Gehaktballen met jus

Woensdag Gehaktdag! "Wednesday is ground meat day". It used to be the marketing slogan for the butchering trade during the fifties and sixties, and even now, on many a Wednesday you can find children standing on a little stool at the kitchen counter, helping make dinner by learning how to roll meatballs in their little grubby hands, and sneaking small bites of the seasoned raw meat when the adult is not looking.

Why Wednesday? Presumably because the butcher would butcher harvest on Monday, cut on Tuesday and process all the leftovers into ground meat on Wednesday. Whether that's entirely true or not, I don't know, but it sounds plausible.

Broodje Bal

Dutch meatballs are a couple of sizes up from the average American spaghetti meatballs. Slowly simmered in their own jus, these carneous clods are versatile, easy to make and affordable, and one of those typical dishes that are somehow associated with "gezelligheid", grandmas and wintery dishes. Gehaktballen can be served in many ways: as your main protein with one of the various stamppots, by itself on a piece of bread, broodje bal, with a good lick of mustard or ketchup, or sliced and deep-fried with onion and served with peanut sauce, the famous bereklauw... The gehaktbal will endure practically any kind of culinary treatment: it's all good.

Preferably made with half-om-half gehakt, fifty percent beef and fifty percent pork, these meatballs will also do fine with an 85/15 (eightyfive percent meat, fifteen percent fat) ground beef. Too lean a meat will not do much for their flavor, you need some fat for the simmering and the jus. Since quite a bit of water is added at the simmering stage, the meat itself will have lost some of its calories, in case you were minding your diet.

Gehaktballen met jus
1 lb of ground beef, preferably 85/15 or half beef, half pork
2 slices of white bread
1/2 cup of milk

2 shallots or one small onion
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg, ground
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, ground
2 tablespoons of prepared mustard

2 tablespoons of flour
4 tablespoons of butter

Mince the shallots or small onion. Add the meat to a bowl, mix in the shallots, the egg, the mustard, nutmeg, the salt and pepper and knead a couple of times. Cut the crust off the bread, soak it in the milk and add it to the meat. Dispose of the rest of the milk.

When the mixture has come together, divide it in four equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, roll the meatballs throught the flour and set aside.

Heat the butter in a Dutch oven and sear the meatballs on all sides until brown. Lower the heat, place the cover on the pan and let them simmer for a good twenty minutes, then turn them over in the grease and simmer for another ten. Add 1/2 cup of water to the pan, cover and simmer for another twenty minutes. Remove the meatballs from the pan, add 1/2 cup of beef stock to the pan and stir to loosen up all the meaty bits from the bottom of the pan. Taste and see if you need to adjust salt/pepper or bind the jus a little bit with cornstarch or flour, you decide.

Meatballs made one day ahead somehow always taste better the next day. Serve one meatball per person, and add a generous spoonful of jus on their potatoes for some good old-fashioned prakking.

Zakdoekjes

It's not that I don't have enough recipes to write about Dutch baked goods (I have at least another two years worth's of weekly posts!), it's that sometimes I can't pick. So many recipes are wonderful and exciting, but the limitation of time, product availability and sometimes a last minute change of plans dictates what gets published.

This weekend I had planned on making a slagroomtaart, a light cake with whipped cream and fruit. It's a delightful cake, traditionally served at birthday parties or other festive occassions. But I received a booklet in the mail this week, Drentse Pot, about typical foods from the province of Drente, and while browsing through it, I came across a recipe for zakdoeken. Zakdoeken (handkerchiefs) or buusdoukies in the Drents dialect are, in this case, not of the cloth kind, mind you, but a lovely, crunchy yet light waffle. The slagroomtaart went out the window ofcourse, because how can you resist a cookie with such an interesting name? I have never spent much time in Drente, so I was eager to try it out. And I am sure glad I did!

This cookie is sweet, crunchy, crisp and light, and shows beautifully. You will need a waffle cone maker style of waffle iron, like you use for stroopwafels. Watch out when folding the warm waffle, it will be hot!

Zakdoekjes

1 stick of butter
1 1/2 cup of sugar
2/3 cup of water
2 cups of flour
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons of vanilla essence

Melt the butter and set aside. Warm the water and add the sugar, stir until the sugar is dissolved. Cool the water and add the egg, beat it well, then stir in the flour and the salt. Mix everything to a nice, smooth batter (no lumpies!). Now pour and stir in the melted butter until it is fully incorporated into the batter. Finally add the vanilla and stir.

Turn on the waffle iron, and bake one waffle at a time with approximately 1/4 cup of batter. This depends on how liquid your   batter is, how large the baking surface is etc. so just measure out an amount and see what the result is. If there is too much batter and it runs off the sides, take less. If your zakdoekjes are more like miniature cookies, pour a little bit more.

