Chufi

oh, mmm lasagna.... is that a layer of something cottage-cheesy in the middle?

Friese Dumkes - Frisian hazelnut aniseed cookies These are famous cookies from Friesland, one of the Northern provinces of the Netherlands. 100 g ground hazelnuts 150 g softened butter 125 g soft brown sugar 2 eggs 250 g flour 1 T aniseed 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp ground ginger pinch of salt Preheat the oven to 150 C / 300 F. Mix together the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs and mix well. Add the flour and mix for a couple of minutes. Add the spices, salt and hazelnuts and blend well. Roll out the dough on a well floured worksurface to a thickness of 1 cm. Cut into strips of 2 x 4 cm. Put strips on a baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes (they should not brown too much). Immediately after taking them out of the oven, you should make an indentation into each cookie with your thumb (hence the name - dumke meaning 'little thumb') However, I find this a rather painful exercise because the cookies just out of the oven are hot! So if you are not aiming for complete authenticity, just omit this step, thay will taste great anyway. let them cool on a wire rack. from the Dutch Cooking thread Keywords: Snack, Cookie ( RG1450 )

that site is amazing.. like a dutch supermarket on the internet... OK so this is interesting. Kroketten are not the same as saucijzenbroodjes.. Kroketten are croquettes, I am planning to make some (or it's little sister, bitterballen) this weekend. I see the Krokettenspicemix on the Hollands' best website, but when I go to the Dutch site of the Verstegen company, this product is not listed. I'll look for it in my supermarket though to see if they have it and if I can see the ingredients listed. I never use ready made spice mixes, except for speculaas (spicy cookies) and I am just amazed at the variety of spicemixes that is out there!

Hi DutchMuse! I'd love to see your recipe, here's mine: this is what goes into it. 500 gr. split peas a couple of carrots a small celeriac 3 fat leeks a couple of potatoes 2 large onions about 1 kilo pork ribs a piece of salted pork 4 bayleaves 4 litres of water smoked pork sausages All the vegetables (diced and sliced into fairly small pieces) go into the pot together with the washed peas, water and the pork (exept the sausages). Simmer for 4 hours.. or so. Add some salt and pepper. Take the meat of the bones and leave the soup till the next day for the flavors to develop. Next day, heat the sliced sausage in the soup, sprinkle with a little bit of celery leaf and serve.. with black ryebread, spread with mustard, with some katenspek (a kind of bacon that has been salted, boiled, smoked AND grilled). I love stamppot too.. so much that I gave it it's own thread! But you're right it does belong in this thread. Here's the linkStamppot Tahnks for this reply, it expresses what I wanted to say but somehow couldn't I'd love to hear about your Dutch cookbooks. Do you cook a lot from them or do you mainly use family recipes?

Abra, I don't know.. the saucijzenbroodjes I had were never spicy.. so I will have to look into that. Do you have a link to the "Dutch place online"?

about the fish: sofar I have focused on the dishes I know well, the ones I grew up with.. Both my parents grew up on a farm and my father was a butcher for 40 years, so you can imagine fish was not a very important part of our diet.. I'll try to think of some traditional Dutch fish dishes though! about the carpaccio: see also my reply to fifi, in the previous post.. the carpaccio is definitely everywhere and in the most horrible disguises.. it's one of those trends that has unfortunately become common practice... makes me so mad sometimes. that's it for now, tomorrow I have to go and do my other job This weekend will bring more recipes, I promise!

The Dutch have always prided themselves in being tolerant of other cultures and habits.. all the way from centuries ago until now. Which means that today we are truly a 'multicultural' society, and we should be proud of that.. but along with that, taking pride in our own traditions seems to have suffered. It's not 'hip' or trendy to cook beef the way I demo'd here. For most people this type of cuisine is something they may remember from childhood but they want to forget about it.. I think mainly because they never had it the right way to begin with... I don't know why it is that at the age of 36, I'm discovering a new appreciation for these dishes.. while I rebelled against them for most of the past 15 years.. it's very interesting. I know of a couple of restaurants in Amsterdam that specialize in classic Dutch cuisine, with a modern twist. If you ever come this way again let me know and I can give you some info! There are some good books. I will try to find out and let you know!

