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.
Being a thrifty nation, the Dutch will recycle leftovers as “restjes”, which are often used as an alternative sandwich spread, creating a monstrosity that is proudly displayed to colleagues at work, who will marvel at the ingenuity of the maker and try to outdo them with rice and pasta dishes.
Dutch people take pride in the fact that the Italian fast-food chain Amsterdam Chips has summarised our entire culinary range by wrapping a spiral of potato around a sausage, after which it is deep-fried, placed on a bun and doused with sauce. The Italians do not have a word for “gezellig”, but this comes close.
Greem (Graeme. Not Graham!)@RichqrddeNooy that looks... Confusing.
@greem “Confusing” is one of the highest accolades for Dutch cooking of any kind. Thank you.
CartyBoston@RichqrddeNooy That *looks* like a hot dog with ketchup on it, which is, of course, an anathema.
Antifascist Atha Ahuluheluw
Rob van Kan🔻@RichqrddeNooy Sadly, the Amsterdam Chips people haven't the slightest idea how to make proper chips/ French fries.
Havyhh2@RichqrddeNooy ...I can't stop laughing.....brilliant....
Sibrosan@RichqrddeNooy As just 2 Dutch people need to take pride in that to make that statement true, it's difficult to refute...
@sibrosan I think you’ll find that all my ficts accurately reflect available knowledge on this topic.
@RichqrddeNooy I looked at more of your toots and with regards to fictuality they check out indeed.
Jeffy 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🇺🇦 ❤️🇱🇺@RichqrddeNooy gezellig is the BEST WORD EVER.
Casper Jansen 🍉🇬🇶 Antifa@RichqrddeNooy very few Dutch people, I think.
@casperjansen As I remarked earlier today: I think you’ll find that all my ficts accurately reflect available knowledge on this topic.
Rosita (she/her)@RichqrddeNooy nice, looking good!! but it's always bread in the afternoon! 😅 when I have rice leftovers and veggies, I'll make fried rice for lunch. 😋
spellfinder@RichqrddeNooy hmm kouwe kale on reye, excellent idea. If no one beat you to it in the middle of the night.. guess you forgot the part where there is usually 1 person in the household who wants to hold on to all the restjes for Later, and one person who is sick and tired of the fridge overflowing w a mish mash of plastic containers, and is always throwing out moldy and rotten spoonfuls of smelly goo.
Or are you blessed w a functional marriage/fifo system?
Not convinced our fellow country ppl have the monopoly on leftover shenanigans btw, hbu @sofonofos
GinevraCat@RichqrddeNooy 😂 Barbecue is a flavour for chips. Not a way to cook meat!
Pieter Lexis@RichqrddeNooy "zwart van buiten, rauw van binnen" is gewoon de Nederlandse stijl
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.
@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.
Jeroen van Tol 🍋 ✞ 
@greem We don't have doughnuts, we have 'oliebollen', a doughball of grease. @RichqrddeNooy
Nix is Ready for Spring@RichqrddeNooy excellent alt text
@nixanadoo Excellent exercise for screenwriting.
Marten Hoekstra@RichqrddeNooy breaded cardboard! Now wash that down with our signature premium lager. That this tastes of nothing at all and still is called ‘premium’ tells you all you need to know about the ‘dutch palate’.