Pour the measured amount of batter on the hot waffle iron, close and bake. When the waffle is done, open the lid and quickly fold the cookie in half, and then again in half, as if you were folding a handkerchief. Place it on a cooling rack, where it will crisp up into a nice, sweet, crunchy cookie.

Makes approximately twenty cookies.

On the practice of prakken....



Table manners are an important reflection of upbringing and common courtesy. Both hands above the table, no leaning on your elbows, no talking and chewing at the same time, no stuffing your mouth full or taking a sip while you still have food in your mouth....for those of us that were raised in Holland, these rules for board behavior sound probably very familiar.

Not all eating etiquette, however, transposes well into other cultures. Whereas in America most foods are served to be consumed with only a fork, the Dutch use both a fork and a knife to eat: the fork firmly lodged in the left hand, the knife in the right. The fork (vork) is used to spear the food and bring it to the mouth, the knife (mes) cuts a piece of meat, vegetable or potato as needed. Open-faced sandwiches are cut into neat little squares, fruit is skillfully severed into edible pieces. It's all very polite and educated and, the Dutch, we innerly scoff a little bit at those people that still eat sandwiches with their hands, peel oranges with their fingers and scoop up rice with a fork.

Mash those potatoes well

But do not be deceived by such haute haughtiness. Because behind closed doors, when we are alone, we subject the food on our plate to a practice so abhorrent, so abominable that even the most barbarous barbaric would drop its jaw in disgust. This is the practice of prakken. If you are familiar with Dutch cuisine, or have read the articles on this blog, you know that it suggested to always have "jus", pan gravy, with the meat when you serve potatoes. Why? Because this fatty fluid is the key to prakken.

Now what the heck is prakken? Prakken is having a beautiful plate of steaming, perfect globes of crumbly boiled potatoes, over which you drizzle hot, greasy pan juice and then brutally attack with a fork, mashing the potatoes, sometimes even mixing in the vegetables, and reducing it to a soft pulpy state. Why do we do this? I have no clue. But it tastes good.



Add enough pan gravy



As young children, when we just start to eat solids, our food is often prakked for us, sometimes with sweet applesauce mixed in to mask the taste of liver, Brussels sprouts or whatever else we tend to dislike at that age, and to make it more palatable. Perhaps that's why we still prak, I don't know. But mashing your boiled potatoes, mixing it with the gravy of the meat and having the slightly sweet, savory flavor of those mashed potatoes is a whole new experience. A more grown-up, and socially acceptable prakked food would be a stamppot, of which we have many varieties. But the home-made, plate-local prak is praktically, no pun intended, illegal, forbidden and most certainly "not done". And that is what makes it so sweet........

So prak away. At home, that is. Just not when you've been invited to dinner at some new friend's home. Or if a potential new employer invites you to a lunch interview. I know you'll be tempted when you see the gravy from the meat dripping onto the plate and slowly making its way towards the potatoes, but prakken is just not done. At least not in public!





Roze koeken

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some time with friends from Holland. It doesn't happen very often since most of us live in other states or countries, and it's not too frequent that we all are in the same place, at the same time. After the typical kissie-kissie greeting (three kisses on the cheek, left-right-left), we sat down, poured coffee, brought out the cookies and shared the latest news. And it's never too long before we start talking about food. "Hey, I found this great Gouda cheese online, I'll send you the link", "We have someone selling stroopwafels at the farmer's market. It's not exactly the same but it's good enough". "I'm really going to miss the Dutch store in town when we move, they even sell hagelslag.". Anyway, you get the drift.

The Dutch tend to be adventurous travelers, and you'll find us pretty much scattered across the globe and far away from home. We love to be out and about, but sometimes we do miss our food! So we sat, sipped coffee, and reminisced about culinaria neerlandica. After I brought out a big platter with suikerwafels and gevulde koeken, we started talking about cakes and cookies. I mentioned the ones that I had baked and listed, out loud, the many that I had yet to try. Everybody joined in calling out the ones they liked, we all went "ooh" and "aah", because they're all so good. But when I mentioned "roze koeken", pink cakes, I noticed that the exclamations were a little longer and the eyes sparkled a little more.

I'm, quite honestly, not sure why. Of all the cakes and cookies we have, the roze koek is possibly the least enticing one, skill-wise or ingredient-wise. No elaborate kneading, twisting and rolling needed as with the bolussen. No intricate web of nutmeg, white pepper, cinnamon, cloves and ginger to make a flavorful speculaas. The roze koek has content-wise very little to offer in complexity: butter, eggs, flour and sugar. I mean, don't get me wrong, you can't hardly mess up butter and sugar, but it's nothing unique or special. They do have something going for them, though, something very un-Dutch: a bright pink, almost neon, frosting! Hot Barbie pink, neon Peptobismol tones....just check the pictures and you know what I mean. The fact that you can adjust the coloring also makes them perfect for other occasions, like King's Day! Who can resist a bright orange cake? 

