The culinary traditions of little Belgium are rich, plain and more than happy to raid the neighbours’ store cupboards, particularly France and Germany. Belgians grow much of their own veg, brew monastic beer, shop daily, discuss all three meals enthusiastically, enjoy a steak-haché chevaline and take their moules with double frites, the national snack sold from café windows in a paper cone with plenty of salt. For some 250 classic recipes, look no further than Ruth Van Waerebeek’s A Taste of Belgium (Grub Street £25, first published 1996). The author is a native of the chocolate-loving city of Ghent but comes from a line of honest country cooks – mother, granny and great-gran – and her photographer, Regula Ysewijn, aka food-blogger Miss Foodwise, is from the spice-importing port of Antwerp. New peas with purslane Purslane, a medieval salad-herb grown in monastery gardens, has an okra-like texture when cooked and a...
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