Sharing Dutch Food Adventures

Over the Christmas holidays, we had our friends Nico and Shasta, who are temporarily living in Scotland, come visit us.  Their visit coincided with Sinterklaas day, so they woke up to all sorts of goodies and chocolate in their shoes the next morning.

Of course, a big part of every visit to a new country is to try the food.  On their visit, we had an opportunity to show them the local specialties.  For breakfast, we had hagelslag, a very popular Dutch breakfast food.  Most of the time, it consists of mostly chocolate sprinkles, but it can come in many different varieties - vanilla, blue or pink anise flavored (typically used to celebrate the birth of a boy or girl), or thick, ribbon like sprinkles.  This particular one is green and chocolate ribbon sprinkles, with some alligator heads thrown in for good measure.  Shasta was also treated to a mega-hagel!

Stopping by the Grote Markt, we also shared with them the popular dish of french fries, accompanied with garlic mayonnaise.  

Fries and garlic.  Yum!

Since it was the Christmas season, they also got a chance to try oliebollen.  Oliebollen are balls of dough (sort of like donuts) left to soak in .... oil.  Not the healthiest thing on the planet, but very yummy, and very Dutch.

Sampling the oliebollen

Oliebollen can also be filled with all sorts of yummy things, like cream or fruit.  Nico got one filled with cherries. 

Another popular thing that we showed them, but did not try, are the popular vending machines that you can find all over the Netherlands.  These vending machines consists of rows of shelves, each with their own little door.  These vending machines sell things such as hamburgers or chicken sandwiches, but also the very Dutch creations such as croquettes (breaded things containing some sort of meat look-alike) or deep fried Scotch eggs.  My Dutch colleagues told me to steer clear of these vending machines, stressing that they are only to be used at 3 am after a long night of bar-hopping when there is no other option.