My own theory is that, from all the Dutch cookies, this is the most extravagant one, and with our Calvinistic upbringing, the excitement of biting into a roze koek is like rebelling, it's almost akin to sin. There, that rhymes. The cake itself is buttery, sweet and tender: the pink icing mixed with berry juice adds a slight tang and creaminess to the whole. Definitely worth a try!

Roze koeken

1 cup (225 grams) butter, room temperature

1/2 cup (150 grams) sugar

3 eggs

3/4 cup (125 grams) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking powder

1/2 teaspoon (3 grams) salt

1 teaspoon lemon zest

For the icing

1 cup (125 grams) powdered sugar

1/2 tablespoons red raspberry juice (for orange, try carrot juice)

Optional: food coloring* (red for pink, red and yellow for orange) 

Cream the butter with the sugar. Add one egg at a time and beat until it's been fully absorbed by the mixture before adding the next one. Mix the remaining ingredients together and fold it through the mix until you have a thick batter.

Spray or grease a muffin pan (I used jumbo muffin pans) and distribute the batter evenly over 8 holes, or 6 if you want taller cakes). Fill each cup about half full, but not more. Place a baking sheet on top and bake the cakes in a 350F/175C oven until they are golden, about twenty minutes. Remove the baking sheet from the top for the last five minutes. Pierce a cake with a toothpick, if it comes out clean, they're done. 

Take them out of the pan, and lay them, top down on a flat surface to cool. 

Mix the powdered sugar with the berry juice and stir well. You may want to add a drop of red food coloring if you are looking for that hot pink. or red and yellow for orange. Stir it well, add some milk if it gets too thick, and then ice the cakes. You can either dip the cake upside down in the icing, and let it dry iced side up, or spread the icing with a knife or spatula on top. 

Let the icing dry, then serve with coffee or tea. Feel terribly sinful for a couple of bites and then have another cake!

If you're wondering where we got the pans and the little crown party sticks, check out the pans here and the crowns here. We also use this food coloring. We get a few pennies from your purchase at Amazon at no extra cost to you which helps with maintaining the website. Thank you! 

Gevulde Koeken

Gevulde koeken are the Dutch equivalent of the American chocolate chip cookie: if there's only one cookie to be had, this will be the one. A favorite of many, it is often associated with ice skating, gezellige afternoons drinking tea with friends and, in my particular case, with traveling by train. Practically each train station in the Netherlands has a small kiosk where you can buy cookies, magazines, coffee, and hot snacks. If the station is really small, most often you can still get a cup of coffee and a cookie. And if wherever you are getting on the train is so small you can't even find that, there will be a chance to buy a refreshment on the train. And I bet you that even that refreshment cart has gevulde koeken......

The Dutch usually don't travel by train for just a hop, skip and a jump. Within the cities, you usually travel by tram, bus, metro or bike. To reach other places, for example if you want to go from Amsterdam to Maastricht, you would travel by train unless you had a car. This last activity usually goes paired with, sometimes undeserved, grumbling towards the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railroads). Not all trains run on time, all the time. Especially this winter, with the huge amounts of snow and the incredibly low temperatures, train travelers were often confronted with delayed trains, missing connections or no trains at all. But look at the gorgeous view when the sun comes out!

But back to the cookie. Gevulde koek, or filled cookie, is a crumbly, buttery, tender dough with an almond filling. The almond decorating the cookie is a dead giveaway. First you taste the cookie, then a sweet, slightly moist almond filling hits you and it's just heaven. Together with a hot cup of coffee (try Douwe Egberts sometime, a Dutch coffee brand and a national favorite), it is a combination that soothes travel irritations, whether you're going anywhere or not.

Gevulde koek
For the dough:
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup of sugar
1 scant teaspoon of baking powder
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon of cold water
1 3/4 stick of butter

For the filling:
1 cup (300 grams) almond paste*
2 tablespoons (30 grams) sugar
1 egg white
2 tablespoons of water
1 teaspoon of almond essence

For brushing:
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon of milk
8 sliced or whole almonds

Mix the dry ingredients and cut the butter into the dough, until it has the consistency of wet sand. Add a tablespoon of ice cold water and knead the dough into a cohesive whole, making sure all the butter is well mixed in. Pat into an oval, cover with plastic film and refrigerate while you make the paste.

