Hulls 2009 from Series Ship Shapes

Ship Shapes

Endive and avocado salad

I often wonder why endive (chicory) should be so expensive in England and so cheap in France. So on our mini breaks in Dieppe (usually to buy wine and eat well for a few days) we bring back a quantity of this crisp, blanched vegetable. A popular dish is to wrap ham around a piece and braise it. I like to dip the pieces into a variable vinaigrette mixture and eat it that way. This salad method of using endive maintains its crunch and adds another flavour and texture. It looks nice, too.

ENDIVE AND AVOCADO SALAD

You will need:
Endive
Avocado
Vinaigrette

Make a vinaigrette in a bowl, using oil, vinegar (or lemon or lime juice), salt, pepper, and a little icing sugar, and possibly dry English mustard, Dijon mustard, or horseradish. Mix it well.
Cut across the endive(s) and add the pieces to the vinaigrette. Toss it all around.
Put the coated endive on plates or in bowls, and on the top place slices of peeled avocado.

Chorizo and Mash

I was in the Portuguese quarter of London to buy capers and, after an excellent coffee and two of those lovely custard tarts in which the Portuguese specialise, carried on to buy the spicy edition of chorizo sausages.
These have a high paprika content, are spicy, very red, and shiny.
At home I made a rather liquid mash with floury potatoes, using plenty of butter and milk, as well as pepper and salt.
Pushing the chorizos slightly into the mash in an ovenproof dish, I baked the combination for about half an hour.
The result was chorizos at their best and mash that had been infused with the paprika colour to form a delightful pattern.
This is a simple, tasty and exotic dish, and is a favourite.

CHORIZO AND MASH

You will need:
Spicy chorizo sausages (one per person)
Floury potatoes
Butter
Milk
Pepper and salt

As described above, make liquid mash and into it press chorizo sausages.
Bake the resultant dish in the oven for about half an hour.

Meat and decoration in France

In early 2009 one can say without hesitation that France is an expensive place in which to eat and drink. Of course the current exchange rate is of no help to those from the UK travelling to mainland Europe for a break and, especially, to enjoy good wine with good food.
Even without the reckoning of an almost parity exchange rate, prices in France are noticeably higher than in 2008.
Be that as it may, one goes to eat and drink well, and if one is prepared to eat the best food, the price of it is probably a lot less than comparing like with like in England. And when eating out in France there is no point in not making a good meal of it – especially in Dieppe, where the fish landed is so fresh that it may well be jumping around a bit on the fishmonger’s slab.
Moreover, if not used to eating so heartily, a good lunch will fill one up so much that a modestly priced picnic is all that is wanted in the evening.
The price of restaurant wine is always on the high side, but carafe wine is still not exorbitantly priced – though a good bottle certainly is.
For picnic wine and wine to take home, the best buys by far are in German owned supermarkets. There it is possible to buy wine from French abroad for very little – the French deeming that wine from elsewhere is not drinkable, and is priced accordingly.
But I am getting around to French meat, which is nearly always on the tough side, but tasty.
You wonder just how to tackle a piece of meat on the plate that is interlaced and surrounded with stringy bits. Quite rightly, a sharp, serrated-blade knife is always supplied when steak is ordered.
The first operation is to cut away all the connective tissue and put it to the side of your plate. Then there is no point in trying to eat a normal sized piece of what remains. No. The meat must be sliced as thinly as it is possible for you to contrive it. This has the advantage of making the meat both edible and tasty. And it will tide out the meal as you will surely not be in a rush – or shouldn’t be.
We have now eaten and returned to our room – in our case the same room that we have booked for years.
I have always thought of our 3 star hotel as a bit seedy and not really up to its star rating.
Perhaps since we were last there the star-inspector had called and demanded an update. And so it had occurred.
French ideas of decoration are not quite the same as ours. Plumbing, for instance, is done in the main by sculptors, not plumbers. Pipes are liable to weave about a bit, sometimes forming real works of – well, amazement in the eyes of a spectator.
Our room has only a vestige of this order of pipework. But the tragedy of this upgraded change is that the landlord (who should have retired, but hadn’t) had all the bidets in the hotel torn out and cast away. If you are used to the hygiene offered by this ancient and most sensible French invention, it was a tragic idea.
Well, out they went, but the pipework holes they had once used remain as holes. Surely they were not left for – well, rodents. No, of course not. But it looked a bit like it.
Radiators remain as before – useless. In the cold weather one must order auxiliary heat in the form of an electric stove. The passageways outside the room, on the other hand, were really warm.
The bathroom floor had been re-laid with what appeared to be black marble or slate. And very handsome it was. But the surface was also as cold as the previous tile flooring. This meant that wherever one stood on it with bare feet in cold weather it was necessary to place a mat or towel on the floor for comfort.
Paintwork had been done immaculately. But the bathroom door, which had always been too large for its frame and never closed properly, was at last free of peeling paint and re-done – except for where it met the floor. There nothing had changed. Broken ply facing still remained – and unpainted.
New curtains were splendid, and up to its 3 star rating, as was the new mattress and properly filled (bits of rubber) pillows. But instead of blankets that could be added or subtracted according to the temperature of the time of year, lay a duvet. Now, am I the only one who finds that a duvet provides too much warmth when covered by it, or none at all when one escapes it?
The old television screen that was liable to impede one’s path in the middle of the night had been replaced by the flat screen variety, which tucked away nicely. But although there were now many more television channels to watch, all were in French or dubbed French. In a hotel that caters for so many foreigners, how is it that no other programmes in other languages are made available? But we must remember which country we were visiting – mustn’t we? Vive les Français. Vive La France.

