Dutch cuisine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
Life in the Netherlands |
|---|
|
Culture
Economy
Society
Politics
Policies
|
| edit box |
Dutch cuisine is shaped by the agricultural produce and history of the Netherlands. It is characterized by its somewhat limited diversity in dishes, the high consumption of vegetables when compared to the consumption of meat, and the wholesomeness of the dishes.
Contents |
[edit] History
The modest and plain look of what is nowadays considered traditional Dutch cuisine appears to be the result of a fairly recent development. From the 17th century onward, the dishes of the wealthy consisted of a rich variety of fruits, cheeses, meat, wine, and nuts. The national cuisine became greatly impoverished when, at the turn of the 20th century, ever greater numbers of girls were sent to a new school type, the Huishoudschool, where young women were trained to become domestic servants and where lessons in cooking cheap and simple meals were a major part of the curriculum. [1][2]
Dutch agriculture roughly consists of five sectors: fishery, animal husbandry, and tillage-based, fruit-based, and greenhouse-based agriculture. The last has had little or no influence on traditional Dutch eating habits.
- Tillage-based crops include potatoes, kale, beetroot, green beans, carrots, celeriac, onions, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, endive, spinach, Belgian endive, and lettuce. Recently some initiatives have been started to encourage interest in such "forgotten" vegetables as common purslane, medlars, parsnips, and black salsify.
- Greenhouses are used to produce tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and sweet peppers.
- The Dutch keep cows both for milk and for their meat, chickens for their eggs and for meat, and pigs for their meat.
- The fishery sector lands cod, herring, plaice, sole, mackerel, eels, tuna, salmon, trout, oysters, mussels, shrimp, and sardines.
[edit] Bread and cheese
The Dutch are famous for their dairy products and especially for their (cow's milk) cheeses. The vast majority of Dutch cheeses are semi-hard or hard cheeses. Famous Dutch cheeses include Gouda, Edam, and Leyden. A typically Dutch way of making cheese is to blend in herbs or spices during the first stages of the production process. Famous examples of this are cheeses with cloves (usually the Frisian nagelkaas), cumin and caraway (most famously Leyden cheese), or nettles.
Dutch bread tends to be very airy, as it is made from yeast dough. From the 1970s onward Dutch bread became predominantly whole grain, with additional seeds such as sunflower or pumpkin seeds often mixed with the dough for taste. Rye bread is one of the few dense breads of the Netherlands. White bread used to be the luxury bread, often made with milk as well as water. A Frisian luxury version of white bread is sugarbread, white bread with large lumps of sugar mixed with the dough.
As well as cheese, the Dutch also use meat products and sweet spreads on their bread: typically sprinkles (hagelslag lit. hail stones), treacle (stroop), and peanut butter (pindakaas). Regionally popular hearty meats include blood sausage (bloedworst), dried sausage, and uierboord, made from cows' udders.
[edit] Coffee and tea
The Dutch drink coffee and tea throughout the day, often served with a single biscuit. Dutch thrift led to the famous standard rule of only one cookie with each cup of coffee. It has been suggested that the reasons for this can be found in the commercial mentality and Protestant upbringing of North Holland. The traditionally Catholic south does not share this tradition (in Limburg a Vlaai, cut in eight pieces, is traditionally served when visitors are expected). A popular Dutch story (never confirmed) says that in the late 1940s the wife of the then Prime minister, Willem Drees, served coffee and one biscuit to a visiting American diplomat, who then became convinced that the money from the Marshall Plan was being well-spent.
Café au lait is also very common. It is called koffie verkeerd (literally "wrong-way-round-coffee") and consists of half-and-half black coffee and hot milk. Other hot drinks include kwast (hot water with lemon juice), anijsmelk (hot milk with aniseed), and the very popular hot chocolate or chocolate milk .
Dutch people invite friends over for "koffietijd" (coffee time), which consists of coffee and cake or a biscuit, served between 10 and 11 a.m. (before lunch).
