An Autumn Recipe - Boerenkool Stamppot

Here in the Netherlands, summer salads are making way for richer fare, which are making their way into the markets and on the menus as the autumn and winter vegetables come into season. Yesterday I discovered a tried and true Dutch recipe for the cold weather. Let's just consider this Holland's answer to bangers and mash.  It is rich, filling and positively delicious.


Boerenkool Stamppot

2 lbs floury potatoes, peeled and quartered
1/2 lb of kale, cleaned and chopped
1 clove garlic, whole
1 smoky sausage (in Dutch, it is called rookworst)
3/4 c milk
1 Tbls butter
2 Tsp honey
1/4 tsp Dijon, or to taste
salt and pepper

When you live in a foreign country and someone at the market is nice enough to put all the ingredients for a traditional dish in a handy bucket like this for you, even sticking the name of the dish on the sticker on top, it's pretty much a sign from above that you need to google that action and have it for dinner. Or so I figured.

1) Put the potatoes, garlic and kale together in a slow cooker and cover with water.  Season with salt.  Cook until you have time to make dinner.

2) Cut the sausage and fry to a nice golden, brown.

3) Drain the vegetables, add milk and butter and mash thoroughly.  Mix in the honey, mustard and season to taste.

4) Divide the mash between 4 plates and top with sausages.  Enjoy!



*This recipe is a bit of a modern take on what is a very traditional vegetable mash.  While the stamppot is prepared by cooking the vegetables together, as is the more traditional method, the addition or honey and Dijon is something new.  Also, frying the sausages separately is more Belgian than Dutch.  For more information on stamppots, or to find a few different variations, take a look at this.

Halloween

It is no secret that we Americans go about things with gusto.  Funny enough, I've had plenty of conversations with people, American and otherwise, who see this as both a strength and a weakness, and when it comes to Halloween, I'm inclined to agree.  I love watching Autumn roll in and breaking out the sweaters and boots and watching steam rise out of thermoses as whistles blow at football games, but I feel a bit conflicted about Halloween.  I love the idea that, for one night a year, we give our children permission to mingle with neighbors, many of whom we will only ever see or talk to on October 31st.  I love the eager giggles at classroom parties, and the opportunity for creativity conceiving of costumes gives the kids. What I'm not so crazy about is the fact that usually, by the time porch lights go off on Halloween night, parents and kids are beyond exhausted and ready to tear the hair out of each others coordinating wigs. (Or so it usually goes at our house.)

That's why I was relieved by our first Halloween in the Netherlands.  Any guesses how many costumes were to be found in the stores? Exactly 2. And they are both related to Christmas.  As for trick-or-treaters, we had a grand total of zero, unless you count our kids.  Or my husband. Twice.  Walking through our village, Halloween looked exactly like any other autumn day.  There were pumpkins at the store.  Last month. They sold all 15 of them and now I can find them at an apple orchard or a restaurant supply store.  My youngest and I went to the orchard and bought the two largest they had.  They were pie pumpkins, and when the family sat down to carve them the night before Halloween the walls were so dense we could barely get a hand into the tall one to clear the seeds out. The four-year-old had to do that on his own. And guess what.  We loved it!

We sat down on Halloween and watched Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin without interruption, then celebrated with trick-or-treating on Saturday with some friends who live in the "American neighborhood." And this was no ordinary trick-or-treating, people.  About 15 houses volunteer to host, a limited number of tickets are sold, and the proceeds from the tickets pay for decorations and candy so that each house is decked out with fog machines or lights or haunted houses.  Each group is given a map of participating houses and sent off in different directions. It was a great time to be with friends, wear costumes and enjoy a Halloween on which no one had to stay home to answer the door.  And as for class parties, a committee of parents put together lovely after-school parties for the children, so instead of 5 parents from each class pouring their evenings over Pinterest trying to come up with clever games and snacks and crafts, a team of parents from across the school did it for two groups (big kids and little kids) and everyone had a great time. Best of all is the fact that, for the first time in several years, I have survived Halloween with enough remaining energy to revel in preparations for Thanksgiving. 

Life on the Farm

The two horses belonged to our neighbor who raises horses until they are old enough to ride at 3 years.

In some ways, it seems like yesterday that we sat with friends in the summer shade of giant oak trees trying to imagine what life would look like after our move from the States, and yet we've managed to fill these last 3 1/2 months with more moments of bliss and doubt than seems possible in an entire lifetime. Plenty of those moments have happened standing before great buildings or in the streets of great cities, but the dearest have come in our garden or on the farm, or on the cobbled lanes of the country villages that we now call home.

