Mussels for everyone: Holland's Seeland region supplies the world

Feb 16, 2010, 12:15 GMT

Yerseke, Netherlands - When Danny de Voogd chats about cooking, he has difficulty keeping back a smile.

'We, too, also sometimes cook with water,' says the owner of the harbour restaurant 'de Branding' in Yerseke. 'But usually we can do completely without.'

It's no wonder, for no other dish is ordered as often in the restaurants of the port town in the Netherlands province of Seeland as mussels. And they are usually so wet that they can go directly into the pot without any additional water. De Voogd likes to cook them with celery, onions, leek, dill, and white pepper.

'For us, the mussel is that what Guinness is for Dublin,' the restaurant man says. 'Both taste best when consumed directly at the source.'

But Yerseke enjoys its nickname 'Mosselendorp van Europa' (mussel town of Europe) not so much because of the gourmet tourists who come to enjoy the grey-black mussels during the high season between July and late April each year.

Rather, one-third of the some 6,500 local residents earn their living from mussels. Alongside oysters, about 100,000 tonnes of mussels are exported to the rest of the world from Yerseke.

Mentioned for the first time in a document in 966 AD by the name 'Gersike' under Emperor Otto I, the spot for centuries remained a farming village with scarcely 500 people.

In a polder area, which like so many other parcels of land in the Seeland province was won back from the sea, the inhabitants initially lived from raising sheep and farming rather than from fishing.

This changed in the second half of the 19th century. In neighbouring Belgium, with affluence rising, markets and restaurants in Antwerp and Brussels paid good prices for fresh mussels and oysters.

'The clean and comparatively warm waters of the Oosterschelde estuary combined for the best conditions for cultivation (of mussels), ' notes aquaculture expert Annelies Pronker of the local large-scale fisheries company Roem van Yerseke.

'What we are doing here may resemble fishing somewhat because we employ boats and nets,' Pronker says. 'But it also has very much to do with sowing, replanting and harvesting,' she adds. 'And so we call it wet agriculture.'

Well before the 80 cutters with their 'YE' registration are allowed to deliver a load of mussels in the Queen Juliana Harbour, the breeders must first 'plant' mussel larvae in parcels set up in specially-designated areas of the shallow Wadden Sea.

After two to three months, pods and filaments emerge, developing into a matting which clings to the seabed where the baby mussels start to grow. As soon as they are sturdy enough, the matting is replanted in the nutrients-rich parcels in the Oosterschelde.

This estuary of the Rhine, Maas and Schelde rivers is, since 2002, also the largest national park in the Netherlands. It is an aquiline world - most of it below sea level - protected by dykes and, since 1986, an imposing storm surge barrier and dam.

For visitors it's a vacation spot of broad horizons, kilometres-long beaches and endless bicycling paths. Visitors also spot seals and porpoises, in an area also enormously wealthy in plant and bird life. And the conditions for cultivating mussels and oysters are ideal.

Even for laymen the mussel cultures are easy to spot from the poles jutting up out of the water. The mussels are ready for harvesting after three years.

But before the wholesalers start their bidding in the only mussel auction in the world in Yerseke, independent experts first test the quality of the crustaceans - they are measured, weighed and classified accordingly.

A key factor is the weight ratio between the shell and the meat. The higher the latter's share - it can reach up to 40 per cent - the higher the price.

As soon as this is determined, the mussels are then given a beauty bath: in the staked-out parcels offshore from Yerseke, the mussels can cleanse themselves from sand through a natural filtration process.

For a week they can clean themselves and mature further to become the tasty, ready-for-delivery 'Zeeuswe Mosselen' (sweet mussels). Packed in jute sacks, they then sent out in refrigerated transports to mussel-lovers around Europe.

Most of these are in neighbouring Belgium, while the second-biggest importer of Seeland mussels is France. But they are also available in Italy, Spain and Germany.