Christmas in Holland is not one but two days of eating. Erste Kerst (First Christmas) is on the 25th of December and Tweede Kerst (Second Christmas) is on the 26th. This means they don’t have a Boxing Day Test match, Sydney to Hobart Yacht race or department store tramplings.
Let's be honest though, who limits Christmas eating to two days let alone one? Mum’s Christmas cake that travelled 16 659 kilometres from Sydney to The Hague was begging to be cut, and so last night, Erste Kerst minus three days we gathered some friends in our little apartment and pierced the fondant icing. Today there is not a crumb left.
While I knew there was cake to be eaten from Australia, I couldn’t resist sampling some traditional Dutch Christmas foods too. There are some exquisite looking treats in bakkerijen (bakeries) and banketbakkerijen (cake and sweet shops) and even in Albert Heijn supermarkt. Most Dutch Christmassy food seems to be fashioned into a wreath shape. There are Christmas wreath cookies* called Kerstkransjes and Christmas wreath chocolates called Chocolade Kransjes. A Christmas wreath pastry called Kerstkrans is a flaky pastry dusted with icing sugar and flaked almonds then filled with an oozing sweet almond paste. A Kerststaff is the same thing but made in a log version for people who are tired of the wreaths.
If not in a wreath shape then Dutch Christmassy food is likely to consist of a yummy sweet almond paste like Kerstol which is a fruit christmas loaf. It’s more like a gourmet fruit bread than a cake and forms part of the Christmas brunch menu for the Dutch.
Dutch Christmas menus also borrow some food traditions from their neighbours. Mulled wine is a German invention and although the Dutch know it by it’s German name glühwein, they have also given it a Dutch title bisschopwijn. Bishop’s wine was known to be a favourite of that old Bishop from Myra, St Nicholas. I made Bisschopwijn with a couple of bottles of Australian Wolfblass cab sav upturned into a pot of the stove, glug, glug, several heaped spoonfuls of sugar and a bought muslin pouch of mixed cinnamon, cloves, allspice, orange peel and ginger, gently warmed until the flavours mingle.
Another Christmas treat developed from mingling plonk and complementary food stuffs is port soaked blue Stilton cheese. Although this is a British cheese it was a Dutch lady who switched me onto it and it’s very Christmassy. Stilton is another of those food products that has it;s name protected under European Law so that only cheese produced in the Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire counties of the UK can be known as Stilton. However for a colourful festive twist the blue veins of the rich creamy cheese are set off with splotches of Port wine. Inside the kaaswinkel (cheese shop) I see how this is done. Large wheels of stilton have their innards scooped out and upturned bottles of port stabbed into them. The impaled cheese absorbs the deep red stain of the port over a week or so. That’s if you can wait a week. So much Christmas food, so little time.
*Cookies are also known as biscuits in the Great Southern Land. Do not be alarmed, I have not forgotten how to speak Austrayan. It’s just that the American word “cookies” comes from the Dutch word “koekjes” which means little cake, so the Dutch always translate koekjes back to cookies when speaking English.
*Cookies are also known as biscuits in the Great Southern Land. Do not be alarmed, I have not forgotten how to speak Austrayan. It’s just that the American word “cookies” comes from the Dutch word “koekjes” which means little cake, so the Dutch always translate koekjes back to cookies when speaking English.
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