Butter Brilliance

We were about to embark for France when I noticed that the cap of one of the gas burners in the kitchen was slightly misplaced. I put my finger on it to return the metal disk to its rightful position, only to find that the burner had not been extinguished and the iron casting, heated by its surrounding flames, was crisis hot.
I jumped in agony as the tip of my left index finger burned to a frazzle.
Now, when I was young, in the early 1920s, and our doctor. Dr. Daley, lived several miles away and made up all his medicines in a shed in his garden, the home cure for burns was butter. And the results were magic when this every-day substance was applied by my mother.
So, without hesitation, I stuck my finger into a slab of butter, and kept it there for a few seconds to make sure that the burn was coated thoroughly. The pain was considerable. I worried about possible inabilities for our stay in Dieppe.
Every so often I returned to the refrigerator to re-butter my finger.
In an hour or so the pain had subsided and I saw that the end of my digit was almost white. It had a hard covering of dead and senseless skin.
Would it be possible to use my hand in the normal way? Yes, it would.
The pain went and, instead of a blister and a painful end to the finger, I had a hand with a perfectly useable and painless extremity.
There was no blistering, no pain, and the finger, now without sensitivity at its tip, was in use as normal.
Five days later the dead skin of the burn started to fall away. Scissors, deftly used, cut off the dry edges attached to living flesh.
Now, in place of the dead skin, newly exposed pink skin started to firm up and regain sensitivity.
There may be lots of solutions to burns, but by God, for this immediate cure, butter, as an ancient country recipe for pain relief and recovery, could hardly have been bettered - even in this medically advanced age of ours.

Vegetables in pots (latest developments)

I wrote in this blog last year of my experiments with growing vegetables in pots in my London garden. Now, in the spring of 2009, a new idea has come about with the purchase and delivery of 3 plastic sacks for growing new, salad, and main crop potatoes (the bags being 17” or 43 cm. tall and 14”or 36 cm. in diameter, and supplied with 5 seed potatoes for each sack).
As my London garden is small (4 paces by 16 paces) and with potatoes not to be planted in the same soil for several years, the compost filling would have had to be replaced each year. And where would I put the spent compost in a mostly paved garden?
So I decided to use the sacks for (roughly) the rotation of crops, retaining their compost filling – being a mixture of my home-made compost mixed with the contents of grow bags – the latter being excellent in quality and obtained at a minimal cost.
Wanting only new potatoes, which are very special to eat and hard to obtain, I will use the 3 bags for: sack 1 (BEANS) for dwarf French beans and dwarf Italian courgettes, sack 2 (ROOTS) for early potatoes (Swift) followed by a planting of carrots and beetroot, and sack 3 (BRASSICAS) for Swiss chard, leeks and lettuce. The correct rotation has been plotted on paper for the next 3 years.
I will write on the results and conclusions.
Beside these sacks I am experimenting this year with growing potatoes in buckets (with drainage holes and crocks). As last year, there will be broad beans in buckets, asparagus in a large pot (mainly for the foliage), parsley in a pot, thyme in a pot, sorrel in a pot (having over-wintered well), salad leaves in a pot, leek seed in a pot (to be planted in sack 3 when handleable), tarragon in a pot, fennel in a pot, a globe artichoke in a pot (decorative), tomatoes in last year’s ground (now soaked with dilute Jeyes Fluid because of blight), mint in a sunken bucket, rosemary in a pot, sage in a pot and, new this year, autumn-planted garlic in the ground and shallots in the ground (both in a limited space – but they do not need much.
For fruit, there is the productive and trouble-free black wine grape (Triomphe d’Alsace) giving shade from the arbour and fruit along its 73 metres length around and about and back and forth around the garden’s walls, an espalier-trained Morello cherry growing on the north-facing wall from daffodil-planted ground and, in pots nearby, a fig, a pear and an apple.
I am trying yet again to grow mistletoe on the apple, binding in the seeds beneath bark with string. These experiments were coated with rubber solution as protection from the elements. To blend the pale string bindings in with the colour of the bark, they were then coated with soil before the rubber solution set.
For the decorative aspect, there is an earthenware trough of spring crocus and snowdrops. Pots of tulips and lilies will give small blocks of bright colour. Impatiens (busy lizzies) will give masses of colour throughout the summer months, with fuchsias and geraniums (pelargoniums) providing the same.
Roses (The Reverend F. Page-Roberts and Typhoon – the best rose ever) grow from earth in a corner of the garden.
The winter-flowering cyclamen will become dormant in their pots, as will the generously-flowered mahonia.
On the kitchen windowsill is a splendid jalapeno chilli (having flowered and fruited summer and winter), the last year’s Bolivian begonia corm coming to life, and an aloe vera.
So, as spring appears and leads to summer, there will be a lot to watch and look after. What an interesting year of pleasure lies ahead.

