Dutch cooking today - A nice Dutch recipe book

Over the Holiday season I found a really nice book: Dutch cooking today. Written in English, this book includes many great colour photos and a lot of the old favourite Dutch recipes, including:

• Dutch apple pie
• Speculaas cookies
• Hutspots
• Uitsmijter
• Dutch pea soup

I think this recipe book was written for two types of readers:

1. Expats living in the Netherlands, who want to learn how to cook some traditional Dutch recipes while they live here and want to find things to do with the limited range of food available in supermarkets.
2. Someone considering moving to the Netherlands who wants to know what "traditional Dutch food" really is.

I can't find the book on Amazon, but here's a comparison page for other online book stores:

http://boeken.beslist.nl/boeken/d0000476667/Dutch_cooking_today.html

Things that are typically Dutch

I was thinking this week about all the things, good and bad, that I’ve seen/found/used in the Netherlands and would never be able to see/find/use back home. Although you’d think that culturally the Netherlands and the UK aren’t that far apart, and that through the process of globalisation, everything is becoming the same anyway, there are still some things that are simply Dutch and you won’t find anywhere else. In my opinion, these are they:

Kaasschaaf (Cheese slice)
This is a really clever device the Dutch use everyday to ensure they get perfectly sliced thin layers of cheese for their lunch-time or breakfast bread rolls or sandwiches. It’s typically Dutch of course because it means that you take only the exact right amount of cheese, there is no room for greedily taking a slightly thicker slice of cheese, the only way to get more is to slice off a whole extra piece, but that is too obvious to people around you.

My only concern about Cheese Schaves (?) is that when you get to the end of a piece of cheese, and you’re working with just a centimetre or two of cheese before the rind, the cheese schaaf does become a bit dangerous. Many a time have I almost cheese schaafed my wrist open while trying to get that last remaining bit of cheese off the rind. This tool is in fact the ultimate suicide device.

Vla

There is no English translation for the word vla, it simply doesn’t exist in England and I have not seen it in any other country than Holland, although I expect the Belgians probably have it too. The only parallel I can draw with English stuff is to compare Vla to a slightly runny low-fat Ambrosia Devonshire custard (don’t tell my husband I said this, but it does actually taste exactly the same and I’ve just found a recipe for making it which uses custard powder as the base – he’ll be devastated http://www.typicaldutchstuff.com/vla.shtml ).

So vla has a “vague resemblance” to custard, but you can get away with eating a whole bowl of vla, by itself, for pudding and no-body will blink an eye-lid. Magic.

White Asparagus
This is another thing that I had never seen or heard of before I came to Holland (in fact everything in this list falls into that category). White asparagus is a delicacy in the Netherlands and Belgium, and when they are in season you can’t escape them in supermarkets and restaurants. They look similar to their green relatives but they are longer, much fatter and totally anaemic looking. They are white because they are deprived of sunlight when they are growing up, and from what I can tell are basically nurtured in the same way as mushrooms.

I have cooked them a couple of times and the hassle factor, compared to green asparagus, is considerable. First of all you have to peel them (I’ve actually used my cheese schaaf to do this), then you have to steam them on a bed made of their own peeled-off skins for about 15 minutes. All the recipes I’ve ever seen for these ghostly vegetables are based on, or totally limited to, butter and cheese. I still prefer the green ones.

Milk at lunch-time
This is less of a “thing” than a massive cultural difference between NL and, let’s face it, the rest of the world. In the UK you are given milk at lunch time as a child at primary school. You wouldn’t be seen dead drinking it at lunch time at secondary school. And, as an adult, milk simply isn’t available to you at a work canteen or in a restaurant. But in Holland, you are a weirdo if you don’t drink milk at lunch time, no matter what your age. My husband and his family always have a glass or mug of milk with their lunch time bread and cheese.

Even more amazing to me, however, was my first few experiences of lunch in an office canteen. The canteen sold 300ml plastic cups of milk (with foil caps) and these were the hottest selling items going. Every single (Dutch) person in the canteen bought a plastic cup of milk and it was so strange to me to see fully-grown men, often senior managers in smart suits, drinking milk in a way I had not seen since I was 11 years old. Every day I would buy a can of diet coke and for the first three weeks or so I was ridiculed for being “so American” and totally unhealthy, or asked “Don’t you drink milk? Don’t you like it?” To answer that question again: yes I do drink milk, but through eating my breakfast cereals every morning. It seems Dutch people don’t eat breakfast cereals, they normally eat bread so the first milk they get in a day is at lunch.

Hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles)
For all the English-speakers reading this blog, the next few lines are basically referring to the chocolate sprinkles, or hundreds-and-thousands, that are, in most countries, the reserve of cakes, pastries or donuts.

Who in their right mind would also sprinkle hundreds-and-thousands onto buttered bread?

…the Dutch that’s who.

Extraordinarily, there’s a whole food industry built up around these polished up little mouse poops. Unilever makes them, there’s a premium brand “De Ruijter” and all the supermarkets sell their own brands too. Unlike buying breakfast cereals, you can buy family-sized boxes of hagelslag, which last my two-person household at least six months. And you can even buy mini-boxes of De Ruijter hagelslag, which are just the right size to sprinkle on one slice of bread. These mini-versions are available in multi-packs in supermarkets and sold separately in work canteens and hotels.

But hagelslagen(/s) aren’t limited only to the chocolate, shiny mouse poo shaped variety. There must be getting on for about thirty variations on the theme, including:

• Bigger, flat, chocolate flakes
• Dark chocolate sprinkles (and flakes)
• Fruit sprinkles (pictured right - not sure how much actual fruit they contain)
• Aniseed sprinkles (which are white with little tails and called mice)
• Powered aniseed sprinkles (which are the mice, but ground and called stamped on mice)
• Pink mice (which are a special treat reserved only for the birth of a baby girl)
• Blue mice (reserved for the birth of a baby boy)
• Easter sprinkles (in spring-like colours)
• Etc, etc

Brand new motorways, major roads and sign posts
This is, again, less of a thing, than an observation and something I wondering whether any other expat in Holland has noticed too. All the motorways and major roads here look like they are no older than 10 years old. All the road surfaces are immaculate, all the paintwork is perfectly neat and still bright white. All the road signs are hung above the motorways in exactly the same way, throughout the entire country (the metal construction on which they are placed is identical where-ever you go). The road signs within cities, and those for bicyclists, are also placed on posts that are exactly the same where-ever you are in Holland. The signs for cars are hung on blue and white painted posts (immaculate as if they were painted yesterday) and for cyclist these post are red and white.

It is as if one single company has spent the last decade building all the roads, using an unlimited supply of exactly the same parts. The roads are built as if they were made by some model-building enthusiast playing with an entire country.

If you are an expat like me, look out for this and marvel at how it’s possible and the huge amount of money it must have taken. If you’re Dutch, open your eyes to this rather unique phenomenon and let me know if you think there is any other evidence that you have been living in a model country all your life (it reminds me of that film “the Truman show”). The only problem I can see it that in the next 10 years or so every major road in Holland is going need replacing. What a job. I’m not sure I want to be here then.

……………

There are other things that to me are “typically” Dutch, but I’ve been writing this post for about an hour and it’s getting too long. The other things include: Beschuit (cheapo breakfast biscuits used to celebrate birthdays), Slingers (cheapo party decorations, used on birthdays), front door signs (everyone has their name on their front door), clogs (need I go on)…

Raw onions, everywhere

One thing that surprises and disappoints me, almost daily, in Nederland is the huge quantities of raw onion to be found in food.

The best example of this is with the Dutch Haring, which is absolutely smothered in raw onions.

See if you can spot the fish in the image below:

I can’t understand this. When you eat raw onions, even the smallest snippet, the taste stays in your mouth for at least the next 5 hours, and worse other people can smell it on your breath for much longer. Very anti-social.

I don’t mind it so much with things like Haring, because I can easily avoid Haring, but when it comes to the ready-made salad meals, or even bags of salad, to be bought from the Albert Heijn, it’s very annoying. I now check each pack to make sure I’m not paying for a salad that is one quarter raw onions.

It’s the same in all restaurants, including the canteen at work. The salad bar has several bowls of different salads to choose from, but many of them contain large quantities of finely sliced onion the pieces of which are very tricky to pick out. The quantity of onion infiltrating the salad bar seems to get more and more towards the end of the work week, possibly because other, less offensive, ingredients are running low.

