Erwtensoep
Pea soup
500 grams split peas
500 grams smoked pork (hocks or bacon)
4 medium potatoes
2 leeks
1 onion
1 celeriac (celery root)
chopped parsley
chopped celery leaves
4 cloves
bay leaf
thyme
salt &pepper
1 ‘rookworst,’ Farmer’s, ring or coil sausage
This is just one of many, many basic recipes for the famed Dutch peasoup ‘erwtensoep.’ Most housewives will have their own recipe, adding this, leaving out that, using a different kind of meat, or adjusting the cooking time to suit their experience.
Boil 1¼ liter water and put in the pork. Stick the cloves into the peeled onion and add with the bay leaf to the soup. Let simmer for 30 minutes. Add 1¼ liter water and the peas, sprinkle in some thyme and salt and pepper. Simmer for an hour.
Peel and cube the potatoes, clean and thinly slice the leeks. Peel the celeriac and cut into cubes. Add to the soup.
When the peas are tender, take out the onion, bay leaf and cloves. Take out the meat and remove any bones or skin. Drain but keep the stock. Put the peas and vegetables through a sieve or mash them in a mixer. Slowly add the stock while stirring and simmer for 20 minutes, add the meat and the sausage and simmer for another 20 minutes until the sausage is done. Add some finely chopped parsley and celery leaves to the soup 5 minutes before it is done.

Echt-hollandse gehaktbal
Classic Dutch meatballs
500 grams / 1 lb. 2oz. lean hamburger meat
1 egg
1 rusk/beschuit or breadcrumbs
125 grams butter or margarine
½ tbsp tomato ketchup
salt and pepper
nutmeg
3 cloves
bay leaf
Mix the meat well with the raw egg, the crumbled rusk (or fine bread crumbs), a pinch of nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste. Use a sturdy fork or a whisk.
Wet your hands and form 4 balls of the hamburger mix. Heat the butter and fry - on medium setting - the meat balls golden brown on all sides.
Add the ketchup, bay leaf, cloves, cover the frying pan, turn down the heat and let the meat balls simmer for 10 minutes. The meatballs are done when they are ‘solid’ to the touch and do not yield too much when you press on them.
Take the meatballs from the gravy and discard the bay leaf and cloves. Serve the juice (jus) as gravy. Serves well with endive or kale hodgepodge. It also tastes great with fries and applesauce. Enjoy!

Brussels lof met ham en kaas
Chicory with ham and cheese
8 heads of chicory
8 slices of cooked ham
1 tbsp lemon juice
100 ml meat stock
1.5 kilograms potatoes
30 grams butter
30 grams flour
125 grams grated cheese
grated nutmeg, salt
Cut a slice off the bottom of the chicory and scoop out the 1/2 inch white bitter part from the centre. Boil water, add the lemon juice and drop the chicory heads in it. Again bring to a boil and cook the chicory for 5-6 minutes. Drain the heads, but keep 200 ml of the juices. Peel, boil and mash the potatoes. Melt the butter in a pan, mix in the flour and gradually add the juices. Mix in 100 grams of grated cheese, add nutmeg.
Wrap each chicory head in ham and place them in a greased deep oven dish. Pour in the meat stock and on top of it half of the cheese sauce. Cover it with the mashed potatoes, sprinkle with nutmeg and add the rest of the cheese sauce.
Top off with the remainder of the grated cheese and bake in a preheated oven at 225 C (440 F) for about fifteen minutes.

Karnemelksepap
Buttermilk porridge
1 litre buttermilk
60 grams flour
molasses or ‘stroop’
salt
Put the flour into a bowl and add a pinch of salt. Pour in half of the buttermilk and mix into a smooth paste. Boil the remaining 500 ml buttermilk and add the flour paste gradually, stirring constantly. Keep on stirring for 4 minutes till the porridge is cooked. Serve with thick (Dutch) sirup or molasses.
For centuries (‘sweet’) milk was a luxury item and buttermilk the drink of the day, cold or warm. Milk or buttermilk often was the base of some kind of porridge (pap in Dutch) of which there are a myriad of recipes, as breakfast, meal or dessert item. Dessert in Dutch parlance has the untranslatable term , literally meaning ‘something after’.

