Kaasballetjes

It's funny how the brain can lead one down many, many rabbit holes. 

I was adding a video on our YouTube channel about Nico Molenaar, a former fisherman from Volendam, who dedicated part of his life to creating mosaics from cigar bands. If you're ever in Volendam, be sure to visit the Volendam Museum, where his work is still on display for all to admire. 

But I digress. 

As I was editing the video, I found myself wondering where all those cigar bands came from. That made me think of the cigars my opa would smoke, usually on special occasions: weddings, funerals, and family celebrations. From there, my thoughts drifted to smoking in general, and suddenly I remembered the decorative glass filled with single cigarettes that sat on a side table in our living room, ready for guests during visiteavond, the visiting evening.

For generations, the visiteavond was a fixture of Dutch family life. Friends, neighbors, cousins, colleagues, and relatives would stop by after dinner for coffee, conversation, and perhaps a small snack. It was neither a special occasion nor an organized event. It was simply what people did. 

For many Dutch people, the word visiteavond immediately evokes a flood of memories. There was no background music. The television remained off. People discussed work, family, local news, holidays, and neighborhood happenings. Us kids often disappeared upstairs to play, leaving the adults to talk for hours, and I mean HOURS! 

A typical visiteavond began with coffee and a biscuit or cake. Later in the evening, if the visit continued, a small drink might appear alongside a selection of savory snacks: chips, salted nuts, cubes of cheese (often topped with a slice of pickle or candied ginger), slices of liverwurst, mustard for dipping, and if you were lucky, hot snacks like bitterballen or today's recipe, kaasballetjes, little fried cheese balls. The goal was not to impress guests with culinary skills, but to make them feel welcome, and to create a sense of "gezelligheid". 

To an outsider, it might sound unimaginably simple, but I remember those evenings fondly - and often long for an evening of visiting for hours and hours. Today, the tradition has largely faded, replaced by busy schedules, television, social media, and gatherings that require weeks of planning. 

Fortunately, these tasty cheese balls are quick to make, so there's no excuse to round up a couple of friends, invite them over, and have a good ole' visiteavond to reconnect! Veel plezier! 

Kaasballetjes

2 eggs

3 heaping tablespoons (35 grams) flour, divided

3.5 cups (350 grams) shredded aged Gouda (or Sharp Cheddar) cheese

Oil for frying

Optional: black pepper, parsley, mustard

Beat the two eggs with two tablespoons flour until there are no lumps, and mix in the cheese. Continue to mix for a good two minutes, until the cheese strands have more or less broken down and you have more of a cheesy paste. If you want, you can add black pepper, or parsley, or a small dollop of mustard to give it some extra flavor. 

Roll the mixture into large marble size balls, weighing approx. 0.8 oz/25 grams each. Place them in a container, cover and refrigerate until you are ready to fry these up. 

Heat your fryer to 350F/175C. Take the kaasballetjes out of the fridge. Roll each one in the tablespoon of flour, and fry them in the oil. You're looking for a golden brown exterior, so about 3-4 minutes each. Always test one first, to see if you need to adjust the temperature! Not all fryers are accurate on their temp.

Serve hot, and dip in mustard or sweet chili sauce. Goes well with a cold beer! 

If you prefer a crunchier outside, prepare them like bitterballen by rolling the cheese balls in egg and breadcrumbs. 

Kamper Steur

It was once quite common for residents of neighboring towns to mock one another, hugely exaggerating each other’s (supposed) flaws and passing along insulting stories through local folklore. What is far less common, however, is for a town’s own resident to ridicule his fellow citizens.

Yet that is exactly what happened in the little book Kamper Stukjes, published in 1852, a collection of short stories in which the inhabitants of Kampen, a city in Overijssel, are portrayed rather unfavorably. The book was written by “a native of Kampen,” who was later revealed to be the artist Jan Jacob Fels (1816–1883).

The stories describe the people of Kampen as hopelessly foolish. In one tale, they build a new tower but forget to include a staircase. In another, the mayor’s wife’s canary escapes, prompting the mayor to order the city gates closed so the bird cannot possibly fly away. You get the idea. 

