October 2018
The American Disciples of Belgium’s Famed Stew
On a steep hill in Norway, Maine, Eliza Beghe welcomed me into the kitchen of her three story victorian house to learn how to make her favorite childhood dish, waterzooi (pronounced va-ter-zoy). From the moment I walked in, the shared kitchen and dining room space was steaming with warmth from a large creuset pot full of water heating on the stove. Before we even finished basic courtesies, Eliza admitted that this pot would be completely unacceptable to her late mother, Bina, for making the Belgian stew.
“What my mother ended up doing which is kinda crazy, but it’s just the way that she was, is that we had to have the right pot in order to do this recipe,” Eliza laughed. “So, she ended up buying me and every sibling in my family the $500, 13.5 quart creuset, mammoth pot that ultimately did not even fit on my stove because I have an induction, glass top stove!”
Although most waterzooi recipes do not call for anything other than a large dutch oven, it became obvious as we cooked why Bina had been so stubborn about the size of the pot. After leeks, carrots and celery are sweated and a whole cut up chicken is poached, the intimidating egg yolk sauce is whisked into the stew. Any pot smaller than 13.5 quarts makes this last step difficult with the obtrusion of the chicken pieces making whisking nearly impossible.
But Eliza has a fear of gas lines coming into the house so, it was the pot that had to go, not the stove. However, an induction stovetop has its setbacks for a stew that does best in a dutch oven. Warming the thick enameled cast iron can take quite some time without the aid of a raging flame. To give the crueset a head start, Eliza had preemptively poured hot water into the pot and started heating it before I even arrived.
As I unloaded the ingredients I had offered to bring-- crème fraîche, homemade chicken stock, leeks, carrots and onions, Eliza flipped through her inherited cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 by Julia Child and Simone Beck, and exhibited it proudly. “I opened this one up this morning to look for the recipe and I was very happy to see that...that shmutz! And it leaks through!”
A big part of Eliza’s connection to her mother is through the cookbooks that she inherited which were so heavily utilized that Bina’s husband had them all library bound to ensure their preservation. As Eliza continued to admire the waterzooi smear, she told me with a playful grin, “It's like a bible, and it's a dirty bible.”
Julia Child’s waterzooi recipe is the Beghe family’s only connection to Belgium and it is only through a unique path of transmission that this provincial dish ended up in Eliza’s culinary repertoire. The Flemish fish stew harks from the city of Ghent in northwest Belgium where the North Sea-destined rivers, Scheldt and Lys once provided a bounty of pike, bass and eels. Most of the fishing is off-limits now in the canals around Ghent due to pollution which may have influenced the popular alternative of poultry for fish in this creamy-yellow stew.
While Eliza held her mother’s cookbook tenderly, she described the first time her mother made waterzooi. “It was exquisitely delicious, I remember eating it as a kid and feeling I had died and gone to heaven.”
Eliza and I had to stand with our backs to each other to take advantage of the limited counter space crowded with brightly colored earthenware. As we julienned ribbons of leeks, Eliza explained that she wasn’t just a kid when she first had waterzooi, but a teenager and in a time of her life that she described as a very “fluctuating period.” There was all the typical adolescent rebellion and at one point, Eliza even moved out of the apartment. Yet, amidst all of this angst, Bina cooked her daughter an unforgettable dinner and for an evening, the rich and decadent Belgian stew bonded the two together once more.
Although waterzooi is a simple dish to make, the finishing egg yolk and crème fraîche sauce creates such a complex and velvety texture that it’s difficult to forget. Child also had an unforgettable experience with the stew and promoted the dish by including it in the second volume of her cookbook and she even wrote an article about the recipe 17 years later for the New York Times. Child was at Le Cordon Bleu when she first encountered the recipe from her favorite chef, Max Bugnard, who is that adorable man with thick rimmed, round eyeglasses often pictured in black and white photographs with Child towering over him. Originally from Belgium, Bugnard ran his own restaurant, Le Petit Vatel, in the capital city of Brussels, just 60 kilometers east from waterzooi’s origins in Ghent.
