What is smeus, besides delicious?

A few years ago, FavorFlav’s Marjan tried smeus for the first time. In Ostend, the Flemish coastal town where this old fishermen’s dish originally came from. Heavy, this hearty workers’ fare? Not at all.

At its core, smeus is mashed potatoes. Well, you’ve already won me over. But on top of that, there’s also a poached egg and Dutch grey shrimp (I rest my case). Naturally hand-peeled, and for unclear reasons called North Sea shrimp by the Flemish.

Smeusing

There’s something special about those mashed potatoes, by the way. Cubes of boiled potato are ‘stir-fried’ in buttermilk and butter before being smeused, in other words mashed into the creamiest of purées.

The boiled potatoes are smeused into a purée with buttermilk.

Originally, smeus consisted of potatoes mashed with buttermilk, browned butter and fried herring. But I’ll take shrimp.

Curly Pete

You don’t have to go all the way to Ostend to eat this Flemish dish. Because even though the cuisine of our southern neighbours is heavily underrepresented in the Netherlands, smeus regularly appears on the menu at Rotisserie Rijsel in Amsterdam, the beacon of Belgian culinary art. With—top that—white asparagus (when in season) and deep-fried curly parsley.

Shrimp croquettes

Strictly speaking, deep-fried curly parsley doesn’t belong on smeus, but on that other Belgian classic, the shrimp croquette. But I’m not filing a complaint.

Want to make smeus yourself? The famous Bruges chocolatier and chef Dominique Persoone has a lovely, doable recipe. And you can easily skip the herring roe. Just add a little extra salt.

image: Marjan Ippel