Pannenkoeken

Fall is a significant time for the Dutch, especially if you’re at the age where you are still going to school. Holland’s summer vacation is fairly short ( if you get to have any summer at all) and before you know it, you’re back in the schoolbanken, agonizing over homework, teachers and hoping your bike hasn’t been stolen while you were in class. 

Thankfully Fall brings a well-deserved break, in the shape of a highly coveted one week vacation called herfstvakantie, or fall vacation. School’s out during that time and families undertake one last fun activity before the winter weather kicks in and reduces outside life to a minimum.  

Herfstvakanties are usually spent outside the home, weather permitting, on a day trip to a theme park such as the Efteling, a weeklong visit with grandma and grandpa, or a trip to the North Sea islands. But regardless of where you go, or with whom, you know that at least once during that week you are going to get treated to that typical Dutch kids favorite: pannekoeken!

Thin, flavorful and as-big-as-your-plate pancakes are a special treat, especially for kids, and are often the food of choice for children’s birthday parties or special occasions. Whole restaurants, called pannekoekenhuisjes (pancake houses), are dedicated to just that: offering a large variety of pancakes and toppings to please everybody’s tastebuds. The décor of these restaurants is usually rural Dutch: lots of white and red checkered tablecloths, big wooden tables and chairs and with an overall farm-feel to it.

But pancakes are not just for kids. For adults, pannekoeken also are a traditional Dutch meal: studded with chunks of apple, pieces of bacon (spekpannenkoek) or covered with a layer of melted aged Gouda cheese, these large flapcakes are a quick and affordable substitute for an evening meal. Unlike in the United States and Canada, pancakes are not part of the breakfast tradition in Holland and are more suited for dinner. Whereas kids usually prefer the batter made with white flour, recipes for grown-up pancakes will often mention buckwheat, whole wheat, or a mixture of both.

The most traditional choice is pannekoek met appelstroop, pancake with apple syrup, a tangy dark sugary spread made out of apple juice. The dark stroop is spread over the whole surface of the pannekoek, after which it is rolled up and either eaten as a wrap, or cut into bite size pieces and consumed with knife and fork. Other popular toppings are peanut butter, chocolate sprinkles, jam, powdered sugar, or just plain. As the batter does not contain any sugar, the pancake can be eaten either as a savory option or as a sweet one. A festive way of serving pancakes can be done in the shape of a pancake cake, a pannenkoekentaart, which consists of layering pancakes and adding flavored yoghurt and/or fresh fruit. 

Keeping Dutch tradition, most people will usually eat a savory pancake first, followed by one with a sweet topping, but you can do whatever you like best! 

Pannekoeken
2 cups (250 grams) flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups (500 ml) milk

2 tablespoons (30 grms) butter, melted and room temperature

1 tablespoon (15 gms) butter for the frying pan

Stir the flour and salt together, and then add two cups of milk and the eggs. Beat until the batter is smooth, and thin with the remaining milk. Melt two tablespoons of butter and stir this into the pancake batter. You are looking for a pourable batter. Cover the bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Heat a 12-inch skillet, add ½ tablespoon of butter. As soon as the butter is melted (but not browned), take the skillet off the stove, pour in about 1/3 cup, or a small soup ladle of batter, and swirl the skillet so that the whole bottom surface is covered with a thin layer. Put the skillet back on the stove, and carefully bake the pancake until the surface is dry, about two minutes, then flip or turn the pancake over and cook the other side.

Stack the pancakes as you go and cover them with a clean kitchen tea towel while you bake the rest. Serve with a variety of toppings, both sweet and savory, such as peanut butter, cheese, jam, fruit jams, bacon, or sugar. Makes about ten large pancakes.

Appelstroop-ish
3 cups (700 ml) apple juice or apple cider
1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
2 tablespoons dark molasses (optional)

Stir the sugar into the apple juice and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for the next twenty minutes. When the liquid has been reduced to about half, start monitoring the temperature with a candy thermometer. As soon as the syrup has reached 225F (107C), take the pan off the stove. Let it cool, stir in the molasses (optional), and serve with the pancakes. This appelstroop, when still warm, is not as thick as the commercial product but will thicken when refrigerated. The flavor is similar to the original. Makes one cup. 

Karnemelkpudding

Holland is dairy country par excellence. Much of that lactic largesse is reflected in its vast assortment of cheeses of course, a product so closely associated with The Netherlands that its inhabitants are often referred to as "cheese heads" or kaaskoppen. But the dairy domination does not stop at the cheese monger. Besides yogurt, ice cream and chocolate milk, the dessert section at the grocery store holds a huge variety of puddings, pourable custards (vla), drink yogurts, cream cheese, mousse and bavaroise, all made with delectable Dutch milk.