Braised beef, Dutch style First get your beef. This is about 1 pound of what's sold over here as 'lean stewing beef'. Cut the beef in pieces (or not, whatever you prefer) and season with salt and pepper. Melt 75 grams of butter in a pan that will accommodate all the beef lying flat. Brown the beef over gentle heat. Add water to come almost to the top of the beef. Now add 2 bayleaves and 2 cloves. And here comes the most difficult part.. (for me at least..) don't add anything else. Not a splash of wine, not a sliver of onion or garlic, not a whiff of any other herb or spice. Nothing. Really. Make sure the meat simmers very gently (use a heat diffuser under the pan) and let simmer for about 3 hours. It ends up looking like this. It is now so tender that when you press a piece, it just falls into shreds. In Holland this dish is also known as 'draadjesvlees' which means 'thready meat'. It tastes of meat that has been braised in butter. My mother used to cook up a big pan of this about every 10 days, and then we would eat it for a couple of days in a row. We never got tired of it.. like you never tire of a plain roast chicken or a plain grilled steak. If you have good quality beef, this is really a preparation to let it shine - even if it isn't the prettiest of braises. Serve with plain boiled potatoes or mash to soak up all the lovely gravy, and a vegetable - braised red cabbage, steamed green beans, brussel sprouts are all classic combinations.

Hi Milagai yes I have been thinking about that... And I have to say that I am no expert on the history of Dutch Cooking or on the history of the spice trade.. so what follows is simply my own assumption about this matter. It is true that the Netherlands played a major role in the spice trade in the 17th and 18th centuries.. and recipes from those days show the use of mace, nutmeg, cloves, sugar and cinnamon in both sweet and savoury dishes. The spices were expensive though so it was only a certain part of society that could benefit from this. They used it as a way to express their wealth. The use of these spices in sweet dishes is still common (as you will see somewhere in the near future when I will start baking the December sweets, most of them are flavoured with a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and pepper). There is, to this day, a modest use of spices in savoury dishes. For instance the famous Frisian cheese that is studded with cloves. Cloves and nutmeg are often used in meat dishes and with game. But it is all very subtle. I hope this answers your question. It is a very interesting topic, but it would require much more research on my part to give a full 'history of the spices in Dutch Cuisine'

blogging's not so hard..it's fun wonderful shops.. And I also love those wasabi peas! Cashew is a brilliant name for a pet.. when I got my rats, I was trying very hard to think up foodrelated names for them.. wish I had thought of cashew!

As a matter of fact, what a coincedence, I just made some.. I always made pannenkoeken (pancakes ) without a recipe, just mixing flour, eggs and milk until it looked right.. Today I looked up a number of recipes and found that they all have different proportions of the ingredients.. I guess it has to do with whether you like your pancakes thick and fluffy or thin and crispy (more crepe like). So, I made pancakes and took notes of what I did: Make a batter from 2 eggs, 200 grams flour, 300 ml. milk, pinch of salt. Depending on the size of your pan and how much batter you use per pancake, this will yield about 4-6 pancakes. I wanted spekpannenkoeken (pancakes with bacon) so I fried up some smoked bacon. I like to fry the bacon first, then pour of the bacon grease, wipe out the pan and then proceed to bake the pancakes (in butter). on the left is one with apple and bacon. The appel slices were first sauteed in the butter, before adding the bacon and batter to the pan. Flip the pancake when the top is almost dry. On the plate with Dutch sugar syrup: Spekpannenkoek and appel-spekpannenkoek (apple and bacon) I should add that these are much smaller and thinner than the ones you get at the special Pancake restaurants. (where you can also eat weird pancakes like pancake stroganoff, pancake with chicken curry, and I'm pretty sure a pancake with aragula and goatscheese has made an appearance by now ) For home cooking I prefer this size, so you can have more different flavoured ones. Pancakes are a favorite dinner for kid's birthday parties but most adults love them too...

Alinka.. that is just gorgeous.. I'm going to show that to my mother next time she comes to visit! Yetty, I am honoured indeed.. they look delicious.. I was planning on making Jan Hagel somewhere in this project, when I do, maybe we can compare recipes? thanks for posting that picture Tepee! They are addictive aren't they ?

Dutch Pancakes (Pannenkoeken) Please use the proportions of this batter as a guideline. It will take some experimenting to learn how you like your pancakes: thin and crispy or thick and fluffy. This batter produces fairly thin pancakes (using a 20 cm pan, it will yield about 4-6 pancakes, depending on how much batter you use per pancake). You can make plain pancakes, or with bacon, with apple, or apple and bacon. 200 g flour 2 egs 300 ml milk pinch of salt butter for frying slices of smoked bacon, lightly fried apple slices, lightly sauteed in some butter sugarsyrup to serve Mix all ingredients except the butter together to form a smooth batter. You can leave it to rest but it's not necessary. Heat a frying pan until it's very hot. Add a knob of butter and with a serving spoon, a scoop of batter. Swirl the pan around to spread the batter. Cook until the top is almost dry, flip, bake for another minute. Keep pancakes warm on a plate set on a pan of simmering water. For bacon pancakes, add fried bacon to the pan before pouring on the batter. For apple pancakes, put the sauteed appleslices on top of the batter after you've poured it into the pan. Serve all pancakes with Dutch sugar syrup. from the Dutch Cooking thread ( RG1445 )

That looks really good.. What became of them bones? ← I scraped all the marrow out of the the bone and added it to the sauce, which made it lovely and rich.. should (or could) I have done anything else with the bone?