Now crumble up the almond paste and beat it with the rest of the ingredients until it's foamy and thick. If you think it's too runny, add a tablespoon of flour, but not more. Look at the picture of the filling to see how thick it's supposed to be - thick enough to pipe and to stay put.

Set your oven to 350F and turn it on. Take the dough out of the fridge, cut it in half and roll one half out, to about 1/8 of an inch thick. Cut out out eight circles. I use the canning ring for a wide mouth jar, it's approximately 3 inches across. Roll the other half out and cut another eight circles (or more of course!). Place one huge heaping teaspoon of almond paste mix in the middle of one dough circle, place a second circle on top and carefully seal the edges. You can do this with a fork or by gently tapping it with your finger on top and to the sides.

When all are done, place them on a parchment lined baking sheet or on a silicone mat. Beat the egg yolk with the milk and brush the top of the cookies, then place an almond on top. Bake for about thirty minutes or until golden.

Let them cool a little bit and enjoy this typical Dutch treat!

*If you don't have access to canned almond paste, you can easily make your own.

Stokvis

Stokvis, or stick fish, not to be confused with fish stick, is a dried piece of cod. Fresh cod is caught, cleaned and stuck on a stick and left to dry in the cold Northern wind. Several months later, you have a dried up, leathery, rock-hard piece of fish. The main reason to dry fish is, ofcourse, to preserve it, often up to a year. In order to make the fish palatable again, it needs to be soaked for at least 24 hours in water to soften the tissue, refreshing the water every six to 8 hours. 

Who in the world would want to eat that? I'm glad you asked. Stokvis is quite popular in a variety of cultures: northern countries such as Norway and Sweden, southern regions like Portugal and Spain, and ofcourse Holland, or the Netherlands are all countries that regularly integrate the delicate flavor of this dried-up finny food into their daily meals.

Stokvis is hard to find in the United States but the salted bacalao, known in Dutch as klipvis, available in the seafood department of larger grocery stores, will do just fine for this purpose: the only difference between one and the other is that bacalao has been salted extensively and the skin, tail and bones have been already removed. Soaking and refreshing the water becomes even more important in this case.

Up until the Second World War, stokvis was very popular in Holland. It was very affordable and the high amount of protein provided a very nutritious meal. The lengthy prepare time and the characteristic smell made it eventually an unpopular dish. Nowadays, it is one of the more expensive foods to consume, but it has never reached its pre-war popularity.

Stokvis is traditionally served on New Year's Day in various provinces, like Friesland and Zeeland. Steamed white rice, boiled potatoes, fried onions, a lick of mustard and warm creamy buttersauce are side dishes to the fish. It doesn't sound like much, and the color combination is terrible (white, yellow, brown, yellow and beige....not appetizing!) but once you mix the buttersauce in with the rice, mashing the potatoes and mixing in the onions, it all of a sudden becomes a very honest, almost heartwarming meal and most certainly worth the effort.

Stokvis

1 case of cod

Plenty of water

1 cup of white rice

4 potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 onion, peeled and sliced

1 stick of butter

1 tablespoon of cornstarch

White pepper to taste

Soak the cod in cold water for 24 hours, refreshing the water every eight hours or according to instructions on the box. The fish doesn't take long to cook once it's soaked so time it accordingly. Both rice and potatoes usually take about twenty minutes, that's enough for the fish to be ready.

Boil rice per instructions (usually one cup of rice on two cups of water, bring to a boil, cover, simmer for twenty minutes) as well as the potatoes (add enough water to a pan to cover, add a teaspoon of salt, bring to a boil, cover and medium boil for twenty minutes or until done).

Fry the onion slices in one tablespoon of butter until golden. Set aside. Melt the rest of the butter in the pan but do not brown. When it's warm, add half a cup of water, bring back up to temperature. Add the cornstarch to a little bit of water, mix and stir into the warm sauce. Stir until it thickens and makes a nice creamy sauce.

When all is done, place a  piece of fish on a plate and surround it with rice and potatoes. Pour the warm buttersauce over the rice and potatoes, add some fried onions on top and sprinkle some white pepper to taste. Add some mustard if you wish and enjoy your meal!

Frikandellen

In several days time, on January 29th, Holland will be the scene for another highly culinary event: the annual Frikandellen Eating competition. Held for the seventh year and hosted by the Men's Choir of Heukelum, a small town in the province of Gelderland, twenty contestants will compete for the challenge trophy and, oh joy, the Golden Frikandel.

Gelderland is no stranger to interesting sausages: it is supposedly the birthplace of Gelderse kookworst and rookworst. In Dutch, worst means sausage which may, on the whole, not be totally coincidental, as the meat used for many of these sausages is not exactly the best. The Gelderse version is made of lean pork, seasoned with a particular set of spices and slightly smoked over oak and beech, then eaten either cold (kookworst) as luncheon meat or boiled (rookworst) with split pea soup or boerenkool, that lovely wintery dish of mashed potatoes with kale.

