needed:
14 quinces for 5 jars.
juice of 1 lemon
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
jam sugar (gelling sugar)
Method:
Wash and dry the quinces, remove the stalks.
Cut the quinces into pieces; the core and peel can be boiled along.
In a large cooking pot, cover the fruit completely with water.
Add the lemon juice, cloves and cinnamon stick.
Bring gently to the boil and leave to simmer quietly for 3 hours.
The fruit must really be cooked down to a pulp.
Over a pot, squeeze the cooked mass out completely through a cheesecloth.
Let the juice reduce to 3/4 of the quantity.
Then add the jam sugar, 1 kg for 1 kg of jelly.
Skim off the foam and leave to stand for another 10 min.
Then spoon into jars, put the lid on immediately and store in a cool, dark place.
Quince jelly is very good for the natural functioning of the bowels. 1 teaspoon a day works wonders.
Enjoy!
Jan Kerckx

Back again: in her handwritten recipe book, Clairette Serneels (1936-2024) reveals the delicious roast of Joséke Geens Bruynseels

My mother was a fantastic mum… she was there for us every day (5 children)… she cooked every day (deliciously)… starter, main course, dessert… incredible. I still wonder how she managed it. Those were very different times, from 1951 to 1978. My mother was a housewife and was happy in her ‘job’ – cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, sewing… – always content, never complaining or nagging. I am still grateful to her every day for the lovely childhood I was able to enjoy.

The grandchildren called her bomma, the great-grandchildren called her ‘big bomma’.

Good luck!

Best wishes,

Chris

Georges and Cecile Buseyne Lalleman

A brief look back at a favourite dessert in Aarschot since the 1950s: ‘bodding’. It is a plum pudding with rum that was prepared weekly by the pastry cook Buseyne for his pastry shop ‘Delecta’. After his marriage in 1951, Georges founded ‘Delecta’ with his wife Cecile (1926-2010) in the Tiensestraat in Leuven. In 1955 the couple moved to Aarschot, where they took over a pastry shop on the Grote Markt, and after three years the whole building was in their name. The people of Aarschot soon grew fond of the rich and nourishing bodding, which was sold in slices of about 1.5 cm.

preparation:

Take a rectangular loaf tin. Grease it completely with butter. Then sprinkle crystal sugar evenly over the butter and shake out the excess sugar. Once you have an even layer of butter and sugar in the tin, take about ten bread rolls that are not too fresh. Cut the rolls into strips of about 1 cm. Line the bottom and sides of the tin with them. Build up neatly like Lego bricks, leaving no gaps.

Then heat a litre of milk with 150 g sugar and a good water glass of rum. Stir regularly until it boils.

Meanwhile, keep filling the tin with the remaining pieces of roll, which do not need to be neat or even, but press them down well, filling up to the top… .

Pour the milk with sugar and rum over it until everything is well soaked, but not too much milk.

Press down the whole filling once more. If necessary, add a few more pieces until everything forms a firm whole up to the top.

Take a bowl, boil water, and place the tin ‘au bain-marie’ in the oven for 1 h 50 at 200 °C.

Then let the tin cool and take it out of the water. When cooled, turn the tin upside down onto a dish. This is how the bodding comes out… .

(1962) Eric Buseyne, the son of Cecile and Georges

C is for CHEESE SOUFFLÉ

by Brigitte Raskin

Favourite dish

Literary tear-off calendar, 21/22-5-2005

It was the family’s favourite dish and only Aunt Tata could make it: cheese soufflé, not in an ovenproof dish in the oven, but in a closed iron mould au bain-marie. Because Tata used an ordinary cooking pot and the rising water bubbles – just below boiling point, not quite bubbles yet – could make the mould capsize, she placed a clean brick on top of it that she kept among her kitchen utensils especially for that purpose.
The construction bubbled away on the stove for half an hour. Then, after opening and turning over the mould, there slid le moment suprême – a light cheese pastry onto the dish. Tata poured a thin cheese sauce full of shrimps over it and cut it with a knife into festive slices.

Our ‘tata’, the eldest sister of our dad, Maria Raskin, a schoolteacher who remained unmarried all her life (Stevoort, 1896 – Aarschot, 1971). When our mum died (1959), tata came to live with us, until our dad remarried. Tata did not let the soufflé rise in the oven in a classic soufflé dish (a large ramekin), but in a bain-marie in a closed iron Bundt tin (see the accompanying photo, but our tin had no grooves).