Courtesy of Gouwenaar

These stories and name-calling, once meant as insults, sometimes evolve into markers of local pride, and become foods, festivals, and traditions. The story behind today’s dish is about a sturgeon, the famous Kamper steur, sturgeon from Kampen, and is a perfect example of this. 

According to the tale, the bishop is expected to visit the city, and a grand banquet is prepared in his honor. For the main course, a large steur, a sturgeon, is caught. However, word later arrives that the bishop has fallen ill and will postpone his visit. The townspeople are left wondering what to do with the enormous fish, until one clever soul proposes tying a bell around its neck and releasing it back into the water.

After all, when the bishop eventually recovers and comes to town, they would only need to listen for the ringing of the bell to locate the sturgeon and catch it again. Right? Right!

Well, when the bishop arrives, the sturgeon is nowhere to be heard or seen. The story in the book ends here, but somehow along the years, somebody somewhere added an addendum to the story, describing what the bishop was served instead of the sturgeon: Kamper steur, hard boiled eggs in a mustard sauce. 

What's interesting is, is that the dish with its fishy name existed long before the story was published. The earliest reference I've found to this particular dish with the name "Kempensche stuer" was 1574, so long before Fels's story in 1852 - an interesting twist. The mustard sauce is not a surprise: the province of Overijssel is famous for its mustards! 

This dish is quick to make, and makes a good substitute for meat. Every now and then I add a crunchy topping to switch it up a bit - I've added instructions below. Serves four. 

Kamper Steur

6 eggs

2 Tablespoons (30 grams) butter

3 Tablespoons (30 grams) flour

1 1/4 cup (300 ml) vegetable bouillon

2 Tablespoons coarse mustard

Parsley

Hard boil the eggs in your usual manner. If you don't have a method, try this: place them in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil and boil for one minute, then turn off heat, cover, and let sit for 13 minutes. Move to cold water or an ice bath for 5+ minutes to stop cooking. 

While the eggs are resting in the hot water, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir in the flour until you have a paste, about two minutes, and then slowly add the vegetable stock. Keep stirring until you have a thick sauce, about five minutes. Stir in the mustard. Taste, and adjust the sauce with salt and pepper or, if you're like me, more mustard. 

Chop the parsley. Peel the eggs and cut them in half, lengthwise. Place them, cut side down in a dish. Stir one tablespoon of chopped parsley in the mustard sauce, and pour over the eggs. Top with additional parsley. 

Serve hot with a green salad and bread. 

*Optional: if texture is a big thing or if you prefer to have something crunchy, add a golden-brown gratin topping by mixing 1 cup of breadcrumbs/panko (approx. 50 grams) with 1/2 cup grated cheese, 2 Tablespoons (30 grams) melted butter, and the parsley, then sprinkle over the dish and broil for 2–3 minutes until bubbly. It's not original, but it sure is tasty! 

Chinese Pindakoekjes

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the cry “Pinda! Pinda! Lekka, lekka!” (peanut, peanut, tasty, tasty) echoed through Dutch streets: the call of the Chinese peanut brittle vendors. 

Most of these vendors were seamen from southern China who had originally worked as stokers and coal trimmers on ships of the Dutch merchant marine, such as the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland. When shipping jobs became scarce (especially after World War I) many of these men were stranded in port cities such as Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Without stable employment, and facing language barriers and discrimination, they resorted to selling Chinese peanut brittle for 5 cents a piece from metal boxes hanging from straps around their necks. 

So familiar was the sight of these peanut brittle vendors that their peanut cry made its way into popular song, most notably in the version performed by Willy Derby. The song exaggerates the character for the stage, as cabaret often did, but behind the humor stood a real figure in Dutch street life - a man making a living, five cents at a time. 

Fotocollectie Spaarnestad 

The somewhat romantic image in the song ("ik heb bij de mooiste meisjes sjans") however hides a harsher reality. Selling pindakoekjes or pinda platen, was not a romantic enterprise but a means of survival in a country where steady employment was uncertain and social acceptance limited. Many of these Chinese migrants became stateless after losing their jobs. They often lived in overcrowded boarding houses, while anti-Chinese sentiment and restrictive labor practices limited other opportunities. Police sometimes also purposely regulated street vending, especially after complaints from local business owners. 