Artichoke Soup

The following is a wonderful soup, but with a snag to it - or perhaps you might think it to be an amusing bonus. The fact is that this particular root vegetable (Jerusalem artichoke), when cooked in almost any form, creates a great deal of air in the stomach and gut. (I am told that we produce, on average, 3-5 litres of internal air in 24 hours.) And as this air has to escape somewhere, and as a rule choosing to exit in the downward direction, it can cause embarrassment, laughter, or pain. However, I read somewhere that asafoetida (or asafoetide), if used in the cooking of artichokes, would prevent the usually excessive egress of air from the body. Powdered asafoetida, gained from the dried resin of a plant, is used in Chinese medicine and Indian dishes. I owned some, tried it, and threw it away, mainly because of the foetid part of its name. On hearing about its wind-reducing properties I tried to buy some more, but Indians in three shops visited had never heard of it. Eventually I did manage to buy a packet from a Greek grocer. Volume experiments using a minimum quantity were disappointing. Using the maximum recommended ruined the soup (which afterwards was turned into a strong mulligatawny satisfactorily) and might have reduced flatulence. Asafoetida may, however, respond more happily to your own metabolism and help to reduce artichoke-generated air.

ARTICHOKE SOUP

You will need:
Butter
Jerusalem artichokes
Onion
Potato
Pepper and salt
Stock, or stock and milk

To make it “special”, you will also need:
A few scallops
Milk
Egg yolk
Single cream
Paprika

Melt a large lump of butter in a saucepan, and in it cook a chopped-up onion until it is soft and transparent. Add a dozen or so well-scrubbed and cut-up artichokes (they are usually knobbly and difficult to free of adhering soil) and a chopped potato or two. For a pale and finer soup, peel these vegetables. For a rustic one, don't bother, just chop them up. Season with pepper and salt. Cook for a little longer and add stock, or stock and milk, to cover generously. Boil this very gently for about half an hour. The vegetables will then be soft.
Now you have the choice of eating the soup as it is in its rough and ready form, liquidising it in an electric blender, or putting it all through a hand-operated soup Mouli. I prefer the last method. Test for seasoning and serve.
To turn it into a special, dinner-party piece, peel the vegetables before making the soup. Then poach a few scallops in a little milk for only a few minutes. Add the milk to the soup. Cut up the scallop meat. Add this to the soup. Thicken with an egg yolk whisked with some single cream. Then heat it to the desired temperature, but do not boil. Serve with a sprinkling of paprika over each plate full.

Chocolate enhancement

I sometimes feel that milk chocolate is either too sweet or has not enough nuts and raisins in it. Here is what to do. The result is both filling and satisfying.

CHOCOLATE ENHANCEMENT

You will need:
A large slab of milk chocolate or one with nuts and raisins in it
A smaller slab of plain chocolate
Nuts of your choice, like peanuts, roasted cashews, almonds, pecans, or others
Sultanas or currants

Into a basin resting on a saucepan of boiling water put broken-up pieces of plain and milk chocolate.
Add nuts, whole, or broken up in a pestle and mortar, and sultanas or currants.
The chocolate will take a little time to melt. When it has, stir it all together with a spatula and scrape it out from its bowl on to greaseproof paper (or its like) in a baking dish. Spread it out to the desired thickness with the spatula and, if you feel like it, press the edge of the spatula into the chocolate to form rough squares when it has begun to re-set.
Allow the chocolate to cool and set, ending by placing it in the refrigerator.
When cold and solid, lift the chocolate mass from the greaseproof paper. Then break up the chocolate into smallish pieces. Keep them in a lidded box in the refrigerator until wanted.

A Simple Soup

I think that it is almost essential to have a winter soup on the go. This one is warming, filling, nourishing, economical, and simple to make. Like most soups to which you may later be inclined to add bits and pieces over days, or even weeks, it is best to get into the habit of bringing it to the boil every day, as some items tend to ferment if left in a warm environment. If the glorious world of soup-making is new to you, start with this one.

VERY SIMPLE WINTER SOUP

You will need:
Butter
Onion
Potato
Stock cube
Pepper and salt

In a saucepan or pressure cooker put a large lump of butter (be generous with it). Melt this and add chopped onion (quantities will be according to the final volume wanted).
Cook the onion slowly until it has given off its initial strong smell and become transparent.
Now add potato, chopped into small pieces.
Crumble in a beef stock cube or two (again be generous).
Add pepper and salt, then liquid to about twice the volume of your ingredients.
The liquid used is generally water. Start with it. But tea (from the pot or unadorned) is a fine addition, and non-wasteful. Leftover water from boiling vegetables or pasta is good and, again, non-wasteful.
Boil the soup until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked through and soft.
Later on you may want to make soup with other things, but start with the above. Then, hopefully, if not already addicted to soup-making, you may have been converted to the pleasures it has to offer.