I'm so glad you posted that After I saw that pic in the WW thread I was literally dreaming about it.. made chili with barley a couple of days later.. it was sooo good. It added a delicious chewy texture. next chili I make, I'm sure I'll add barley again.. heresy maybe.. but heresy that tastes great..

Lamb ragout with red peppers, roast eggplant and potatoes: I braised a lambshank for the first time yesterday. Pulled the meat of the bones today, and reheated in the sauce (onions, carrots, red wine and rosemary) with chunks of red pepper. It was the most tender lamb I have ever had.. so rich and sweet. Mmm.. dessert: stoofperen with lemon vanilla rice porridge. See the Dutch Cooking thread for details on those pears..

Stoofperen This is a dutch variety of a cooking pear, called Gieser Wildeman. They are inedible when raw (very hard, almost like quinces) but become ruby-red and meltingly soft when cooked for hours in a sugar syrup. Here's what they look like: They are usually a bit smaller, but I picked the larges ones from the market stall because peeling those little ones is a real pain.. In the pan with cinnamon stick, a couple of tablespoons of sugar, some water, a splash of red wine. My mother, who grew up on a farm where using wine in cooking was as unheard of as using garlic , never adds wine and her pears still turn bright red. After hours and hours of stewing (these were on the stove for close to 4 hours) they look like this: In my family they are traditionally eaten as a 'vegetable' accompaniment to braised meat or chicken. I like them better for dessert, like we had tonight: with rice porridge, flavored with lemon and vanilla:

so many questions.. and assignments I''ll try and answer them one at the time! tahnks for that link Ludja. I think some of these items will be appearing on this thread in the near future! fascinating that you can get vlaai in San Luis Obispo. I visited SLO 3 years ago, pity I did not know about the bakery back then.. I don't think anybody makes stroopwafels at home. You need special equipment.. I could try and get a picture of the guy at the Albert Cuypmarket who makes them, so you would see what I mean.. re the clothing: Nancy is absolutely right about the sneakers and Goretex. Just wear what you would normally wear when going to a city.. comfortable shoes because Amsterdam is small enough to walk around all day. And layers of clothing because it can be very cold with snow and ice, or wet and mild and anything in between! Apple pie is definitely on my list! I've never made pepernoten at home. It's one of those things everybody just buys, you know.. Oraklet's recipe seems about right though, as far as the spices go.

Boterkoek, Dutch gingerpastry This is my mom's version of the classic Dutch boterkoek, a rich buttery pastry eaten as a snack with tea or coffee. I've included a "photo tutorial" of this recipe here on the Dutch Cooking topic I started. 150 g butter 150 g sugar 200 g self-raising flour 1 beaten egg 3 knobs of crystallized ginger, chopped 1 T ginger syrup pinch of salt butter and flour for cake tin Butter and flour a 20-22 cm round shallow cake tin. Preheat oven to 175 C / 350 F. Melt the butter. Mix the melted butter, sugar, flour, chopped ginger and ginger syrup and the salt together. Mix in most of the beaten egg (hold back a little to glaze). Spread the dough in the prepared cake tin and level the surface. Brush with the remaining egg. The pastry has to bake for about 30 minutes. During that time, about every 8 minutes, you have to knock down the dough as it starts to rise. Do this by gently patting the surface of the dough with the round side of a fork. (If you leave the tin in the oven while doing this, be very careful not to burn yourself). This 'knocking down' produces a rich and slightly chewy pastry. After about 30 minutes the pastry should be golden brown. Don't overbake. from the Dutch Cookingthread For a lovely variation, add tow heaping tablespoons of Dutch cocoapowder to the dough when mixing. See herefor the result! With special thanks to Nishla who came up with this idea! Keywords: Easy, Snack, Cake ( RG1443 )

thanks everybody for the kind words Ludja, if you have names/descriptions of the baked goods, I would love to learn about them. It's always interesting to see how traditional stuff 'travels' to other countries and if, and how, they change along the way. That's a very interesting issue. i will talk about that some more tomorrow (have to do a little research first.. ) frugal and bland are indeed two words that describe traditional dutch fare quite well. That's exactly what my complaint was and why I have spent the last 15 years cooking with garlic, aragula and chillies... Anyway, lately I've come to realize that when done the right way, bland becomes really tasty comfortfood, and frugal is just a way of making the most of only a few ingredients. If the food is good, there's a place for it in my kitchen. edited to add: Melissa, I'll answer your questions tomorrow as well

that sounds lovely. What an unusual combo! I bet it looked great too with all those golden yellow ingredients. That's on the menu soon...

