Fun with Dutch Cooking
Jul. 30th, 2007 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI brought a Dutch cookbook over to my sister's to get her opinion on whether I should hang onto it, specifically, whether there were any recipes in there for things she already knows are yummy (she lived in Belgium for a while).
She was hoping for sugar bread, but that wasn't there. However, she said the rice milk (Rijstebrij) looked good. It looks a lot like the recipe I have for yule grit (which I believe can also be spelled with J's), which is a rice pudding cooked on the stove top.
She also liked the recipe for (Belgian) Endive III (Brussels lof III), with endive, butter, flour, milk, Parmesan cheese, and salt.
There's also a recipe for spiced cookies (speculaas), a delicious buttery flavorful cookie similar to something you may have seen in the shape of a windmill.
So, I'm keeping the cookbook, but more for the humor value than for the cooking ideas.
First, there are the recipes themselves. Most of them do not look easy, and you can tell by the first sentence. For example, the first thing you do to make speculaas is to "Pour boiling water over the shelled almonds." You've got to love a sentence that has extra sentences implied like that. (Bring water to boil. Shell some almonds.) And all the pureed potatoes start with this jewel: "Rub the boiled potatoes through a sieve." Uh, no.
Then there's melted butter sauce I. Ingredients? Three tablespoons of butter. "This is the easier way. Melt 2 tablespoons butter slowly, so that the yellow color does not change. Never brown it. Remove from heat and add the third tablespoon; stir well until all has melted." We started making up recipes. There is a recipe for cauliflower sauce. Did we read it? No. Obviously you just take two cauliflowers and stir until melted. Then add a third cauliflower. Bean soup? Mash 2 tablespoons of beans. Then add third tablespoon.
Then there's fun with trying to pronounce a foreign language you are totally ignorant about. Well, English and Dutch are both Germanic, but still. Why say beef hash or even "hodgepodge with boiled meat" when you can say "hutspot met klapstuk"? Why have hard fondant when you can have borstplaat? I want to make hoppel-poppel just so I can say I'm serving hoppel-poppel. It looks like some sort of eggnog, and this recipe has uncooked egg yolks, so I'm not making it.
The Dutch word for blancmange is roompudding. My sister thought it might be some kind of sauce, but I explained that no, it's something that is expected to have a shape. "Pour into a moist mold, chill, and unmold."
Bread omelette (broodomelet)? Doesn't sound so great, does it? But it sure looks a lot like what I think of as bread pudding. (Bread pudding is hardly a better name than bread omelette, though.) (One of my favorite recipes could probably be called baked chocolate scrambled eggs, but is more often called flourless chocolate cake.) (I have a lot of parentheses in here.)
Braised lettuce (stoofsla) involves lettuce and gravy. And bread crumbs.
Part of the humor isn't just about being another culture, but also being from another era, back when copyright dates were still written with Roman numerals. Specifically, 1961. For example, when making brown beans (bruine bonen), remember: "Sour dill pickles and mustard accompany this nourishing dish." My sister thought I made up that line. I said I cannot make this stuff up. She says yes I can, I do it all the time.
And now for something educational: I did figure out that slaw, as in cole slaw, means salad. See, (cold) beet salad is bietensla, cucumber salad is komkommersla, herring salad is haringsla, tomato salad is tomatensla, and shrimp salad is garnalensla.
She was hoping for sugar bread, but that wasn't there. However, she said the rice milk (Rijstebrij) looked good. It looks a lot like the recipe I have for yule grit (which I believe can also be spelled with J's), which is a rice pudding cooked on the stove top.
She also liked the recipe for (Belgian) Endive III (Brussels lof III), with endive, butter, flour, milk, Parmesan cheese, and salt.
There's also a recipe for spiced cookies (speculaas), a delicious buttery flavorful cookie similar to something you may have seen in the shape of a windmill.
So, I'm keeping the cookbook, but more for the humor value than for the cooking ideas.
First, there are the recipes themselves. Most of them do not look easy, and you can tell by the first sentence. For example, the first thing you do to make speculaas is to "Pour boiling water over the shelled almonds." You've got to love a sentence that has extra sentences implied like that. (Bring water to boil. Shell some almonds.) And all the pureed potatoes start with this jewel: "Rub the boiled potatoes through a sieve." Uh, no.
Then there's melted butter sauce I. Ingredients? Three tablespoons of butter. "This is the easier way. Melt 2 tablespoons butter slowly, so that the yellow color does not change. Never brown it. Remove from heat and add the third tablespoon; stir well until all has melted." We started making up recipes. There is a recipe for cauliflower sauce. Did we read it? No. Obviously you just take two cauliflowers and stir until melted. Then add a third cauliflower. Bean soup? Mash 2 tablespoons of beans. Then add third tablespoon.
Then there's fun with trying to pronounce a foreign language you are totally ignorant about. Well, English and Dutch are both Germanic, but still. Why say beef hash or even "hodgepodge with boiled meat" when you can say "hutspot met klapstuk"? Why have hard fondant when you can have borstplaat? I want to make hoppel-poppel just so I can say I'm serving hoppel-poppel. It looks like some sort of eggnog, and this recipe has uncooked egg yolks, so I'm not making it.
The Dutch word for blancmange is roompudding. My sister thought it might be some kind of sauce, but I explained that no, it's something that is expected to have a shape. "Pour into a moist mold, chill, and unmold."
Bread omelette (broodomelet)? Doesn't sound so great, does it? But it sure looks a lot like what I think of as bread pudding. (Bread pudding is hardly a better name than bread omelette, though.) (One of my favorite recipes could probably be called baked chocolate scrambled eggs, but is more often called flourless chocolate cake.) (I have a lot of parentheses in here.)
Braised lettuce (stoofsla) involves lettuce and gravy. And bread crumbs.
Part of the humor isn't just about being another culture, but also being from another era, back when copyright dates were still written with Roman numerals. Specifically, 1961. For example, when making brown beans (bruine bonen), remember: "Sour dill pickles and mustard accompany this nourishing dish." My sister thought I made up that line. I said I cannot make this stuff up. She says yes I can, I do it all the time.
And now for something educational: I did figure out that slaw, as in cole slaw, means salad. See, (cold) beet salad is bietensla, cucumber salad is komkommersla, herring salad is haringsla, tomato salad is tomatensla, and shrimp salad is garnalensla.
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no subject
on 2007-07-31 02:35 pm (UTC)cole slaw
on 2007-07-31 03:11 pm (UTC)I discovered this when I told my Dutch boyfriend that I wasn't a fan of cole slaw and he understood me...lightbulb!
no subject
on 2007-08-01 02:21 am (UTC)Raw eggs don't sound that yummy to me, though I know they can be if you mix enough whipped cream in with them.
Re: cole slaw
on 2007-08-01 02:23 am (UTC)