Stews, a Belgian one and Jill Dupleix
- rosemary
- Jul 28
- 5 min read
"Old food. Favourite food.
Above all, food that makes people fall in love with us.
That's what cooking is all about as it always has been." Jill Dupleix
It's lucky dip time, and those are the closing words of the introduction, even before the title page of Jill Dupleix's book Old Food.
Which I guess was a kind of sequel to her very successful book New Food and opens with the words:
"These are the best recipes of the last two thousand years."
I think Jill Dupleix would have got on famously with Robert Carrier. They both have such a fun attitude to cooking, superficially breezy and devil may care, but actually with a serious respect for tradition and technique. I bought this book in an op shop for a ridiculous sum of money, and I am ashamed to say I have not used it much. Ashamed because there are so many good recipes in there - and today's lucky dip recipe, which I shall come to, is one of them and I am determined to make it some time very soon. I shall bookmark it and put the book in the kitchen, rather than putting it back on the shelf.
Jill Dupleix in some ways, is a blogger's dream in that she has a tendency to write short sentences which are very quotable, urging you to consider or do something, whilst making it sound easy and fun, but important:
"Use this book as if it were your grandmother.
Cooking is the sport of the future.
The perfect vinaigrette is three parts oil to to one part vinegar. The perfect martin is ten parts gin to one part dry vermouth. This is probably all you need to know in life.
Cook when you're happy, not when you're angry, tired or ill.
A little butter is a wonderful thing.
Preserve your heritage. Get the three best recipes out of your grandmother now.
Something will always go wrong when you cook. It's not your fault ."
And so on ... OK - just one more:
"It takes a hell of a lot to kill a good recipe. It can survive poor produce and amateur technique, thumb its nose at fashion, and even triumph over the strange things restaurant chefs do to it, but it won't lie down and and die as long as someone still loves cooking and eating it."
Witness the spaghetti and meatballs our family ate last night at a weekend get together, and which I have to cook again for next weekend's birthday party. (My son cooked yesterday's batch.) It's a dish known simply as 'meatballs' in our family and nobody is protesting at having it again in such a short space of time. Well maybe David, just a tiny bit.
Back to the lucky dip aspect of this post. The page I alighted on was another list of aphorisms on stews:
"It's time we cooked something with time as a major ingredient."
Give yourself time to stew
Let the stove do the work. That's what it's there for.
Stews don't want you to hover.
They don't like fuss.
In fact, they don't even want you in the kitchen.
All they need is help to get started."
But it was just a page of thought provoking words, and so I turned to the first page of her stew section to find this glorious photograph of Chicken waterzooï - a dish from Ghent in Belgium, a country that we do not often consider when talking about food, which is silly because there is lots of good food in Belgium, (frites anyone?) and this one is a classic of the country Alas Jill's recipe is not online - unless you are a subscriber to the CKBK. But if you would like a copy I can certainly scan it and pass it on.
So I looked for other people's recipes - there were plenty but went for the first one The Hungry Belgian - well Belgian, so surely pretty authentic - and his/her recipe for Gentse Waterzooi (chicken stew from Ghent) which he/she says is adapted from a recipe from the Restaurant de Karmeliet - so pretty authentic you would think.
And it looks pretty good too - if you like pale food. The introduction tells us:
"The dish was historically nothing fancier than a simple fish boil with readily available fish like cod & perch, and potatoes. As rivers and ponds became more polluted and fish populations diminished, chicken made its debut in this classic charmer."
I do know that it looks a little anaemic, and I also know that stewing chicken - almost poaching it is possibly not tempting, but having tasted a few poached chicken dishes now I'm willing to bet that it tastes really good. In fact this finished dish is from the happy-go-lucky guy of Jamie and Julia who actually expressed some disappointment over some of the ways Julia cooked it and the - to him - decision as to whether it was a soup or a stew. He did like the taste though. It's a longish video but, because he is slapdash and does some things wrong, you actually learn a few things as you go along. Like don't use a mandoline to julienne celery.
I'll give the final recipe to a Flemish chef - Peter Goossens, who just gives vague instructions for this version:
"In Flanders we make waterzooi, a fragrant chicken stew. You boil a chicken with carrots, leeks and celery to make a stock. You take the chicken out and add a roux, to thicken up the stock into a white sauce, with a bit of cream and some fresh herbs, then you put the chicken back in and serve with potato or bread. Belgian cuisine is full of robust flavours and slow cooking."
His looks more like a soup than a stew perhaps, but then maybe it can be either. Also maybe - it's one of those recipes where precise measurements do not matter. And I have to say that Jamie of Jamie and Julia must be a bit of a salt addict because he put a lot of salt in this. But I guess that's a personal taste thing.
And what did Jill Dupleix consider to be the other classic stews? Braised lamb shanks, Pollo alla Romana, Ratatouille, Beef rendang, Tripes à la NIçoise, Osso buco, Lancashire hotpot, Lamb navarin, Hungarian gulyas, Chicken and thyme stew and Chilli con carne. I'm willing to bet that most of us would not argue with that selection - well perhaps Boeuf Bourguignon, and a Chicken butter cream are missing?
Last word from Jill? Don't rush it.
YEARS GONE BY
July 28
2021 - Apple strudel
2020 - Missing
2018 - Dinner with the locals
2016 - Croissants
Lovely quotable quotes. Very amusing. oh and pale food... not my favourite! 🤪