A Chicken Dog

Two dogs enlivened our lives as children in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They were a cairn, called Bunty, who gave birth to Kennel Club pedigree puppies that we were loath to part with, and Ben. He was a black cocker spaniel.
My father, though badly wounded in the recently ended First World War, ran a chicken farm at Silchester, a walled Roman town in the south of England, positioned between Reading and Basingstoke on the Hampshire/Berkshire borders.
Ben was not only a much-loved house dog but a working dog, too – a chicken dog.
When my father wanted a bird for the oven or sale, he would herd chickens into a corner of their run, where they would squawk and flap, probably knowing that one of their number was to end up as food in the near future.
Having selected the required bird, my father would point it out to Ben with his finger – rather as a pointer dog would point with his nose. Ben would then slowly and quietly enter the mêlée and rest his paw on the selected bird, pinning it gently to the ground. Off would scamper the rest of the flock. My father would then gather up the desired chicken from beneath Ben’s paw.

Hot Avocado and Tomato Salad

Having bought a quantity of avocados in the market and made a very successful soup with some of them, I noticed that a bowl of tasteless, out-of-season tomatoes were in the kitchen waiting to be used up. So this dish came about. And an excellent salad/hors d’oeuvre it is, too.

HOT AVOCADO AND TOMATO SALAD

You will need:
Vinegar
Tomatoes
Pepper and salt
Garlic
Avocado
Toasted breadcrumbs
Olive oil

Into a nice-looking ovenproof dish pour some vinegar. On it place sliced tomatoes. Dust with pepper and salt.
Now press at least two cloves of garlic over the tomatoes.
Take the flesh from an avocado, and dot small pieces of it over the tomatoes (you might need more than one avocado – depending on its size and the size of your dish.
Sprinkle toasted breadcrumbs on top, and dribble olive oil over all – coating the breadcrumbs.
Shove the dish into a hot oven for half an hour – preferably when you are cooking the main course in it (for economy).
Up until the avocado bit you can prepare the tomato part well before wanted. But after dotting the just-opened avocado flesh over the tomatoes and completing the crumbs and oil addition, do not delay in putting this hot salad into the oven.

Avocado Soup

This soup came about after I had been shopping in Shepherd’s Bush market and found ten avocados for sale at £1. This being an unbelievably good bargain, in winter, I thought aloud, wondering if perhaps the thick-skinned avocados might have a touch of frost in them and be black inside. The helpful Indian stall-holder took out a large machete (the kind used for cutting through jungles) and with it sliced through an avocado to show me that they were in edible condition.
With the idea that the avocados might ripen at the same time and be too many to use, I decided right away to turn five of them into soup. The result was slightly yellow, creamy, and quite delicious. Moreover, it was a simple soup to make.

AVOCADO SOUP

You will need:
Ripe avocados
White sauce (milk and water, butter, flour, stock cubes, pepper and salt)

Make a white sauce in the usual way by melting a good sized lump of butter in a saucepan, stirring in flour and, in this case, two chicken stock cubes. Add milk and water, whisking the result until quite smooth (being careful to dislodge thickened flour from the bottom angles). Cook the sauce slowly until it bubbles, stirring all the time.
Thin down the sauce with water and milk until it has formed soup consistency – possibly putting it into a larger saucepan. Now add the avocado flesh.
Press down on the avocado with a potato masher to break up the large pieces, and continue to whisk until the soup is smooth, yet still contains small avocado pieces. Test for seasoning.
Garnish the offerings with a little chopped coriander leaf – if you have any at hand.
(Coriander will keep for weeks if washed and sealed in a plastic container with a little damp kitchen paper beneath the stems. Keep the container in the vegetable storage part of the refrigerator.)

Recipe: Beef and Brussels' sprout stew

I was making a winter beef stew and found some Brussels’ sprouts in the vegetable part of my refrigerator. They were there for no particular reason. So I used them in my stew. Now, Brussels’ sprouts are a vegetable that you either like or loathe. In this dish, those who like them will love them cooked this way, and those who don’t, will, I think, come around to liking them. But be warned. They hold in the heat in a strange way, so a burn in the mouth is possible when biting into one.

BEEF – BEEF AND BRUSSELS’ SPROUT STEW

You will need:
Beef (shin, chuck or other)
Oil or fat of your choice
Onions
Garlic
Flour
Pepper and salt
Carrots
Brussels’ sprouts
Stock

In an iron casserole make a stew in the normal way by frying chopped onions and garlic in oil, or fat of your choice, until browning.
Throw in cubed beef, and cook until it changes colour.
Sprinkle over it some plain flour, and stir this in. Add pepper and salt.
Now add a layer of cleaned carrot pieces and a top layer of trimmed and washed Brussels’ sprouts.
Pour in stock, made with tea and a stock cube, to almost cover the contents.
Depending on the type of beef used (shin or chuck, say) cook slowly on top of the stove (or in the oven) for an hour for chuck, or two hours for tastier and cheaper shin. Keep an eye on the liquid level.
You might like to add a chilli or half of one.