Frankwin's "broodje frikandel"

So what is a frikandel? It's a skinless deep-fried sausage, made of chicken, pork and beef. It can be served by itself or with mayo, in a roll (broodje frikandel) or cut open and doused in mayo, (curry) ketchup and minced onion. This culinary concoction is called a "frikandel speciaal". This savory sausage is Holland's number one snack, only every so often bumped off its champion position by number two, the kroket, the big brother of the bitterballen. Fried snacks such as these are traditionally sold in neighborhood "snack bars" or "automatieken", like the Febo.

Kroketten, bitterballen and frikandellen are also the top three fried snacks most missed by Dutch expatriates. The first two are fairly easy to make, but I had never tried my hand at making frikandellen until this weekend. It's a bit of a hassle but you'll be surprised at how close to the real thing this recipe is. So get your mayo, ketchup and onions ready, because it's time for a frikandel!

Frikandellen

1 pound of beef
1 pound of pork
8 oz of chicken
3 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon of black peper
1 teaspoon of ground allspice
1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
3 teaspoons of onion powder
3/4 cup of whipping cream

Grind the meat very, very fine and blend together with the spices and the cream. Watch out for the motor if you do this on your food processor, and do small batches to prevent overheating the appliance.

Many thanks to Frankwin for
the recipe and all the help!

Bring a large pan with water to a boil. If you have a sausage grinder or stuffer, just hang the end of the tube over the pan of boiling water. If you don't, you can make this contraption to push the meaty mush into a sausage shape: take a 16oz soda bottle, preferably with straight edges, and cut off the bottom. Find a glass or something solid that fits snug inside the bottle so that you can push the ground meat through the opening. You are going to need a lot of strength to do this! Please make sure the pan with boiling water cannot be bumped off the stove and keep kids, pets and impatient eaters out of the kitchen. Safety first!

Now fill the bottle with the meat, tap it tight so that there are no air pockets and hold the bottle over the water. Push the meat through the opening and have someone else cut the string of meat every ten inches or so. The meat will shrink at least a third in the water, so the longer the better. Frikandellen measure on average a good seven inches long.

Allow the meat to boil for five to six minutes, on a medium boil, then retrieve the sausages and dry them on a cooling rack.

Once they've cooled, you can freeze them for future use, or you can crank up the deep-fryer. Straight from the cooling rack, they need about 3 to four minutes in the hot oil (fry at 375F). For frikandellen speciaal you can cut them lengthwise, about 2/3s in, before you fry them.

Serve with mayo, with a bun or "speciaal". If you start training now, you might still be in time to participate in the National Frikandellen Eating competition this year. Good luck!!

Suikerwafels

It's not until you bite into a suikerwafel for the first time that you realize that not all waffles are equal. Some shine, some just eh...waffle, I guess. The batter-type waffles that we serve during St. Maarten's have their own charm; they're fluffy, tender and can be outfitted with the most exciting bursts of flavor: sweetened whipped cream, fresh fruit, gooey chocolate syrup...you name it.

But it's the suikerwafel, or sugar waffle, that sets itself apart from all other waffles. The dough is yeast-based and vanilla-infused, and creates a beautiful chewy, heavy pastry. Within all that golden goodness, the waffle holds delicious pockets of crumbly pearl sugar. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a WAFFLE!

These pastries were originally known as Luikse Wafels, waffles from Liège (Belgium), but have no similarity to the Belgian waffles as we know them in the United States, except for its easily recognizable grid pattern. Whereas those Belgian waffles are consumed for breakfast, with syrup or whipped cream and fresh fruit, these sugar waffles are eaten as a snack, a pastry or as a quick pick-me-up with a cup of coffee, but hardly ever as a breakfast item. Now...I'm not saying that's not a good idea!

Look at that sugar!

Just like the stroopwafels vendors in Holland, you can find small food trucks throughout the various cities in Belgium that sell these suikerwafels. They (the waffles) made their way to Holland and are now a standard fare in the cookie aisle and on street markets, but are also sold at the oliebollenkramen during the wintertime. The last several years suikerwafels seem to play a much more prominent role than before, a welcome addition to our already quite extensive cookie and pastry selection!

Suikerwafels
3 1/2 cups of flour, divided
2 heaping teaspoons of active dry yeast
3/4 cup of milk, warm
Pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla flavoring (or 1 sachet vanilla sugar)
3 eggs
2 sticks of butter, room temperature
1 cup of Belgian pearl sugar*

Put three cups of flour in a bowl, saving the half cup for later. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk, set it aside for a couple of minutes to proof. Add the salt to the flour. Pour in the yeasty milk, add the vanilla and stir until the dough comes together. Now add an egg and keep stirring (I let the mixer do the work!). When the dough has absorbed the first egg, add the second one, and repeat the process with the third.