The pourable vla is a typical Dutch product, with the consistency and mouthfeel of yogurt but without the tang, and served in over twenty flavors: vanilla, chocolate, caramel, strawberry, banana, raspberry, apple-cinnamon, coffee....you name it. We'll do a separate chapter on vlas alone one of these days!

But one dairy product does not usually jump out at anybody for its mouthfeel, for its flavor or even for its innovative character: it's the slighly snubbed, often overlooked karnemelk, or buttermilk. The somewhat sour taste, the viscosity of the milk and sometimes even the smell, will put many off.

Karnemelk is the milk that is left over after the cream has been removed for butter. It's slightly sour and a little thicker than milk and is most often used for baking with: the slight acidity is an excellent trigger for a leavener such as baking powder. In the older days, buttermilk was used as a beverage and for the poorest of people, as a substitute for meat gravy on their potatoes. In the more rural areas of Holland you will still find that some older farmers pour buttermilk over their potatoes before they prak, or mash, them. Don't knock it till you try it!

From probably those same days stems an old-fashioned dessert called buttermilk pudding, or karnemelkpudding. Easy to make, the hardest part is going to exercise the patience to wait until its ready to eat: the pudding requires a minimum of four hours in the refrigerator, and even better overnight. It's a creamy, airy, slightly tangy with a sweet undertone pudding and goes very well with sweet fresh fruit such as strawberries or rode bessensaus, a red currant sauce. For a more wintery dish, try a jar of sweet dark cherries to pair this dessert with.

Karnemelkpudding
1/4 cup granulated sugar (85 grams)
1/4 cup (60 ml) + 2 tablespoons water
1 envelope gelatin powder (or 3 leaves)
2 cups buttermilk (500 ml)
1 cup heavy whipping cream (250 ml)
2 heaping tablespoons powdered sugar

Soak the gelatin leaves, if using, in a bowl of water. Mix the gelatin powder with two tablespoons of water and set aside.

Mix the sugar with the 1/4 cup of water and slowly heat on a stove, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Take the sugar water off the stove, add the gelatin (squeeze the water out of the leaves if using) and stir until it has dissolved as well.

When the liquid has sufficiently cooled, stir the sugar water into the two cups of buttermilk. Stir until everything is well mixed and set it to the side.

In a separate bowl, whip the cream. When you have soft peaks, add the powdered sugar one tablespoon at a time, until stiff peaks form. Carefully fold the whipped cream in with the buttermilk until they are blended. Rinse a 4 cup pudding form (either a large one, or several small ones) with cold water and pour the pudding mix into the mold. Cover with plastic film and refrigerate for a good four to five hours minimum, better overnight.

To remove the pudding from the mold, set the mold in a pan with hot water for ten seconds, then tip over on a plate. Decorate with fresh or canned fruit.

Gerookte Makreel

Mackerel and I don't have the best of relationships. My first encounter with this fatty finned food was while fishing one day on the North Sea, many years ago. It was cold, it was windy and trying to get those slippery fish off the hook while they void their vent on you is a hassle and a half. Not my idea of a fun afternoon, mind you, and I venture to say not the mackerel's either.

Last week, many years after our first date, we met again, mackerel and I. Not anywhere near the North Sea, but in the freezer department of a local grocery store. There it was, immediately recognizable by its distinct silver and dark blue pattern, but slightly less agitated than last time. Well, quite a bit less agitated actually, because it was frozen stiff.

The Dutch traditionally don't smoke many of their foods for preservation or flavor: rookworst (smoked kielbasa), rookvlees (thinly sliced smoked sandwich meat, made from either beef or horse), rookkaas (smoked cheese) are just about it. But visit any fish monger worth his weight and you will find smoked mackerel, smoked eel and smoked herring (bokking) as part of the assortment. Whether as a sandwich filling or as a fatty snack by itself, both mackerel and eel are Dutch favorites when it comes to fish.

Fatty fish are great sources for Omega-3 fatty acids and two portions a week are said to do you much good. Both eel and mackerel are fatty fish and a little bit goes a long way. A one pound mackerel will probably serve three to four easily. Do serve it with either a bread and butter pickle or a pickle spear, to cut through the fat.

*Caution: fatty fish are much more prone to spoilage. As soon as the fish has thawed, gut it and put in in a salt bath, per recipe's instructions. The salt will flavor the meat but also kill any possible pathogens. Brine it for at least three hours, or even better if you can leave it soaking overnight in the fridge.

For this dish you need a smokehouse or smoker. I purchased a Little Chief smoker and used apple chips to smoke the fish. Keep the temperature at an even 150F for the duration of the process: mackerel should be ready in about an hour and a half.