Avro Lancaster drift scale

Vickers-Armstrong Warwick Lifeboat Release

Pheasant meat in general

In winter, when the pheasant shooting season is in full swing, so many of the birds are shot that sometimes they cannot even be given away. And I have heard that unwanted carcasses are sometimes even buried, having provided the “guns” with their sport. It is then the time to buy several pheasants at a good price – often at a Farmers’ Market. At this time, pheasant becomes a reasonably-priced meat. Where I buy them, the birds are offered in prime condition, fresh from the shoot, plucked and trussed, and presented in cling film wrap.
Buy some, take them home, and slice off the breast meat and as much as you can cut from the thigh. The leg is very sinewy and best left untouched. Feel for shot in the meat and extract any (they are now usually No. 7 shot and very small), freeze the breast in pairs, and bag up and freeze the thigh meat for a future casserole or terrine.
Break up the carcasses and turn them into delicious game stock by putting them into a pressure cooker with some salt and pepper and just a little extra flavouring, like two cloves, two cardamoms and a bay leaf. Pressure cook for 45 minutes. Strain, and allow the stock to cool in a bowl before taking the fat off the surface with a spoon.
The stock is excellent if used as the liquid for a leek and potato soup.
When roasting the breast meat, wrap it in bacon.
When cooking breast meat with chopped up green cabbage, in which you have used your hands to coat the greens with olive oil, white wine, pepper and salt, place the meat just below the surface of the cut cabbage. Put peeled potatoes above and oven-cook for an hour or two.

Amsterdam Restaurants 2008

Our choice of places to eat and drink in Amsterdam come from past experience, “nosing out”, and the advice of locals. Here are some, in haphazard order.

The most amusing place where we had a drink (one was enough) was outside a bar on the Singel Canal, not far from Centraal Station.

In front of us was a pissoire with perforated ironwork at the occupant’s eye level. It was so popular that one man would often be waiting for another to finish. Next to our bar was a glass-fronted, red and blue lit basement for two ladies – one dressed skimpily and the other in part leather gear. The latter offered, via a notice in the window, S&M services.

Hardly a pedestrian walked by without a glance or two at the ladies. And from the pissoire it was possible to penetrate the perforations with the eye for a good view of the goods on offer. What entertainment it was. Theatre for free.

To really eat a “Dutch “ lunch, you could hardly beat enjoying a raw herring, or shared one, standing at the raw herring stall on the bridge at the start of the Singel Canal near to Centraal Station, and then to cross the road to the Kobalt Cafe. Inside this old warehouse (where presumably they once stored cobalt) are huge and impressive floor-supporting beams that rest upon granite feet. The wooden beams were hued for industrial support rather than for visual finesse.

To choose uitsmijter from the menu would be right and proper. Its fried eggs rest on ham, which rests on slices of plain bread, and all covered with a cheese sauce. Drink beer.

In the Haarlemmerstraat, close by, are two places we would recommend. Stout, on the left, is modern, with modern food, and with fashionable diners.

Beyond Stout on the other side of the road, stands Dulac. Should you think that the interiors of Dutch houses are small, this will surprise you with its large size and minimum use of it. A pink cloth pool table is the focal point. This is surrounded by a theatrical collection of strange structures and objects. Separated at a distance from one another are tables for clients. We dined well off four tapas dishes and a bottle of South African red wine from Franschhoek.

The above places are on the edge of the Jordaan district, which is now smart and fashionable. But when I worked on coasters some 60 years ago it was a slum area where lived the family of the stuurman of our vessel. I remember that we sat on the stairs to peel the skin off smoked eels and to eat the flesh from the bone like sweet corn. We slept on the floor, possibly listening to Johnny Jordaan, who was the popular singer in those days. Times have changed somewhat.

A bar that is light, and where one might read the newspaper, is the aforementioned Kobalt Café. Another is farther away in Spui (pronounced Spow) Centraal. It is Café Hoppe. This ancient bar, that purveyed jenever and much else, is divided into two. You could drink and possibly have a snack under cover outside (bitterballen here is good), or enter the atmospheric darkness inside (the corner one especially) to experience a Holland of the past.

Move to the red-light district, to the left as you leave the Centraal Station, to see a vibrant, exciting and architecturally delightful part of old Amsterdam.

Warmoesstraat runs through its heart and is the most popular, we hear, with gays. But all around are ladies for short rent in gaudily lit windows. They display much of what they have to offer, and might tap on the window to beckon you in.

On the street is an entrance to the “new” Heffer bar. It is an object lesson in clever bar design – colour, lighting and decoration. And to move customers on, it is uncomfortable.

