At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Netherlands

Karin Vaneker

In the Netherlands, almost 40 percent of the population lives alone, and single-person households are expected to grow significantly in the future. Graphic designer Jan de Vries is among almost 3 million Dutch people who currently are living alone. He is single, in his mid-50s, and lives in the center of a city with almost 160,000 people in the eastern Netherlands. Before his early 20s, Jan didn’t display a particular interest in food and food preparation. He was born and raised in a small village and in a traditional Dutch family, and his mother did most of the cooking. Being a boy, Jan didn’t learn anything about cooking at home. He was in his mid-20s when he prepared his first dish and immediately abandoned typical Dutch food such as potatoes and vegetables with meat, usually pork—which he knew from home. Toward the end of his studies when he was living in a dormitory, he became more serious about cooking and purchased his first cookbook Ou est le garlic (1979), written and illustrated by the British spy and cookery writer Len Deighton, because he loved Deighton’s thrillers and studied graphic design. From the book Jan learned French cooking and especially how to make sauces. By the time he entered his first serious relationship and his children were born, he was cooking almost every day. Because it was more of the same and due to its focus on meat, he started disliking French cuisine and started watching cookery programs on the British Broadcasting Corporation network. Jan discovered Delia Smith teaching the English how to cook an egg and became interested in authentic Italian cuisine. To improve his culinary skills but also for ideas and recipes, he started buying cookbooks from chefs Nigel Slater, River Café, Dean & DeLuca, Heston Blumenthal, and Jamie Oliver. At the same time Jan became fascinated by reference books with information about food and cooking and started spending money on good-quality kitchen equipment. After his wife passed away a few years ago, he had to find a new approach to cooking. Unless his children from a prior relationship are visiting for the weekend and except for the occasional dinner with friends, on an average day Jan cooks a meal and eats it alone. Although lonely diners are perceived as a tragedy and it is not easy to cook for one person either, Jan enjoys cooking and doesn’t mind eating alone. Unlike most Dutch people, he doesn’t purchase his groceries in the supermarket either. Jan prefers to shop at the market and in ethnic and specialized stores. He always goes to the same places. Jan is convinced that the owners of market stalls and small stores pay much more attention to the quality and taste of the food than to its appearance. For the past 40 years Jan has done most of his food shopping on a Saturday or a Tuesday. On these days there’s an open-air market on the city’s major square. He’ll take his heavy-duty shopping trolley, walk to the close-by market, and buy a weekly supply of fresh vegetables, fruits, fish, and cheese. Jan also likes to shop at the Turk and the Toko, the Turkish and Indonesian grocery stores, respectively, that are very common in Dutch cities. Occasionally he buys some meat at the butcher, but on a regular basis he goes to the poulterer, where he either buys some French corn-fed chicken or regional-raised country grouse (landhoen).

Albala

Graphic designer Jan de Vries reading while eating home-cooked stir-fried chicken breast with a marinated salad. (Courtesy of Karin Vaneker)

Jan likes to prepare his food with fresh ingredients and from scratch. He doesn’t like to throw food away and always eats whatever he prepares for dinner. What he prepares largely depends on his weekly supply of groceries and the cooking style and cuisine he fancies. Probably because the Asian, and especially Malayan, style of cooking is close to the cuisine of the former Dutch colony of Indonesia, currently he prefers to cook dishes with a Malayan twist. Through reading cookery books and watching shows on television, he discovered that the wok and stir-frying offer many more possibilities to prepare a meal for a person alone than most cuisines. On average Jan will spend 30 minutes in the kitchen to prepare one main dish with a salad, a nutritious soup or a vegetarian bean stew with lentils. Because there’s not much available in the city, on rare occasions he doesn’t cook dinner himself but eats ready-made or takeout food. And as he tries to eat about 10.5 grams of fresh vegetables every day, he stocks his fridge with fennel, broccoli, cos lettuce, tomatoes, spring onions, and other vegetables that will stay fresh longer.

In order to prepare a stir-fried chicken breast with a marinated salad, Jan used ingredients from his pantry, fridge, and kitchen shelves and went to the poulterer to purchase a chicken breast. He prepares his food in the galley kitchen of his ground-floor apartment in a spacious living space, with a huge wooden dinner table opposite the kitchen area, a workspace with two large-screen computers, several bookshelves, and a couch in front of the television and fireplace.

On most days Jan eats his first meal of the day around midday, when he prepares a breakfast of Turkish yogurt with some fresh strawberries and ecological (spelt) muesli. Later in the afternoon he snacks on fruits or cheese; dinner is his second and main meal. He mostly eats his dinner between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. and will either sit down at the dinner table or sit on the couch, and while eating he will read a book or the newspaper or watch television.