Of course onions are basically the same as Tulip bulbs, which the Dutch have plenty of. I don’t think I’m actually facing tulip bulbs in my salads, but during the “hunger winter” of 1944-1945, the Dutch did eat tulip bulbs as other food was confiscated and sent to Germany. Understandably, the Germans didn’t think the tulips were very tasty and so the Dutch were allowed to keep them. Apparently tulip bulbs are very sweet, they made you sick or give you a rash, so maybe “normal” onions are now a special treat for the Dutch?

A nice GLASS of tea!

One of the most difficult things for any English person living abroad is the fact that you have to learn to make it through the day without, necessarily, being able to lay your hands on a nice cup of tea. Fellow Brits will be able to sympathise with me; every time any of us goes abroad on holiday from the UK we wake up in our hotel rooms desperate for a cuppa, but have to put up with the weak insipid tea bags on offer at breakfast. As an expat, I face a similar issue in cafes throughout the Netherlands. The point is, I’ve had to learn to adapt. But it’s hard with my background*.

At home in Britain, British tea drinkers, like me, are generally very limited in their choice of teabag, opting only for a “nice cuppa tea”-teabag, which is in fact black tea, a bitter blend that is better with milk. If you ask for a cup of tea in a restaurant or café, normally it is assumed you’ll want milk and it’ll either already be in your cup with your tea, or you’ll get a small jug. The hard work is done for you, the teabag itself will already have been removed. OR, in the better places, you’ll get a nice fresh pot of tea, so you judge the strength yourself and come back for seconds.

Dutch people are open to a much wider variety of tea flavours, and correctly do not mask the flavour of these particular teas with milk. In Holland, tea is served as a single glass of hot water with a basic (not round, pyramidal or non-drip draw string), but flavoured or scented, tea bag on the side, a teaspoon and a tea bag saucer. There’s no such thing as a pot of tea for two here in the Netherlands. You’ll get a small glass mug with a randomly selected Twinnings teabag, or nothing. No china cup, no mug, no teapot in sight and certainly no milk.

The problem is that the English are so used to drinking their tea with milk that they desperately need to add even a spot of milk to these weaker European blends, even if it’s from the jug of milk that’s supposed to be used with the breakfast cereals. Adding even this slightest drop of milk causes the final brew to look like dirty dish water, which is highlighted through the glass sides of the cup, so the tea looks and tastes very weak and not at all satisfying. Even so-called English breakfast tea bags aren’t strong enough in taste to come close to a nice cup of tea.

So I’ve learned to drink Dutch tea the Dutch way, it tastes better that way. But I’d rather opt for a good old English cup of tea any day of the week.

* Britain is the largest tea market in Western Europe, representing 86.9% in overall volume terms and 92.6% of volume sales of black tea (source: http://www.teaandcoffee.net/0103/tea.htm). According to the Tea Council the UK drinks 165 million cups of tea a day - 62 billion cups per year.

About the Dutch addiction to deep-fried snacks

One of the things I quickly discovered when I moved to the Netherlands is that the Dutch seem to be addicted to deep-fried food. Examples of savoury Dutch deep-fried delicacies are:

• Bitterballen (round balls containing thick meat sauce)
• Frikandel (a long skinless dark coloured sausage of beef and pork mince)
• Kibbeling (fried fish bits, perceived to be healthy because they’re fish-based!)
• Patat/Patat frites/Vlaamse frites (Belgian fries)
• Rundfleeskroket (oblong shaped croquette containing beef mince)
• Satekroket (similar to the rundfleeskroket, but also containing garlic and peanut butter!)

When I worked at a large office in the Netherlands the only hot food served in the canteen was deep fried, everything else was (of course) bread or cheese. Here, I saw many Dutch colleagues eating deep-fried croquettes mashed up and spread in a bread bun. This seems far from a healthy balanced meal and more like a carb overdose to me. Not being particularly fond of meat slurry, I’ve only dared to eat Bitterballen and Patat. Bitterballen are served with a small ramekin of mustard and Patat (frites) are smothered with mayonnaise.