[edit] Dinner
Dinner, traditionally served early by international standards, starts at about 6 o'clock in the evening. The classic Dutch dinner consists of one simple course: traditionally potatoes with vegetables and meat and gravy, or a stew of potatoes and vegetables. If there is a starter, it is usually soup. Today the meal is often heavily influenced by foreign cuisine. Foreign dishes such as Italian pastas, Indonesian meat and rice dishes, Mexican enchiladas, and Swiss cheese fondue are commonly encountered on the Dutch dinner table and on the menus of local restaurants. The final course is a sweet dessert, traditionally yoghurt with some sugar or vla (cooked milk with custard).
Typical Dutch dishes include stamppot (Dutch stew) and pea soup. Famous stamppotten include *Hutspot, made from potatoes, onions, and carrots served with slow-cooked meat or bacon. This is a legacy of the Spanish invaders, who, according to legend, left a pot of this stew behind in their abandoned trenches when the town of Leiden, which they had been besieging, was liberated in 1574 – so that hutspot was one of the first foods its starving inhabitants found. Before potatoes were used in Europe hutspot was made from parsnips, carrots, and onions.
- Boerenkoolstamppot, kale mixed with potatoes, served with gravy, mustard, and rookworst (smoked sausage).
- Stamppot rauwe andijvie, raw endive mashed through hot potatoes, served with diced fried speck.
- Hete bliksem, boiled potatoes and green apples, served with "stroop" (syrup) or tossed with diced speck
- Zuurkoolstamppot, sauerkraut mashed with potatoes. Served with fried bacon or a sausage. Sometimes curry powder, raisins or slices of pineapple are used to give a stamppot an exotic touch.
Stews are often served with mixed pickle, including zure zult or stewed pears (stoofperen).
Meat products include gehaktballen meatballs, blinde vink, minced meat wrapped in bacon, balkenbrij, a type of liverwurst and meatloaf. The gravy in which the meat is produced is also eaten. A variant of this, eaten around the IJsselmeer, is butter en eek, where vinegar is added to the gravy.
If a dish consists of beans/potatoes, meat and vegetables, these vegetables are sometimes served as a stew, like "rode kool met appeltjes" (red cabbage with apples), or "rode bieten" (red beets). Regular spices used in stews of this kind may be bayleaves, juniper berries, cloves, and vinegar.
Dinner can also consist of pannenkoeken pancakes. The Dutch make them in several forms, including poffertjes (miniature pancakes) and spekdik (a Northern variant with bacon). Wentelteefjes )French toast are similar. Broeder, a type of cake, is also eaten for dinner, mainly in West Friesland.
Desserts often include vla, pudding, or yoghurt. Regional variants include broodpap, made from old bread, griesmeelpudding, grutjespap, Haagse bluf, Hangop, Jan in de zak, Karnemelksepap, Rijstebrij (rice pudding), Krentjebrij, and Watergruwel.
[edit] Alcoholic drinks
Traditionally wine has received a modest role in Dutch cuisine, but there are many brands of beer (mainly lager) and strong alcoholic liquor. The most famous Dutch beer producers are Heineken in the west and Grolsch in the east. Traditionally Noord-Brabant and Limburg had a strong beer tradition, with many different types of beer (not unlike Belgium). However in the 20th century big brewers took over many of the small time breweries or offered them a license to sell their beer brand, while stopping their own production. Also a variety of bitters where Beerenburg is the most famous. Strong liquors include Jenever (gin) and Brandewijn (brandy), but also kandeel (made from white wine), Kraamanijs (a liquor made from aniseed), Oranjebitter (a type of orange brandy, which is served on festivities surrounding the royal family), advocaat, Boerenjongens, raisins in brandewijn, Boerenmeisjes, apricots in brandewijn.
[edit] Special occasions
On special occasions, pastries are eaten.
When a baby is born in a family, the young parents traditionally serve their guests beschuit met muisjes (Dutch rusk covered with sugared aniseed).
