Pink Sunshine

My breakfast this morning was a nice reddish pink grapefruit , an apple, a tomato, half a cucumber and a salted herring. In my opinion the salted herring is the only redeeming food in the pathetic dutch cuisine. Actually, we don't have a cuisine, we only have food.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this rather unique absence of tried and true dishes that represent a cultures gustatory fancies. The Netherlands was very late to industrialize. It made a rather sudden turn to factory life and certain household magazines, in an attempt to aid the poor worker who's gastronomical routine was now thrown out of whack, dictated what a decent and healthy diet should be.

This amounted to bread with cheese for breakfast and lunch and a hot meal after working hours. This meal was always to consist of three parts: potatoes, vegetables and meat (or fish, once a week, on fridays). Pitty about the potatoes, cheese and bread, or we would have had an artificial paleolithic diet imposed on us and been spared the diseases of affluence.

Anyway, while the workers toiled all day long, the new "cuisine" wasn't what boiled all day long. Factory workers wives could not afford to read the magazines and the only part of society that was told to cook differently, was the upper class, who usually are the natural guardians of "haute cuisine". And so the once very rich dutch culinary tradition was entirely wiped out. Old dutch cookery books read like completely alien fantasies.

And so we're stuck with boring dishes. The vegetables are always only a single vegetable, and like the meat, they are seasoned without any imagination at all. And the potatoes... well, all I can say is good ridence - I will never eat them again. I'll let someone else have my heart attack.

Ah, but the salted herring. A divine gift to a gastronomically challenged people. It's like nothing you've ever eaten. The soft texture, the sea-like salinity, and the hands on approach - you take it by the tail, lift it over your head and bite from below. Seriously yummy! Beware though - it's a bit of an aquired taste. But if you ever visit the Low Lands, dont forget to try our entire cuisine. Buy a salted herring, preferably at the market, and eat it on the spot. They won't be the same anywhere else.