When you can no longer tell the egg from the dough, carefully mix in the soft butter, bit by bit. If the dough has a hard time coming together, add one tablespoon of flour to help everything blend.

When the dough has come together (it will be slightly sticky), pull it out of the bowl, and knead it for a few minutes on the counter (you may need to dust your hands and the counter with a bit of flour to avoid it sticking!), then mix in the sugar. When all has come together beautifully, roll the dough into a log, cover it and let it rest for five minutes.

Cut the dough into 2 oz pieces (or 50 grams), and roll them into balls. Place them on a floured baking sheet or cutting board, and cover. Let them rise until puffy and tender, a good thirty minutes at room temperature.

In the meantime, heat your Belgian waffle iron. It should not need any greasing as there is plenty of butter in the dough, but you know your waffle iron best! Place a ball of dough on the griddle, push down the lid and bake until they're done.  I happen to have a two rectangles kind of waffle maker. If you have a round one that breaks the waffle into four sections, measure your dough out to 6 oz so that it'll make four smaller waffles at once.

Place a dough ball in the middle of the iron, push down the lid and bake as usual. Depending on the waffle iron, this can take anywhere from two to 5 minutes. Be careful, as the melted sugar is extremely hot and can cause severe burns. Let the waffles cool on a rack before eating, and cool the waffle maker (the machine, not you!) before cleaning. The burnt sugar is best wiped off with a damp cloth.

Makes approximately 24 waffles.

*If you can't find Belgian pearl sugar in the store, take the equivalent amount in sugar cubes, put them in a towel and give them a couple of good whacks with your rolling pin. Same thing!

Zeeuwse Bolus

"Come and eat poop? What an invitation!" my friend Naomi joyfully exclaims when I ask her and my friend Ann to come over for coffee and a Zeeuwse bolus. This Dutch baked delicacy from the SouthWestern province of Zeeland is colloquially called "turd", as the shape reminds one of eh...well....a lump of excrement, pardon my Dutch. Of course the pastry's name stems from the Latin word for ball, referring in this case to a ball of dough, and the nomenclature was adapted afterwards to describe the eh...other stuff. Unappetizing, for sure, but don't let that put you off this delectable treat!

Bolussen are traditional for various regions, mostly Amsterdam (a ginger bolus) and Zeeland (the cinnamon bolus). These Dutch bolussen were originally baked by Sephardic Jewish bakers in Holland and date back to the first half of the seventeenth century.

Since 1998, on the Tuesday of the twelfth week of the year, Zeeland holds baking competitions for their kind of bolus, and professional bakers strive for the famous Bolusbaker of the Year Award.

Bolussen are best consumed slightly warm and are a great substitute for cinnamon rolls or sticky buns. They are sticky and gooey but their tender texture makes up for the heavy sugar. Some eat their bolus with a thick layer of butter on the bottom (flat) side of the bolus. I have tried it, and I can't say I blame them! Especially salted butter seems to really match the sweetness of the bun.

Zeeuwse bolussen

Ready to rise

3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of powdered milk
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 1/4 cup of milk, warm
1 tablespoon of active dry yeast
6 tablespoons of butter, melted and at room temperature

For the sugar
2 cups of the darkest brown sugar you can find
1 heaping teaspoon of cinnamon, ground

Mix the flour, salt, powdered milk and sugar together. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk and add to the dry mixture. Knead the dough for a good couple of minutes, then drizzle in the melted butter. Continue to knead for fifteen minutes, then place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise for fifteen minutes in a warm spot.

Punch down the dough carefully and divide into 2oz pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Mix the brown sugar with the cinnamon and roll each ball through the sugary mix. Place the dough balls back into the bowl, cover and rise for another fifteen to thirty minutes.

Take each dough ball and carefully roll out to a rope, about 7 to 8 inches long. Roll each rope through more sugar and cinnamon, until fully covered. Pinch one end of the rope between your thumb and index finger and with the other hand roll the rope around your index finger in a circular fashion. Tuck the end of the rope underneath the bolus and place them on a sheet of parchment paper or on a silicon mat on a baking sheet. Leave about an inch and a half or two between the rolls. Sprinkle the rolls with more sugar. Cover and rise for at least an hour or until doubled in size.

Sprinkle the rest of the sugar on top of the rolls. Preheat the oven to 450F and bake the rolls puffy and done in seven to eight minutes. The sugar tends to burn rather quickly so keep an eye on the rolls. They will be gooey and sticky (so let them cool for a minute before you pick them up), and they will smell up your house something divine.

