Richard de NooyThis lunch includes all five of the main Dutch food groups: cheese, cucumber, geometry, boredom and sorrow, with most of the vitamin content provided by the soul-destroying view of endless flatness spilling off the far-flung horizon.
Amsterdam kitchens are tiny, partly because most Dutch food is made on the floor, using an axe, a cudgel and a spade, which is used to scoop the meal into the pan. The work surfaces are just big enough for two drinks, a bowl of peanuts and the New Testament.
Restricted space also makes it easier to corner rats, mice and other edible vermin, which are skewered on sticks and roasted over an open fire, after which they are covered with a peanut-butter sauce we claim originated in the former Dutch colonies, but they have repeatedly denied any involvement.
Despite being one of the tallest nations on earth, the Dutch are terribly insecure when it comes to cooking, which is why one of our favourite festive pastimes involves the use of tiny cooking utensils that make us feel like culinary giants. This tradition is laughably known as "gourmetten".
The term "salary" originates from the fact that soldiers were paid in salt, which was once a more valuable commodity. The clever Dutch realised that bags of salt were weighing their soldiers down, so they mixed it into small coin-shaped sweets that soldiers could eat, instead of carrying it around.
The Dutch began eating "kale" because nothing else would grow in our godforsaken polders. But we don't call it "kale", we call it "kool", which is kooler than cool. We mix it with mashed potatoes, otherwise it tastes like plant-shaped fart, and we eat it with sausage made of smoked skaters.
If you ever spot a Dutch person wearing an orange Unox cap, this means they have donated an elderly, speed-skating relative to the sausage works. Dutch people take pride in the fact that their family member has helped feed the nation, restrict population growth and bolster our state pension scheme.
Before they are smoked for sausage, Dutch skaters are thoroughly cleaned by their relatives on New Year's day at a special festive ceremony held on beaches up and down the coast. This has prompted the ever pragmatic and optimistic Dutch to refer to themselves as the "free-range humans of the world".
The Dutch eat their herring raw, because fish is at its most tender just as it starts rotting. Our herring is served with raw onions and gherkin to mask the stench as the fish passes your nose on its way down your throat. The Dutch live longer because we constantly endanger our health with food.
The Dutch eat their chips with mayonnaise, because that was the easiest recipe to remember when the French left the Netherlands in 1814, taking their cookbooks with them. Similarly, the Spanish left us the "croqueta" after their lengthy occupation (1556-1715), but we could only remember one filling.
Deep-fried food — locally revered as “the brown fruit” — is a cornerstone of Dutch culture. After work on Fridays, the Dutch gather for a “borrel”, which is best described as “sunless sundowners”. After a while, a tray of nondescript snacks is served, which all look different, but taste the same.
The Dutch often eat chocolate sprinkles and flakes on their bread. We refer to this delicacy as “hagelslag”, which literally means “hail beating”. By rendering our atrocious weather in chocolate form, we make the many different forms of precipitation we are forced to endure slightly more bearable.
Visitors delight in this tradition, because they are unaware that it originated after a Dutch ship was wrecked on a desert island in 1793 and the crew eventually resorted to mixing the only ingredients they had left on board: cacao, sugar, goat’s milk and faeces.
Dutch people are very fond of animals and they like to express this by barbecuing meat as badly as possible, thereby ensuring that people want to eat as few dead animals as possible. Dutch people will make a fire, wait for the flames to die down and will then put all the meat on the grill at once.
Sometimes Dutch people, upon hearing that I grew up in South Africa, will ask me to "save their barbecue", to which I invariably reply that the saving would have had to start three days before, with the buying and marinating of the meat, or three years before, when they decided to purchase their infernal Weber, which some experts refer to as "the blackest and shiniest circle of hell".
“Speculaas” is a rather boring biscuit that the Dutch prefer not to discuss, mainly because it was used to trick young men into becoming sailors by promising them they would eat only speculaas on their “voyage of discovery”, whose true purpose was captured in this original, wooden biscuit mold.
The Dutch lack of culinary creativity is confirmed by the fact that the run-up to Christmas and Easter start earlier each year. By law, the Dutch are only allowed to eat marzipan and powdered sugar between Christmas and Easter, otherwise our combined weight would cause the country to subside.
Cunningly, Dutch confectioners prepare very similar celebratory delicacies for Christmas and Easter, such as the above fruitcake, which originated around 1736 as a means of smuggling highly-prized marzipan, which was hidden on one side of the loaf to trick inspectors armed with prodding sticks.
Véronique Vitry@RichqrddeNooy which explains why my belgian grandmother called them 'crottes de souris', which translates as 'mice dung'
LZonjee - Antifa 🍋🍉🦀🔻@RichqrddeNooy Maar dat zijn (chjocolade) vlokken.
saarmuller@Ch1po @RichqrddeNooy Precies: chocolate in the form of snow flakes!
Steven G. Harms@RichqrddeNooy prachtig. Volgens mij je hebt “the undutchables” voor generatie Mastodon geschreven.
Greem (Graeme. Not Graham!)@RichqrddeNooy I thought British cuisine was hard to beat for doom and gloom, but you're giving Dutch cuisine a really good push to the bottom of that particular rank.
Well done. Have a doughnut.
Nix is Ready for Spring@RichqrddeNooy excellent alt text
@nixanadoo Excellent exercise for screenwriting.
Hans van Leeuwen
Laurens@RichqrddeNooy Early forms of genetic engineering at its finest. The part of the populace that couldn't stomach raw herring has died off.
@ElBeeToots Dutch people are tall, because all our shorter ancestors drowned when the taller ones said: “You can stand here, it’s not deep at all!”
Andreas Neustifter@RichqrddeNooy Jez thats grim...
@astifter By darkening our mealtimes, we brighten up the rest of the day.
@RichqrddeNooy 'Unox smoked sausage is people!'
@ElBeeToots Too few people are aware of this fict.
Jos Geluk@RichqrddeNooy @ElBeeToots now you know what they mean by "family package".
Rob van Kan🔻@RichqrddeNooy *speed-skating
Guusabc@RichqrddeNooy
People from the Low Countries that are fed up with this 'tradition' are increasingly switching to Lonux.
People from the Low Countries that are fed up with this 'tradition' are increasingly switching to Lonux.