Bruine bonen met appels en spek
Beans with Apples and Pork
500 grams dried brown beans
6 Granny Smith apples
300 grams fresh pork or streaky bacon
(for a less greasy meal use pork chops)
3 onions
150 grams molasses or Dutch stroop
salt, pepper & cinnamon
coarse black bread or multigrain bread
Start preparation a day ahead. Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water. The following day, bring the beans and the same water - with a level teaspoon of salt - to a boil and cook over low heat for about 60 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel and core the apples and slice them in rings. Boil the rings in shallow water for a few minutes and drain. Sprinkle the pork with pepper and cinnamon, and slowly fry in its own fat. Save the grease. (When opting for pork chops, fry in a little butter, and save the fat).
Peel and dice the onions and fry in the bacon grease/fat. Add the apple slices to the beans and drain. Very slowly warm the molasses/stroop and add some of the bacon grease/fat. Serve the beans with the fried pork and the hot molasses on the side and thick slices of bread.
The words ‘stroop’ and ‘syrup’ have the same origin and were derived from the Arabic language; both mean the same thing. Akin to that is the Arabic word ‘sharab’, which means the drink made of a syrup and became known as ‘sorbet’ in Dutch or ‘sherbet’ in English.

Boeren-omelet
Farmer’s omelet
6 eggs
2 peeled small potatoes
100 grams bacon
butter
parsley
chervil
chives
50 grams ham
1 tbsp pearl or cocktail onions
salt and pepper
1 tomato
Boil the potatoes for about 15 minutes in salted water. Let them cool off, slice the potatoes, and dice the bacon. Heat a teaspoon of butter and fry the bacon till golden brown. Sautee the onions or scallions with the bacon and add the potato slices. Put a lid on the pan, turn down the heat and fry the potatoes for three minutes each side; add more butter if needed.
Chop parsley, chervil, and chives, dice the ham and pearl onions and mix all that carefully with the potato/bacon/onion. Beat the eggs and add salt and pepper and pour into the pan. Cook the omelet on one side only, slide onto a dish and garnish with sliced tomatoes and parsley.
The word ‘omelet’ comes from the French ‘omelette’, which originally was spelled ‘lamelette’. This word originates in Latin, where ‘lamella’ was the diminutive of ‘lamina’, meaning ‘plate’ or ‘sheet’ and thus used to indicate the form of the egg dish.Alternative: substitute veal and pork with beef, shrimps, fish, or your choice of vegetables. When substituting eggs or cheese, use milk instead of stock and omit the boiling, the bouquet garni but add bacon bits instead.

Hutspot met klapstuk
Leiden hodgepodge
750 grams carrots
500 grams parsnips
250 grams white beans
250 grams onions
salt & pepper
500 grams brisket or stew meat
peppercorns
bay leaf
Wash the beans and let them soak overnight in plenty of water. Boil 2 litres of water, add salt and pepper, the meat, peppercorns and bay leaf and bring to a boil again. Turn down the heat and let simmer for 2.5 hours. Take the meat from the stock and cut into smaller pieces.
Slowly cook the beans, using the water in which they have soaked, for twenty minutes. In the meantime, clean and scrub the carrots, parsnips and onions and cut them in chunks.
Add the stock and vegetables to the simmering beans and slowly cook for another 45 minutes. Drain the mix, add the meat cubes and season to taste. Mix well and serve.

Friese koolstamppot met lamsvlees
Frisian lamb-and-cabbage stew
500 grams lamb
75 grams butter
6 thick slices of bacon
½dl vinegar
3 pickles
2 cloves
1 bay leaf
pinch tarragon
1 kilogram potatoes
1 kilogram white cabbage
4 onions
salt and pepper
Season the lamb with salt and pepper. Quickly sear it on all sides in hot butter. Take the meat from the skillet and quickly fry the bacon. Cube the lamb, put it back into the skillet with the bacon, add 1½ dl water, the vinegar, chopped pickles and spices. Mix and let the stew simmer for 90 minutes.
In the meantime peel the potatoes, cut them into chunks and add to the stew. Clean and slice the cabbage, peel and dice the onions and add to the stew as well. Simmer for another 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with chunks of coarse wholegrain bread lathered with mustard.

Haagse bluf
Hague Bluff
4 egg whites
400 ml red currant or rasberry thick juice
125 grams sugar
6 biscuits
Beat the egg whites with the sugar till stiff. Slowly add the juice while still beating the conconction. Then divide the Bluff into six dessert bowls, stick in a biscuit and serve at once.
The name of the dessert is quite obvious: a lot made from little. The appearance of a rich dish is said to be ‘typical’ for the people in the city of The Hague in earlier centuries, where pretense of affluence or social status often outweighed a family's real means or income. In this same vein came about the popular expression ‘houten ham’ (wooden ham), a prop used for the dinner table, while the family - again? - had a meatless meal. The need for such appearances (bluffs) also was influenced by the fact that the Dutch kept their curtains open in the evenings allowing passers-by to look in, a custom still the norm in the Netherlands.

