of mandjeskaas in and around Beersel. Today, there’s only one left: Kaasmakerij Walschot. Father and son carry on the tradition of making it in the same labour-intensive, artisanal way as for the past five generations.
While you won’t find their cheese in the supermarket, you can visit the shop in Beersel, or look for it at the local food markets in Brussels and across Pajottenland.
Kaasmakerij Walschot
Steenweg op Ukkel 161, Beersel
www.walschot.be
Photo by Luk Collet
