Surinaamse Pindasoep

This article and recipes were first published in Dutch, the mag.

The city of Amsterdam is known for many things, and not in the least for its multicultural society. It is said that every nationality is represented in this city. And with each nationality comes food, often glorious, exciting and flavorful food!  

For several years I lived in an outside neighborhood of Amsterdam, on the one-a-last subway stop. It was close to the Bijlmermeer, an area known for the large concentration of Surinamese people.  Many moved to The Netherlands after Suriname achieved independence from the Dutch in 1975, and brought with them a colorful culture, and a vast array of culinary treasures.  Amsterdam alone counts over 200 Surinamese eateries, where one can enjoy these exciting dishes. Almost one in six inhabitants of the city has Suriname heritage and there are almost as many Surinamese people living in The Netherlands as there are in Suriname.

The Dutch first arrived in Suriname, a country on the east coast of South America, in the early 1600s. They traded New Amsterdam with the British for this fairly new and booming location with its rich soil and started plantations. These plantations relied on African slaves to grow the sugar cane, coffee, cotton and coffee. After slavery was abolished in 1863, and most slaves left the plantations, the Dutch brought in workers from other colonies and areas like Indonesia, India and in smaller amounts from China and the Middle East. The variety of cultural backgrounds that each brought with them, and a preference for certain foods, influenced the local cuisine heavily. The Surinamese cuisine nowadays is a beautiful and exciting melting pot.

The recipes in the following weeks are a representation of the different cultures that encompass the Surinamese population: we're starting off the mini-series with pinda bravoe, a Surinamese peanut soup. It is reminiscent of West African dishes where the groundnut was an available and affordable source of energy, and it was quite possibly a dish introduced by the African slaves who worked on the plantations. In the next couple of weeks we'll be covering pom, of Jewish origin, a dish that is often attributed to the Creole population of Suriname. Roti, the curried chicken and potato dish that is served with braised yard long beans and a side of flatbread, has seemingly Indian influences. The baka bana reminds us of the pisang goreng from Java and the bara, a savory and spiced fried snack made with urad dal has a distinct Hindu background.  

All in all, the Surinamese kitchen is a rich one, with a large variety of flavors and backgrounds, and worth giving a try! Njang Swietie! (Eet smakelijk!)

Pinda Bravoe with tom tom
½ teaspoon butter

½ cup onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 small tomato, chopped

6 ounces (175 grams) chicken meat

2 ounces (50 grams) corned beef brisket*

4 cups (1 liter) chicken stock

1 bay leaf

4 whole allspice berries

1 sprig of celery leaves

10 ounces (275 grams) peanut butter, natural

1 Madame Jeanette pepper**

1 plantain

Salt

Melt the butter in a small stockpot and sauté the chopped onion until they are translucent. Add the minced garlic, then add the tomatoes. Carefully stir for a couple of minutes or until the tomatoes have softened. Add the chicken meat and the corned beef and give it a couple of stirs, then add the chicken stock, the bay leaf, the 4 allspice berries and the sprig of celery.

Simmer for thirty minutes. Remove the bay leaf and the allspice berries, and discard them. Take the meat out and set it aside. Purée the soup.  In a separate bowl, mix the peanut butter and one cup of soup until it’s smooth. Add it in to the rest of the soup. Stir until the soup is homogenous, and return the meat to the soup. Add the Madame Jeanette pepper to the soup, whole, and let it simmer for another ten  minutes. Make sure the pepper does not break or rip, as the soup will be too hot to eat: we’re trying to get the pepper to add flavor but no heat.

Discard the pepper after ten minutes: taste the soup and adjust with salt and pepper. If you’d like some spice, try to add a little bit of chili sauce.

To make the tom tom, peel the plantain and boil it until soft. Remove it from the water and mash it with a fork. Add a pinch of salt, and roll into small balls, the size of a marble. Add one or two into each soup portion.

* This is your regular St Patrick's day corned beef brisket, not the canned variety. 
** Can be easily replaced by Scotch Bonnet peppers or habaneros. Watch the heat!!

Eén ei is geen ei.....Vrolijk Pasen!

"Een ei is geen ei, twee ei is een half ei, drie ei is een Paasei!" goes a famous Dutch children's Easter song. Deviled eggs are a perfect choice to celebrate Easter, together with Paasbrood, Paashaasjes, Paasstol, and even a beautiful Paastaart, an Easter cake, complete with advocaat. 

