While on the topic of food, and the Dutch habit of combining walking and eating, I'd like to talk about kibbeling. Kibbeling is deep fried battered fish (usually cod), served in bite sized chunks and accompanied by either tartar sauce or garlic sauce. (You'll notice a trend emerging in which Dutch people use food as an excuse to smother it in sauce. It's not about the food, but you look a bit - let's say - odd standing around drinking garlic sauce straight from the bottle.)
I'm not sure where the name originates, although there is a Dutch word "kibbelen", which means bickering. Which I don't want to do about this. Kibbeling is contagious. If you see one person eating kibbeling, very soon others will follow. And more others. Before you know it, whole town squares are overtaken by people who stand around stuffing themselves with battered fish (no such thing as a home for battered fish in the Netherlands), and liberally dropping sauce on their clothes (which owing to its greasy nature never will come out).
In fact, kibbeling is like a culinary (I'm using the term loosely) black hole, absorbing all human life in it's vicinity. Now, I can hear you thinking (but I'm being medicated for that) "is kibbeling really good?" No. Without sauce it tastes like soggy battered and deep fried styrofoam. As a matter of fact, I think that using surplus styrofoam and preparing like kibbeling and serving it doused in garlic sauce would fool the majority of customers and get rid of stuff that doesn't biodegrade and ends up choking dolphins.
We shall therefore add kibbeling to the category of Dutch food products that make no sense to me. I mean - the French fries are usually pretty good here, although they're actually Belgian (and another popular vehicle for sauce). I can understand why someone would eat stroopwafels. But kibbeling is to me as incomprehensible as (more about that later) gestampte muisjes. If you must eat kibbeling - wear a rain slicker or a hefty bag, and don't do it in front of me. Nuff said.
No comments:
Post a Comment