Yet these vendors also represent the very first visible Chinese community in the Netherlands. The first Chinese restaurant surfaced in Rotterdam in 1920, initially to cater to the Chinese community, but eventually gaining interest and appreciation from Dutch customers. The later rise of Chinese-Indonesian restaurants after WWII grew partly from these early networks. 

Fotocollectie Spaarnestad 

The pinda platen vendors eventually ventured outside of the bigger cities.  Many in the older generations can recall stories about their city's "pindachinees”, the local Chinese peanut vendor. I remember my grandfather often speaking of a gentleman known as “Pinda Willem,” or Peanut Bill (real name Tsen Koa Pai), who lived in Venlo from 1937 to 1963 and became a familiar figure by supplying locals with peanut treats, especially the kids. As the stories go, he often carried “something for the weekend” at the bottom of his bag for the local men as well.

The koekjes themselves were practical: made with a mixture of sugar, peanuts, and a touch of vinegar, they required no oven, just heat. The warm brittle was cut into bars, which hardened as they cooled and could be snapped off and sold individually. For many Dutch people, the first taste of something “foreign” came from a paper-wrapped peanut cookie bought from a man whose story they never knew. And perhaps that is why these peanut cookies matter. They are evidence of adaptation, resilience, and the quiet ways migrants become part of everyday life.

These peanut brittles (in Mandarin Hua Sheng Tang, in Indonesian known as teng teng, a name echoed playfully in Willy Derby's refrain) remain popular in China today and are often enjoyed during Chinese New Year celebrations. Even though they never became a staple in Dutch cuisine, they sort of helped spark the emergence of Chinese-Indonesian restaurants, now firmly woven into our everyday food culture. 

These brittle bars are quick to make. Feel free to experiment with flavors: add sesame seeds, or replace the peanuts with a mix of other nuts you might like better. You could also add a little vanilla, but don't omit the vinegar. The flavor does not affect the cookies, but the vinegar will help keep the sugar from setting too quickly. If you chop the peanuts, you can roll this brittle very thin, which results in a crispy, snappy kind of treat, and much more in style of what they're used to look like. Spreading the mix out on a large baking sheet will be the best choice. I left the peanuts whole which resulted in a thicker, chewier kind of treat.

Chinese Pindakoekjes

2 cups (250 grams) roasted peanuts
1 heaping cup (250 grams) regular, white sugar
1 Tablespoon (15 grams) butter, and a bit extra for greasing the paper
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
1 Tablespoon water

Line a baking sheet or square baking pan (mine is a 9 inch/22 cm) with parchment paper, and grease both top and bottom of the paper.* 

Chop the peanuts into small pieces, or leave whole like I did. In a heavy bottomed pan, cook the sugar, butter, vinegar and water into a golden caramel, until it reaches a temperature of 300F/148C. Quickly fold in the peanuts until they are well coated, and immediately pour the mixture on the parchment paper. With a sturdy spatula or the back of a solid spoon, quickly spread out the mixture so that it has even thickness. With a knife, or the metal edge of a bench scraper, mark out the lines of the bars. As the brittle cools, you may have to do that once or twice, to make sure the indentations stay. 

Let the brittle cool fully before you snap it into bars. 

* Greasing both the top and the bottom will secure the paper in place when you are working hard on getting the peanut brittle spread out. Alternatively, if you are not using a baking pan with raised edges like mine, you can roll the brittle out thin with a rolling pin once it has started to set.  

Carnavalssoep

I was tempted to give this post a subtitle: The Curious Case of the Carnaval Soup, and here's why. For the last several years, online recipes for a dish called carnavalssoep (a rich tomato based soup with peppers, leeks, white beans, ground beef and smoked sausage) have been appearing with increasing frequency. Depending on where you look, it may also be called truujensoep, oudewijvensoep, or aldewievensoep. 

I first encountered it while researching oudewijvenkoek, and was immediately intrigued. I am a Limburgse at heart and grew up immersed in local carnaval traditions, from the festivities beginning on November 11 through Ash Wednesday, yet I had never heard of this soup before.

Unlike many Dutch dishes whose origins can be traced through old cookbooks, regional archives, or family notebooks, carnavalssoep seems to appear quite suddenly. There are no clear references in older culinary literature, no mentions in early twentieth-century household manuals, and no obvious regional variations passed down through generations. Instead, the soup enters the internet already presented as something familiar and traditional from the start. 