I am starting this thread to share some of my country's traditional dishes. Dutch cooking today is ofcourse very much influenced by cuisines from abroad, but there are still many homes where traditional cooking is the daily fare and where people still eat the way we all did 50 years ago. My mother only has salt and pepper by her stove, and I’m pretty sure she never used a single sprig of thyme or rosemary in her stews. I grew up on that kind of cooking – meat, boiled potatoes and boiled vegetables every single night – and I could not wait to start exploring the wonderful world of food when I moved out of my parents house. By now, my mother thinks my cooking is quite eccentric, but at the same time I find that I have a new appreciation for the dishes and traditions that I grew up with. It’s time to collect the family recipes and to think about the culinary heritage that my country has to offer me. Fall seems the perfect season to start this project. I feel Dutch cooking is at its best in fall and winter. The sweet and spicy pastries that accompany the celebrations of December, warming soups and nourishing stews, boozy drinks to keep you warm in the icy wintermonths. I don’t want to romanticize – the winters are no longer as icy as they appear in 17th century paintings, almost everybody buys their liquers instead of making them at home, and even the great Dutch soup, splitpea soup, is more often bought in a tin than made from scratch. But this is Egullet and I’m going to do it my way. I’ll start with a Dutch pastry, boterkoek (buttertart). This is a very rich, thin, buttery pastry. While I agree that the rich buttery taste is essential to this pastry, most boterkoek you can buy (and most recipes) has too much butter for my taste. Some are so rich that the pastry almost becomes translucent from all the fat. This is my mother’s recipe for boterkoek. Technically it should be called gemberkoek (ginger pastry) because it is flavored with crystallized ginger. Her recipe has an unusual method which creates a final product that is rich but light, and deliciously chewy. ingredients: 150 grams of butter 150 grams of sugar (in this case, taken from the vanilla jar) 200 grams of selfraising flour 1 egg 3-5 knobs of crystallized ginger (to taste) and a little bit of syrup from the jar not in the pic is the pinch of salt that I forgot to put in Method: Preheat the oven to 175 C / 350 F Melt the butter. Mix melted butter, sugar, flour and ginger + syrup together. Beat the egg and add almost all of it to the batter. Mix well. The dough looks like this: Have ready a round, 20-22 cm tart tin (buttered and floured). Press the dough into the tin with a fork. Brush with the leftover beaten egg. [note: if you use the smaller tin the pastry will be a bit thicker and will have to bake a little longer]. Put it in the oven. It will have to bake for about 30 minutes, but during that time you will have to knock it down a couple of times like this: Because you have used selfraising flour the pastry will start to rise. Knocking it down produces a pastry that is soft and slightly chewy. According to my mother, using ordinary flour just does not give the same result. I've never tried. It's ready when its firm and golden brown. Don't overbake or it will be dry. End results: The more common version is made without the ginger and often has a pattern of halved almonds on top.

WOW.. such amazing dinners.. Deborah and Daniel, you have some lucky friends! And Daniel what you said about ordering pizza and having just as much fun.. I don't know.. yes sometimes the company is the most important thing, but I'm sure your guests really appreciated all the time and effort you invested in this dinner.. cooking for people this way really is an act of love.. Saturday I braised a couple of pigeons. I loved the flavor but it's not very elegant eating.. tearing the meat off the bones with your teeth is about the best you can do.. Served with roast swede and a Swiss chard torta with raisins and pinenuts, a Marcella Hazan recipe. Truffled goatscheese and a piece of St. Nectaire cheese for "dessert", with some fig bread. Yesterday I ws at a friend's birthday and watched someone else cook mussles and frites for 35 people. Delicious dinner and I was glad I did not have to do all that work!

I hope you all went running to the kitchen to count the cook's fingers. Blegh.

Alinka, that picture of your bowl of oatmeal is gorgeous. Sunny, bright, comforting. I can taste the sweetness just by looking at it.