World Travel 2013-2014, Deep Fried Snacks. Food of the Netherlands
Finally we have reached one of my favourite posts for any of the countries we visit – the food post! Netherlands was a bit of an interesting country, as the food is very similar to Belgium. We did notice that a lot of the food and snacks tends to be deep fried comfort style foods, so we tended to snack small amounts during the day (there is only so much oil you can eat) which gave us the opportunity to try a few different things.
Here a few recommendations of things to try:
Haring
This is basically a raw fish (not quite full raw as it’s pickled slightly) served with chopped onions and pickles. Takeshi loved this – me not quite as much. If you like raw fish, don’t mind tangling with some bones and want to try a traditional Dutch snack though, Haring would have to be the one to try.
Apple Tart
Definitely worth trying the apple tart while you’re in the Netherlands. This dish is much more delicious in my opinion in comparison to the Haring, and if you find a food market (we were lucky in Delft) you can try a freshly baked tart for around 1.5 euro.
Bittenballen
Literally translated to bitter balls, these snacks are basically like a deep fried kroket in ball form. These are a bit harder to find; however, if you can find a cafe serving Dutch food then this may be on the menu under snacks. I think I personally preferred these over krokets as they’re much smaller and bite sized – and they would be particularly nice with a mustard or some form of condiment on the side.
And so you can see what the inside of a bittenballen looks like:
Yup that’s right. Kind of looks like a creamy kroket on the inside. The bonus with bittenballen is that you get more crust though in comparison to the kroket which is rather nice.
Poffertjes
Poffertjes are basically mini pancakes which are traditionally served with butter and icing sugar, although you can get other toppings like nutella on them. You can find these being sold in markets or potentially cafes with a Dutch menu although in my experience similar to the bittenballen they can be a bit hard to find.
That’s just a few things that stand out which we tried while we were in the Netherlands (not all of them very traditional as you can see from the photos below). Would also recommend trying the white asparagus soup, as well as the salads from Albert Heijn supermarkets. I know salads from a supermarket don’t sound that exciting, but they tasted amazing and were a very filling dish when you’re doing a lot of running around.
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