Even though we had missed Sinterklass, we were still able to indulge in one of the special cookies that Sinterlass pass out - Pepernoten. They are like a small nugget of gingerbread. The hotel we stayed at the first night gave us a dish full.
While there I picked up a couple of cook books "Stuff Dutch People Eat" is a bit of a tourist book but it did contain recipes for some of the items we had tried, and it was available in English. It wasn't until I got back home, when I was looking more closely at the book that I discovered it was actually written by a Canadian that moved to the Netherlands!
I have tried a couple of recipes since but I waited to make the Pepernoten until now to celebrate Sinterklass. Unfortunately they did not turn out at all. I even made the recipe a second time with the same results. They are supposed to be like a crunchy small nugget or marble. Instead they flattened in the oven and became a hard inedible cookie. Not sure what happened. A quick internet search produced a recipe similar to what was in the book. I do find when using European recipes there is some challenges, as ingredients may not always be the same in Canada. The recipe did call for self-rising flour, which is not commonly used in Canada. Maybe next year I will give the recipe another shot.
After spending time in a small village north of Amsterdam - Makkum and then Amsterdam we went on a Rhine River Cruise and spent many afternoons at various European Christmas Markets - a lovely way to spend the lead up to Christmas. During our stop in Alsace, France I also picked up the second book in the picture. I have a couple of recipes picked to make for Christmas, but have not prepared anything yet. Hopefully I will have better success than the Pepernoten.
To start my Dutch meal, I made Tomatensoep (Tomato Soup), I left it a bit chunky and added some green onions, but it made for a quick tasty tomato Soup.
The main course was Hutspot met Klapstuk (Potato carrot stamppot). The cookbook describes a hutspot as a traditional Dutch dish made by cooking and mashing potatoes together with carrots and onions, which is then served with a side of meat. In this case meat and vegetables are all cooked in the same pot so the flavours blend. The Dutch do seem to like to mash their food. The cookbook describes it as one of the 3 ways the Dutch like to prepare food and/or vegetables. It says they like to
1. mash the hell out of something
2. boil the shit out of something
3. deep-fry the life out of something.
We did have several lovely meals while in the Netherlands, we ate at a pancake house one night - which we would describe as crepes, another night of Dutch specialities - many of which were deep fried, but my favourite was the breakfast treat of chocolate sprinkles that were liberally put on toast or bread and considered breakfast - any excuse to have chocolate for breakfast works for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment