MOOSHED AND MASHED

Winter is fast approaching us here and Holland, and with that comes the age old Dutch Tradition of  'Stamppot'. What this can roughly be translated to it 'mashed pot' where potatoes are boiled and mashed followed by adding fine chopped up vegetables and letting that soften in the mix. Once the meal is dished up on a plate, slices of smoked sausage or 'rookworst' are placed ontop and sprinkled with bacon. What I find somewhat bizarre is that some families eat this dish with 'appelmous' or apple pure' on the side as if its some sort of desert. It is a very simple dish that the Dutch take pride in and I have found myself digging in for seconds, minus the appelmous thank you very much.

Although the basis of any stamppot is potatoes, almost any vegetable can be added as a filler. Carrots and sauerkraut are a favourite in my household, as is andijvie (a green leafy vegetable similar to lettuce)and kool (a sort of kale like vegetable). The first few times I ate this dish, I could barely stand the fact that there was almost no seasoning and flavour and most of all  no SALT. However, the more I began to eat this dish the way the Dutch do, I started to realise the 'rookworst' and 'spekjies' (bacon) was so salty itself, that they didn't bother to season the rest of the dish, quite ingenious if you ask me.

STUFF ON BREAD

When one first hears 'stuff on bread' you might conjure up images of tomatoes, cheese, marmite for us south Africans, or jam. For the Dutch, this image is slightly warped. Hagelslag and muisjes are such commonalities for a topping, it would be odd if someone didn't have it. Within the first month or so of being here I thought this tradition was a complete outrage. I just didn't get how smearing butter on bread and then sprinkling it not so generously was seen as tasty and nutritious.

 

What I found even stranger was that there were hundreds, if not thousands of varieties of the stuff.

 

Muisjes

Muisjes translates into 'mice'. Yes, mice, a strange thing to call a topping (strange is becoming the operative word in so many of my posts it seems). The story behind its name is in actual fact due each sugar coated aniseed having a small string, resembling the tail of a mouse. I never knew what these kernel type things tasted like before I came to Holland, but to all of you out there who don't know, its a crunchy liquorice flavour.

Gestampde Muisjes

This is pretty much the same as above, but its crushed into a powdery form. I don't have much of an opinion on it, excepts that the Dutch love it just as much as every other topping.

 

Anijs Muisjes

These look like white mouse droppings and also taste like liquorice. As far as I know, their ingredients consists of sugar, and sugar. Like I said a really 'nutritious' snack.

Chocolade Hageslag

This is probably one of my favourite toppings and I will disclose why. When I was a young girl my mom would always buy the chocolate sprinkles for cakes and keep them in our pantry. Having the sweet tooth I do, I naturally hunted them down and gobbled them up in one go (I'm shocked I wasn't obese as a child). I was scolded for this as they were meant for cake decorating and not for my enjoyment. You can just imagine how my inner child's sweet tooth went completely bonkers and self discipline out the window when I heard that they have this on their bread as a topping for general daytime meals. In the past month I have started to love the stuff and more often than none I find myself spreading chocopasta on a slice of bread and generously sprinkling chocolate hagelslag on top. I would say it has taken priority  on my list of guilty pleasures.

 

MISTER POTATO HEAD

 

The Dutch like their potatoes. No.. that cant be right, let me rephrase. The Dutch love their potatoes, be it boiled, steamed mashed or baked (which is actually pan fried, they seem to call it something its not). Regardless in which cooked form this vegetable takes, the Dutch can't seem to get enough of it.

 

In preparing dinner the other evening, I spontaneously decided to spice things up (excuse the irony Im uing) and grill potato wedges, something I was certain the family had never cooked before. Back home in South Africa my mom would make the most delicious assortment of grilled vegetables wedges consisting of butternut, potatoes, sweet potato and onions seasoned with all kinds of flavours and spices.  I thought I would spare my host family the shock of something that extreme and opted to use just the potato. I lightly doused them in olive oil and a weak sprinkling of rosemary (the Dutch way) before throwing the pan into the oven.

 

Whilst the wedges were happily grilling away, my host father returned home and asked what I was cooking for dinner, curiously pressing his nose against the glass of the oven. I beamed at my response of grilled potato wedges, when he turned and looked at me with the most confused and blank expression, merely responding 'why'? I couldn't quite comprehend why he questioned this, as if he was perfectly happy with eating bland, boiled and boring potato the same way day after day, week after week.

 

After serving the wedges to the boys and finally sitting down to the meal I had slaved over, I sneakily glanced over at the 3 boys and noticed they were devouring (more so than usual) these triangular shaped pieces of potato as if it were a piece of heaven. I relished in the brief moment of acknowledging my job here was done...

TAKE THE EDGE OFF THINGS

 

A South African friend of mine also residing in Holland, recently introduced me to this edgy and frivolous group that I found an extreme liking to. Skip and Die have a loose, raw sound and many of their sounds contain words in Afrikaans, Zulu, Spanish and Portuguese, think 'Die Antwoord' but kinda cooler in my opinion.  I  of course am going to check them out live at Tivoli in Utrecht on the 19th of December for a mere 13 Euros. Thins are going to get out of hand, what what!

 Taken from their website

 

' The group consists of

 Cata.Pirata // vocals / visuals
Gino Bombrini // guitar / percussion
Daniel Rose > string instruments (sitar/guitar/sas)
Jori Collignon > electronica / keys / FX

 

 

What started as a collaboration between South African artist Catarina Aimée Dahms (aka Cata.Pirata) and Dutch producer Jori Collignon (C-Mon & Kypski, Nobody Beats The Drum) has now grown into a full-fledged live band. '

 

 

 

HELLO BARCELONA : PART ONE



Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be writing about Barcelona, but here I am, blogging about what an amazing city it is and how it managed to steal my heart in only 5 days.

After waking up on the morning of Friday the 18th of October and preparing the boys' breakfasts and school lunches, I did a bit of last minute packing into the smallest hand luggage bag ever. Iv always travelled with a substantial amount of clothes, so this was something I had to get used to. The weather forecasts for Spain read in the mid twenties, so in I packed skimpy shorts and dresses, this made the process a lot easier as these don't take up too much space. Myself and the girls took the train to Eindhoven, and from there the bus to the airport which is so small in size it only has 1 terminal. We checked in, took toilet breaks in turns and finally had a chance to sit down and relax before our flight. A friendly girl, Derya, sat down by the table next to us and we ended up striking a conversation with her, she too was headed off to Barcelona. Lone behold, she ended up sitting next to me on the flight and we spoke about South Africa, Sweden  and listened to Swedish rap.

As we touched down, I could already start to feel the heat from outside. We yanked our hand luggage out the compartments as fast as we could and sped into the Spanish Sun. We purchased our bus tickets into Barcelona and because I couldn't resist the heat in long pants anymore, I sneakily changed into my short shorts on the bus.  We exchanged numbers and full names with Derya before she headed off into the city to meet her boyfriend. From there it was our turn. I must admit, we got slightly lost and had to ask for directions in a nearby café' only to find out we were a mere block away from our hostel.

We waltzed into The Black Swan Hostel only to be greeted by the front desk girl demanding us to get our bags out the way. I wont lie when I say she was not the happiest clam I have come across. Regardless, she appointed us to room 110.

We explored the streets of Barcelona for what seemed like a good 3 hours when our hunger pains got the better of us. In true Spanish tradition, we sipped on tall glasses of sangria at Maka Maka, whilst conversing with the Australian and South African lads sitting beside us.

We managed to muster up enough energy to traipse home and slumped into our lumpy hostel mattresses, completely exhausted from all the traveling our first day had presented.

RISE AND FALL

I awoke to a late Saturday morning and jumped out of bed to set out on my journey to Amsterdam for the weekend, yet again. Driebergen to Utrecht, and Utrecht Centraal to Amstel station, a mere block away from Basti's flat. On arrival we went to a local street market for fresh orange juice and a bite to eat followed by coffee at the cafe' we seem to have made our regular spot on my Amsterdam weekend stays in the city. Basti and I speak about a lot of things, mostly relationships, people and generally just wanting to be happy. He's cool like that.

Later on in the day I met up with Marie, a South African Friend who I had met a few months ago in SA through a mutual friend we shared. Our initial plan of visiting the Rijks museum was short lived once our eyes set sight on the queue.

Instead we opted to walk through Vondel park and catch up. The weather had cleared up quite nicely with sunny skies all around. We wandered through the red light disctrict and Dam square and I even spotted  the Old Amsterdam cheese store that I had seen so much about on design blogs and magazines.

We also may have set foot inside a coffee shop or two, as one does in Amsterdam. This stopover lasted longer than Marie and I anticipated. We ended up sitting on a few steps just watching people walk by for hours. We eventually set out to a friends place via tram. I was completely freaked out at this thought. I had never taken one before and in all honesty felt claustrophobic in the people moving machine. A lot of deep breaths were taken, but we prevailed and after what felt like 2 hours of walking around and taking one tram to the next we were greeted with open arms by my good old friend Reinoud.

The rest of the night was followed by drinks at Bar Nel and shocking service at Café de Fles. Their food however was incredible, as expensive as it was. Marie and I shared the "Geitenkaas salade" (goats cheese salad) which had goats cheese wrapped up in phyllo pastry on a bed of leaves with a dash of balsamic vinegar, fresh berries and some sort of caramelised nut shard thing ( a whopping 14 Euros= 150 ZAR), It was tastebud heaven and although I paid an arm and a leg for a salad, I was pretty pleased the meal didn't involve any bread or potatoes!

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Sunday was by far the most miserable day. It rained, and rained and rained, and it just didn't stop, I had left my bike outside the Rijks museum the previous day and had been putting off collecting by telling myself  I'd go when it stopped raining, It didn't. Resulting in facing my fear of taking the tram to the museum and biking back in rain and wind. It took me the entire day to convince myself to go and do such a meagre task. Sometimes the rainy weather here can make you the laziest person in the world. To justify this, as I write this post I am lying in bed whilst it rains quite severely outside...

HELLO MISTER TRAIN CONDUCTOR

Yesterday I decided to take on the treacherous adventure of biking all the way to Utrecht. To be honest, its really not that far, about 18km. It is however very tempting to hop on the train and be there within 7 minutes. My first stop as I cruised into town on my bike was the Spoorweg Museum, as recommended by numerous friends and acquaintances. Before even stepping foot inside, I ordered the largest cappuccino expecting to pay a good 5 euro for it. I gulped down the caffeiney goodness without a guilty feeling in the world knowing I had biked all the way there. It was weak and bland, as I had expected here in Holland, and tasted like watered down milk more so than coffee. No wonder the Netherlands is one of the biggest coffee drinking nations in the world, because of the simple fact that they need 6 cups of the stuff just to get a buzz from this watery drink they refer to as 'coffee'. Regardless of its quality, I only spent half of what I thought I would which is a luxury in itself.

 

The museum has a number of old train carriages on display which you can walk through. This wasn't particularly the highlight of the day, but being the designer I am, or was in this case, the smell of antique furniture transported me back to the 1800's. On entering some of the carriages, I would pretend I was a duchess wearing a fur coat, a trendy hat and a looped dress and corset.

 

I also had the chance to go through a train simulator. It felt more like a rollercoaster ride but I enjoyed in none the less. This was followed by an audio guided tour through an makeshift old English town recreating the history of trains

 

For the most part, It was a pretty okay museum. I enjoyed hearing about the history of the trans and the 'spoors' but in all honesty, I wouldn't have put it on my list of things to do. The museum in itself is interactive and fun which seems to gain mass popularity amongst families with children.