The cooking of Belgium isn’t one of those cuisines that springs immediately to mind amongst the foodies of UK. We’ve been in love with the cooking of France and Italy for a long time; more recently Spanish food has become popular with great tapas bars appearing everywhere; and, of course, chefs like Ottolenghi have inspired a love for Middle Eastern Food. But Belgium? Well, actually you’ll find some of the best food anywhere in Belgium.

Belgium and its food has been on my radar for a long time, in fact since childhood when, with my parents, we would drive across Europe in the summer and had favourite places to stay and eat in Belgium. Later, my parents had many Belgian friends (mainly due to my father joining a golf club twinned with a Belgian one) and even into adulthood, I’d sometimes join their trips to Belgium. I spent a lot of time in Brussels years ago when my ex was working there and we’d eat wonderful food in restaurants, from simple but delicious mussels with fries (and a cold Belgian beer) to high-end dining. After I started the blog, I interviewed a wonderful young Belgian pastry chef, Jurgen Willems (who sadly died very young a few years later) and was totally convinced that some of the best pastries and cakes you could find anywhere, came from Belgium.

Thus, when Grub Street Publishing asked me to review The Taste of Belgium, I was delighted. It was a brilliant opportunity to find out more about the cuisine I’d enjoyed so much over the years, yet had never actively tried to reproduce. Now was my chance!

Ruth Van Waerebeek was born and raised in the medieval town of Ghent, one of Belgium’s most important cities with a university and known as a cultural hub. Ruth learned to cook at the side of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother (she dedicates the book to them all) and she writes a beautiful  background to their lives and how they inspired her passion for cookery. She then worked as a chef in two leading Ghent restaurants before beginning some travelling, which took her to New York and eventually to Chile where she now runs a cookery school and gastronomic lodge, and is house chef to Chile’s most important winery.

Ruth echoes my own thoughts on Belgian cooking in her introduction to the book, ‘Europe’s Best-Kept Secret’, telling us that most people know little about Belgian cuisine. However, it seems that the Belgians, like the French and Italians, devote a great deal of time and thought to what they eat, and spend more money on food than the average westerner. Their motto is: ‘We eat three times a day, so we’d better try to make a feast of it every time’. Belgian food ‘is still deeply rooted in medieval cookery’, Ruth tells us, with their use of condiments, herbs, dried fruits and nuts, and spices. Potatoes, she says, ‘are practically the Belgian national dish’, which, as a lover of potatoes myself, appeals. I think they are a seriously underrated vegetable. Another passion – and mine! – are mussels and I love the way they serve them with thin fries. I learnt to love fries with mayonnaise in Belgium when, as a child, we’d sometimes stop the car to buy fries and mayonnaise from a roadside cafe. 

The Belgians eat a lot of meat and game and, of course, when we think of their vegetables, it’s Brussels sprouts and Belgian endive that come to mind. The sprouts came from the Mediterranean but were first cultivated near Brussels (hence the name) in the 13th century, and Ruth gives us a lovely recipe for ‘Gratin of Brussels Sprouts’. 

The book is divided into some standard cookery books sections – ‘Appetisers, Salads and Small Plates’, ‘Soups’, ‘Poulty and Game’ and ‘Desserts’. But there are some chapters you wouldn’t find in most cookery books: ‘Cooking with Beer’, ‘Potatoes’ and ‘Waffles, Pancakes and Breads’. Well, I talked of potatoes above and Ruth does give us a recipe for ‘The One and Only Truly Belgian Fries’, but there’s ‘Mashed Potatoes with Caramelised Shallots’ too; ‘Stuffed Baked Potatoes’ and ‘Flemish Potatoes’, which is a casserole that ‘exemplifies Belgian home cooking at its best’. And of course there’s Ruth version of the national dish, stoemp, ‘Mash Potatoes with Leeks’.

