Young culinary talent will be the focus of the third Belgian Culinary Festival to be held in Bulgaria, taking place from April 21 to 27 at the Hilton Hotel in Sofia.

Organised by the Belgium Bulgaria Luxembourg Business Club and the Belgian embassy, the aim of the event is to introduce the array of quality food products that Belgium produces, both from the ground and more industrially. This year, 2008, also co-incides with the 50th anniversary of Expo 58, when Belgium’s now-symbolic Atomium was built.

At a news conference at the Hilton on April 18, Belgian ambassador Philippe Beke said that they were working on having a model of Atomium at the festival, though it would not be in chocolate. “We prefer to have other chocolate activities,” he said, citing the pleasurable edible, as opposed to decorative, combination of chocolate and beer, two of the products for which his country is best known.

“Belgium is entering more and more into Bulgaria,” Beke said, through its interest in the Belene and Bobovdol power plants, along with bank investments and food processing. Current Belgian economic presence includes the likes of Kamenitza, MaK Publishing, Univeg Bulgaria, Cumerio, Leonidas and GreenCat Gallery (though in this last case, it’s a Bulgarian interest in Belgium). In addition, Bulgaria’s Todoroff Wine Cellar is exerting itself to enter onto the Belgian market as a quality producer.

Beke said that it was important for Bulgaria to promote itself as a producer of quality food products As such, Belgium is currently working on projects to help Bulgaria better its image in this field: in January 2008, there started a project to improve bread quality; another project works to improve the quality of small fruits; a third aims to improve the marketing of Bulgarian products in Belgium.

Other forms of support include partnerships with schools and smaller towns.

Like this year.
The first year it was held, the Belgian Culinary Festival featured top chefs; the second year, it was international chefs. Now, four stellar pupils from SIMA hospitality school in Aarschot, Belgium, along with their professor Willy Smet are in Sofia as part of the happenings. At the news conference on the 18th, they prepared a recipe consisting of apple-filled crèpes that made use of a Belgian speciality called sirop de Liège, which Belgian economic and commercial attaché Eric Santkin described to The Sofia Echo as a sort of concentrated paste made from apples, pears and sometimes dates.

“This event will allow Bulgarian gourmets to relish what Belgium has to offer,” he said. “We hope for it to increase an interest in some of the more speciality products of our country, like the jambon des Ardennes (a prosciutto-type ham).”

Also at the news conference were Nadia Maneva and Kurt Houbrechts of GreenCat Gallery. Houbrechts talked about the two art exhibitions that would accompany the culinary revelling. One will be by Adamava Contemporary Art Collective, a group of four artists, each with his own style and technique: Axel Daeseleire, Jurgen Addiers, Ariaan van Looy and Adalbert Gans. During the Belgian Culinary Festival, Adamava will be present, with Daeseleire also taking part in a Francophone and Flemish poetry reading on April 23 at 7pm at the Hilton.

Showcased at the Hilton’s branch of GreenCat Gallery will be maps new and old, in an exhibition called Abraham Ortelius and the Early Cartography of the Low Countries. Prominent 16th-century cartographer and geographer Ortelius is regarded as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
 
During the Belgian Culinary Week, guests to the hotel’s restaurant Seasons will be able to taste Belgian specialities in a dinner buffet format, where dishes will include North Sea sole terrine in Belgian shrimp aspic, rabbit with plums and Belgian beer, fowl with asparagus and coulis made of Gueuze beer, rice milk with saffron gingerbread, and bavarois with cinnamon.

The week opens with a private reception at which beers (Bocheltse jenever, Van Honsebrouck, Hoegaarden, Stella Artois, Leffe and Tryavna Deluxe, according to bblbg.com), chocolate and ice creams will star.

SIMA director Daniel Steegmans, Belgium Bulgaria Luxembourg Business Club president Johan De Smet-Van Damme and Ivan Todoroff, owner of Todoroff Winery, also participated in the news conference.