Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Reviving my Dutch Culinary Tradition

 Today 2/2/21, I posted on FB about my own Dutch culinary heritage.

My top ten for Dutch dishes... bearing in mind that my focus is on healthy food, in the tradition of whole foods, plant-based nutrition, but I keep exploring dishes that I want to rediscover. Recently, I made a great effort about bruinebonensoep. Snert, split pea soup I have long since had under control, but after that, it gets fuzzier... I want to write down my tentative list here, with a request for suggestions, and an emphasis on the idea that there are no really healthy oliebollen and appelflappen, for there are no healthy fried foods, although some of us can work miracles with an airfryer. I note also that I was raised vegetarian, but of course today dairy is out completely too.
  1. Bruine bonensoep - Dutch brown bean soup. Current favorite. https://starlingaveplantbased.blogspot.com/.../winter...
  2. Snert, erwtensoep - split pea soup. https://starlingaveplantbased.blogspot.com/search...
  3. Brussels lof - Belgian Endives, As a child, we ate this with boiled potatoes and hardboiled eggs, with a cheese sauce with a whiff of nutmeg. Right now I make it with a sauce of besan (chickpea flour), nutritional yeast, and black salt, with some turmeric (use fresh if possible). Better than the original.
  4. Spruitjes - Brussels sprouts. Stemed or roasted with chestnuts and some nutmeg. With either potatotes or rice, and the rice you can spruce up with an caramelized/chopped onion and some mixed veggies if you like.
  5. Bloemkool - caulifflower. Easy enough with some kind of a curry sauce. Serve with vegetable rice, or potatoes, and combines very well with roasted/stirfried mushrooms. Or, I like to make lasagna with cauliflower and tofu, but that's not very Dutch. (My pasta sauce was already famous when I was a teenager, and came in handy when I was married to an Italian, though my mother in law never forgave me, because my wife thought my sauce was better than her mother's).
  6. Koolraap - Kohrabi. Interestingly, this was a use for caraway seeds. I regarded that as a very typical Dutch dish always. My mother steamed it and made it with a sauce based on whole wheat flour with caraway seeds and pepper and salt, which if fine. Recently, I have been making it more hungarian style, as gulash, which is excellent.
  7. ?
  8. ??
  9. ???
  10. ????

Ok, that is my list so far. There may be another dish or two I am not remembering at the moment, but I am asking for suggestions for #7-10 positions. I am curious what people on this list might come up with. Evidently, I am limited by what is available around here (Bronx, NY), which is a lot, but not everything. I have never seen capucijners here for example.

I will post some of the responses here, and they will become the raw material for new recipes in the future...

7. boerenkool/kale. 8. rode kool. 9. peen en uien.
ad 3. brusselslof als salade met wat zoete ingredienten zoals fruit en rode ui.
ad 4. spruitjes met champignons, uitje en knoflook.
ad 5. gebakken bloemkool roosjes, of als salade met wat olijfolie en azijn.

  • Rogier F. van Vlissingen
    leuk en wat me nog te binnen schoot : de nederlandse groentesoep vindt ik ook iets speciaals ...
    Tr: Dutch veggie soup is also something special.
  • --Red beets in any form, but grilled on bbq best. My favorite birthday food as a kid
    --Bloemkool, nutmeg, grated cheese
    --Tomato soup met balletjes. Any day. Any time.
    --Bahmi, or, what my children call Chinese Spaghetti with veggies (onion, celery, bean sprouts, spinach, bok choy, etc) instead of that horrible marinara-type tomato sauce.

    Note; I would treat Bahmi more under Indonesian cooking, for that is where it comes from.

    Hutspot 🥰 (carrots, oinions, patattos, a little bit of applesirop, a little bit of milk (or subsitute) and unsalted butter (or subsitute) all musshed together 😇) and a good veggie rookworst ^^
    I think my spelling is a little bit off today 🙈 sorry!

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