An Evening With the Flemish Primitives

by Stephen Harris

When I first heard about The Flemish Primitives I was instantly intrigued. They sounded like a Belgian punk band who might have been managed by Andrew Loog Oldham but are in fact a group of chefs from the north coast of Europe covering Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Apart from being a sucker for a movement, given the close proximity to Kent, where my restaurant is located, I was fascinated to see what they were doing with ingredients similar to the ones I use over the Channel in Kent. I had visited Sergio Herman’s Oud Sluis a couple of times so I was aware that something was developing but when Steve asked me to attend an event for OA called Identity Crisis at In de Wulf, I jumped at the chance. Just on the other side of the Channel from Kent, Emma and I set off for Belgium mid-afternoon and arrived less than 3 hours later.

The 3 chefs cooking that night were two chefs from Belgium: Kobe Desramaults of In de Wulf in Heuvelland, Filip Claeys of De Jonkman in Brugge, along with Alex Gauthier of La Grenouillère in La Madelaine-sur-Montreuil, France. On arrival there was a discernible buzz about the place as everyone gathered in the kitchen – a very well laid out kitchen whose modern look contrasted well with the traditional building that housed it. The event was being broadcast live online – and, with glasses of champagne in hand we met our fellow guests, a mix of bloggers, guidebook editors as well as one other chef.
Rather than list all of the dishes I will pick out the ones that stood out for one reason or another.

The first dish by Kobe was whelks with whelk mayonnaise which I had seen before and was dying to try as Whitstable (my home town) has far more whelks than oysters so any help in making these tricky customers taste good is appreciated. The whelks were tender and served on large pebbles with the reduced cooking liquor in mayonnaise – I’m sure I could also taste cep powder. This earthiness brought everything together well.

Alexander’s first dish was raw bass, oyster, basil and seaweed served in a glass. This perfect, fresh appetizer then had salt water added to it which seasoned the whole dish in a usual and successful way.

I hadn’t heard very much about De Jonkman and its chef Filip before this meal but his skate cheek with hazelnut and brown butter made me realize I had missed something - it was so tender and gelatinous as head meat often is. In England these nuggets are known as Skate knobs and usually deep fried but this was a much better way of serving this cut-cleaner and brighter.

His next dish also knocked me out. Weever fish is almost impossible for our local fishermen to sell so it gets thrown back or used for bait. Here Filip had served it with braised red chard stalks and leaf-the strange earthiness of the chard brought out the true flavour of the fish-brilliant.

Other great dishes followed-in particular a pigeon cooked in hay. The bird had been stuffed with the hay for a couple of weeks before hand and then pot roasted-the result was to highlight the gamey flavour of the local wood pigeon. Like ours in Kent these birds have a darker, redder meat than French farmed pigeons and their diet of berries and grains gives them a much more complex flavour. The challenge is to keep them tender and medium rare. This was followed by a rare breed of Flemish beef which is almost extinct. Only through careful management is the herd of 50 cattle being kept going although we managed to munch our way through at least one of them.

Puddings included an interesting combination of beer and pork which had no right to work but somehow did-in the way an English savoury, such as rarebit often leads well into the sweet dishes.

I think it makes sense to see this movement in the wider context of what is happening all over northern Europe. Led by Rene Redzepi of the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, chefs are turning their backs on the food of southern Europe with its reliance on luxury ingredients like foie gras and truffles. Helped by techniques developed as part of the molecular gastronomy movement, they are expressing a unique terroir, and that is based on ingredients that were previously underutilized. And in the same way that Redzepi has been successful in expressing the ingredients of Scandinavia – especially the way he plays with bitter tastes which play off proteins and milky flavours whilst adding a textural crunch. – these, and other Flemish chefs, are beginning to focus on the ingredients which historically gave the cuisine of this part of Europe a unique taste."

But possibly the best thing about the evening, and the main thing I took away from it, was the feeling of having been at an event, a happening. Maybe I should get out more but the sense of a food community gathering to celebrate a new way of looking at their indigenous ingredients made me very happy.

Stephen Harris is the chef/owner of The Sportsman in Seasalter, United Kingdom.

10/05/2009 | Comments (1) | Kobe Desramault, Alex Gauthier , Rene Redzepi, Filip Claeys, Stephen Harris