Dutch cuisine
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Template:Cookbook Dutch Cuisine is characterised by the consumption of large amounts of bread and potatoes as suggested in Vincent van Gogh's painting The Potato Eaters. Open sandwiches and beschuit (a double baked round white bread disc) are eaten for breakfast, with different savoury and sweet toppings. Most parents promote savoury toppings for their children’s daily sandwiches, and a range of cheeses is available such as Gouda, Edam and Leyden. Most towns in the western parts of Holland have their own cheeses, which are only faintly distinguishable by taste, yet look different from outside.
Milk and black tea are drunk in great quantities at the Dutch breakfast and lunch table, coffee being reserved for the koffietijd at ten o'clock in the morning to start with. Dutch thrift led to the standard rule of only one cookie with each cup of coffee; it has been suggested that the reasons for this can be found in the trade-mentality and protestant upbringing. The Dutch have all sorts of cookies, many of them filled with marzipan or a cheaper version of almond-flavoured filling made out of beans. The traditional and heavier coffee snack is koek better known as gingerbread. Lunch is something of a repetition of the breakfast, only sometimes with the addition of certain foods.
At three o’clock in the afternoon it is teatime, though often coffee is drunk at this time of the day. Traditionally, in most households dinner is served at about 6 o’clock, but the higher the social class, the later one eats. Traditionally, a Dutch meal is constituted by boiled potatoes, one type of boiled vegetable and a stewed meat, including gravy. Nowadays more and more people are trying to cook foreign dishes, and the traditional Dutch meal is therefore associated with cabbage-fumed old-age homes.
The Dutch have probably always been open to foreign influences in their cuisine, and from the 16th century onwards all sorts of spices and food stuffs from all over the world were introduced into the Dutch kitchens. Some typical Dutch wintertime dishes, for which Dutch cuisine is probably most famous, are peasoup, and hutspot, a legacy of the Spanish invaders, who left a pot of hutspot on a fire outside the sieged town of Leiden in 1683, when the water rose to their teeth and they fled. Hutspot was originally made of parsnips (later replaced by carrots), potatoes and onions.
Other winterdishes are associated with winter festivities like Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) on the evening of the 5th of December. Sinterklaas rides the Dutch roofs on his white horse and accompanied by his black helper Zwarte Piet who carries pepernoten (like gingernut biscuits but made with cinnamon, pepper, cloves and nutmeg mix of spices) with him in heavy bags full of presents. Sinterklaas also gives each Dutch child the first letter of their name made of chocolate. On New Year's Eve Dutch houses smell of piping hot oil deepfryers in which oliebollen (literally oil balls) and appelflap (battered apple rings) get fried. These yeast dough balls, filled with glacé fruits, pieces of apple and raisins and sultanas, are the treat for the evening to come and are served with icing sugar.
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Frikandel (also called "Berelul", literally, Bear's Dick.)
A sort of minced-meat hot dog.
Kroket
This is a deep-fried roll containing beef, stock, breadcrumbs and wheat flour. Typically served with prepared mustard. There are also fish kroketten, goulash kroketten and potato kroketten (with mashed potato in them).
Bitterballen
Similar to a kroket, but instead they have a round shape, roughly the size of a golf ball. Just like a kroket served with prepared mustard. They are very popular in pubs!!!
Banket
Banket is Dutch pastry with almond-flavored filling.
Haring
This is raw herring, served with diced raw onions, with or without a bread roll. Herring can be eaten on dark sticky ryebread or on a typically Dutch white bolletje (a soft milk-based roll) from a street vendor. The most traditional way of eating a herring is holding it at its tail and devouring it from the head side (which has been taken off).
Erwtensoep
Dutch pea soup. Usually filled with chunks of bacon and sausage.
Hutspot
Mashed potatoes with carrots and onions. Other variaties are stamppot boerenkool (mashed potatoes with kale), andijvie-stamppot (mashed potatoes with endive) and zuurkool-stamppot (mashed potatoes with sauerkraut).
Poffertjes
Little pancakes served with butter and sugar.
Balkenbrij
A sort of meatloaf made of, among other things, pork (traditionally meat from pigs' heads or other 'less desirable' offcuts), fatty bacon, liverwurst/liver paté, buckweat flour, raisins and various spices (like aniseed, cloves and nutmeg).