Bugnard had to abandon his home and restaurant in Brussels to avoid the German invasion in the Spring of 1940. Already familiar with France from his early years as an apprentice in Parisian kitchens, Bugnard returned to Paris and became an instructor at Le Cordon Bleu. Ten years later, he was teaching the uproarious Julia Child a recipe from his homeland. Bugnard’s version reflected Ghent’s easy access to the North Sea via the city’s two rivers and included eels, perch and white fish stewed with stock, wine, herbs and mirepoix. The stew was then finished with the traditional egg yolk and crème fraîche emulsion.
Child kept the memory of this recipe from Bugnard close to her and made a point to “clip” any other versions of waterzooi she encountered from there on out. After experimenting with a chicken version she found in a French gastronomical magazine and a few years later, with Juliette Elkon’s recipe that called for a capon, Child developed the waterzooi recipe that Bina would years later cook for her 15 year old rebellious daughter.
Child’s adapted recipe calls for 2.5 pounds of bone-in chicken
pieces and since Eliza and I are both dark meat lovers, we tossed the
packages of breasts back in the fridge and wedged drumsticks, wings
and thighs amongst the sweating vegetables to continue the Belgian
sauna. This recipe calls for a technique that I had never heard of
before-- sweating the meat. Once the chicken pieces were seasoned
with salt and fresh tarragon, they were then covered and left to sweat
for ten minutes.
When the chicken’s spa time was up and Eliza removed the pot’s
cover, there was an anti-climatic scene. The leeks were translucent
and the carrots were barely visible beneath the very pale skinned
meat. It was all looking quite bland. A bouquet garni was added to
the pot along with glugs of vermouth and chicken stock.
The pot was covered once more and left to simmer while we snacked on marcona almonds and Eliza inspected her well-stocked liquor cabinet. While plans were being made for negronis, Eliza reminisced about her mother’s role as a homemaker. “I don’t think that raising four babies who are all over the place was fulfilling necessarily on all planes.” she said. Although, around the time Eliza was eight years old, Bina was inspired to transform the everyday chore of cooking into a challenging hobby.
While the chicken poached in the boozy stock, Eliza and I admired the title page in Mastering the Art of French Cooking which had a note written in half-cursive, half-print, “Bon Appétit to Bina Beghé -Julia Child.”
In 1963 Bina’s sister, Bess Hopkins, was living in Cambridge and volunteering for WGBH, the network that produced The French Chef. As a volunteer for Child’s show, Bess was responsible for washing dishes, preparing ingredients and testing recipes. The French Chef depended on its volunteers comprised of mostly housewives, to do the majority of behind the scenes preparation. Their roles were so essential to the show’s success that Child would even introduce Hopkins and her other volunteers in some of the episodes to express her gratitude.
“Meet my associate cooks,” Julia would say in her breathless voice. “Mary O’Brien, Liz Bishop, Bess Hopkins, Edith Seltzer, Rita Rains, Bess Coughlin, and Gladys Christopherson. It’s always more fun cooking with friends, don’t you think?”
As Bess worked for Child, the enthusiasm for cooking became infectious between the two sisters who maintained a close correspondence. Bina worked her way through Child’s first book, attempting the more complex recipes as she became fluent in foundational cooking skills. When Bina visited her sister in Cambridge, she too would meet with Child and soak in as much knowledge as possible.
And much in the same way that Child’s husband was portrayed in the movie, Julie and Julia as reaching into the medicine cabinet every night for acid reflux or heartburn relief, Bina’s husband had his own reactions to her newly acquired skill. Eliza remembered her father as trying to counter the rich food Bina was making by eating granola every morning, making yogurt in a countertop machine and doing his exercises.
The stereotype of Child’s recipes as being quite fatty may very well be true. To prepare the finishing sauce of waterzooi, I had to separate the yolks from six eggs and whisk them into a cup of crème fraîche. Child certainly knew by the late ‘80s that recipes with such quantities of fat were receiving nutritional criticism and she made a point to defend her waterzooi recipe (and Chef Bugnard) in her article for the New York Times entitled, “The Most Interesting Recipe I’ve Clipped:” “...in those days nobody gave a thought to six egg yolks, large dollops of heavy cream and lashings of butter. (Incidentally, despite his taste for rich foods, M. Bugnard had a long and healthy life, retiring at 85 and dying peacefully at the age of 93).”
