Bite: New kids on the block
Eight more Flemish products are given official recognition, including blood sausage, pickled beef and strong mustard
Alan Hope on food and drink in Flanders
Some of the goodies just given the seal of approval are other versions of products previously given the title. One is filet d’Anvers (the pickled beef fillet known by its French name across Flanders) from Alken in Limburg and from Temse in East Flanders. Previously, the title was reserved for the product in Antwerp and Schoten, both produced by the Michielsen family.
Another is the strong mustard from Leuven made by De Ster, which also holds a title for its sweet mustard.
The Sint-Antonius blood sausage, known in the Kempen as beuling, is a blood sausage with the addition of apples, Calvados and cloves. It’s prepared annually in Zoersel and in Schilde for the feast of Saint Anthony on 17 January.
Butcher Segers-Kerremans of Strombeek-Bever, Flemish Brabant, takes three titles with his black-and-white puddings (pictured), unchanged after three generations: the black is flavoured with cloves and pepper, the white with mace. His Brabantse kop has also been recognised, a head cheese or brawn, or in fact a terrine made with pork in jelly, spiced with mace and nutmeg and eaten cold with mustard.
The Van Ouytsel family has been roasting coffee in Lier in Antwerp province since 1876, in small quantities and for a duration still determined on the spot by the nose of Judith Van Ouytsel. It goes well with a Lierse vlaaike, a small dense cake whose name was recently given EU protection.
Flemish red ale is among the oldest beer types brewed in Belgium, known for its sour taste which comes from the yeast used in a process of natural fermentation in wooden barrels known as foeders, special in that they stand upright rather than lying down. Usually the beer is blended in a mix of old and young to provide a consistent product, but some especially good foeders are also bottled individually. The classic of the type is Rodenbach, and the style is common in West Flanders, more particularly west of Rodenbach’s home in Roeselare.
The Strubbe brewery is in Ichtegem, near Torhout, and it has been for seven generations. The Ichtegemse Grand Cru is produced in three foeders that are never cleaned to preserve the natural yeasts which go to work on each batch, and the result is a beer not too high in alcohol (6.5% ABV) but strong in flavour.
Photo courtesy of VLAM
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