We were talking with our groupmates from Microeconomics about food and we strayed to Dutch food – They have very different feeling about it, one of them really likes it (because it’s cheap?) but the other felt it’s bland and tasteless. I asked them what good Dutch food is and they offered to cook for us, which was quite amazing since we only knew them for like a few weeks at that point. (on the other hand the Dutch all seem friendly.)
A few weeks later, we went over and have dinner!
This was a typical student home (they put it on google maps actually, it’s hilarious. the reviews talk about their pear ice cream.)
So the “Good Dutch Food” they decided to make was Hachee. It’s a dish that say, grandmothers would make on a special day, supposedly. And it was great. It’s kind of like a beef stew with a lot of onions, clove and bay leaf. I got a recipe in the end – It has sambal in it, which is really cool.
The red stuff in the pictures is rodekool, which literally means red cabbage. But this was braised in a mix of stuff, including raisins and orange juice. It was sweet and light, but still crunchy and a nice mix.
The potatoes were just boiled at the last minute after we arrived, potatoes are common carbohydrate in the Netherlands.
It was quite interesting because they would really lay the table, serve everyone a portion of the food, then dig in. And when we finished everything, they would unlid the pots again and ask who wanted seconds. That’s something you normally only hear/read about but to experience it was cool. Then after that we had dessert, which was pannekoeken (pancakes) and strawberries and ice cream. (not pear ice cream. though, supposedly pear ice cream is a daily thing for that house.)
Later we would learn that they do their dishes differently – by plugging the sink and filling it with water, then scrubbing the plates and drying them, soapy water and all. That was weird to us, but I guess it’s just how they do it. Wonder how much soap they’re actually eating…