In the same street, at the station end, is a very Dutch restaurant whose chefs specialise in cheese fondue. You can choose from several blends of cheese. The place is called Karbeel, and an excellent and civilised place for lunch or dinner it is, set among some rather seedy establishments.

Returning to central Amsterdam and the Damrak (main street), you will pass the other (old) Heffer bar, just behind the “new” one. This is housed within a defunct customs building. It is not as theatrical as its compatriot nearby, but more comfortable and more “established”. It is a good place for food. But be careful. You might be propositioned by a lady, house relation, who will try to tell you your fortune by numbers. She is persistent. I think I frightened her.

Behind Centraal Station are the landing stages for ferries to the other side of the wide IJ (pronounced Eye) river. And on that other side are two fine places in which to eat – after a nice river crossing – and the ferry crossings are for free.

Take the one that will state on the back of the ferry and on the illuminated sign in front of the landing – NDSM Werf. The trip down river toward the North Sea Canal will pass docks, ships loading and unloading, possibly a liner, a disused submarine and lots of shipping going about its business. This will give you an appetite for a meal or snack at the Kantine, a spacious, light and happy place, at the bottom of what looks like a dull block of flats. You can eat and drink there, watching shipping on the river through high and wide windows. You might well take sunglasses on a sunny day.

When taking the ferry back to the Centraal Station dock, choose the modern variety. There is an older, smaller ferry that simply crosses back and forth across the river, finally depositing you back by the Kantine, from where you set off.

If you take the IJ Plein ferry to cross the river, turn right immediately after disembarking to walk along the riverbank until coming to an orange-coloured building that is the Wilhelmina Dok restaurant. It perches out over the river, putting you right among the shipping. Have your drinks and food outside in summer and inside in winter. It is our favourite restaurant in Amsterdam.

Above are the places where we have enjoyed food and drink. There are not many, but we recommend them.

FOREIGN PLACES, FOREIGN CUSTOMS

In one’s reflective mind it is usually the large objects that define a foreign country – the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, the Bank of China Building, the Taj Mahal, Hilversum Town Hall and all the rest. But when abroad it is often the small objects, scenes, smells, food, drink and customs that make the country a foreign one. The following observations come in random order.

I have just been to Holland twice (October and November 2008) to think about it.

On the Eurostar train, through the Tunnel and into France and Belgium, I saw, in the middle of a ploughed field, a small patch of possibly a dozen or so orange pumpkins. I was in a foreign country all right.

In Brussels Midi Station, the escalator appeared not to be working. But on approach, off it went.

One hears nothing but complaint about public transport in England – though not having to use it in rush hours I approve of it. In foreign Holland, however, they have always had the reputation of running a reliable and wonderful public transport system – no longer. The actual trains worked well and were clean and comfortable. But to pay for a rail journey was often confusing, with either a long queue for buying a ticket or a time-consuming struggle with an automatic, touch-screen ticket machine. Having bought our tickets, confusion reigned. For a one-change journey from the countryside back to Amsterdam we were diverted, for an undisclosed reason, and had to change trains three times. For another journey we were directed to one platform and then, with the other hopeful passengers were told that the train would leave from another. This involved an arduous climb up stairs with our heavy luggage. The long-distance train then arrived at the platform to collect its passengers half an hour late, and finally stopped three stations short of its destination, with instructions for passengers to change platforms and continue aboard a local train – involving another climb up and down stairs with luggage.

Public transport does a lot from country to country. In Holland, where the tram and bus services continue to be excellent, a “strippen card” is needed for both busses and trams. This involves buying a strip of numbers, folding it at the needed number of tickets required for your journey, and then poking the strip into a machine on board, that stamps it with a “ping”. It is difficult for the stranger to know how many tickets to offer the machine. At tram stops this can be worked out (with difficulty) from a map. But it is easier to go to the train station and buy the required demarcated map. Locals know, but foreigners don’t. The validation is for one hour, presumably for more journeys within your ticket’s stamped compass. I understand that a pre-paid card, like the English Oyster Card, will be introduced in the near future.

International hotels give no indication of foreignness. They are “anywhere” places. The design of their rooms and bathrooms, though, can cause confusion for all. Plumbing is often the main problem to solve. Without the arm length of an orang-utan, to close the bath’s “plug” needed a climb into the bath. Then, with two large, chromed wall knobs for the control of water heat, bath water flow and shower, it came as no surprise to have an arm soaked from above.

The size of beer glasses and how much is in them determines the country you are in. The Germans may favour litres and half litres, we pints, the French hardly a half pint, and the Dutch, where one orders a “pilsje” (small beer), a few decent swigs beneath an inch or more of foam may come your way. A repeat order might contain more or less beer. An ordered pilsje sometimes comes as a vaasje (slightly more). Or one can order ½ pint or a pint (groot). All are served with a variable size head of foam. I find Holland to be a country of dehydration, which is an excuse, I suppose, to drink more beer.