Dutch food culture has always been receptive to new influences and make them its own. What begins as a personal preference, a local joke, or a practical solution can, within a generation, be remembered as always having been this way. A well-known example is the kapsalon, now a staple in snack bars across the Netherlands. Yet the dish did not exist before 2003, when a Rotterdam hairdresser asked his local shoarma shop to combine fries, meat, cheese, and salad into one tray. Other customers began ordering “the kapsalon,” and within a few years it had spread nationwide: a modern invention that already feels deeply rooted in Dutch food culture. 

Something similar may be happening as we speak, on a more local level. This year, the Frisian village of Grou announces the return of Sint Pitersop, Saint Peter's soup. The soup is served during the celebration of Sint Piter on Februari 21st, an event similar to Sinterklaas that has always been unique to Grou. The festivities committee's website states that they are "reviving an old tradition: the St. Piter soup". But research into old cookbooks, online archives, and reams and reams of regional publications has not revealed any tradition regarding soup during St. Piter. 

But back to the carnaval soup. The earliest version of the carnavalssoep recipe I have been able to find dates from 2009. Many online descriptions of this soup repeat the same claims almost word for word: that it is traditional, that it was made by (and for) older women, and that it follows a familiar set of ingredients. Rather than pointing to a shared family history, this may simply reflect a recipe copied and repeated online. Over time, repetition can create the impression of age and authenticity: a gentle reminder that repetition alone does not make something historically accurate.

Carnavalssoep, like St. Pitersop, may therefore not be an old tradition at all. Perhaps it is something more interesting: a new tradition in the making, one that is just as worth documenting. If future generations continue to prepare the soup during carnaval, a tradition will truly have come into being!

The recipe can be adjusted to your liking. I rolled the beef into small balls and simmered them in the soup. If you don't have access to beans in tomato sauce, use regular white beans and two tablespoons of tomato paste, or use a can of pork and beans. 

Carnavalssoep

1 Tablespoon (15 grams) butter

1 lb (500 grams) ground beef

1 large onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

3 bell peppers, diced (one red, one green, one yellow)*

1 large leek, cut in half moons

1 can (15.5 oz/ 440 grams) beans in tomato sauce 

3 cups (0.75 liter) tomato sauce

3 cups (0.75) water

1 smoked sausage, sliced

3 bouillon cubes

2 bay leaves

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

1 Tablespoon sambal or hot sauce

Salt to taste

Melt the butter and fry the ground beef until no longer pink, then add the onion, garlic, peppers, and leeks. Fry the vegetables until they have a little bit of a char and the onion is no longer raw. Add the can of beans, stir everything well and then transfer the content to a crockpot, slow cooker, or stockpot. 

Add in the tomato sauce and the water, the bay leaves, the smoked sausage and the bouillon cubes. Bring it back up to temperature and let it simmer for a good fifteen to twenty minutes, then taste and adjust the salt level. Stir in the brown sugar and the sambal or hot sauce, and you're ready to party! 

* these are the traditional Limburg carnaval colors!

Vrijerskoek

Long before text messages, before flowers delivered with printed cards, and long before dropping on one knee in front of clicking cameras, young men relied on baked goods to express intent. One of those baked goods was the hylikmaker (literally a “marriage maker”) also known as vrijerskoek, a suitor’s cake. 

The young man would purchase this cake at the kermis, the funfair, or at the bakery, when he was ready to declare his love for someone. Often, the cake was rectangular and decorated with almonds or sweet words in piped icing, other times it was in the shape of a person, like the ones in the larger wooden speculaas molds. 

We can see an image of such a vrijerskoek in the Feast of Saint Nicholas painting, by Jan Steen, ca. 1665–1668. In the lower left part of the painting, we observe a basket with baked goods, traditional for this time of year: waffles, rolls, ontbijtkoek, and right underneath it, a long elongated flat cake: the hylickmaker. It is not surprising to see this cake in a painting about Sinterklaas. His moniker, goedheiligman, is said to stem from "goed hylick man", good marriage maker, probably referencing the story that Saint Nicholas provided gold coins for three young women so that they would have a good dowry and not have to go into servanthood. 