Enjoy with a good cup of coffee either by themselves or with a nice layer of butter spread on the flat side of the bolus.

Kokosmakronen

Beauty lies in simplicity. One of the many things I've learned on this quest to map the Dutch kitchen is that, quite often, the best dishes are the ones with just a few ingredients. Less is more, so to say.

I've mentioned before that the Dutch have an incredible cookie culture. The grocery stores stock shelves of the most amazing combinations, shapes, ingredients and flavors. Coffee and tea are consumed throughout the day and, preferably, in combination with a cookie. Or two. Because that's so gezellig.

Coconut macaroons, or kokosmakronen, are found in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are small and high, others piped in a circle and flat. Some are yellow (depending on whether you include the egg yolk), others plain white, but the flavor and texture is always moist, coconutty and sweet. Kokosmakronen are usually baked on circles of edible potato starch paper, that I have not yet been able to locate, but they bake equally well on parchment paper or on a silicone mat. Make sure you keep the temperature low enough that the bottom of the cookies does not burn or get too toasted. Burnt coconut will leave a bitter taste and spoil the overall flavor of the cookie.

When you bake kokosmakronen, the smell of coconut will permeate the air and all, except for those who abhor this fibrous drupe, will wait with coffee in hand until the long, agonizing wait until you pull these golden beauties from the oven, is over. And that would be all of fifteen minutes, so go figure....The key is to wait until the cookies have cooled down sufficiently to allow the flavor to come forward. Better ofcourse is to eat them the next day, when the cookies have achieved that typical chewiness.

Kokosmakronen
2 egg whites
3/4 cup of sugar

1 1/2 cup of shredded coconut
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons of self-rising flour

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then slowly add in the sugar. Keep beating until the sugar has dissolved. Pinch some egg white between your fingers and rub them together. A little bit of grain is fine, but you want most of the sugar gone. Carefully fold in the coconut and the pinch of salt, then fold in the flour.

Heat the oven to 300F. Place small heaps of dough on a silicone mat or parchment paper, place it on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for approximately fifteen minutes or until golden. The cookies will still be a little bit soft in the center but will set after you remove them from the oven.

Makes about twenty small cookies.

Bapao

Bapao, or ba pao, is a steamed bun with a savory or sweet filling. Originally from China, it made its way into the Dutch kitchen via the cuisine of Indonesia, a former colony of the Netherlands. The savory filling is traditionally made with ground beef and is flavored with Chinese five spice powder (fennel, anise, ginger, cinnamon and cloves) and sweet soy sauce.

The bun is best enjoyed warm, with a sweet chili dipping sauce. You can buy these Indonesian gems in snackbars, at the grocery store or at the city markets. Look for a small white trailer that sells Vietnamese loempias, i.e. egg rolls, and you're bound to find they also sell ba pao. The fillings can be beef, chicken or vegetarian (usually some sort of tofu mixture).

It's an easy snack to make and once steamed, cooled and properly wrapped, it will hold for several weeks in the freezer. All you need to do is pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes (wrapped ofcourse!) and your snack is ready! Because of the sweet dough and the savory filling, it is a favorite with both kids and adults.

Bapao
1 lb of ground beef
1 green onion
1 clove of garlic, minced

1 tablespoon of five spice powder*
2 tablespoons of sweet soy sauce**
1 teaspoon of salt

For the dough
4 cups of self-rising flour
1 1/2 cup of milk
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt

Parchment paper
Steamer
Tea towel

Cut the parchment paper into 3x3 inch squares. Brown the beef in a skillet and pour off some of the fat, if there is a lot. Mince the white part and 2/3s of the green of the green onion and stir, together with the minced garlic, into the meat. Sauté until the garlic is translucent, then stir in the spices and the soy sauce. Taste and adjust salt if needed.

Put the steamer on the stove and bring the water to a boil. Tie a tea towel around the lid to avoid any water dripping from the lid onto the dough.

Knead a dough with the flour, the milk, the sugar and the salt, and cut into 2.5oz pieces. Flatten each ball into a circle, not too thin, and add a heaping tablespoon of the meat mixture in the middle. Wrap the dough around it, pinch it shut and place the bapao, seam side down, onto a square of parchment paper.

When they are all done, lift the lid on the steamer, place the bapao on the perforated pan. Leave plenty of space between buns as they will rise and expand considerably. Replace the lid and steam the bapao for about fifteen minutes. Carefully lift the lid and keep it straight as tilting it may cause condensation to drip on the buns. This will ruin the fluffy dough, so be careful!

Remove the buns carefully, let them cool a little and enjoy them with a sweet chili sauce dipping. Makes approximately 10-12 bapao.