Before he starts cooking he always sharpens his one-piece stainless steel Japanese knives on a Japanese water stone and makes a mise en place of the ingredients. For the stir-fried chicken breast with a marinated salad, several knives and most of the ingredients were put on a large wooden cutting board next to the sink. A seasoned carbon steel wok with a wooden handle and a saucepan with a steamer were put on the stove, and a wok spoon, salad spinner, white bowl, and plate were placed on the workspace of his galley kitchen.

When he purchased his apartment, located in a former factory, he bought kitchen components that served his requirements and altered them according to his practical needs. From the countertop to the stove with five burners (one for slow cooking, two regular burners, and a fast burner for a wok), the semiprofessional espresso machine, the coffee mill, the toaster, and seven Japanese knives on a magnetic strip, his self-built kitchen is dominated by a countertop and equipment made from stainless steel. Behind the work top he made a stainless steel shelf for his pepper mill and bottles of oil and vinegar.

Takeout

Takeout is nothing new. The ancient romans had their popinae (food stalls), and many apartments in the ancient world had no cooking facilities. The same was true 19 centuries later in major cities, where people depended on what is the equivalent of takeout. In similar fashion, there are people today, by necessity in thriving sophisticated cities, who never cook food and depend entirely on takeout. Whether this is important is a matter for debate. Arguably, it does take less time and makes cleanup, especially for a family, much easier. On the other hand, such establishments rarely consider health, and takeout usually costs more than cooking from scratch. One undeniable fact is that takeout has greatly expanded familiarity with ethnic cuisines, which are both interesting and usually quite affordable.

Currently Jan uses at least five different types of olive oil, mostly Italian; a bottle of grape seed oil; and four different types of vinegar such as red balsamic, white balsamic, and wine vinegar with tarragon. Beneath the countertop, he stores ingredients such as salt, sugar, flour, and pots and pans in drawers. So apart from making a mise en place, he has easy access to ingredients he might need while cooking. After Jan made a mise en place of the vegetables, he started with the preparations of the marinade for the salad by thinly slicing half a shallot and a quarter of a fennel bulb and cutting a small preserved lemon into small pieces with a medium-sized Japanese knife. He then tore a handful of cos lettuce leaves into pieces and put these in cold water in the bowl of the salad spinner, cleaning the lettuce by hand, occasionally putting a bit of lettuce in his mouth. He twice dried the lettuce in a salad spinner and wrapped it in a clean kitchen towel. And to make it tastier and crunchier, he then put the lettuce in the lower drawer of his refrigerator. Once the salad preparations were finished, he started to clean another shallot and rinse a head of broccoli, a red chili pepper, and spring onions under streaming cold water and dried these with a kitchen towel. Cut into bite-sized pieces, the broccoli florets and peeled and sliced stems were steamed in a saucepan with a bit of water from his boiling water tap. In between he sliced another shallot, cut the red chili pepper into small rings, and together with thinly sliced garlic bulbs put it into a bowl and ground a bit of white pepper on top. He prefers white pepper, because black pepper tends to dominate the color of the dish. Using a small knife, he removed the skin of a small piece of frozen ginger and then used a small stainless steel ginger grater (Japanese, brand Muji) to grate the ginger over the bowl with the onions and chili pepper.

Jan’s style of food preparation and cooking does not involve measuring and spoons and cups. After displaying the ingredients and in between cutting and slicing, he tastes several of the ingredients and judges the right quantity by looking at the cutting board or at the bowls and plates with the ingredients. Before he took the chicken breast out of the refrigerator in his pantry, he took out a yellow plastic cutting board and cleaned a knife. After cutting the chicken breast into pieces he ground white pepper on top, sprinkled them with fine sea salt, scooped some Japanese rice flour from a plastic bag in the palm of his hand, and used his fingers to coat the chicken pieces. In between he stirred and tasted the marinade for the salad with salad cutlery and heated the wok on the fast burner of the stove. Once it was smoking hot, he added two large tablespoons of coconut oil from a jar; while shaking and stirring the wok with a wok spoon, he added the chicken pieces. While stir-frying, Jan paid much attention to their color and tested their resistance and doneness by pressing on the pieces. Once the chicken pieces had a light brown color, he took out a larger piece, cut it in half, looked at the inside color, put it in his mouth, and removed the other pieces from the wok with a wok spoon. After putting the seasoning—shallot, chili pepper, garlic, and ginger—in the wok, within two minutes he added the broccoli. While quickly stir-frying, he added the chicken pieces and pulled out two bottles of soy sauce and oyster sauce from a drawer beneath the stove.

Splashing some sauce in the wok, after tasting the broccoli he added a bit of boiling hot water and gave the dish a final stir and tasting. After the fire was closed and the hood was turned off, he put the stir-fried chicken on a dinner plate and sprinkled the spring onions on top. He then dressed the lettuce with two large tablespoons of marinade and put the dishes on the dinner table, already set with a white plate, knife and fork, a water glass, and a bottle of white Chardonnay wine.

