Epautre vs. Apôtre

My mother’s mobility still being a bit dodgy, I continue supplying my weekly catering services on Sunday. In fact, I also prepared and had Saturday lunch at her home, three doors down the road. It consisted of a ‘tomate crevettes’ (fresh tomatoes stuffed with grey North Seas shrimps, crushed hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise), a mixed salad and pan-fried new potatoes. My mother had pre-boiled and peeled the potatoes. I put the rest of the dish together, presenting the tomatoes on a bed of green salad on a oblong stainless steel platter that fit perfectly in one the large shopping bags supplied by our local supermarket.

Today I’m trying my hand at something warm. Yesterday I boiled and shredded a chicken, made some tiny yet tasty meatballs using half-and-half pork and veal mince, an egg, bread crumbs and a generous dash of grated nutmeg. I also sliced up and sautéed 200 grams of mushrooms. This morning I made a white ‘roux’, using Irish (Kerrygold) butter, the chicken stock and the juice of half a lemon.

Another indispensable ingredient of ‘Vol au vent’ is the roux and a roux requires flour. As young housewife (back in the eighties) I would have used plain white flour. However, ever since I’ve discovered ‘farine d’épautre comple't in the nineties, I prefer using what is considered as the authentic cereal. I like it for its authenticity but also for the funny story that is attached to me discovering ‘épautre’, or spelt as it is called in English.

As I said, it was some time in the nineties. My friend and I were staying at our favourite hotel/restaurant in Habay-la-Neuve in the Belgian Gaume. Truffles were in season and I decided I’d treat myself to one of the starters containing the ‘black gold’. On the menu card it read: ‘Tranches de truffles à l’huile d’olive et au gros sel, présentées sur une tartine de pain d’épautre grillée.

Reading this put a grin on my face. My friend who noticed this asked me what was wrong. All proud and self-assured my said “There’s a spelling error on the menu.” He looked and looked again. “I don’t see it.” He finally replied. “Of course, look they wrote ‘épautre au lieu d’apôtre!!” I laughed. Little did I know then that ‘spelt’ had nothing to do with an ‘apostle’, although some of the original apostles, some of who were farmers, may have grown it! Okay, go ahead and make fun of me … I deserve it!

In my defence, however, I would like to point out that we do have ‘Trappist' and ‘Monk’ bread in Belgium … so the connection with the ‘apostle’ seemed like a logical one, doesn’t it?

The first and only time I saw spelt in its‘natural’ form, was in the medieval garden of the Donjon of Loches. Nowadays I buy the Michel Montignac brand … not that it did him any good, because despite his so-called healthy diet, he didn’t live a long life. 

Den or sty?

The other day when visiting Leuven with my friends Beatrice and Jean-Luc, one of the things we did was take a tour of the ‘Oude Markt’, the Old Market square. In the late sixties and early seventies, when I was attending secondary school in Leuven, you could drive your car and park it in the square. In the nineties all traffic, except bikes, was banned from it and the sidewalk terraces of the many pubs and bars took over. After all, Leuven is a university town AND the home town of the Stella Artois brewery. Over the last decades this local brewery has become one of largest, if not THE largest beer concern in the world. Today it is called Anheuse-Busch InBev and has breweries all over the world. One the company’s latest acquisition is the Mexican Corona brand.

The 'Oude Markt' in Leuven:
the longest open-air drinks (beer?) counter in the world.

Now what do go obtain when you put university students and beer together? That’s right: the longest open-air beer counter in the world! And that’s what the ‘Oude Markt’ is known as. On the day of our visit, the weather was nice and sunny and the students were really making the most of it. About one third of the numerous seats were taken … which proofs that there were still some students who were actually attending classes or studying in their ‘kot’. A ‘kot’ is the student’s slang word for their lodgings. The English translation can be either ‘den’ or ‘sty’. But I guess that one can safely assume that some of these ‘dens’ probably look like ‘sties’.

About half of these lodgings are let by the university. The other half belongs to private people, who have turned their house into some kind of a hostel, where several students live together. They each have their own room but have to share the bathroom, the kitchen and the sitting room. Often the house is run by a woman or a couple who are known as the ‘kotmadam’ or the ‘kotbaas’ (student slang for landlady and landlord). The real ‘kotmadam’, who considers her lodgers almost as her own children, provides breakfast and often also dinner, comfort and a shoulder to cry on in stress situations, caused by exams or a broken heart. The ‘kotmadam’ is a dying breed though and more and more students rent a house together, running it in group and sharing the costs.

The bronze statue of the 'kotmadam', holding her coffee pot 

and relaxing after a long day of looking after her students.

To honour the legendary ‘kotmadam’, a bronze statue has been erected on the ‘Oude Markt’. It’s a life-size woman, sitting on a bench, holding a large coffee pot in one hand (the students preferred beverage when they need to stay awake to study for their exams or after they have had too much beer the night before). The bronze woman is leaning back on the bench, as if exhausted and grateful for a moment of rest after looking after her ‘children’.

The statue sits in a very strategic place, overlooking the square and amongst the many hundreds of students who sit on the sidewalk terraces, drinking, laughing and enjoying life. A fitting tribute to a legendary breed of women! And although it has been there for several decades, the statue has never been vandalized. Irrefutable proof of the respect the students show towards their ‘kotmadam’.