Recipe Ghent Waterzooi

The traditional Slovak dishes are most commonly referred to as gnocchi with sheep cheese (Bryndzové halušky), sheep cheese (Bryndzové pirohy) and other dishes produced using traditional methods.The sheep cheese is a soft salty cheese made of sheep’s milk with a strong aroma and taste. Like Bryndzové halušky, Bryndzové pirohy is a characteristic Slovak dish that belongs to traditional Slovak specialties. The recipe is quite simple. The preparation procedure, however, is quite different and we can distinguish them reliably by sight and taste.

The reason why the Hotel “Sacher” is as popular as Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace is not its luxury accommodation, but the Sachertorte. Its fame has spread well beyond Austria and it is also the basis for this Gugelhupf recipe.

“Dining like Kings” under the Austrian monarchy did not necessarily mean fine dining. Franz Joseph, the Emperor of Austria, for example, preferred simple meals. One of them was a simple Gugelhupf for dessert, which he loved to have served by his life-long confidante Katharina Schratt.

Waterzooi is a classic stew of Flanders. Its name is Dutch, ‘zooien’ meaning ‘to boil’. It is sometimes called Gentse Waterzooi (in Dutch) which refers to the city of Ghent. The original recipe is made of fish, either freshwater or sea, though today chicken waterzooi is more common. The most accepted theory is that rivers of Ghent became too polluted and the fish disappeared. The stew is made of the fish or chicken, vegetables including carrots, leeks and potatoes, herbs, eggs, cream and butter and usually serbed as a soup with a baquette to sop up the liquid.