“I can imagine that Dutch food does not strike foreign students as imaginative at first or even at second instance”, says Koehn. “If you look a bit further, the Dutch cuisine has of old been robust, honest and local. Many of the products that are used are harvested locally, such as potatoes, asparagus, various cabbage varieties and other vegetables. At the same time the Dutch cuisine was streaked with foreign influences in the past as a result of our mercantile spirit. Think of herbs, spices and tea.”

“The strength of Dutch cooking is that one single ingredient can be processed in various ways to form a delicious component of a meal. Look at the potato, for example, which can be used in dozens of ways.”

“My favorites include black pudding and scrapple. They have fine earthly flavors, are pure and require few additives while nothing is left unused. I also like asparagus, and Brabant ‘worstenbroodjes’, simply because they are tasty.”

Do the Dutch appreciate their own cuisine sufficiently? “More and more so, because the well-known chefs work very much with truly Dutch products and the authenticity and origin is becoming increasingly important. As is the sustainable production of ingredients - indeed, it is impossible to imagine present-day society without the sustainability requirement.” (SK)

The next three weeks we shall be nosing around the Dutch cuisine further.
Next week: international influences.