Netla, check out this thread on Dutch cooking on Egullet. Chufi shares many of her family's and traditional Dutch recipes.

Ann

Cool link Ann!
My mom's family is Dutch. Great grandma was Dutch Reform but great grandpa converted to Seventh Day Adventism along with the 8 girls. I laughed out loud at the description of dutch food--plain meat and potatoes. Take away the meat and you have an idea of the Dutch food I remember as a kid. Actually grandma used lots of bacon--she fried tvp in bacon to give it more flavor, lol! She wasn't a vegetarian. What I took away from my Dutch ancestry was a complete LOVE of gardening and fresh produce. Certainly the winter fare was plain and gruely, but in the summer we feasted on fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, green beans, zuchinni, (which I think go by the name courgettes in Europe), etc. My appreciation for plain fresh vegetables is competely Dutch. Just with butter and salt, or a little bacon grease, lol! Also plain fruit--berries and sweet cream. Tea every afternoon. Grandma was no great baker--her specialties were gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies that weren't very sweet (not my faves back then) and fried donuts. Oatmeal every morning or fresh ground cracked wheat. Lots of dishes with apples.

When I think Dutch food nowdays, I think plainer than plain except with the baking. Seems like there is no end to the Dutch sweet tooth!

Oh, and braunschweiger and cottage cheese--those are some of the foods I associate with my Dutch heritage. Scrambled eggs and bacon for dinner--that would be Dutch, lol! Plain and frugal. Except at the bakery, where the wild side comes out!

I live in a very "Dutch" area of the midwest. A town about 20 miles away was settled about 150 years ago by the Dutch and over the years more and more people from the Netherlands have come to live in Iowa. They are very proud of their heritage and have preserved much of the customes and food.
I can buy Dutch baloney and pastrys of all kinds, letters, breads, pies and restraunts serve rouladen and sausages and a wonderful Dutch salad.
It seems to me that those who say they remember just boiled meats and vegetables seasoned only with salt are remembering the way pretty much all the people cooked who didn't have the luxury of travel or hired help. It comes from a heritage of just getting food cooked to feed the family....just food....cooked in the easiest way.
People who didn't have to work dawn to dusk, cleaning, washing, chopping wood, making the clothing as well as the medicines and poultices could find time to experiment with different ways of cooking things. Just providing food for sustenance was enough.
Linda C

When I lived with my host family in Amsterdam back in 1993 I didn't notice anything really very unusual about their meals/cooking style.

Mary made a lot of the same dishes one would find on an American table, leg of lamb, meatloaf, cheesepie (similar to quiche) apple pie, etc. Maybe she was more "westernized" in her cooking style, I don't know.

She gave me a few of her recipes, but they're all metric and I just haven't had the time to try to convert them, so I haven't made any of them. Her meatloaf recipe was layered with hard boiled eggs and bacon...it was really good!

I really don't recall having any meal while I lived there that I would have considered authentic/exclusive "Dutch".

I'll be interested in seeing the replies on this. Maybe I missed out on some authentic Dutch cuisine! LOL

Linda

My husband & I moved to the Netherlands in 2006 and lived there for 2 years. It is a culinary wasteland. In fairness, we were not exposed to homecooked Dutch meals. I have read Chufi's posts on Egullet that Ann shared with me last year. You would be hard-pressed to find food that good in restaurants anywhere in Holland perhaps with the exception of Amsterdam and den Haag, or perhaps Rotterdam - and only then if you're lucky.

Our experience is that the Dutch only eat one hot meal a day, in the evening. Breakfast and lunch are cold (pastry, bread, cheese, cold cuts). Food is plain, not much spice with the exception of their Indonesian restaurants which almost seem like their "national cuisine".

Unless you are staying in a big hotel, there is no place to have breakfast. Bakeries are open in the mornings, but there is no such thing as koffie "to go". We did not live in Amsterdam - so in that unique big city things might be different than the rest of Holland.

Another kind of restaurant found all over Holland serves "pannekoeken" (but not for breakfast). These are big, thin crepe-like pancakes filled with anything from sauted apples/raisins/whipped cream to sauted chicken livers with onions. More commonly, they were ordered with sweet fillings by the Dutch. The Pannekoeken Huis in our town boasted 100 different fillings.

French fries are a major food group. They are sold at markets and in cities in big cones with all kinds of gloppy toppings. Raw herring with onions (eaten while holding onto the tail) are revered by the Dutch. They also have about 100 varieties of cheese which just about all taste the same.

Around Kerstdagen (Chistmas) stands would open in the towns to sell Olliebollen (fried balls of dough, often with chopped apples and dusted with powdered sugar). Those were good.

That's all I can come up with as far as unique Dutch food that was available to us as expats there. I shopped in their fresh markets and in their grocery stores, and had little trouble finding good quality foodstuffs. I cooked most of our meals at home. We had a hard time getting excited about going out to eat while we were living there. Whenever my husband's colleagues would come for meetings they would always comment about how bad the food was, and the chairman of the meetings would apologize "especially to the French and Italians" about the food they would be eating for the duration of their stay lol!

Holland is a beautiful country. We really enjoyed our time there. I'm sad to be back in the States so soon. The Dutch do flowers better than anyone, but as far as their cooking they must keep the best behind closed doors.

seagrass

seagrass, your description of Dutch food sounds a lot like what my son & his fiancee are finding in Denmark. They moved to Copenhagen last summer from San Francisco. What a difference in food offerings!

DS said there are a variety of cheeses, but they all taste the same. There are few ethnic restaurants, save for "Italian" (sounds like it's their equivalent of the Dutch's Indonesian). Eating out anywhere costs a fortune.

The one thing they raved about...Danish pastry.

Didn't mean to hijack, just saw so many similarities I had to post. Makes us appreciate all the variety and relative affordability of good food here!

We live in a dutch community. The one Linda is talking about in fact.

The name of our town is Pella. I and my husband are dutch and have lived here all of our lives. The community has a high percentage of Dutch Reformed. We also have Reformed who broke away from the Dutch Reformed. Really fairly much the same.

People from all over the country come to Pella to buy the dutch pastries from the two bakeries. The dutch meat markets are famous for their different flavors of smoked ring bologna.

When growing up my mother and granmother had very few spices in their kitchens, mostly used salt. I remember one of the meals we just loved my granmother called "Hutsput". It was made with boiled potoates, carrots, onions and left over roast or hamburger. The boiled ingredients were all put into one pot and mashed all together. I still make this now, but will add broth and spices.

My grandfather was a wonderful gardener. I can still smell the beets and onions that would hang in his garage. Read on one of the dutch recipe sites that the dutch were known more for gardens than their food!

My husbands grandfather was a widower who had to learn how to cook on his own. The grandsons (probably 8 at time) would stay overnight. In the morning he would make them "Vetenstroop", not sure this is spelled right. It was bacon grease mixed with molasses, they would dip bread into the mixture.

The dutch love their "coffee times". I remember grandparents having this at 9:00 and 3:00 every day with cakes, pies and cookies. It's no wonder I love cakes :)

Our city still celebrates our dutch heritage with a "Tulip Festival" in May. One of the dutch foods that we enjoy during the festival is "Poffertjes" the dutch pancakes.

All this talk about dutch foods, sure brings back memories.
I have a few of the old dutch cookbooks, but not much for notable foods that you probably wouldnt find in any other cook book.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Lots of interesting information here to digest. The book did seem to be heavy on the pastries, but the few recipes I scanned didn't seem to be markedly different from what you would find in Germany or even England, except for the names.

Seagrass, I laughed out loud when I read your comment on Dutch cheeses. Very funny.

Now I wonder how different Netherlands Dutch and American Dutch cuisine are from each other? It has been longer since the first Dutch immigrants arrived in North America than when the first Icelanders did, and I have found some very interesting differences between American and Canadian Icelandic cookery on the one hand and modern Icelandic on the other, so I imagine the difference must be even bigger between US Dutch and old country Dutch cooking.

Well I do know they like to lotsa chocolate sprinkles over their morning toast.

I think you might be surprised by the similarities, since people from Europe often moved to places in the US that had a similar climate (I know not always). My home state of Michigan (the western part where I''m from) is another big Dutch enclave in the US. Not a lot of ocean fish meals there! Michigan owes a lot of its reputation as an agricultural powerhouse to the Dutch, although many of the agricultural institutions in MI are fading, such as the greenhouse businesses and nurseries. But it's the same all over the US.

I love Dutch cheeses, particularly Edam. I think it doesn't taste like anything else! Also, plain food is not necessarily boring when it comes to fresh produce, IMHO. Michigan CANNOT be beaten in that realm except for maybe places on the west coast and FLA which has a totally different climate. A lot of Dutch farmers. My great grandfather grew pickles for Heinz, that's how my grandparents met, my grandfather was a pickle buyer! Not many of those left around these days I imagine! Dutch like pickles and preserves too. I think you will find similarities in all these northern European cuisines due to the similar growing conditions and climates throughout the region. Of course nowdays, all cuisines are melding together into either something junky and ubiquitous, or very international/fusion.

I had completely forgotten about those chocolate sprinkles. Remember having those at my great grandmothers....with loads of butter on the bread also.
The meat markets here have some wonderful smoked Gouda cheese.

