Where the French eat lunch in a restaurant, Spaniards eat extensively before their siesta and Swedes bring leftovers from the night before to work, many Dutch eat a sandwich with cheese. Off the cuff, often behind the desk.
In the final episode of Regions from Van Boven Yvette van Boven delves into the typically Dutch phenomenon of cheese sandwich.
In the third series of her AvroTros programme, the cheerful chef focused on the origins and future of Dutch dishes. After, among other things, the Limburg sour meat ( zoervleisj ), the success numbers of the Chinese-Indisch restaurant and the avg’tje is the dessert, in the last episode, perhaps the most Dutch bite: the cheese sandwich.
According to Van Boven, this symbolizes our well-known practical nature and efficiency. “Does well for breakfast, but is also the star of our lunch.” The cheese sandwich for lunch became popular after the rise of industrialization. When the commuting distance for many people became too great to have a hot meal at home, the lunchbox under the bungee cords made its appearance.
Cheese has been a regular part of the meal here for centuries
According to the Knowledge Center for Intangible Heritage, the first Dutch cheese barrels date back to the Iron Age, around 800 BC. In the Middle Ages, cheese was an integral part of the normal citizen’s meals. The peasants and serfs often ate this on rye bread and drank milk with it. The rich, the nobility and the clergy ate wheat bread.
The cook Iwan Kriens from The Hague made an attempt in 1915 to introduce the cheese sandwich to England when there was a shortage of eggs there during the First World War. ‘A sandwich with some slices of thinly sliced cheese is a favorite breakfast in the Netherlands. It’s worth trying it out, for example with Cheddar’, he tipped in a newspaper. But this suggestion was not received with open arms on the other side of the North Sea.
In Regions from Van Boven Van Boven examines this national phenomenon with the help of baker Gerard, miller Sven, cheese curator Marike and farmer Theo. How did the most sold bread in the Netherlands become the boring square tin bread and not a floor bread? ‘The Dutch don’t want to chew, but suck up the bread,’ explains the baker. Are blaarkops, a low-maintenance breed of cattle, the secret to really good farm butter? And does the secret of delicious Leiden cheese lie in the use of whole milk and buttermilk?
The simple cheese sandwich becomes a chic one at Madame Van Boven croquette Yvette
Accompanied by her inseparable dog Hughie, she makes a cheese sandwich in this episode, but a ‘genteel’ one. No croque monsieur (with ham), or Croque Madame (with a mirror egg) only one croquette Yvette using two different cheeses and onion jam.
And she comes up with an original idea with the cheese curator Marike: they imitate a still life by the Belgian artist Clara Peeters from 1615. With a day-old very young cheese made by Van Boven, it looks a lot more attractive than what the average employee fishes out of his drum these days.
Monday, NPO 2, 8.30 p.m