Jan doesn’t like pots and pans and too much fuss on the dinner table. It is only on special occasions that he uses a tablecloth and napkins. Tableware, he believes, should be functional and at the same time look good. Because it is multi-interpretable and most parts can be used as a plate, bowl, or serving dish, for many years in the kitchen and on the dinner table he has used white Arabia tableware (Teema) from the 1950s. Whether it is beer or wine, he prefers to drink from straightforward Itala water glasses designed by the Finnish designer Aino Alto and likes to eat with his simple stainless steel German cutlery. According to Dutch custom, he put a knife on the left side and a fork on the right side of the flat white plate serving as a place mat, and while his left hand was holding a book, he used his right to eat with a fork. Although he used salad cutlery to prepare and stir the salad, he didn’t use it to put salad on his plate but instead ate the salad straight from the salad bowl by pricking it with his fork. Whereas preparing dinner took him about 30 minutes, he ate it in about 10 minutes, on and off taking a sip from his wine. After dinner he put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, inspected the kitchen, cleaned the countertop and dinner table with a cleaning cloth, and went straight back to his computers in his workspace. Living alone for many years and because of his above-average interest in food and cookery books, Jan has a style of food preparation that is superorganized and very functional. Unlike many Dutch people, he isn’t bothered much about cooking a meal for one and eating it alone.

Stir-Fried Chicken Breast with a Marinated Salad

1 person

Marinated Salad

Cos lettuce

½ banana shallot or any shallot variety

1 preserved lemon, walnut-sized

¼ fennel bulb

White pepper

Maldon sea salt

1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1.Prepare the marinade for the cos lettuce by thinly slicing the shallot and fennel and cutting the lemon in thin pieces.

2.Put these in a bowl and grind a bit of white pepper on top.

3.Sprinkle with the balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

4.Mix and set the marinade aside for at least 30 minutes.

5.Meanwhile, clean a handful of cos lettuce leaves with cold water and tear these in rougly 2-inch pieces by hand. Use a salad spinner (tosser) to remove the excess water, dry the pieces with a clean kitchen towel, put the lettuce in the refrigerator loosely wrapped in a kitchen towel.

6.To serve, put the cos lettuce in a salad bowl and sprinkle the marinade over the top. Use salad cutlery to mix the salad.

Stir-Fried Chicken Breast

1 medium (about 6 ounces) chicken breast

1 head of broccoli

1 banana shallot

1 red chili pepper

4 or 5 thin spring onions

2 single garlic bulbs (solo garlic)

½-inch piece of fresh ginger

1 tablespoon soy sauce (all-purpose Kikkoman)

1 tablespoon oyster sauce (Chinese)

Japanese rice flour

White pepper

Fine sea salt

2 tablespoon extra virgin coconut oil

1.Rinse the broccoli, chili pepper, and spring onions under cold, streaming water.

2.Use a sharp knife to cut the stalk of the broccoli; peel and discard the outer skin of the stalk. Cut the stalk in slices and the individual florets in bite-sized pieces.

3.Place the broccoli in a saucepan with a steamer with about an inch of boiling water. Bring to a boil, put the lid on top, and cook the broccoli crisp-tender on medium heat for about 4 minutes, until you can pierce the thickest pieces with a knife.

4.As soon as the broccoli can be pierced with a knife, discard a bit of the water and steam the broccoli for about 1 minute without the lid. Put the broccoli in a bowl.

5.Remove the outer skin of the banana shallot and cut it in thin slices.

6.Cut the chili pepper in very small rings.

7.Remove the outer skin of the garlic bulbs, cut the bulbs in half, and slice very thinly.

8.Put the chili pepper and garlic on top of the broccoli.

9.Use a sharp knife to peel the ginger, then use a fine grater to grate the ginger on top of the broccoli. Grind a bit of white pepper over the top and sprinkle with a pinch of salt.

10.Put the chicken breast on a plastic cutting board. Use a clean sharp knife to cut it (horizontally) in bite-size pieces. Grind a bit of white pepper over the pieces and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Sprinkle Japanese rice flour over the chicken pieces and mix by hand until all the pieces are covered with flour.

11.Heat the wok over very high heat, add the coconut oil, and stir-fry the chicken pieces about 4 minutes until light brown. Use a slotted spoon to remove the pieces from the wok and set aside.

12.Add the broccoli, shallot, chili pepper, garlic, and ginger to the wok and stir-fry for about 2 minutes over high heat.

13.Add the chicken pieces, stir, add the soy and oyster sauce, and stir well. Eventually add 1 or 2 tablespoons of boiling water.

14.Put the stir-fried chicken on a plate, sprinkle with the spring onions, and serve immediately.

Meal prepared by Bert van der Veen, Enschede, the Netherlands.