I inherited Tata’s closed mould and her recipe booklet, in which the cheese roux does go in an ovenproof dish in the oven and its composition holds no secrets (butter, flour, milk, eggs, cheese, pepper and salt, it cannot get any simpler, more rustic or more old-fashioned in culinary terms).
Since that precious inheritance I have tried to do it Tata’s way, brick at the ready. But every time I turn out the mould, the roux slumps together on the dish, with only in the middle a hint of how it should have been. Serve with white wine.

preparation for six people

1. Separate six eggs. Grease the Bundt tin with butter. Sprinkle the walls of the buttered tin with grated Parmesan. This fixes the mixture better and it will rise better than if you use only butter.
2. Melt 100 g butter in a medium pan over moderate heat. Add 80 g flour while whisking constantly. Cook for about 2 minutes until you have a smooth, blond roux.
3. Add 1/2 l semi-skimmed milk while whisking and season with pepper, salt and nutmeg. Simmer for 3 minutes, stirring, until thick and smooth. Whisk often over the bottom and side of the pan. Take the pan off the heat and let it cool briefly.
4. Then stir in the egg yolks and 200 g finely grated Gruyère cheese.
5. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff, but do not overdo it: egg white beaten too stiff ‘breaks’ when you mix it into a sauce. Using a supple spatula or wooden spoon, fold 2/3 of the beaten egg white into the cheese sauce with slow, careful movements, and then the rest of the egg white. The cheese sauce must no longer be too hot when you add the egg whites.
6. Spoon into the soufflé dish.
7. Put water in a large pot and heat it to just below boiling point, place the Bundt tin with its lid in it and put a brick on top.
8. Leave to bubble for half an hour au bain-marie.
9. Open the lid and turn the mould out onto a dish.
10. Pour a thin cheese sauce full of shrimps over it.

A Fabiola dish is a dessert of rice pudding with fruit and whipped cream.

Preparation:

1. making a thick white rice pudding

• rinse about 100 g of white rice in a sieve under cold water, so that it will burn less easily later – let it drain
• put the rice in a pan with a litre of milk
• add 100 g of sugar
• put the lid on the pan and let it simmer gently for 45 minutes, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon
• let it cook for a few more minutes
• let it cool for a day

2. cut fruit into cubes and catch the juice that drips out in the meantime

3. making fresh whipped cream

• pour 200 g of full-fat cream into a mixing bowl
• add a little sugar if desired
• whip to whipped cream. Do not stir, but make short, vigorous circular movements
• stop when it becomes firm, otherwise it turns into butter

4. then carefully mix the cream into the rice pudding and add the fruit juice as well – decorate with the fruit

5. serve in individual bowls or in a dish

Elisabeth Riebs, the granddaughter of Céline

portrait through the lens of Princess Stéphanie de Windisch-Graetz (1939-2019)

Céline’s town garden in Aarschot is admired for the beautiful colours and breathtaking scents of its roses.

“It is with great pleasure that I would like to write here about a dish that was a fixture on every festive menu of my beloved late mother. In Aarschot everyone knew her as Miss Bols, because generations benefited from her teaching. I am happy to write this contribution at the invitation of Pieter Van Kerckhoven, whom I got to know in 1983 as my pupil at the college of Aarschot. It was a new link in the relations between our two families: my grandmother, Alida Bols-Cloots, bought fabrics to have her dresses made by Tineke Van Dyck, Pieter’s grandmother! Our mothers regularly chatted when they met, my family were clients of Notary Van Kerckhoven, and as a child I was the altar boy and, for the communion round of the Reverend Goor, the notary was the driver. But now to the subject… A richly laden table always awaited my parents’ guests, and that was already the case with my grandparents. Early on I understood how important the pleasures of the table are in building a network of relationships. Did Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand not say: “Le meilleur auxiliaire d’un diplomate, c’est bien son cuisinier”. My parents supported me unconditionally in building my career, among other things by organising countless festive meals. Invariably on the menu: Fabiola dish! My mother stressed the following points: white rice pudding, so without saffron, let it cool for a day, and the secret is to mix enough whipped cream into the rice pudding! Then decorate ad libitum with fruit and whipped cream! Legion is the list of (eminent) people who over decades have enjoyed the Fabiola dish, even a memorable evening with Mayor Free Coekaerts and his wife … and the Secretary of Queen Fabiola and his wife … So many beautiful memories to cherish …” – Gunnar Riebs

(1991) Monsignor Jean Petrus Canisius van Lierde, Vicar General of the Pope for Vatican City, enjoys the Fabiola dish in Aarschot at the home of the Riebs family.

At ‘Mit Cock’ in café ‘De Schuit’ there was regularly a party for one or other Liberal association, the ‘Wipschutters’, the hunters,… and that was with … ‘Ox tongue in Madeira sauce’ and croquettes, sometimes with a ring of vegetables. ‘Maria de Kokkin’ did the preparation and serving together with Mit and her helpers.