Gerookte Makreel

2 mackerel
Salt
Water
4 handfuls of apple chips

Thaw the fish in the refrigerator, or in the sink under running water. In the meantime, prepare a salt water solution (1 cup of table salt on sixteen cups of water) with enough water to cover both fish.

Lay the fish on its side, and cut open the belly with a short sharp knife from the vent to the gills. Carefully reach inside and pull out all the organs and the digestive tract. Cut out the gills. Rinse out the cavity and the head, and lay the fish in the salt water brine.

Keep the fish submerged in the brine for at least three hours, but if you can brine them overnight in the fridge, even better. The next day, rinse the fish and pat them dry. Insert a sausage hook (I used the metal hooks from a bungee cord) into the back of the head of the fish. 

Fire up your smoker. In the meantime, hang the fish somewhere where they are covered, out of the elements but with some kind of airflow. A small fan might just do the trick. Smoke does not penetrate into wet meats, so the drier the fish, the better the smoke flavor.

Hang the mackerel in your smoker, put the lid back on and get smoking! Mackerel has a distinct flavor of its own and apple will give a tender, non-dominant smoke flavor to the fish, but you are welcome to experiment with any other flavors, or stick to your favorite.

Remove the mackerel when they're golden and done, roll them separately in aluminum foil, and let them rest for an hour. If you want to eat them warm (and who doesn't!!), cut off the head and the tail, and carefully break open the fish by inserting your thumbs into the belly cavity. Remove the spines and the skin, and break the remaining meat into large chunks.

Serve as such, on a buttered roll with a pickle, or cold on some crackers as a snack or appetizer.

Beschuit met muisjes

I'm in such a happy mood! It's Spring, which is always a good reason to celebrate: new life, new births, new everything. I love seeing how the first flowers pop up in the garden, how the first leaves are carefully unfolding as if to check and see if winter is really over. It's a great time to celebrate life.

In Holland, the birth of a child is celebrated with beschuit, a twice-baked white roll that is as brittle and fragile as a new-born baby. Depending on the outcome, these rusks are buttered and sprinkled with pink muisjes if it's a girl, and blue muisjes if it's a boy. As it's usually either one or the other, only those two color variations exist for the sugar coated aniseed muisjes, or "mice". That is, unless you're royalty. In that case, the beschuit will be covered with orange muisjes, to represent the Dutch royal house, the Oranges.

Beschuit has been around since the early 1400s: the then bishop of Utrecht is said to already have enjoyed the twice-baked bread. During the 1600s, the city of Wormer made a name for itself with its beschuit, a finer table bread, and more delicate than its sturdier sister, the scheepsbeschuit or hardtack, that was produced for the seafaring population of that area. The popularity of both had, at one point, over 150 grain mills delivering the flour needed to produce all those beschuiten.

Nowadays, beschuit is still a favorite breakfast bread: it requires skill to butter the rusk without it breaking in three or four pieces and plenty of tourists have wondered why on earth the Dutch bother with something so dry and brittle if there are so many other breads to choose from.

But beschuit is one of those foods that triggers memories: softened with warm milk and sugar it becomes one of grandma's versions of lammetjespap (lambs porridge), crushed to fine crumbs it holds together that lovely schoenlapperstaart (cobbler's pie) or those famous Dutch meatballs, and if you were sick as a child, a cup of weak tea and a dry beschuit would sometimes be the only food you were allowed to eat.

Unfortunately beschuit is no longer baked by artesan bakers such as the ones in Wormer or Jisk, but large companies such as Verkade or Bolletje have included beschuit into their assortment of baked goods. Verkade started baking beschuit during the last part of the 19th century. Baking was considered a man's job but the beschuit was so brittle that Verkade started employing (unmarried) women to pack the rusks, as their hands were more slender and their packing skills more gentle than the burly beschuit bakers.

Making beschuit at home takes some time, but it's worth to do. You can vary with whole wheat flour, add sesame seeds or sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top for a sweet version. For the baking, use straight-edged ramekins that are five inches (approx. 12 cm) across and 1.5 inches (approx. 4 cm) high.

Beschuit
4 tablespoons (60 grams) butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons (50 grams) sugar
1 cup (250 ml) of milk
2 eggs
3 3/4 cups (450 grams) all-purpose flour
1 scant tablespoon (15 grams) baking powder
1 scant tablespoon (10 grams) active dry yeast
1 teaspoon of salt

Cream the butter and sugar. Mix the flour, baking powder, yeast, and salt in a bowl and add to the creamed butter. Add the milk and the eggs and knead everything into a pliable dough, for about five minutes.
Let it rest in an oiled bowl, covered for fifteen minutes, then divide into 3.5 ounces (100 grams) pieces. Roll and rest under a towel while you prepare the ramekins.