Boerenkool met worst en spek
Kale hotchpotch with sausage and bacon
1 kilogram kale
2 kilograms potatoes
1 smoked sausage
250 grams Canadian bacon or cured side of pork
75 grams butter
100 ml milk
salt and pepper
Strip the kale from the stalks and finely chop and use only the dark-green leafs. Peel, wash and halve the potatoes. Boil the potatoes until tender. Meanwhile, pour about 2 inches of water in a second pan, add some salt and bring to a boil. Add the kale, turn down the heat and and let it simmer and shrink. Put the smoked sausage and the bacon or pork on top of the kale. If preferred, the pork can be braised or baked beforehand.
vWhen both the kale and potatoes are done, drain the vegetables. Add the butter and milk to the potatoes and mash them. Mix in the kale and add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Rabarbermoes en Stoofperen
Rhubarb Compote and Stewed Pears
Rhubarb Compote
8 rhubarb stalks
4/10 liter water
200 grams sugar
1 tbsp corn starch
Wash the stalks and cut them into 3 to 4 cm pieces. Add the sugar to the boiling water and place the rhubarb in it. Simmer the rhubarb gently and when the vegetables are getting softer, stir regularly to break up the pulp. Add some corn starch or arrowroot to thicken the compote.
Stewed Pears
1 kilogram small, hard stewing pears
75 grams sugar
lemon peel
1/2 liter water
4 tbsp red currant juice or grenadine
2 tsp corn flour
Peel, halve and core the pears. Put them into a heavy pan, add the water, sugar, lemon peel and juice or grenadine. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer the pears for two hours or longer if the pears still are not softened. Do not let the fruit become mushy! The juice or grenadine will add the needed colour to the stewed pears. Add sugar to taste and blend in the flour to thicken the juice.

Drie-in-de-pan
Three in the pan
250 grams flour
1 tsp salt
2/3 package ready-made yeast
300 ml milk
1 tsp sugar
50 grams raisins
50 grams currants
lemon rind
1 small tart apple
margarine
Sift the flour into a bowl and mix in the salt. Prepare the yeast as per instructions on the package and mix in with the flour, adding the lukewarm milk gradually, mixing from the middle until the batter is smooth. Add the washed and patted-dry raisins, currants, the peeled and cored and chopped apple and a bit of rasped lemon rind. Cover the bowl with a damp towel, put it in a pan of warm water or near a warm radiator and let it rise for about one hour until it is twice the original size.
Put a dollop of margarine in a frying pan. With a large spoon, put three small heaps of batter in the pan. Turn down the heat and cook the ‘drie-in-the-pan’ until the top has dried. Then turn it over and fry the underside. Keep the ‘pancake’ warm in a lukewarm oven and fry the next ones in the same way. Serve with sugar, syrup or any toppings you may use for ‘regular’ pancakes.

Utrechts lieverdje
Utrecht sweet-heart cake
500 grams flour
1 tsp baking powder
400 grams brown sugar
1 tsp ground clove
1 tsp cardamom or nutmeg
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cacao
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
500 ml milk
120 grams candied peel variety
30 grams candied cherries
50 grams raisins
100 grams icing sugar
1 tsp kirsch
Combine flour and baking powder in a tall bowl. Mix in the salt, brown sugar and milk, clove, cardamom, ginger, and cacao and knead it into a cohesive dough. Wash the raisins and pat them dry. Put two tablespoons of candied peel, one tablespoon of raisins and one tablespoon of candied cherries to the side and mix in all the remainder. Put the dough into a greased, (heart-shaped) form and bake for about 90 minutes into a pre-heated oven at 175C/340F. Take the cake out, let it settle for about five minutes, remove the form and allow the ‘lieverdje’ to cool on a cake rack.Coat the top of the cake with a glaze made the following way: mix a few drops of kirsch (or water) into the icing sugar. Garnish the glaze with the left-over candied peel, raisings and cherries.
A ‘lieverdje’ is the Dutch diminutive of ‘lieverd’, indeed: sweetheart in all its meanings. As such it is akin to the Latin word ‘libido’. However, the diminutive also has gotten a mildly derisive meaning: a ‘gamin,’ a playfully mischievous street urchin. In Amsterdam, there even is a statue to the ‘Lieverdje.’