In another painting by Jan Steen, De Koekvrijer, (The Cake Suitor, ca. 1663 -1665), we see a young man lifting his hat towards a young woman who is seated. In his other hand, he holds a large hylickmaker. The woman does not immediately take it. Instead, she looks straight at us, slightly amused. We can read a lot into the details in the painting (the woman is sewing, the bed behind her has opened curtains, the door is open to the outside, the way he is holding the cake...but I'll leave that to your imagination!). 

Presenting the cake was one part. Accepting the cake meant more than enjoying something sweet; it meant acknowledging the possibility of a future together. If the girl was partial to the young man, she would break the head of the cake and gave it back to him. If instead she handed him the feet, well....then he better get walking! In the case of the rectangular cake, the young man would be invited to have coffee at the house. If the cake appeared on the table, uncut, the proposal was declined. If the cake appeared on the table, and the young man was offered a piece of that cake and a cup of coffee, his proposal was accepted! 

Recipes for hylickmakers appeared in cookbooks as early as 1746, but they unfortunately are no longer part of the proposal tradition. The Volmaakte Hollandsche Keukenmeid lists as ingredients for the "hylikmaker": flour, brown sugar, honey, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, a pinch of potash, and candied citron and orange peel. She then casually mentions: "Neemt dan de rolstok en maakt het deeg daar mede plat" (Take a rolling pin and make the dough flat"). 

Now....I have tried this recipe, and our keukenmeiden (kitchen maids) back in the day must have been as strong as an ox, because the moment the honey with the sugar cools down, this dough is tougher to roll than concrete! Annie van 't Veer warns us about this in her "Oud-Hollands Kookboek", explaining that bakers back in the day used to knead this dough by pushing down on it with an iron bar, a so-called breaker bar. I could have used one of those! 

These were not everyday treats. They were baked with purpose and offered as part of a quiet negotiation between families, intentions, and futures. The citron, orange peel, and warm spices signal luxury and intention. Because the dough was so hard to roll, the second time I baked these cakes I decided to add a little bit of additional luxury, and added butter and an egg. I still rolled it out thin, like both Annie and the Keukenmeid suggest, but it was a bit easier to do! I rolled the dough out between two plastic sheets to make it easier to lift from the table.

For this recipe, I included both candied citron and candied orange. If you don't have any left over from your Christmas baking, don't worry. I don't know that the citron added that much special flavor to the cake, and the candied orange can easily be substituted with orange zest. 

This recipe baked 3 nine inch (23 cm) gingerbread men and a rectangular 11 x 7 inch (28 x 17.5 cm) cake, as can be seen in the picture. Since not many of us have those large speculaas molds, I chose a large gingerbread cookie cutter instead. You can also use heart shaped cookie cutters, or any other Valentine Day cutters! These cookies crisp up when they cool. If you prefer a breadier, thicker cake, don't roll it too thin. 

Vrijerskoek

3/4 cup (150 grams) brown sugar

1/4 cup (90 grams) honey

1 1/2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour 

1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking powder 

1 1/2 teaspoon (3 grams) cinnamon

1 teaspoon (2 grams) nutmeg

1 teaspoon (2 grams) ground cloves

1/4 cup (30 grams) candied citron (optional)

1/4 cup (30 grams) candied orange peel (substitute with 1 Tablespoon orange zest)

1 stick (115 grams) butter, cold and diced

2 eggs

For decoration: almonds, edible glitter, heart shaped candy, etc. 

Carefully warm the sugar with the honey on the stove, until the sugar is melted. Mix the dry ingredients
in a bowl, and when the sugar honey mix has cooled enough to handle to the touch, pour it in the bowl and mix. Then add in 1 egg, the cold butter, and continue to mix until all the ingredients have blended.  If you are using citron and orange peel or zest, mix it in now. 

Roll out the dough thin, and cut into shapes. Beat the second egg, and brush the cookies with egg wash. If you make gingerbread men, remember to poke a hole in the head (I used the lid of a pen) so you can tie a ribbon through it. 

Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet at 350F/175C for about 15 minutes, middle rack. Keep an eye out for those last several minutes, as the amount of sugar causes the cookies to go from golden to burnt in no time. 

Let cool. Store in a cookie jar, or hand it to your intended on Valentine's Day. Let's revive a centuries old tradition!