Ingredients for 4 people:

1 ox tongue, 1 leek, 1 celeriac, 2 carrots, 1 onion, 250 g minced veal, 250 g mushrooms, 15 cl Madeira wine, 1 l veal stock, 50 g butter, 3 tbsp flour, 4 tbsp tomato purée, 2 bay leaves, 2 sprigs of thyme, 4 sprigs of parsley

Preparation:

1° Soak the tongue in 3 litres of salted water until it turns white. Change the water after an hour and a half. Roughly chop the leek, celeriac, carrot and onion.

2° Bring the salted water to the boil, add the ox tongue and boil for 5 minutes. Pour off the cooking water and pour fresh boiling water over it. Add the vegetables and the bouquet garni and simmer for 2.5 hours, just below boiling point. Peel the tongue.

3° Make small meatballs and poach them in salted water. Slice the mushrooms. Melt butter in a pan, add the flour and stir. Deglaze with the stock and the Madeira. Add the tomato purée and stir until smooth. Add the mushrooms and meatballs and season to taste.

4° Cut the tongue into strips of 0.5 cm and serve with the warm sauce. Delicious with croquettes or mash.

“My mother, known in Aarschot as Milia, liked to help out when neighbours, acquaintances or relatives called on her cooking skills. For instance, I remember that Mia Van Kerckhoven would secretly come to our house to pick up a little bowl of soup. My mum passed it through the kitchen window, as in a chip shop. It was then served with success to guests who were delighted with Mia’s cooking… For years Milia gladly took care of the meals at the summer camps in Austria for the Aarschot Youth Choir under the direction of Rev. Frans Breughelmans.” – Christine Sas

ingredients apple pie Emily

100 g flour
250 g self-raising flour
150 g butter
200 g sugar
4 eggs
1/2 kg apples

Sift the two kinds of flour together into a bowl.
Melt the butter over a low heat.
Make a well in the flour and slowly add, using a mixer (beaters), the sugar and egg yolks until a firm, homogeneous mixture forms.
Tip: add a very small splash of milk.
Beat the egg white until stiff and fold it through the dough alternately with a spatula until you have a light mixture.
Grease a cake tin and fill it partly with the dough.
Spread the apple slices with cinnamon over the dough and cover with the remaining dough.
45 minutes in the oven at 180 degrees.

• Heat butter in a large frying pan and slowly fry onions cut into rings (optionally with diced bacon).
• In a second frying pan, heat butter or oil and fry raw potato slices until cooked.
• Season the potatoes with nutmeg, pepper and salt.
• These potato slices should not be too flat but firm to the bite with a crispy crust, so stay by the pan and taste now and then.
• Then mix the two together.
• Do not let yourself be distracted or it will go wrong… .
• Milia, his wife, garnished the dish with the finesse of parsley!

lasagne that had Rector Dillemans licking his fingers.

Tineke from the Leopoldlaan: “I was good friends with Sam, the son of Rector Dillemans at the time. Together we attended the drawing academy in Leuven. Because his father liked Italian dishes, I prepared lasagnes for lunch when the professors met with the rector at the rectory. A small note: back then there was indeed minced meat in the sauce. But of course I will no longer promote that in this final recipe as a firmly established “veggie” dish. – Tineke

Ingredients : 

3 cloves of garlic,
a handful of round onions, a handful of cherry tomatoes, 
2 stalks of white celery,
1/2 courgette, 
cold-pressed olive oil,
1 packet of lasagne sheets, 
2 jars of Barilla tomato sauce with basil, 400 g each, 
oregano, basil, pepper, salt, 
1/2 litre of milk,
40 g butter,
40 g plain white flour,
100 g grated Emmental cheese,

Take an ovenproof dish of about 21 by 30 cm. 
Grease the dish. 
Briefly boil the Barilla lasagne sheets, about 10 of them, in water with a splash of oil and salt to prevent them from sticking together. (even though the packet says they do not need to be boiled)
Spread the pasta sheets out on a tea towel.

Tomato sauce: 
Finely chop a handful of small onions, 3 cloves of garlic, a few white celery stalks and thin slices of courgette and fry them in cold-pressed olive oil; let them simmer slowly, for at least a quarter of an hour, over a low heat to create a fine flavour. Halfway through, also add a handful of cherry tomatoes.
Take two jars of Barilla tomato sauce with basil, 400 g each, and add them to the vegetables. Add a little more oregano and basil if desired.

Béchamel sauce:
Melt 40 g butter, stir in 40 g white flour over a low heat. Slowly whisk in milk (1/2 litre) until you have a smooth mixture. Add pepper and salt if desired.
Mix in 100 g grated Emmental at the end. 

Place two lasagne sheets in the dish, cover with tomato sauce and béchamel sauce and cover with 2 lasagne sheets. Repeat all this…
Finally, cover everything with a little extra béchamel sauce. 
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees and heat for about 20 minutes at 220 degrees until the lasagne is ready to serve.