Not to be outdone by anyone, we celebrate Easter for two days. Today is Easter Sunday, or First Easter Day, Eerste Paasdag. Families get together for breakfast or brunch, complete with wonderful bread selections, omelets, smoked salmon and watercress, or get together later today for an Easter dinner, although that is usually not as common. Lamb, although appreciated, still does not have a prominent place on the table as it does in other countries during this time of year.

And as the world gets back to work and resumes normal life tomorrow, The Netherlands celebrates Second Easter Day, or Tweede Paasdag. Where most stores and businesses remain closed, Second Easter Day is seemingly THE day to go furniture shopping. The large furniture stores, meubelboulevards, are open today to the shopping public. Some of these are all set up for today: playgrounds for the kids and a tearoom or lunchroom for mom, to make it gezellig. 

In the meantime, prepare some Dutch-style deviled eggs with all those colored eggs you may have made for Easter. We've ventured away from the standard yolk-mustard-mayo filling and created some new, but familiar, flavors. 



                    Vrolijk Pasen!!




Gevulde eieren
4 eggs
Water

Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water, so that the eggs are covered by an inch. Bring to a boil, boil for two minutes. Cover and turn off the stove. Leave for 15 minutes. Uncover, pour off the hot water and "scare" the eggs by running cold water over them. Let the eggs sit in cold water for ten minutes, then peel. 

Fresh eggs tend to be the hardest to peel, so you may want to use the older eggs in your fridge for boiling. Adding a teaspoon of baking soda, steaming the eggs, baking them in the oven, or cooking them in an InstaPot is also said to make eggs easier to peel. 

When the eggs are peeled and cooled, cut them in half lengthwise and remove the yolk. Mix up your favorite spices with the yolks, add some cream or mayonnaise to make it dollop-able, and fill the eggs. Chill and present on a pretty plate. Following are some favorites that may please the Dutch palate:

Saté Deviled Eggs: mix 2 teaspoons of regular or salty creamy peanut butter for every four yolks and 1 1/2 teaspoons of sweet chili sauce. Mix well, fill the eggs, and top with a drizzle of chili sauce.

Sweet Curry Eggs:  add ½ a teaspoon of your favorite curry powder to four yolks, a tablespoon of coconut milk, and minced yellow raisins.

Seafood Eggs: chop eight small salad shrimp with four yolks, mince a little piece of celery fine and mix it in with a teaspoon of mayonnaise and freshly ground black pepper. Top with a dollop of caviar or a whole shrimp. 

Chocoladevla

 Some foods don't need a lot of explanation, like today's vla. It's chocolate, and it's vla. It's good. You can eat it as dessert, all by itself. You can stir it with vanillevla and mix it up. You can use it as a dip for fresh bananas. It's comforting, enticing, yummie and chocolatey. And it's vla.

And if there's something we love for dessert, it's vla, a pourable sweet pudding, available in over fifty flavors. The rectangular vla cartons look much like the American quart sized milk cartons, and will appear on the table after dinner. If you're fairly  new to the table, people will probably give you a clean bowl. If you're family, whether blood-related or not, you will probably pour your vla of choice on the plate in front of you, the one that you just finished eating your main course of. A good reason to finish your plate!

You will find vla in the dairy section of the grocery store. There are seasonal vlas, like an apple-cinnamon for the Fall, or a fruity lemony one for the Spring. There are fufu-fancy ones and there are the run-of-the-mill vlas, like today's chocolade vla. Together with vanilla, hopjesvla and raspberry, it's probably one of the most popular flavors and bound to show up on a Dutch dinner table sooner than later.

The best thing is that it's so easy to make. Some milk, a bit of corn starch and good old-fashioned Van Houten cocoa powder and sugar is all this takes. The making of the vla takes less than ten minutes, but it's the waiting until it's cooled off that takes the longest....unless you eat your vla hot!

Chocoladevla
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup corn starch
1/3 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
2  1/4 cup milk

Stir the cocoa powder, corn starch, sugar and salt together in a bowl. Add a cup of milk and whisk until all lumps are gone. Bring the rest of the milk to a low simmer, add the chocolate milk to the pan and stir together. Keep stirring while the milk comes to a boil, and boil it for a good one or two minutes, or until the mixture starts to thicken. Pull off the stove, pour in a bowl or container. Cover the surface of the vla with plastic food film to avoid a "skin" forming.

Cool in the fridge. Stir before serving.

In The Dutch Kitchen.....

For the longest time, the Dutch kitchen was considered practically non-existent in the food world. And, quite honestly, we will not be dominating the culinary covers of  those big food magazines any time yet. No hot features in Saveur, although I still think it was a huge faux pas to omit us here. Food and Wine doesn't talk much about Dutch cooking, and neither Bourdain nor Ottolenghi have spent much time trying to master the intricacies of the frikandel or philosophize on the practice of prakken.