The Dutch festival of Sinterklaas (dedicated to Saint Nicolas) is held on the 5 December. Special pastries are made and are distributed by his aide Zwarte Piet; they include pepernoten (gingernut-like biscuits but made with cinnamon, pepper, cloves and nutmeg mix of spices), letters made from chocolate, marzipan, borstplaat (discs of fondant); and several types of spiced cookies: taai-taai, speculaas and kruidnoten, banketstaaf, made from almond meal
On New Year's Eve, Dutch houses smell of the piping hot oil used to prepare oliebollen, appelflappen and appelbeignets (battered apple rings) in deep-fat fryers. These yeast dough balls, filled with glacé fruits, pieces of apple and raisins and sultanas, are served with powdered sugar and are a special treat for New Year's Eve. The Dutch also took their oliebollen to America, where they are now known in a slightly different form as doughnuts. In Limburg nonnevotte are sometimes served during New Year's Eve, although it is mostly eaten during Carnaval
On birthdays all kinds of cakes and cookies are eaten, including appeltaart (apple pie), Bossche bol, dikke koek, cream cake, Fryske dumkes, gevulde koek (cookies filled with almond meal), Groninger koek, Janhagel, Ketelkoek, Kindermanstik, Knieperties, Krakeling, Krentenwegge, Kruidkoek, Limburgse vlaai, Ouwewijvenkoek, peperkoek (gingerbread), Rijstekoek, Spekkoek (from Indonesia), Sprits, Tompouce, Trommelkoek, Bitterkoekjes, Kletskop and Stroopwafel.
A famous Dutch sweet is drop (liquorice). Dutch drop is sold in a large variety of shapes and forms. Drop can be either sweet or salty (or very salty). It is sometimes flavoured with coconut fondant (Engelse drop or English drop), honey (honingdrop), mint (muntdrop), salmiak (salmiakdrop), or laurel (laurierdrop). Typical shapes are lozenges, ovals, oblongs and coins. Honeycombs for honeydrop are also familiar. Some manufacturers have introduced speciality ranges where the drop is made in thematic shapes, such as cars (autodrop), farm animals and farm machine rys (boerderijdrop), etc.
[edit] Fast food
The Dutch have their own types of fast food. A Dutch fast-food meal often consists of a portion of french fries (called friet or patat) with a sauce and a meat product. The most common sauce to accompany French fries is mayonnaise, while others can be ketchup or spiced ketchup, peanut sauce or piccalilli. Sometimes the fries are served with combinations of sauces, most famously speciaal (special): mayonnaise, with (spiced) ketchup and chopped onions; and oorlog (literally "war"): mayonnaise and peanut sauce (sometimes also with ketchup and chopped onions). The meat product is usually a deep fried snack; this includes the frikandel (a deep fried skinless minced meat sausage), and the kroket (deep fried meat ragout covered in breadcrumbs).
A smaller version of the kroket, the bitterbal, is often served with mustard as a snack in bars and at official receptions. Regional snacks include eierbal (a combination of egg and ragout) in the North and East, and Brabants worstenbrood, a sausage baked in bread. Other snacks are the Indonesian-inspired bamihap (deep-fried mee goreng in breadcrumbs) and nasibal (deep-fried nasi goreng in breadcrumbs). In Limburg fries are sometimes ordered with the traditional Limurgian dish Zuurvlees, a type of sour meat (traditionally horse meat, now often cow meat), this is called ‘”frietje zuurvlees”.
Another kind of fast food is fish. This includes raw herring, which is sold in markets and eaten (often with chopped onions), by lifting the herring high in the air by its tail, and eating it upwards, or (less messily) on a bun. Other regular fish snack are kibbeling (deep-fried nugget-sized chunks of cod), smoked eel, and rollmops.
[edit] Regional cuisines
Although the Dutch cuisine is quite unified at present, typical regional specialities still exist:
[edit] Groningen
Groningen is the northernmost province of the Netherlands and borders the Wadden Sea. In the coastal region, especially around the Lauwersmeer area, the use a lot of fish and shrimps. The village of Zoutkamp is the largest shrimp "producer" in Europe. Since, too, Groningen has a small colonial history, cloves are very common in the Groningan cuisine. Groningan meatballs, beef dishes and the typical metworst are all seasoned with cloves.