This shy couple (expecting a baby this April) shares their pond beneath the willow tree with the resident duck families,
who have migrated south for the winter

The change of seasons is upon us, and nowhere is that more evident than in the countryside, where tractors have been buzzing about like bees near the hive, making barren the corn-padded fields and opening up the landscape so we can see farms for miles until they bump up against the forests on the Belgian border, which is just a 10 mile drive from our house.

The land we live on belongs to a gentleman farmer who lives with his wife in the charming little village up the road, and spends a few hours each day in his workshop and in the stables with his 12 miniature horses.  During the summer, the horses feed solely on the grass grown in the farm's four pastures, and in fall and winter their diets are supplemented with hay and pellet feed, giving them more energy and time to run around or, as is the case with the four dairy cows in the field beside us, lay around. Three of the horses are pregnant and expecting foals sometime in April, and the two spring horses from this year have grown tremendously since we moved in.  Just about 2 months ago, a sweet-tempered young white colt name Denzel joined the others as a lodger of sorts, bringing the population to 13, and giving my eldest child a new favorite pet, which would come as a blow to the rooster who shares his coop with 6 hens if he had the sense to understand that this means he was once favorite at all. Or perhaps he does and that would explain his crowing every time we walk past him this week.

 

And the rooster is not the only animal in the neighborhood who has been vocal lately.  Last Monday, as the farmer was out working the field of feed grass across the street, the four dairy cows were insistent with their mooing, even going so far as trying to run alongside the tractor a time or two. It was two days of constant mooing. And my, how loud that is. And it has taken this long for these cityslickers to understand that there is good reason that young goats are called kids. Because I spent half the weekend trying to figure out whether our youngest was calling for his dad or the goats were going at it.  Same sound.

The field adjacent to our house.
This irrigation ditch is infamous in our family as one of the children has taken a dramatic bike trip into its depths. Once.

Last Saturday I came out the front door to find two men with shotguns and hunting dog in the field across from the house.  Unlike our suburban neighborhood in the States, loud pops in the night in the month of October do not mean teenagers with fireworks, they mean hunting season is in full swing.  Men are seen across the Netherlands with rabbit or duck hanging from their belts, and the gunshots at night usually mean wild boar, which we have been told to watch for on menus. In order to hold a hunting license in Holland, one must prove in court that he or she has land enough to hunt on, which means farmers in the fields with shotguns and ducks who choose to migrate that day.

Like creatures all across the Northern Hemisphere, we are busy preparing for winter, gathering walnuts from the two prolific trees in the back garden, collecting twigs and leaves and pinecones along with all of the other trophies of autumn, and enjoying leisurely weekend bike rides through the leaves with the luscious scent of woodfire in the air.  Enjoy the crisp air and a mug of cider!

How It Begins

At the start of any good film about an American abroad there is always some matter of discord; a failed marriage, a career in ruins, or a general sense of directionlessness in life. This was not the case for us. 

The morning that my husband was offered a job in the Netherlands, my younger son and I enjoyed time in the Pacific Northwest sun (the power of which you can not understand without experiencing first hand) with friends while my daughter sat with her very best friends at their school, which happens to be one of the best in the state. We were blessed. The children were thriving at school and with the security of friendships and access to family, and I felt very fulfilled by meaningful friendships of my own, as well as the civic and creative outlets our way of life afforded me. And my husband was just past halfway through an MBA program which was already delayed by a move from the Midwest a few years prior. Really, after years of moving around, we considered our roots to be planted and had no intention of starting all over again.  Then came the offer...

It's easy to walk away from something when it's not going well, but it is hard not to get carried away with doubt when what you leave behind is good. It takes faith. Faith that the God who has blessed us before will be with us still. Faith that part of being blessed is choosing gratefulness. Faith that choosing opportunity and not fear is a wise decision. And that's why we're here.

Three months later, after endless phone calls and emails and form after form - after numerous trips to the ups store and government offices - we stepped off an airplane to a warm Amsterdam morning and our adventure began. 

Where we live:

We live just outside a small country village an hour and a half south of Amsterdam. Our home is a farmhouse (more modern than traditional) surrounded by beautiful gardens with trees for climbing and flowers for picking most of the year round, and our gardens are adjacent to the rest of the farm which serves as home for 12 miniature horses, four hens, a rooster, several doves and three duck families which live in the pond outside our kitchen window.  In the surrounding fields live three dairy cows, two (full size) horses, plenty of roosters (or so my ears tell me) and a handful of goats.

The village market, which has been more or less inhabited for 3000 years, is surrounded by restaurants and shops, an ice cream parlor, a small sanctuary and a gazebo which hosts live musicians on the weekends. It is a charming hub of Dutch activity, and, when combined with the beauties of the farm, proved an irresistible argument for living in the country for the three or so years we're here.

I will begin to post photographs and vignettes of our little life here in the days and weeks to come, when our computer and camera arrive. Thanks for stopping by.

Tot ziens!