Eliza and I confirmed early on in the cooking process that neither one of us were afraid of fat and we had used butter without discrimination when sweating the vegetables. As we whisked up the yolks and crème fraîche, we were giddy about this rich, finishing touch and the negronis were kicking in as well. As a precautionary measure, we had removed the chicken pieces from the pot after about 45 minutes of poaching and left them in a heated oven so we could whisk in the sauce without the meat in our way. The yolks and crème fraîche were first tempered slowly with a cup of the hot broth from the creuset and then, this creamy mix was slowly whisked into the pot.
As the sauce blended with the stew’s liquid, it turned a brilliant yellow as though we had just added several pinches of turmeric. The chicken was returned to its rightful place in the enriched broth and boiled potatoes were divided amongst bowls. The stew that I had initially thought as looking quite bland had transformed into an intriguing golden color with the thickness of a hot custard. The chicken peeled effortlessly off the bone and all of that aromatherapy it had undergone earlier, imparted the flavors of the leeks and tarragon.
The waterzooi was truly as Eliza had put it, “the queen, cream, chicken recipe.” For me, the Belgian stew was unforgettable and it will certainly become a dish I make for a cozy dinner party. Although, when flipping through Child’s cookbook, I can’t say I would have chosen this recipe if someone like Eliza hadn’t brought it to my attention. The ingredients and methods are modest and I would’ve never guessed they would produce such an intoxicating flavor.
Throughout Child’s career, she promoted this dish in the United States which was very much entangled with Chef Bugnard’s legacy as well. Her enthusiasm for waterzooi caught the attention of one of her loyal disciples, Bina Beghe, who in her own way, promoted the Belgian stew’s future in her American family by insisting all of her children have the appropriate pot for the recipe. For Eliza Beghe, making waterzooi is a nostalgic process that brings her back to her childhood; it was the recipe she wanted to be associated with her mother. Perhaps that is why waterzooi is so rich-- it is a recipe that someone dearest to you shares.
Waterzooi
Adapted from the recipe in volume two of Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
2 large carrots
2 medium onions
2 tender ribs of celery
2 medium-sized leeks, white and tender green parts only
3 tablespoons of butter (or more!)
2 sprigs of fresh tarragon
4 sprigs of thyme
4 sprigs of parsley
Salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste
A whole chicken cut into 6-8 bone-in pieces
1 1/2 cups dry white wine or French vermouth
1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken stock
1 cup crème fraîche
6 egg yolks
Minced parsley for garnish
Boiled butterball potatoes
1. Cut the vegetables into 1 1/2 inch julienne matchsticks. Cook slowly with the butter in a covered dutch oven over low heat. Stir frequently until vegetables are tender, but now browned-- about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the chicken.
2. Salt the chicken lightly and arrange in the dutch oven, spreading the vegetables over and around the chicken pieces. Cover the pot and let the chicken sweat over moderate heat for 10 minutes, turning once. Then, pour the vermouth and enough chicken stock to cover the chicken pieces. Tie the herbs into a bouquet garni and submerge in the pot. Bring to a simmer, then cover and moderate heat so that it maintains a gentle simmer. Cook until chicken is done-- about 25 minutes.
3. Place chicken pieces in a heated oven to keep warm while the sauce is being prepared. Whisk the egg yolks in a large bowl and then, whisk in the crème fraîche. Slowly whisk in 1 cup of the hot liquid from the pot. Remove the pot from the heat and whisk the cream mixture into the pot. Add salt and white pepper to taste. Add the chicken pieces back to the pot, and divide boiled potatoes into bowls. *Once the sauce is made, the waterzooi must be served immediately.
4. To serve, ladle the chicken, vegetables and sauce over the potatoes. Sprinkle each serving with parsley. Serve with good French bread.
Eliza Beghe with her mother, Bina.