I was rather conservative with the filling,
but you may want to fill this puppy up,
the dough will hold it!

* Five Spice Powder is easily found in regular grocery stores, in the Asian food section. If you cannot find it, try this recipe.

** The Indonesian sweet soy sauce is called Ketjap Manis. Not easy to come by in the United States but if you replace it with regular soy sauce, add a 2 teaspoons of sugar to the meat and carefully adjust the salt, as regular soy sauce is rather salty.

Driekoningenbrood

Three Kings Day, or Epiphany, is traditionally celebrated on January 6th. It's supposedly the day that the three Magi, Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar, guided by a star, presented their gifts to Christ in the manger.

Driekoningen is not a very traditional or widespread holiday in the Netherlands anymore but it used to be one of the most celebrated ones, akin to Sinterklaas. The famous painter Jan Steen reflected this festive holiday in numerous works: scenes of blissful family gatherings with food and drink, music and singing. The city of Tilburg still organizes Driekoningen celebrations every year. The celebration was added to the Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2012.





Jan Steen, Driekoningenfeest (1662),
Oil on canvas, 131 x 164.5 cm.,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 Captain Alonso Vazquez noted the tradition in his writings of 1614, " On the day of Three Kings, and the night before, they (i.e. the Dutch) crown someone in their household as king, by luck, and they obey him and serve him as such, and when he drinks they encourage him and praise him in loud voices, and from Christmas Eve to Three Kings, a period which they call Thirteen Evenings, they place in remembrance  thirteen burning candles, of white wax, on the window sill, in a single line behind the curtains, to remember the thirteen nights from Christmas to Three Kings, and each night they will get together and party and get drunk." Well, that's lovely. No wonder the Calvinistic movement in the 17th and 18th century forbade to host or participate in such festivities. No fun! 

Another source, a 1935 issue of a monthly magazine for housewives, references the old tradition, already rare by then, that the bread was cut in thirds by the man of the house: one third for the church, one third for the neighbor who was not able to purchase this costly bread, and one third for his own household.

Nowadays, pockets of predominantly Catholic areas such as North Brabant and Limburg do still celebrate it, albeit in a more moderate form. Children will dress up as magi and will, illuminated by a burning star-shaped lantern, go door-to-door and sing songs in hope to rake in the candy.

On the eve of Driekoningen, January 5th, or early morning on the 6th, Driekoningenbrood is served. It's a sweet bread, flavored with almond paste and lemon zest, that holds a small surprise: hidden in the bread are three uncooked beans. Two are white beans and one is dark, to represent the three Magi. Whomever gets the slice with the dark bean will be "king" for a day, being allowed to set the pace for the day, or at least decide what's going to be for dinner. If a parent or adult gets the king's bean, they are expected to treat the rest of the family - double joy! 

Driekoningenbrood

4 cups (600 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (50 grams) sugar
1 teaspoon (6 grams) salt
Zest of one lemon

2 teaspoons (15 grams) active dry yeast
3/4 cup (175 ml) milk, warm

1/4 cup (80 grams) almond paste

2 eggs
1 stick (100 grams) butter, melted

2 uncooked white beans
1 uncooked black, red or pinto bean
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Optional: 1/2 cup (75 grams) raisins or mixed peel

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and lemon zest. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk and proof, then add to the flour mix. Break pea-sized pieces off the almond paste and add with the eggs to the dough. Knead together, then add the melted butter. Knead the dough for a good five to eight minutes or until it's smooth and flexible - add one more tablespoon milk at a time if you feel it's too dry. Set aside in an oiled bowl, covered and let it rise for an hour or until doubled in size.

Carefully punch down the dough, spread raisins over the top if used and knead them in carefully, then shape the dough into a round. From the bottom, stick the three beans in the dough, each at a fair distance from each other. Place the round dough on a baking sheet or in a round baking pan, cover the dough, rise for 45 minutes or about 2/3s in size.

In the meantime, heat the oven to 375F/190C. When the bread is ready to be baked, slash the top of the dough once top to bottom, and once right to left. Then slash each quarter section once more, creating 8 sections. As the bread bakes, the tips of each section will rise up and create the shape of a crown. Bake the bread for about thirty minutes or until done (>185F internal temperature). Note that, because of the high sugar content, the bread may brown prematurely and might acquire a bitter taste: tent the bread with aluminum foil during the last ten to fifteen minutes to avoid any burning.

Brush the bread with melted butter when it comes out of the oven, let it cool and dust richly with powdered sugar. Slice in pieces and serve with hot chocolate and coffee: make sure you check to see if you have the dark bean!

If you prefer to not cut the star shape in the bread, you can also cut out a star or crown shape out of paper and dust the bread with powdered sugar after it's cooled.