1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (40 page)

In the realm of food, form should never be valued over content; yet when the two are of equal excellence, it’s a very special thing indeed. Such a concurrence will be on view during a visit to Holland, or to any Dutch-inhabited neighborhood, on December 5, St. Nicholas’s Eve.

To honor the patron saint of children, Dutch confectioners shape delectable alphabet letters out of either rich, dark, bittersweet chocolate or puff pastry filled with almond paste. Each good child is rewarded with his or her initials, a treat supposedly delivered by St. Nicholas (or Sinterklaas), who rides a white stallion over rooftops and slides his gifts down the chimney—never mind what happens to the fragile treats if there’s a fire on the hearth. With him is a less generous companion called Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter, who gives naughty children only a birch stick or a lump of coal.

Known as
banketletters
, or bakery letters, the sizeable sweets are about eight inches high. “Q,” “X,” and “Y” need not apply, probably because none works as the first letter of any Dutch name.

Although not as personalized, two other enticements are available to the well
behaved on St. Nicholas’s Eve and Day: deep-fried dumplings called
oliebollen
, studded with raisins and candied fruit peel and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar; and the crisp, savory, ring-shaped apple fritters called
appelbeignet.

Retail and mail order:
In New York
, for chocolate letters, Li-Lac Chocolates, tel 212-924-2280,
li-lacchocolates.com
;
in Pella, Iowa
, for pastry banketletters, Jaarsma Bakery, tel 641-628-2940,
jaarsmabakery.com
.
Further information and recipe:
For pastry letters,
Visions of Sugarplums
by Mimi Sheraton (1981).

Hochepot morsels cook until soft but not mushy.

A defeated army flees without stopping to rinse out its pots and pans, and from this understandable instance of poor housekeeping a brand-new dish is born. This is the origin of
hutspot met klapstuk
, one of Holland’s most comforting winter dishes, a soft, peppery stew of beef, potatoes, onions, and carrots, slow-simmered in a pot until it melds into an almost fully disintegrated, cozy mash.

The story has it that when occupying Spanish soldiers were driven out of the northern Dutch town of Leiden in 1574, they left behind unwashed pots in which the Dutch found remains of a meat and vegetable stew. History has not recorded who was the first intrepid taster of those leftovers, but suffice it to say that soon after, local cooks approximated what they thought to be the original. What is said to be the original cauldron—hopefully washed—is on view in Leiden’s Museum De Lakenhal.

Hutspot
falls into the category of sustaining one-pot winter stews that the Dutch call
stamp-pots
—all sneakily addictive and, when prepared in large quantities, great at hanging around and improving through several reheatings.
Hutspot met witte bonen en spek
combines bacon and salt pork with onions and white beans.
Stamppot van zuurkool met spek en worst
is a more piquant version in which sauerkraut underlies potatoes, bacon, and smoky frankfurters.
Stammpot van boerenkool met worst
is the heartiest version, based on dark-green winter kale, potatoes, and sausages enriched with bacon or lard. That kale, incidentally, is at its most tender when it has been allowed to freeze in the cold winter air before being cooked.

Typically, the Belgians heat up a more soigné version of hutspot for the dish they call
hochepot
, simmering the carrots, onions, potatoes, and meat into small, fork-tender chunks rather than total mush. Thyme, cloves, and bay leaves add sprightly touches to intrigue the more demanding Belgian palate.

Despite their slight differences, both hutspot and hochepot call for some of the cold, sunny beer both countries are famous for and, after that, a nice long nap through the winter afternoon twilight.

Further information and recipes:
foodnetwork.com
(search hutspot mit klapstuk);
thedutchtable.com
(search hutspot met klapstuk).

Kroketten and bitterballen warm a wintry day.

To spend any part of a winter’s day outdoors under Holland’s quicksilver skies is to know what it feels like to be damp-chilled to the bone, almost as if you were wearing no clothes at all. What a blissful wonder, then, to come upon a vending machine, street stand, or snack shop offering crusty golden spheres of
bitterballen
, bite-sized treats fashioned from chopped, cooked meat, parsley, and bread crumbs bound with white sauce and deep-fried. Or you might choose one of the log-shaped
kroketten
made with either cheese, meat, potatoes, or bits of seafood. Among the tastiest of these is a hotly spiced, plump, and crunchy round of curry-flavored rice inspired by the fried rice dish
nasi goreng
, which the Dutch came to love in Indonesia, known in colonial days as the Dutch East Indies.

The savory curried rice snack is hand-warmingly hot, with further warmth coming from seasonings such as cayenne, dry mustard, golden curry powder, and black pepper, joined by occasional fine mincings of ham. Lucky is the traveler who finds it in a train station’s vending machine—the more improbable the location, the more satisfying the snack.

