Dutch cuisine
The main ingredients of the Dutch Cuisine are bread and potatoes as suggested in Vincent van Gogh's painting The Potato Eaters. Open sandwiches and beschuit (a double baked round white bread disc) are eaten for breakfast, with different savoury and sweet toppings, including hagelslag and jam. Most parents promote savoury toppings for their children’s daily sandwiches, and a range of cheeses is available such as Gouda, Edam and Leyden. Most towns in the western parts of Holland have their own cheeses, which are only faintly distinguishable by taste, yet look different from outside.
Milk and black tea are drunk in great quantities at the Dutch breakfast and lunch table, coffee being reserved for the koffietijd at ten o'clock in the morning to start with. Dutch thrift led to the standard rule of only one cookie with each cup of coffee; it has been suggested that the reasons for this can be found in the trade-mentality and calvinist upbringing. The Dutch have all sorts of cookies, some of them filled with marzipan or a cheaper version of almond-flavoured filling made out of beans. The traditional and heavier snack is ontbijtkoek better known as gingerbread. Lunch is something of a repetition of the breakfast, that is, a cold meal with bread, only sometimes with the addition of certain foods.
At three o’clock in the afternoon it is teatime, though often coffee is drunk at this time of the day. Traditionally, in most households dinner is served at about 6 o’clock, but the higher the social class, the later one eats. Traditionally, a Dutch meal is constituted by boiled potatoes, one type of boiled vegetable and a stewed meat, including gravy. Nowadays more and more people cook foreign dishes, and the traditional Dutch meal is therefore associated with cabbage-fumed old-age homes.
The Dutch have probably always been open to foreign influences in their cuisine, and from the 16th century onwards all sorts of spices and food stuffs from all over the world were introduced into the Dutch kitchens. As an example, the spicy Indonesian --Indonesia being a former colony of the Netherlands-- dish Nasi Goreng of rice with chicken or pork, is long considered to be part of the Dutch cuisine.
Some typical Dutch wintertime dishes, for which Dutch cuisine is probably most famous, are pea soup, and hutspot. This dish is told to be a legacy of Spanish invaders, who left a pot of hutspot on a fire outside the sieged town of Leiden in 1574, when the water rose to their teeth and they fled. Hutspot was originally made of parsnips, onions and other vegetables, but has evolved to include carrots and potatoes as primary ingredients.
Other winterdishes are associated with winter festivities such as Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas), celebrated on the evening of the 5th of December. Sinterklaas is said to ride the Dutch roofs on his white horse and accompanied by his black helper Zwarte Piet who carries pepernoten', small gingernut biscuits made with cinnamon, pepper, cloves and nutmeg mix of spices. Sinterklaas also gives each Dutch child the first letter of their name made of chocolate.
On New Year's Eve Dutch houses smell of piping hot oil deepfryers in which oliebollen (literally oil balls) and appelflappen (battered apple rings) are fried. These yeast dough balls, filled with glacé fruits, pieces of apple and raisins and sultanas, are the treat for the evening to come and are served with icing sugar.
A sort of minced-meat hot dog.
This is a deep-fried roll containing beef, stock, breadcrumbs and wheat flour. Typically served with prepared mustard. There are also fish kroketten, goulash kroketten and potato kroketten (with mashed potato in them).
Similar to a kroket, but instead they have a round shape, roughly the size of a golf ball. Just like a kroket served with prepared mustard. They are very popular in pubs.
Banket is Dutch pastry with almond-flavored filling.
Slices of meatloaf and fried onion rings on a wooden skewer, smothered in peanut sauce.
Drop is liquorice, a very popular candy. Drop in its pure form appears to be enjoyed mostly by people living in the Netherlands, northern parts of Germany and Scandinavia. The Dutch dubbelzoute drop (double salty liquorice) is very similar to the Finnish salmiakki.
Although Flemish fries, deep-fried potatoes, are traditionally attributed to originate from from Flanders, Belgium, this is the number one snack in most of the Netherlands. The fries are thicker than French fries and are typically eaten with mayonnaise sauce. Combinations with ketchup and peanut sauce are common as well ("patatje oorlog", that is, "war zone fries").
Haring
This is raw herring, served with diced raw onions, with or without a bread roll. Herring can be eaten on dark sticky ryebread or on a typically Dutch white bolletje (a soft milk-based roll) from a street vendor. The most traditional way of eating a herring is holding it at its tail and devouring it from the head side (which has been taken off).
Erwtensoep
Dutch pea soup with chunks of bacon and sausage.
Mashed potatoes with carrots and onions. Other variaties are stamppot boerenkool (mashed potatoes with kale), andijvie-stamppot (mashed potatoes with endive) and zuurkool-stamppot (mashed potatoes with sauerkraut).
Little pancakes served with butter and sugar.
A sort of meatloaf made of, among other things, pork (traditionally meat from pigs' heads or other 'less desirable' offcuts), fatty bacon, liverwurst/liver paté, buckweat flour, raisins and various spices (like aniseed, cloves and nutmeg).
An oven dish containing stewed beef, potatoes, onions and apples.
Pastry with almond filling. Jocularly referred to as the staple diet of enlisted men.