Dutch Delights

The Dutch are not exactly renowned for their culinary highlights. Think only of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting that shows the famous poor family of potato eaters of his days. Potatoes are still a main staple in many dishes like “stamppot”, a hotchpotch made indeed by stamping potatoes with sauerkraut or with endive or even with carrots, always accompanied with a smoked sausage. A Simple no-nonsense meal for farmers and dyke builders, who needed calories to be able to perform the hard work on the fields and the never ending fights against the water. Not exactly a refined recipe for the modern palate.

The reader will understand why I am a bit reluctant to pick up the Mosaic gauntlet as a Dutch native to write about our native food. Add to that another famous dish: pea soup, that’s specifically made to sustain the cold winter days: it has to be so thick that your spoon stays upright in it without any help. Again, the main ingredients are: potatoes, green peas, and smoked sausages.

But those dykes permitted the Dutch to add an important part of windmill dried land to their country: one third of the Netherlands is below sea level, that’s why it is known also as “The Low Countries.” The land of those “polders” proved to be very fertile, and soon we became known for our cows, which produce an incredible amount of milk and with it, our famous Cheeses: Gouda, Edam, Leerdammer to name but a few, all named for cities with age old cheese markets. The older the cheese, the crumbier and more expensive they are. But I must confess, there are days I would give a fortune for a really old piece of salty farmers’ cheese.

I need to make another confession! When we learned that we would move to DC for a job at the World Bank, my first reaction was: how am I going to survive in a country where it seems impossible to get real good bread and cheese? Back home a slice of bread with some good cheese was the first thing I prepared for myself after a long and exhausting day of work. I really consider the Dutch bread the best in the world. Yes, you can get some interesting specimen sometimes at Whole Foods or Traders’ Joe, but the choice and the quality is nowhere near what we can get in our home country. These breads here have stiff crusts, contain only a few whole grains, and worst of all: they are sugared! That was the most difficult discovery that I made in the US, that everything contains sugar: the milk, meat products, and even bread!

Van Gogh however would not recognize modern Netherlands, at the daily street markets in Amsterdam you can buy anything from Indian chilies, bananas to bake from Indonesia, guava from African countries and special ingredients for Turkish, Moroccan, or South Asian cuisine. The people are incredibly mixed, and nowadays more than 50% of its inhabitants are not of Dutch origin.  That’s why you can buy the Moroccan clay tajine ( a cooking pot) at your local Dutch butcher, with a delicious recipe for lamb stew. Modern Dutch cuisine has certainly embraced many inputs from Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Morocco to name but a few. And many old fashioned “stamppots” have been reinvented, and have become really a delight with the extra input of nuts, curry, cilantro and whatever exotic herb or ingredient the cook may want to use. That may explain why I mention as one of my favorite food shops in DC the surely not Dutch but essentially Italian Vace on Connecticut Avenue, close to Cleveland Park metro. They sell fresh home made delicious pastas, you can get real mozzarella cheese, delicious sausages and if you are lazy: terrific pizzas.

The day I discovered the farmers Market at the 24th street side of Foggy Bottom metro was also a happy one: they do not sell much, but do have great bread! Unfortunately they sell only on Wednesdays afternoon from 2.30 till 7.00 from the beginning of April till the end of November. There are other year round fresh markets, check out the website below to find one in your neighborhood. I still miss my butcher in Amsterdam, who sold incredible good lamb and fresh organic vegetables as well as the best bread in Amsterdam. But, I am happy to see that Farmers’ Markets get more and more support, there is nothing better than fresh products.

Maaike le Grand