Hey! Trudy!!!..hope the hosta are sleeping well.
Dutch letters with the morning coffee....not much better....and Jarsma's doughnuts....better yet!
Linda C

There are a lot of Dutch emigres in this part of SW Ontario as well. Half my school looked like a scene from Village of the Damned with all that blonde hair LOL
I think all the nurseries are or were Dutch owned, they were big into tobacco growing, that's almost all gone now.
Luckily I have a little Dutch Shop in the plaza about 1/2 mile away right next door to the English Shoppe. I buy Bahmi and Nasi Goreng and other oddities at the Dutch Shoppe and cheese and tater pies etc at the English Shoppe.
Come to think of it last thing I bought in the Dutch Shop was Frite sauce... like mayonaisse for fries.. I think that's all it is anyways, not worth the price they asked for it but I wanted to try the import.

My good friend Maartje is from Holland, and I've read some of her Dutch cookbooks. I can understand Dutch cookbooks from knowing German, although I have to ask about an occasional word. Dutch food seems extremely boring, and Maartje told me that the only interesting food in Holland was Indonesian, which is not Dutch at all. To me, it was very similar to English food, with some German influence, and I don't like English food at all and am not that fond of German, in comparison to other options. My grandmother was from Alsace, and it seems that Alsatian cuisine is very similar to Dutch - very plain and simple. The only Dutch restaurants I have been able to find were Pancake Houses - think IHOP - not my idea of eating out.

I think Scandinavian food is somewhat more interesting than Dutch, but that's because I love fish.

Lars

Hey Linda :)

Love those dutch pastries. We still have 4 frozen unbaked dutch letters left in the freezer from the holiday baking. Let me know when it works for you to stop for coffee, will pop one in the oven for you. We can talk hostas while we have "Coffee Time"!

Hostas are covered with a nice thick cold blanket of snow.

Trudy.....you are tempting me!! LOL!
I have another friendwho lives in Bos Landing....I could do morning coffee and afternoon tea....and skip lunch and dinner!!

Actually pkguy, the Dutch student we had in our lab last year corrected me, it's just buttered bread they put those sprinkles on. She also informed me they are the largest population of milk drinkers, and that is what makes them the tallest people in the world! LOL. I miss that cutie. Oh, and the bread is ok for the sprinkles, but toast is better.

I didn't get to see much when I was there on business, but one thing really stood out. No water available, but you could buy beer, in the company vending machines! That was several years ago, but not anything I will forget.

My memories from 32 years ago was that Ristaffel (Indonesian food) was the only dinner that I wanted to eat! The hotel provided abundant breakfast buffets with cheeses, hams, breads, pastries etc. Although most vivid memory was of a signboard outside of a restaurant advertising fried spareribs! My stomach still turns at the thought!

Netla, here are some excerpts from my "Better Homes and Gardens Heritage Cookbook" for the "New Amsterdam" section (which became New York).

"The Dutch earned a reputation for prodical use of their excellent dairy products. Wrote Peter Kalm in 1749, 'In the evening they made porridges of corn, in the center they poured fresh milk . . . As they ordinarily took more milk than porridge, the milk in the dish was soon consumed . . .
After that they would eat some meat left over from the noonday meal, or bread and butter with cheese . . . "

Some 200 years later my Dutch grandmother had some kind of hot cereal porridge every day for breakfast.

"Cabbage for Coleslaw was only one of the many fruits and vergetabes frown in New Amsterdam gardens. An attorney, Adrian Van Der Donck in "A Description of the New Netherlands," 1653, describes the wealth of those gardens. The kitchen gardens, 'consist of various kinds of salads, cabbages, parsnips, carrots, dill, sorrel, radishes, cresses, leeks, and esides whatever else is commonly found in a kitchen garden. The herb garden is also tolerably well supplied with rosemary, lavender, holy onions, dragon's blood, together with laurel, artichokes and asparagus, and various other things on which I have bestowed no attention. We have also introduced morecotoons (a type of peach), almonds, figs, several sorts of currants, gooseberries and thorn apples . . . "

Some of that sounds incredulous to me given the NY climate. But maybe they were just trying a bit of everything to see what would work.

Washington Irving in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" describes the bounty of the Ducht table. 'Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives. There was the doughty doughnut, the tenderer oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and hoeny cakes, and the whole family of cakes.'

The recipes include:
Roast Goose with Apples Stuffing
Cottage Cheese
Coleslaw
Dutch Spiced Flank Steak
Sweet Waffles
Hutspot
Buckwheat Griddle Cakes
Raisin Almond Pound Cake
Oliebollen
Molasses Cake
Champagne-Rum Punch
Tea Punch (Tea with brandy and rum)
Gingerbread Men
Raised Doughnuts
Crullers

Nothing in that list that doesn't have its counterpart somehwere else in northern Europe.