There is a whole fast-food retail concept “FEBO” focusing on just these sorts of vein-cloggers. The name FEBO comes from the street where the first ever shop was located, on the Ferdinand Bolstraat round the corner from where I live in Amsterdam. Now common all over the country, each establishment is nothing more than a couple of guys with deep fryers and a wall with rows of coin-operated vending doors. Behind the doors a range of soggy looking burgers and croquettes await. Drunk Dutch boys will sometimes attempt to eat a “straatje” (street) which means opening a whole row of the little doors of doom and consuming the contents within. Calorie-wise, I’m sure this idea knocks the typical “English” donner kebab into touch, and that was always rumoured to be the equivalent of your daily calorie allowance in one go. As far as I know FEBO is unique to Holland, surprisingly the concept has not been exported.

Broodje frikandel is basically the Dutch equivalent of a hot dog, but of course the sausage is deep fried instead of boiled. Probably broodje frikandel came long before the hot dog in fact. Anyway, the Dutch are mad for them, as can be seen in this classic Dutch music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8wBJlApVFU

The Dutch are very particular about the way of dressing their chips (patats) and you need to be in with their lingo to make a successful order. If you just want salt, ask for “patat zonder”, chips with salt and mayonnaise are “patat met”. You can also get “patatje oorlog” (chip battle) which is the last chips from the pan drenched in pretty much every sauce available (peanut sauce, mayo, curry sauce, ketchup and chopped raw onions). This is probably the only way you’ll be able to get chips with ketchup in Holland without being criticised, but all the other throat burners come with it too.

One last treat worth a mention is Oliebollen (literal translation: Oil balls). These sweet deep-fried pastries are similar to donuts, but roughly spherical and with raisins, currants and sultanas added to the batter. They are most delicious when served hot and with powdered sugar on top. Oliebollen are only available to buy at and around New Year, when Oliebollaries (decorated sales huts) appear all around the city wafting the smell of their freshly fried Oliebollen. We’ve made our own fresh Oliebollen on New Years Eve for the past three years in a row, they were really lekker (yummy) but not at all ball-shaped.

Things that cannot be bought at my local Albert Heijn

Albert Heijn (AH) classify their size of store from 1-5 (1 being the smallest, 5 being the biggest). The store nearest me is categorised as a size 4, so you’d expect it to be pretty big and stock pretty much everything you’d need or want. Not so.

Here’s a list of things I’m not able to find in my local Albert Heijn:

Lamb
No Lamb of any variety: no minced lamb, diced lamb, lamb steak, lamb chops. Nothing. Amsterdam is full of Turks, you’d think they would want to buy some lamb? Oh I forgot, everyone in Holland has the time to traipse around the butchers, bakers and candlestick maker’s shops every single day to get their groceries.

Limes
My Albert Heijn always stock lemons, oranges, mangoes and pomegranates, but no limes.

Fruit Squash / Ribena
I don’t understand what kids drink here. Parents have the option of buying either really expensive fruit juices, or carbonated drinks for their kids. The other option, which I wouldn’t go near, is something like the French Diablo, which the Dutch call Sirop, and is pure sugar in a tin. I guess they just rely on good old fashion milk, and chocolate milk (also full of sugar).

Double or Single Cream
There’s only whipping cream, sour cream and crème fraiche here in the Netherlands it seems. And you’d never pour whipping cream on an apple pie, as that would be sacrilege, you MUST whip it first. (Oh yes and rather hilariously whipped cream translates into Dutch as "slagroom"!)

Pantene Hair Products
I was truly astounded at this one. Procter and Gamble what are you doing to me? The hair product aisle in my category 4 Albert Heijn is four shelves high by about 8 products wide and includes L’Oreal, Dove and something called Andrélon (made by Unilever) which dominates the shelf in garish purple packaging. Compare this to the hair product range in my old Tesco in London which was about 10 metres wide and had every product under the sun, except Andrélon.

Serious Breakfast Cereals
First, it’s impossible to by a box of cereal over 500g. It’s like buying mini cereal boxes from a Kellog’s selection pack. I need to buy two boxes to last the week. And talking of selection, don’t get me started on the range of cereals available in Holland. The narrow shelf here has Fruit and Fibre, “Cruseli”, Jordans Muesli (pronounced in the not-so Biggleswade/Bedfordshire accent of “Yoordaans”), Cornflakes, Special K and something based on sawdust. Weetabix, if available, only comes in boxes of 12 – that would last one person only six days – does everyone in Holland live alone?