Belgian beer is glorious and in its home country it is revered almost as much as wine. It was in Brussels that I first experienced a ‘grand cru’ beer. I was eating in a restaurant specialising in mussels and a grand cru beer was recommended to accompany it. It seemed for this wine lover a bit over the top – ‘grand cru’! But, wow! I was seriously impressed and quickly became a fan of Belgian beer. I saw restaurants whose entire menu was devoted to dishes made with different beers. Ruth explains in her ‘Beer’ chapter the difference between beers such as low-fermentation pilsner or lager, and the high-fermentation ales, which are usually darker and rich in flavour. I do occasionally cook with beer and particularly love beef cooked this way, so I can’t wait to try out Ruth’s ‘Flemish Beef Stew Cooked in Beer’. ‘Pork Chops Brussels Style’ are cooked in beer and ‘Belgian Meatballs Braised in Beer with Endives’ sounds like another ‘must’. Ruth tells us about the popularity of rabbit, a delicate meat similar to chicken, and ‘Rabbit Stewed with Prunes in Beer’ is appealing. I used, many years ago, to cook rabbit a lot but then couldn’t bring myself to do it when my daughter acquired a pet rabbit. But in Belgium rabbits are kept for the pot! You can buy rabbit in UK but not easily. I have seen it in my local fishmonger, which also sells game. 

Ah waffles! There is nowhere like Belgium for waffles. I have happy memories of being in Belgium with my parents and my kids when they were young and being taken to a wonderful place that cooked huge and gorgeous waffles and pancakes, which we ate topped with whipped cream and strawberries. Waffles, Ruth tells us, are a bit more special than pancakes, which are seen as everyday food in Belgium, and always signal a celebration. She tells us how to use a waffle iron, gives a recipe for ‘My Mother’s Waffles’ and includes waffles from different regions of Belgium, including ‘Flemish Waffles’ which she describes as being ‘for a quick, small batch of waffles’. There are some lovely bread recipes in this chapter too: ‘Flemish Raisin Bread’ and ‘Flemish Cinnamon Buns’.

The recipes in the Desserts chapter centres around cakes and biscuits: ‘Almond Cake with Fresh Fruit Topping’, ‘Spiced Brown Beer Cake with Dried Fruit & Nuts’, and ‘Almond Cookies’, although there are recipes for desserts like poached pears and strawberry mousse too. There’s a wonderful sounding recipe for ‘Flemish Vlaai Tart with Blueberries’ which is made with a yeasted dough and contains fresh cheese as well as the blueberries. 

Back to the ‘Appetisers’ and I could see ‘Warm Green Bean and Potato Salad from Liege’, with bacon in it, making a fabulous summer supper on its own. Herrings are popular and Ruth offers a few recipes. Ruth’s fish chapter is subtitled ‘A fish lover’s paradise’, and indeed fish is very important in Belgium. Much of the country lies on the coast with long, wide beaches stretching between France and The Netherlands. There is nowhere better to eat mussels and Ruth guides us to buying and storage as well as offering a number of recipes. Eels are also popular – ‘Eels in Green Herb Sauce’- and while not so much here in UK, I remember buying live eels in the market with my grandmother before I was old enough to go to school and her making a stew with them. You’ll find lovely recipes for cod, monkfish and sole too.

In the Meat chapter you’ll find another national dish – Hutsepot, ‘A Hearty Winter Stew’. There are some good lamb recipes and Ruth tell us that many lambs are reared on the salt marshes by the coast, which always provides some of the tastiest lamb. Venison steaks come with gin and juniper berries, and many of the recipes contain root vegetables like celeriac and turnips. 

The book is full of delicious recipes that offer something different. Belgian cooking certainly isn’t boring as it’s sometimes been accused of being, it’s rich in tradition and history and offers a quite different cuisine to what most of us are familiar with. What I particularly like about the book is not just the recipes but the wealth of information that comes with them, from ‘tips on making soup’, ‘the art of pouring beer’, and information about places, including her home town of Ghent, and ingredients, like almonds. And chocolate of course! Belgian chocolate has for a long time been recognised as some of the finest in the world. ‘Daily social life in Belgium would be unimaginable without chocolate,’ Ruth tells us. Well, a day in my life would be unimaginable without a little bit of chocolate!

What a great book this is. It offers something quite unique for there aren’t many books on Belgian food and cookery and it’s a cuisine that definitely warrants closer attention and enjoyment. 

This is a new 2024 edition of the book, so if it appeals to you, make sure you get the latest edition.