I have noticed a distinct change in the drinking habits of the Dutch since I was there as a supernumerary on a Dutch coaster in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Then the sailors had a taste for sweet liqueurs. And people drank jenever. Now I only saw one person drink jenever, most drinking beer or wine. And the wine drinkers chose mostly white wine. This is now much more in line with the rest of Europe, except that they also drink milk with their meals.

In France the bill for drinks is put on to your table, so you can leave when you feel like it, having left the money with the bill. In Holland you wait until ready to leave, try to catch the eye of the waiter or waitress, and then pay before leaving.

Which brings me to tipping. At last (I suppose with the advent of the EU and Euro), tipping on top of the bill is unnecessary – certainly in France, Belgium and The Netherlands. A little “rounding up” is an option, and one usually leaves any small copper coins that come with the change. For excellent and pleasant service one could add 10%, but no more. Many do add this in Holland. In England you have to scrutinise the bill to see if service has been added or not. When added, it is often on the high side and includes the full service percentage on the cost of the wine, which a waiter has only had to withdraw a cork or twist off the screw-top. This does seem greedy to me – especially as the wine has usually been overpriced in the first place. But in England it is sometimes the case that the tip is the main form of income for the often-underpaid foreign waiters or waitresses. It is difficult to know exactly where the tip ends up without engaging in that controversial conversation. The system is more professional on the continent where waiting can be seen as a vocation.

And in what country might you see a man with a long pole, mop head and hose pipe, cleaning the blank side of an ordinary brick-built house? Holland, of course – in the centre of Delft.

In Delft I wanted to take a canal boat trip, especially to see from where Vermeer painted his landscape of the city. But four passengers would be the minimum number acceptable before the voyage could begin. I returned twice on the appointed hour. Eventually I was taken – alone. But the businessman pilot of our shallow draught vessel, said that if tourists saw our boat in operation they might think of taking the trip. And true enough, on our return quite a few people were waiting to board.

The sights of Delft from its canals are of a perilously leaning church tower, and splendid houses, mainly from the 17th century vintage. Very Dutch, and so very foreign, the houses are beautifully proportioned, and exhibit the wealth derived from naval and commercial power related to East India trading. West India trading (slaves) is much less mentioned. We were not the only baddies. Many of the greater houses were also built by the brewers of beer, Delft once being the centre of that industry – until the canal water used became so foul that no one would drink the end product. Today no breweries exist.

Do not hope to take the canal trip in Delft after the university students’ graduation romps. Far too much junk is thrown into the canals to make navigation a safe exercise.

One canal boat does ply its trade of keeping the narrow canals clean. A plodding boat, with a solitary man aboard, is provided with a scoop and an enlarged butterfly net at the end of a long pole. The pilot’s autumn catch seemed to be of leaves only.

You would not imagine that staircases define a country. But they do in Holland. Space has always been at a premium, especially in the cities of the 17th century. Staircases then took up unnecessary room where money might be made. So they were constructed to be steep, confined, precipitous – and dangerous. Large objects were lifted up on pulleys attached to a strong beam projecting from the upper part of the gable. These gables are straight, stepped, bell/neck shaped or elaborate/flamboyant. They were designed originally to hide unsightly roofs.

Rain is treated differently abroad. In Holland, for instance, umbrellas are used, yet many people seem to rather ignore the precipitation. In England I don’t believe that I have ever seen a cyclist riding beneath an umbrella. But in Holland it is commonplace. Many of their bicycles have back-pedal brakes, operating only on the rear wheel. This braking method frees up both hands – one to hold the umbrella.

Which brings me to a small but cumulatively large, unique and astounding sight. It is the thousands upon thousands of bicycles, parked, day and night, outside railway stations. If mothers know their babies, owners their dogs, so the Dutch must know their bikes. To the outsider they look much alike – saddle, wheels, handlebars, frame, and nearly all black. Cyclists there can do no wrong. At any accident scene the cyclist is right. So they ride like maniacs, both ways on the cycle paths that edge every street, and sometimes not on their rightful tracks at all. It is hazardous for pedestrians to cross any street, or even alter direction. Every vehicle or person gives way to bicycle riders.

The herringbone brick-on-end, bronze-coloured pavements and sometimes roads in Holland are a delight – except when it rains. The attractive undulations then create puddles, before the water seeps down into the sand below. These lovely bricks, however, seem often to be being dug up and re-laid. French pavements have too much dog mess on them for safety or pleasure when viewing anything above pavement height. England is becoming better in that respect.

In passing through Belgium and Holland it is very noticeable that graffiti lives – and in a big way. This disfigurement of the townscape seems, mercifully, to have declined in England. It lives and thrives elsewhere.

A charm of Dutch cities is to hear the joyful chuckle of jackdaws. Just why they do so well in their cities and not in English ones is a puzzle.

