Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Food from two cultures

I count myself lucky to have a Dutch wife. And as we take alternate weeks to cook, another culture's cuisine dominates our menu ideas every seven days.
Margreet's approach stems not from personal experience, as her past in the Dutch Foreign Service deemed that others did the cooking for her. So dishes are as she remembered them from childhood, when shortages were part of post-war Dutch life - difficult times, but very Dutch food.
However, like birds making the same kind of nest as their parents, and with no instructions, so types of national cooking would seem to be inbred.
My first experience of eating her kind of food was as a supernumerary on Dutch coasters. And very basic it was. The cook, sober or not, kept a sort of missionary's cauldron full of meat chunks in liquid ("jus"). This was served up in quantity with boiled potatoes combined with the liquor in which the meat was cooked. Sometimes another vegetable came as well. But whatever was served, it was covered in grated nutmeg. That was about it, and not very satisfactory if the sea was rough.
When briefly ashore in Holland, the crew and I savoured those specialities that can make eating there a wonderful experience. This trio of delights were - and are - raw herring (when in season), smoked eel, best in skin and both eaten in the fingers, and pancakes (bacon ones being my favourite).
Generally, though, plates of food are piled high, often mixed, as once in a restaurant when all three courses were served at one time and on one plate.
Quantity is the Dutch theme - I suppose to fill their large selves and keep out the cold and the rain.
So Margreet, probably without really knowing it, piles the food high, often in such quantity (and mixture) that leaves plenty over to chop up and add to our ever-changing and excellent soup.
My own upbringing in England was one where I took little notice of food. At home we had a blackened anthracite-fired range that supplied hot water and cooking facility for the house day and night. On it, Constance, our maid, turned out staid and solid English fare of roasts, pies, overcooked vegetables, suet puddings, dumplings and cakes - the latter made with many eggs as my father had a chicken farm. We children could have what we liked for our birthdays and always chose roast chicken. In those days chickens were all free-range, ours roaming around our fields. Our choice was sensible English. We did not know much about fancy foods anyhow.
RAF food in the war was substantial and plain, changing abruptly in the great post-war freeze-up of 1947 when anything to eat was scarce, so much so that I contracted TB, probably through lack of it.
But revelations in the enjoyment of food were just around the piecetime corner when we were allowed out of our severely rationed country to reach France and eat as though the war had never happened. Café fare was served separately in small quantities, varied, unadorned, delicious and simple - the style of which I have tried to adhere to ever since.
So, roughly speaking, for now it is hearty and filling one week and light and simple the next.
This could hardly be bettered. Vive la difference!