The greater part of Groningen is rural, which makes potatoes and meat the main food of the province. Even though potatoes are seen as the main food in the Netherlands, in Groningen meat is more prominent. Dishes without potatoes are more common than dishes without meat. Typical Groningan dishes use Groninger mosterd (Groningan Mustard) as stip (gravy). Groningan mustard can also be found in a regional mustard soup. Most common vegetables are beans, black beans, kale (Gronings: mous) and peas which are also included in the most famous Dutch soup with a Groningan variation, snert (pea soup).
Bakery is one of Groningen's specialities. The typical Groninger koek (Groningan cake) is known in the entire country. One of the most famous of the cakes is the oalwievenkouk (old lady's cake). Other famous dishes are povvert (the Groningan variation of Gugelhupf), spekdikken (rye pancakes with speck and metworst) and nijjoarsrollechies (rolls of the new year) which are sweer rolled cookies which are called kniepertjes and which also can be found in Drenthe and Overijssel. Groningen is also known for its rye bread (brood in Gronings; while regular (wheat) bread is called (waaite) stoede). Until the 19th century rye bread was the main food in the province.
The city of Groningen knows a speciality called mollebonen which are saltened fried beans. In the late Middle Ages this was one of the Hanze specialities of the city and in the surrounding areas the citizens of Groningen had mollebonen as their nickname because they used the beans as voting materials in the council.
Groningen is also called land of jenever, which is the "national" baverage of the province.
[edit] Friesland
Just like Groningen, Friesland (or Fryslân) is a coastal province with a lot of rural areas. Potatoe dishes are most common, as well as fish in the coastal areas. The landscape of Friesland consists primerally of grass lands on which cows live. The production of dairy products is one of the largest industries of Friesland. The brand Friesche vlag is one of the most prominent dairy brands in the Netherlands. Beside milk, flan and yoghurt, cheese also knows Frisian varieties, like nagelkaas, which is cheese with pieces of cumin.
Friesland and Groningen have once been one single region, which causes many resemblances between both provinces. One of these resemblances is the cake. As Groningen has its Groninger koek, the Friese kruidkoek (Frisian ginger cake) and the Friese fruitkoek (Frisian fruits cake) are the typical cakes of Friesland. Also oranjekoeke (orange cake), Fryske dúmkes (Frisian thumbs) and sûkerbôle (sugar bread) are quite famous in the entire country. Just like in Groningen, rye bread was the main food until the 19th century. Nowadays the Frisian rye bread is seen as the regular rye bread. A popular snack in the north of the Netherlands is small pieces of rye bread with a piece of herring.
The most famous alcoholic drink of Friesland is Beerenburg.
[edit] Drenthe, Overijssel and Gelderland
The provinces Drenthe, Overijssel and Gelderland are part of the Saxon cultural area. Gelderland south of the Rhine, the Betuwe, does not belong to this area. The area is known for its agricultural character and ridges of hills like the Veluwe crossing the land. In these regions lamb is very popular. In the other areas beef and pork are the most used types of meat.
A typical type of dish from this part of the Netherlands is stamppot. This a mix of potatoes, a type of vegetable, for example kale (moos or moes) and a type of sausage, which is mostly eaten during winter time. Typical sausages from this area are rookworst (smoked sausage) and Drentse kosterworst. Stamppot became well known in the entire Netherlands, that some people see it as the national dish of the entire country.
The center of this area, called Salland, is known for the production of cold cut, such as ham and boterhamworst. In the east, a region called Twente, neagelhoolt is a speciality. This is specially seasoned and saltened (originally done to conserve it) beef which people hang next to a fire place to dry.
A speciality from the whole area is Zwieback, beschuit in Dutch and tweibak in Low Saxon. This is twice baked bread with a round or butterbrot shape. Also krentenbrood, breads or rolls with currants, are popular in this area, as well as Oberländer and Twentish rye bread.