Another puzzle concerns eating in the quite splendidly simple Fat Kee Chinese restaurant in The Hague. They offer a dish called chicken, pepper and salt. What arrives at your table is a huge pile of very crisply coated morsels containing pink chicken meat and bones. The puzzle is to deal with what is inside the coating. What is chicken meat? What shape are the bones? What is coating and what is bone? This offering seems to be the speciality of the house, and great fun. Many foreign dishes are poorly adapted by the Dutch to please their own taste. Kip, peper en zout, if Chinese in origin, is splendidly Dutch. At the Nam Kee Chinese restaurant in Amsterdam I tried the same, out of curiosity. It was pale, not nearly as good – but without bones.

In France one may enjoy several courses, none too large or filling. At Simonis in Scheveningen (a seaside suburb of The Hague), set in a warehouse among others right next to a dune and the sea, you will enter, queue past the menu and food on offer (I ordered plaice), pay, receive a number, sit down and wait for that number to come up on a large screen. What came for me was a huge plate of chips and one excellent large fried plaice, on top of yet another. The Dutch have hearty appetites.

During my two quick stays in Holland I was looking for small items that differentiate one country from another. So it was really not my intention to remark on the largest thing visible – the sky. The sky and clouds in Holland – seen near to and never too far from the North Sea coast – have a distinctive look and colour to them, that is, when it is not raining. The windy sea air is crystal clear, often dotted with one shape or other of scudding cumulus clouds and, in the evening, with lovely sky colours in the background – very much as seen and depicted by the Dutch masters of old.

French restaurants do not get going until at least seven o’clock in the evening, with people often turning up to eat much later. All customers will have had an aperitif around six o’clock, when the bars are full. It seems that there is a national pattern to it. For office people it appears to be much the same in Holland.

In England, if invited for drinks, the start time is usually 6 to 6.30, leaving the guests to eat out or at home by 7.30 to 8 o’clock – which is about the time invitations are made for dinner. The English drinks party is an ideal way to meet, exchange information and views, and then leave. This can all be done with the minimum of trouble to the hosts by simply producing a few “bites” and plenty of white and red wine. But not everyone knows the “rules” about leaving.

The Dutch seem to close up shop early, and eat early. A party at a friend’s place might start at 5 o’clock in the afternoon with coffee and cake, going on to wine and food. Guests stay a long time, with plenty to say. To bid farewell takes an age, with handshakes for men and three kisses for women, with each parting in need of the politeness of a small conversation. The English might even leave quietly and unnoticed, without giving offence (filet à l' Anglaise).

The foreignness of a country is also determined by what one brings home from it. From France we take home mostly wine (usually from other countries than France), cheese, paper tissues, smoked chicken and lavatory paper.

From Holland we return with toothpaste (9 tubes from Hema for the same price as one glass of excellent de Koninck beer), my winter socks (Hema, Ski), young white goats’ cheese, cut from a wheel, and Hema’s famous smoked sausage (rookworst). I’m pro Hema.

In England and France I have never thought of meat and vegetables tasting other than they should. But in Holland there seems to be an underlying blandness in the flavour of food. Coatings and sauces offer flavour, but beneath them there is lack of taste. Is this, I wonder, because being a small country and also a highly productive one in vegetables, dairy products and meat, many of their products are forced – often out of their natural season (tomatoes for one). In my mind I see greenhouses, North Sea gas heat and hydroponics in use. But perhaps I am alone with those thoughts. Margreet says that products lack salt because too much is considered bad for the health.

I needed to buy butter in Holland, a country famed for its dairy produce. It seems that after the war when the nation needed as much foreign currency as possible, they exported most of their butter, providing substitutes for it, like margarine. The habit has continued. On the “butter” shelves in a supermarket were so many of these “spreads”, many flavoured, that I was lucky to have chosen the real thing from the many lookalikes on offer.

Approach to ice-cream is another item that defines foreignness. In France it can be good, and varied, in Belgium, splendid. But in Holland, restaurants rarely provide any flavour other than vanilla, sometimes with a smidgen of chocolate sauce when ordered as a dame blanche – and this from a specialist dairy country.

The English eat quite a lot of bread, usually in the form of sandwiches. The French eat sticks of bread, freshly baked, and throughout the day. The Dutch eat an enormous amount of bread, mainly for breakfast and especially for lunch, when dishes are often mostly bread (often in large hunks) with some tasty bits added. I counted 18 types of bread in one bakery shop.

The Dutch eat cheese for breakfast, the French and English don’t.

In the roof girders of The Hague’s art deco railway station, Holland Spoor, two pairs of crows croaked and flew menacingly to maintain their territorial rights.

In Holland those in charge of public conveniences demand 50 cents for entry.

In the autumn countryside, large fields of leeks decorate the ground with the blue of their leaves – far more impressive than the colour from fields of brassicas.

Despite the attentions of plough and harrow, some maize stalks were refusing to be buried beneath the autumn-tilled black soil.

In Holland and Belgium important and expensive houses are actually built right next to railway lines, by choice, when one might have expected them to be positioned farther away.

These staccato impressions of foreignness are from only two short stays in Holland.