Where:
In Amsterdam
, Kwekkeboom Patisserie, tel 31/20-673-7114,
kwekkeboom.nl
; Van Dobben, tel 31/20-621-4200,
vandobben.nl
;
in Ouderkerk de Amstel
, Café Loetje, tel 31/20-662-8173,
amsterdam.loetje.com
;
Further information and recipes:
The Art of Dutch Cooking
by C. Countess van Limburg Stirum (1962);
allrecipes.com
(search dutch croquetten);
coquinaria.nl/english
(click Recipes, Dutch Cuisine, then Kroketten and Bitterballs);
expatica.com
(search how to make traditional dutch croquettes).

Slim, pink, and tender lamb tongues each make a single portion in this traditional Dutch dish. They add up to subtle, wondrous morsels, particularly when they come from the breed of Texel lambs that feed on Holland’s North Sea salt marshes. Just as the French prize their
agneau de pré-salé
(see
listing
), so the Dutch appreciate the gentle saline accent the meat acquires.

The tender tongues are briefly simmered with bay leaf, mace, a few crushed juniper berries, onion, parsley, and celery, and are then trimmed. Just before being served, they are sliced and sautéed in butter with a hint of garlic, then finished with a Madeira sauce. Fluffy steamed white rice is the traditional foil for all of this richness.

Lambs’ tongues are not easily come by in most food markets, save those catering to Greek and Middle Eastern customers. Calves’ tongues work as well, as do small, fresh beef tongues, neither pickled nor smoked.

Further information and recipes:
The Art of Dutch Cooking
by C. Countess van Limburg Stirum (1962);
recipehound.com
(search lamb tongues in madeira sauce);
emomrecipes.com
(search tongue in madeira sauce a la julia child).

Traditional Dutch herring eating method.

A holiday for herring may seem an odd sort of celebration. Unless, of course, you are Dutch and it is May 31. On that day, and through most of June, all of Holland turns out to eat the season’s
maagdekensharing.
These so-called maiden herring (also known as green herring) have not yet spawned, so are considered virgins, whatever status that imparts. What it undeniably grants the silky raw fillets is a gently saline, sea-fresh flavor that gets a sprightly enhancement of minced onion and hard-cooked egg. (“Fresh” is a technicality here, because by law the fish must be brined and frozen solid in oak barrels for a minimum of twenty-four hours—a process that kills parasites without diminishing gustatory pleasure, and that in fact adds additional layers of saltiness.)

Although you can find this first green herring in restaurants and homes, it is best enjoyed from street carts, with the damp North Sea
breezes adding a seasoning of their own. The Dutch book of etiquette permits the fillets to be eaten out of hand: intermittently dabbed with onion and egg, and then held up by the tail and lowered into the mouth in the style of a sword swallower.

Officially, the first seasonal catch of these luscious little fish belongs to the queen, but wisely she shares it with the country’s commoners and their guests. There is no evidence that she ever has pronounced, “Let them eat herring.”

So generous is the queen with this very local treat that each year a portion of the brined catch is even exported for sale in restaurants and fancy food stores, some of which affect a cart to approximate the true Dutch experience.

Where:
In New York
, Grand Central Oyster Bar, tel 212-490-6650,
oysterbarny.com
;
in Brooklyn
, Grand Central Oyster Bar Brooklyn, tel 347-294-0596,
oysterbarbrooklyn.com
.
Retail and mail order:
Russ & Daughters, tel 212-475-4880,
russanddaughters.com
.
Special event:
The Vlaardingen Herring Festival, Vlaardingen, Holland, June,
goeurope.about.com
(search netherlands herring festival).

Still Life
by Osias Beert the Elder (1580–1624).

Countries bordering on the frigid waters of the North Sea are rightfully proud of the silky, saline oyster varieties available to them, but few have raised them to such artistic heights as the celebrated, bygone painters of the Dutch and Belgian-Flemish schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Challenged by the rough, rocky gray outside shells, the shimmering, pearly interiors, and the limpid, translucent oyster itself, these painters regarded their challenging subject as an exercise in technique. They attempted to match texture and color, yet to keep the eating of these oysters in mind, arranged them in suggestive, elegant still lifes that often included a lemon cut into quarters, with the peel partially pared into sunny coils, as well as a loaf of bread and cheese. (There wasn’t a school dedicated to painting oysters au gratin—baked under rich and puffy coverings of cream, butter, and cheese—but the preparation is much favored in both Holland and Belgium.)