[edit] Noord Holland, Zuid Holland, Utrecht and Betuwe
The provinces of North Holland, South Holland, Utrecht and the Gelderlandic region of Betuwe are the parts of the Netherlands which regional identity has spread to become a stereotype of the whole Dutch cuisine. A reason for this could be that it is the central part of the country. This results in the fact that most foreigner see the regional products from this part of the country as typically Dutch, while the Dutch themselves see them as Hollandic. The central role of this area causes national acceptance of the products from this area.
The most famous product from Holland is the Hollandse nieuwe (Hollandic new one or soused herring), which is caught in the north of region. It is eaten with the hands while holding at the tail, above your mouth and eat it from the bottom to the tail. Usually small pieces of onions are served with it. The west and the south of the region also border the sea, which are famous of their mussels. The center and the east is known for its flat grass lands. Just like in Friesland, a lot of dairy products are made there, but the most famous products are the semi-hard cow milk cheeses. Among the most prominent cheeses are Gouda (from the region near the city of Gouda, and not to be confused with foreign copies), Leidse oplegger (spiced chees with caramin, cumin or cloves), Edam (parafin coated small spheres) as well as more recent high quality cheeses such as Leerdammer and Beemster.
The Zaanstreek in North Holland is known for its mayonaise and mustard, while West Friesland, the region north of the Zaanstreek, is known for its Jodenkoek. The Betuwe, the region around the large rivers in Guelderland, is known for its fruits and marmelades.
[edit] Zealand
The name Zealand (Dutch: Zeeland) means land of the sea, which explains the regional speciality: sea food. In the Netherlands, Zealand is known for its mussels, eels, oysters and shrimps. Most Zealandic restaurants serve freshly caught fish. Typical Zealandic dishes in restaurants are filled lobster and mussel soup.
Popular vegetables in Zealand are leeks and beans. Another popular vegetable was zeekraal until picking them was forbidden late 20th century because it manaced to become extinct.
The producer Zeeuws Meisje (Zealandic girl) is the most famous producer of butter producs in the Netherlands. This is one of the specialties of the province. Other Zealandic specialities are Zealandic butter cookie (Zeêuwse rondjes), and bolus, which actually originates from Jewish bakers on the islands of Zealand.
[edit] North Brabant
North Brabant is the Dutch part of the medieval duchy of Brabant. The other part is Belgian. Both Dutch part and Belgian part still share their culture and cuisine. A typical Brabantian dish is Hachee ,a stew of onions, beef and a thick gravy, usually served with potatoes or rice and red cabbage. Although hachee is a famous beef dish, pork is most used in Brabant. Brabant is famous for its breeding of pigs and the fields of corn. Leek is another popular vegetable in Brabant.
The most famous Brabantian bakery is the Bossche bol, a cakelike ball filled with cream and a coating of chocolate. It is a very popular pastery in cafes in the cities ('s-Hertogenbosch, Breda, Tilburg).
The people from Brabant consider the Brabantian hotdog, a roll with a sausage of ground beef, as the typical Brabantian speciality. In the provincial capital of 's-Hertogenbosch every year there is a battle of who can make the best Brabants worstenbroodje.
[edit] Limburg
Limburg is compared to the rest of the Dutch provinces a little different. The landscape is hilly and the dialect is so different that it could be categorized to the German dialects. The different landscape makes the Limburgish cuisine full of wild meat, especially in the hunting season. The north of the province is quite flat and is the largest asparagus producing area of the Netherlands. In Limburg the asparagus is so popular in the spring season that it is also called queen of vegetables.
Beef is the most used meat in Limburg. A popular Limburgish beef dish is Tête de veaux, which is beef with mushrooms and a tomato based sauce.
The most famous dish from Limburg is vlaai, a large round pie, filled with fruit marmalade. It is so characteristic for the province that the common name for vlaai is Limburgse vlaai.
Limburg is also the province with a lot of beers. Some breweries in Limburg are Lindeboom, Brand, Gulpener, Christoffel, Leeuw, Hertog Jan and Alfa. Many of these breweries use water from the Meuse River, which flows through the entire length of the province.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] External links
|
|||||||||||||||||
