YEARS AGO, A SCIENTIFIC study of the Eskimos of Greenland concluded that a diet rich in fish oils could help reduce the risk of heart disease. This, in turn, led to a surge in demand for fatty fish like wild salmon. It’s a shame scientists haven’t done a separate study on the people of the Netherlands. The findings would surely cause a sharp increase in the sales of fried food and bicycles. Allow me to explain.
My family and I recently spent four days in Holland (or the Netherlands, no one knows for sure). We were visiting my sister’s new Dutch in-laws, who live in the bucolic town of Papendrecht, southeast of Rotterdam. They are a giant people, the Dutch; the tallest in the world, according to some. And they like to eat. When we first arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, our hosts took us to a café for some coffee (a “regular” packs the punch of a quadruple espresso) and a dainty-looking pastry called saucijzenbroodje. Underneath its flaky crust, lo and behold, was a butterflied piece of sausage. Just one saucijzenbroodje will give you that extra oomph needed for a long day’s journey. I had two.
At a cookout later that day, we hunkered down for some fresh herring, pork shish kabobs, and the coup de grâce, the frikadel, or fried sausage. It goes excellently with a tangy Zigeuner sauce. (Zigeuner means “gypsy,” although it is unclear if actual gypsies make the sauce.) The next day we took a trip to Rotterdam. We saw where the pilgrims embarked for Plymouth and stopped for some patat or fries. These had to be the best I’ve tasted, golden-crisp on the outside, tender-white on the inside. They came with a mayonnaise, which tasted kind of like a salad dressing. I told myself it was Weight Watchers’ low-fat ranch as I doused my fries with it.
The next night my in-laws held a reception for our family. Dinner was served, buffet-style, and it included liverwurst, fresh meats and cheeses, something similar to onion rings, and another Dutch fave, the kroket. No surprise, this too was deep-fried and contained a sausage-paste filling. Quite lekker, as the Dutch say, even if this sausage treat would make the head spin on your average American nutritionist. Yet as I looked around the table, not one of my new Dutch relatives was overweight. Even 89-year-old Opa looked svelte as he sliced into his golden-brown kroket, savoring every bite of it.
Could it be that I had stumbled onto a nutritional breakthrough rivaling that of the Greenland Eskimos? Can a concentrated diet of frikadels and krokets help you lose weight and live longer? The answer is a qualified yes.
It’s true the Dutch enjoy the good life–I haven’t even gotten to the beers, such as Dommelsch and Heineken (their domestic version is far superior to the one they export here). But the Dutch also like to ride bikes and take long walks. So after careful analysis, I have concluded this to be the secret of the Dutch diet: a healthy mix of biking, walking, and fried sausages.
What other explanation is there? Sure, the Dutch like their dance clubs, but there’s barely room to dance in them. I went to one in Rotterdam called Plan C, which must have stood for Cancer, considering all the cigarette smoke inside. A more interesting locale was Papendrecht’s own bar/restaurant, Tijdloos (the name means “timeless”), with its larger-than-life cutouts of Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, and Ronald Reagan. Some of the music was techno, but a lot of it was old American Top 40, including Billy Joel and Bon Jovi. I found out there’s nothing quite like a room packed with Dutch kids singing “Living on a Prayer.” When Tijdloos shut down, some of my new Dutch friends took me to their version of a late-night diner, called the Samaria Shoarma, where we devoured warm pitas stuffed with fried lamb strips, slathered with garlic-yogurt sauce.
I hate to give the impression that my trip to Holland was mostly about eating. Okay, it was. But I did see the wondrous windmills of Kinderdijk and stroll down the cobblestone paths of Dordrecht, a town more than a thousand years old. As the Dutch are quick to point out, there is more to the Netherlands than just Amsterdam. (True enough, I didn’t see a single addict shooting up or any hookers advertising their wares in store-front windows. So I’ll have to go back.)
Before we departed, one of the Dutch grandmothers, now in her mid-80s and living proof of this country’s unique health regimen, gave me a bag of stroopwafel–sugar waffles stuck together with chewy caramel. I’m guessing now I’ll have to step up my own workout routine, for as my brother-in-law enthusiastically pointed out, “Those waffles are the good ones–they’re made with real butter.”
-Victorino Matus
