I’m blogging out of sequence (backwards, actually)– our Karpaz trip happened the first weekend of July, and now I am moving on to Amsterdam, which was the beginning of June. And I still have a few posts from the end of May that I need to catch up on. I’m confusing myself…
So, Amsterdam! As I am sure we have properly established, food tours are the best way to see any place. Amsterdam was no exception! We did a food tour with the same company we used in Prague and Rome, and this was by far the best tour yet– there was a nice mix of local flavor combined with really effing delicious food. (Dutch food is great, who knew?!)
The day started off raining (which we loved) and we walked over to our meet-up point. We were early, so Severin had a coffee while I explored a little farmers’ market nearby. I love European market culture (which Nicosia utterly lacks)– there were beautiful flowers, amazing produce, excellent cheesemongers and butchers of every variety…you could get everything you needed without going to a store, and it was truly awesome. I didn’t want to get too wrapped up in things so I made my escape and headed back to the cafe. I squeezed into the half-seat next to Severin and the waiter told me I couldn’t sit there unless I bought something. Good grief.
The cafe was called Papeneiland, and is one of Amsterdam’s famous “brown cafes,” so named for being generally dark, poorly lit places. Papeneiland’s claim to fame is its Dutch Apple Pie, which Bill Clinton apparently liked so much he bought a slice and came away with an entire pie.
The pie was thick and had a slightly-bready (rather than buttery-flaky) crust. I liked it, but Severin and I agreed American apple pie reigns supreme. I guess it just depends on what you are used to.
Our next stop was a specialty butcher (aren’t all butchers kind of specialty, these days?)
We sampled a variety of cold cuts here. I can’t tell you what kind of a animal any of them are from. The one on the far left had a crazy squishy texture. They were all pretty tasty.
Next up was PICKLED HERRING from a shop called Viswinkel. I know it sounds gross you guys, but it was actually totally delicious. The fish was buttery and when eaten in one bite with the pickle and the onion…it was good enough to eat again, and that’s coming from someone who will only eat fish when it’s wrapped in rice and dunked in wasabi with a little soy sauce.
Our other bite at Viswinkel was “kibbeling,” which is the Dutch equivalent of fish and chips. We had ours without the chips, because we were only in the early miles of our marathon of food. This was the very best battered and fried fish I’ve ever had in my life– the fish was soft and tender, perfectly cooked, and the batter was crisp, flavorful, and just the right amount of greasy. If we had more time in Amsterdam, I certainly would have come back for more.
Another place I would have happily come back to eat was this Indonesian-Surinamese joint called Swieti Sranang. It had a fast casual vibe, where you could pop in, select what you want out of the deli case, and leave. We had chicken satay, with the most flavorful satay sauce I’d ever had. In my experience in the United States, satay is always very heavy on the peanut butter flavor and light on much else. This had a hint of peanut butter but with the spice-complexity of a delicious curry. It was amazing.
Serving suggestion: sprinkle with crispy fried onions and serve with prawn crisps and pickles. Prawn crisps sound gross but they have a nice fairly neutral flavor, a perfect vehicle for mopping up whatever precious satay sauce was left. I stopped myself from licking the plate, but only just barely…
What would a Dutch food tour be without STROOPWAFELS? These were warmed slightly and served soft. We bought two packages for our offices, but I ate mine before they made it into the Embassy. Sorry/not sorry, office. (Don’t worry, I brought them the salty, chewy Dutch licorice known as “Drop”; it was so gross that it’s still on our communal office food spot a month later. I couldn’t even finish one piece. Those flavors just don’t belong together.)
We paid a little extra to add a canal boat ride onto our food tour, and it was totally worth it. This was our boat, the aptly named “Tourist.” It was nicer than any other boat I saw on the canals; apparently Winston Churchill rode in it and it’s worth a couple million dollars.
While on the boat, we got tastes of a local cider and a local beer. I love a good cider, and this was no exception. Accompanying the cider were a few varieties of Dutch cheese. Gouda is my favorite, and for the record the correct pronunciation is “HOW-da.”
About halfway through our tour, the captain pulled over to the side of the canal as a smiling woman walked up to the canal from the street. Before I realized what was happening and could snap a picture of the amazingness of what happened, without stopping the boat, the captain held out what looked to be an extra long fire poker and hooked a white paper bag from the woman. Inside, one of the cornerstones of Dutch bar food:
These are bitterballe, which are deep-fried gravy balls. And if you are wondering what a deep-fried gravy ball tastes like, well, it tastes exactly like you think it would. I thought I wouldn’t like it but yeah, these are definitely dangerous.
Our last stop was for Dutch pancakes, called poffertjes. I think they are more commonly known in the United States by their Danish name, Ebelskivers. They are no less delicious…
That was the end of the food tour, but not the end of our culinary delights.
Cheesecake and cappucinos at some random cafe by the Van Gogh Museum:
We stopped at an Italian deli one of the days and bought ourselves a small picnic spread– a pasta salad, a tomato-mozzarella dish, an artichoke-zucchini-black olive dish, and tiramisu. We stopped at the Albert Heijn grocery store to buy waters, and I couldn’t resist throwing in a case of raspberries, which are nearly impossible to find in Cyprus…and when you do find them, they are bruised, old, and cost nearly 7 euros. These were so amazing I bought another box and carried them on the plane home with me.
Here is a display of cookies. I saw them. I wanted one. So I bought two. No one ever accused me of good impulse control.
Since Severin is so tolerant of my constant detours to (a) be distracted by store windows and (b) to go into shops, I figured I’d better build something into our trip that he would enjoy, so we visited a Jenever distillery and had a tasting. It will get its own separate post, but in a nutshell Jenever is the Dutch version of gin– it has the same botanical profile but a different taste. Here are the “Jonge” (young) and “Oude” (old) versions:
