Ingrediënten
Serves four:
- salad greens
- oil, vinegar, pepper, salt, sugar
- 500 ml milk
- 400 g grated young Gouda cheese, preferably farm house**
- 20 g potato starch or corn starch
- 1 glass of Dutch brandy
- pepper, nutmeg
- 500 g young potatoes
Zuid-Hollandse kaasdoop. Eating at my grandmother Jannigje’s farm, was always a feast for us children. No prescriptions for fork and knife and where you had to keep your hands, just pick up a hot potato* from the pan and dip it into the pipkin with fat. Yes in the style of the famous van Gogh painting, but happily. A real feast was the cheese dip, made with her wonderful cheese – she was one of the best cheese makers in the province – eaten with small new potatoes and a green salad. So for the right taste you need a young farmhouse Gouda, made from raw milk.
- First wash and dry the salad leaves. Prepare a Dutch dressing, in which always a pinch of sugar. It is rumoured that this was to save oil, but no, it is just that Dutch love a sweet taste. Pour the dressing over the salad in a bowl. Wait until the dip is ready before mixing.
- Bring the milk to the boil in a heavy based saucepan and stir in the cheese little by little. On very low heat stir until the cheese has melted.
- Blend the starch with the brandy, stir into the cheese sauce until it thickens.
- Season with pepper and nutmeg, place the pan on a rechaud and dip hot potatoes in it with a fork.
- Serve with the salad and more brandy.
* This way of eating is the origin of the saying ‘he speaks with a hot potato in his mouth’ when somebody has an affected pronunciation of the Dutch language, as in The Hague.
** When in the Netherlands you can visit cheese farms. There is brochure with addresses, where you are shown the whole process and buy the cheeses. Of course farmhouse cheese is also for sale in supermarkets.