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Spray each ramekin with cooking spray. Place the dough balls on a baking sheet, cover each one with a ramekin and let the dough rise for about 30 minutes. Place the sheet on the middle rack and bake for twenty minutes, leaving the ramekins in place. Retrieve the baking sheet, remove the ramekins, turn the beschuit over and bake for another ten minutes.

Now, cool the beschuit until cold to the touch and slice the bread lengthwise in two. Place cut side up on the baking sheet and return the rusks to the oven, lowered to 325F/165C to dry and lightly brown.

This will take another ten to fifteen minutes, but keep an eye on the bread.

When they're golden and dry, remove, cool, and enjoy!! Makes approx. 7 beschuiten.

Tomatensoep met balletjes

The Netherlands is currently the world's largest exporter of tomatoes worldwide, ahead of Mexico and Spain. We have quite a history with tomatoes: at first deemed only a decorative fruit, the tomato was considered poisonous until they figured out that the tin plates on which they served them caused the toxins. It quickly moved from show-apple to love-apple, celebrating the presumed aphrodisiacal powers this fruit of the nightshade family might have, and has since 1900 featured in our diets in various formats, one of which is today's tomato soup. 

Unfortunately, our tomato soup has become one of those industrialized, run-of-the-mill soups that are available anywhere and everywhere. Tomato soup is standard on menus, is available from automated soup dispensers and is sold in large family-sized cans, but it's often not more than a gloopy, starchy red mass. No tomato proud of its heritage would want to end up in a can like that....so we're going to make our own!

Wintertime is a great time to put a bowl of steaming hot tomato soup on the table: the color and the flavor will bring back memories of summers past. But fresh tomatoes are hard to come by this time of year, or at least tomatoes that have great flavor, so my go-to during this season are canned diced tomatoes. They have more lycopene than fresh tomatoes, and the flavor is hard to beat since the tomatoes are processed when they are at their ripest, and in such a fast fashion that vitamins and minerals are often preserved. 

If it's summertime when you're reading this, it's a fantastic time to revive tomato soup from its sordid industrialized image. Gardens are flooded with large, juicy, ripe, sun-kissed tomatoes all over, just plain begging to be used up for a homemade, honest, honorable tomato soup. In Holland, tomato soup is traditionally served with soepballetjes, mini meatballs, and a splash of heavy cream. The recipe below makes about four generous servings of soup, and about 20 soepballetjes.

This is a quick soup. For a more elaborate soup, look for Oma's Tomatensoep in the near future.

Dutch Tomato Soup
2 lbs/1 kg ripe tomatoes (use a variety for more complex flavor) or a 28 oz (794 grms) can of (low-sodium) diced tomatoes*
1 beef or vegetable bouillon cube

4 cups/1 liter hot water for fresh tomatoes (2 cups/0.5 liter for canned)
1 small onion or shallot
1 tablespoon butter
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves

For the balletjes:

8 oz (250 grams) ground beef

1/2 egg, beaten

2 tablespoons breadcrumbs

Salt

Pepper

Nutmeg, optional

Peel and chop the onion or shallot and sauté it in the butter. Cut the fresh tomatoes up into small pieces, remove the seeds and, after the onions have become translucent and released their fragrance, add the (canned) tomatoes and simmer for the next ten minutes. Pour the hot water over the top, add the bouillon cube, the bay leaves, and the fresh thyme, bring it up to a boil, then cover and turn down the flame to simmer. In the meantime, season the ground beef with salt and pepper (nutmeg optional) and knead it with the egg and the breadcrumbs together until all the ingredients are mixed, then roll into small marble-sized balls (0.3 oz/8 grams) and let them simmer in the soup for a good ten minutes. 

Remove the bay leaves and the stem sprigs, pull out the meatballs, and blend the soup smooth. Taste and adjust with salt or additional herbs if desired, then add the meatballs back in. Before serving, pour a tablespoon of evaporated milk, milk, or sour cream into each plate and stir.

* I love the diced tomatoes with Italian herbs: perfect for a cold winter day! 

Amazon Prime Shopping Suggestions: 

• Stick blender
• Red stock pot
• Soup bowls
• Digital kitchen scale (weighs both grams and ounces)
• Soup ladles
• Tomato shark

Disclaimer: if you buy through any of the links in the Amazon Prime Shopping Suggestions section, the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program will pay us a small commission on qualifying purchases. It does not increase your cost or price, and it will help us keep the website running. Your support is very much appreciated! 

Don't have Amazon Prime but want to give it a try? This link offers a 30 day trial.