But that's okay. We've gone from sheer opulence during the Golden Age where our cuisine was predominantly influenced by the French, to a practically austere kitchen as part of the Protestant and Calvinist ideology. Food was not to be a source of pleasure, of identity or joy, but was meant for simple sustenance. I personally believe it allowed us to focus on other areas where we could contribute in a different way: science, literature, travel, music, technology......

Still, throughout the ages, in country kitchens, in humble homes, we have ultimately managed to create a kitchen that defines us, and that has become part of our identity. We've gathered a wealth of regional products and produce that is unique to our country and slowly but surely, we're learning to enjoy it and to add it back into our culinary repertoire. Most importantly, we're allowing ourselves to be proud of it, and that is saying something.

Last year, I contacted the National Bureau for Tourism and Conferences in The Netherlands. Their website, www.holland.com is the main site for world travelers to learn about our country, our national treasures, habits and history. People all over the world use it to plan trips, pick out sites to see or simply travel to our beautiful country from the comfort of their own home. I praised them on every aspect of the site, but then asked them why they were not spending any space on Dutch recipes, on Dutch cooking and on our local cuisines. I offered to write for them, they accepted, and the first series on recipes and short introductions is now live:
http://www.holland.com/us/Tourism/Interests/Food-Drinks/Dutch-recipes.htm

Excited? You bet! Proud? Quite! I have been on this quest to bring more focus and attention to the Dutch cuisine, and I feel that this is another great step in the right direction. Time to celebrate! 

Tosti Hawaii

It's been one of those weekend where you run errands, you run from one side of town to the other, and finally you run ragged. And when you finally plof down on the couch, you realize that it's time for dinner. But you don't feel like peeling potatoes,  you haven't really given the vegetables any thought and you forgot to pull the meat out of the freezer. So what is one to do?! Calling out for pizza is not altogether too common yet in the Netherlands and thinking about pulling out of that parking space in front of the house that you circled the block ten times for is out of the question. So what will it be? Yep, tosties!!!

Grilled ham and cheese sandwiches are probably as popular in Holland as in any other country that has bread and cheese as a staple. Tostis (a tosti by itself is usually ham and cheese) or tosties are a standard go-to snack when a sandwich just will not do. They are on the menu in cafés, offered in any broodjeszaak or sandwich shop around town and tend to be a favorite in many households. There are about as many variations as there are people in the country: first comes the selection of the bread (wheat, white or anything in-between , then the type of cheese (young, mature, old, Leidse or foreign cheeses like Brie or Camembert), a selection of meat (ham, salami, roast beef....you name it), everybody in the family has a favorite combination. 

Usually the buck stops here but others go even further. A Tosti Hawaii is, ofcourse, a ham and cheese grilled sandwich with a slice of pineapple, which is my favorite. There is a Tosti Kaas Ui (cheese and caramelized onion), Tosti Kaas Champignon (with, you guessed it, cheese and sautéed mushrooms) and so on and so forth. Slices of tomato or cucumber are also often added to the tosties.

So the easiest thing to do is to pull out the tosti-ijzer (a small countertop tosti making machine, much like a George Foreman grill) which just about any Dutch family has. Some kitchens have them permanently located on top of the counter, others will have to dig it out of a cupboard, but most homes do have one. Grab all the breads out of the broodtrommel, the bread box, retrieve several cheeses from the fridge, raid the produce pantry or groentela, produce drawer, in the fridge, and have everybody make their own tosties. 

And after the savory tosties come, naturally, the sweet ones. So a tosti with apple and cinnamon, or one with  banana and strawberry jam, another using up the pineapple slices from the Tosti Hawaii that someone ate earlier......it's a great way of using up those last pieces of cheese, sandwich meat or lick of leftover jam that needed to go. Quick and easy, and yet such comforting food! 

Tosti Hawaii

2 slices of bread

4 slices of cheese

3 slices of ham

2 slices of canned pineapple

Butter or mayonnaise*

Ketchup

Arrange the cheese, ham and pineapple between the slices of bread. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a non-stick skillet and place the sandwich in the middle of the pan on low heat. When the bottom side of the sandwich is golden brown, carefully flip it over. Continue to fry until the other side is now golden brown too. Remove from pan. Cut in half, dip in ketchup and eat. Eat hot! 

*If you don't have, or want to use butter, slather the outside of the bread slices liberally with mayonnaise and fry the sandwich in the pan. Use real mayo, not salad dressing!