Burt Wolf's Table: Holland - #218

BURT WOLF:  Holland -- the country that was created by its people when they reclaimed their land from the sea. It's the place to see the paintings of Dutch artists like Rembrandt and Van Gogh and find out what they are eating in those paintings.  We'll discover why Holland produces some of the world's best fruits and vegetables, and we’ll trace the creation of cheese right up to today's market in Gouda. So join me in Holland at Burt Wolf's Table.

WOLF:  The two most powerful forces in the history of Holland are wind and water. For over a thousand years, the people living in this part of the world have had an amazing ability to take advantage of these two forces.  Perhaps the most obvious example is the windmill.

WOLF:  The Dutch used windmills to turn the pumps that drew the water off the land, over the dikes, and back to the sea.  Much of Holland’s actual land surface was created by windpower moving water.  The farmland that evolved from this system formed the basis for Holland's extensive agricultural and dairy industries. It was also windpower that moved the Dutch ships across the surface of the seas during the 1600's and made Holland the most powerful trading nation of the time, and the absolute center of commerce and culture.  During the early 1600's there was an extraordinary expansion in worldwide trade. In  Europe just about everybody who had a boat wanted to push off for some distant port in the hope of buying something there and bringing it back home and selling it for big bucks. For the Dutch, it created a giant worldwide trading empire -- and back home in Holland, an enormous amount of money. A lot of that money was used to commission works of art. Art that the Dutch appreciated in terms of aesthetics, but that they also considered to be a great commercial investment -- and boy, were they right.

WOLF:  Holland's golden age of the 1600's was the time of Rembrandt -- not a bad investment -- and Van Dyke, Franz Hals and Vermeer. These works can give us a detailed picture of what Dutch life was like at the time, especially when it comes to food.  The Dutch masters have left us a picture of the period's menu: cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, fish, beer.  The same foods and drink that make up the traditional meals of today's Dutch family. Very often the way a food was shown was meant to tell a story. The Merry Family by Jan Steen looks like a great Sunday afternoon lunch with the kids -- but when you look at it closely you see that the children are following the bad habits of their parents: drinking, smoking, overeating. The painting is actually a warning against weak morals, a seventeenth- century cry for improved family values. The Dutch love of art has continued, and so has their ability to produce some of the world's finest painters. 

WOLF:  Vincent Van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853 and died in 1890. Almost all of his paintings were made during the 1880's, and though he was able to sell only a few of his works during his lifetime, his paintings have since become the most valuable in the international art market. In 1990 a Van Gogh sold for more than eighty million dollars. In the center of Amsterdam is the Van Gogh Museum, built to make his works available to the public. Over one hundred Van Gogh works are on continual exhibition.  Food has always been an important subject for Dutch painters and Van Gogh was no exception. This still life of apples and pears was a color study producing a completely yellow picture.  He also presented people eating and drinking in cafes and one of his favorite works was The Potato Eaters.

LOUIS VAN TILBORGH: He...he tried to do something with the light which is...very difficult.  I mean he... from the beginning...

WOLF:  Louis VanTilburg is the curator of the museum's Van Gogh collection.

VAN TILBORGH:  The Potato Eaters is an important painting because it's actually the first mature painting that Van Gogh really made. Before that time, that means from l880 until '80...'85... he made more or less studies. He didn't make... pictures which he thought were good enough for the market... for the art market. He was just learning the trade more or less, and with The Potato Eaters he first thought that he could launch own career... artistically and commercially. He thought that he could send it to...to an exhibition in Paris and could present himself with that picture to... art dealers.

WOLF:  It doesn't have any of the bright colors that so many of us expect in a Van Gogh.

VAN TILBORGH:  He... always like to exaggerate.  He did that in France and he also did that in Holland and in Holland at that time... gay colors were not in fashion but dark colors were, that he exaggerated.  I mean if you would compare  his pictures to the pictures of his... of his colleagues at the time... his... his pictures are much more...darker ...even...even more to say black.

This pic... picture... if you very... look very carefully at the... the hands... the way it is constructed it's very... I mean the people are sitting there... cramped. They're not looking at each other.  For instance, the lady on the right has to pour coffee.  Someone has to... take a fork and take in the potato. It's all very clear... very defined but as a total... it's not sensible at all because there is talk at a table.  They interact and they do that... don't do that in that picture and... I think he himself was aware of the fact that he did not succeed in that, because he never made a picture like this any more... five persons around the table that... was too... too difficult for him.

WOLF:  The fact that they were using potatoes to make an entire meal is an interesting reminder of how important the potato was to the European peasant farmer.  During the seventeen and eighteen hundreds it was very often the only food they had, and because of its high nutritional content, was actually enough to keep them alive. For Van Gogh, the peasant and the potato were examples of a purer and simpler lifestyle, but in the case of the potato that's only true if you leave off the sour cream.

Vincent Van Gogh painted The Potato Eaters  in 1885 and regarded the work as one of his best. He believed that the peasant was in many ways better than the more sophisticated people in the city and that there were lessons to be learned from them. When it comes to cooking, that may very well be true. There are a lot of things going on in the simple foods of the European farmer than can teach us a lesson about good cooking. 

Robert Kranenborg, the executive chef at Amsterdam's Amstel Hotel, has used Van Gogh's painting of The Potato Eaters as a starting point for a Dutch potato recipe.  Thin discs of potatoes and onions are overlapped in a heatproof serving dish.  A broth is made from chicken stock and a few juniper berries, an optional ingredient; if you have some and you like the flavor of gin,put 'em in.  In goes a bay leaf, a few slices of fresh ginger, five minutes of simmering, a tablespoon of mustard, then through a strainer and onto the potatoes and onions until they're almost submerged.  Then into a three hundred and seventy five degree fahrenheit oven for fifteen minutes.  And it's ready to serve. 

WOLF:  When Van Gogh lived in Paris during the 1880's, he would often pay for his meals at the local cafe by giving the owner a painting of flowers or food which was then used to decorate the restaurant. One of my favorite paintings of food by Van Gogh is The Flowerpot With Chives that he painted in Paris during the spring of 1887. 

VAN TILBORGH:  It...it shows you a...how Van Gogh's interested in little details...small, interesting details of...life. You see...just a simple pot with chives in it and that's...that's all....not more, not less but that's what it shows and... many people would think that it's easy to paint something like that. It isn't.  For instance, you have painters who... want to... are looking for motives and it's very difficult to find motives. You've got to artists ... art history can prove to you... that who are... go out the door and think “now I'll motive to paint” and they do not find it  because they're not actually satisfied with what they're finding. It does not fit. Van Gogh was not that kind of person. He went out.  He did see something and immediately his easel was there and then he painted it and that is...shows something of his remarkable attitude I think to life and nature. It was for him very easy at finding motives in real life and this is one of them because it's such a charming picture.

WOLF:  KLM Chef Paulo Arpasanna was inspired by this work and responded by creating a chicken recipe with chives.  Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are cut into bite-sized pieces and mixed with a little rosemary and garlic. A few tablespoons of oil are heated in a saute pan.  Some chopped onion goes in and cooks for two minutes. Then the chicken pieces.  When the chicken is browned, it comes out and it's held aside. Back in the same pan:  two cups of sliced mushrooms, half cup of white wine, a couple of tomatoes in their juices. The chicken returns to the pot. A little cream or milk.  Fresh chives are cut from a plant with a scissor and added to the recipe.  Onto the plate and it's ready to serve.

WOLF:  About an hour's drive into the Dutch countryside from Amsterdam is the small village of Zundert.  This is the building that put Zundert on the map. Zundert is where Vincent Van Gogh grew up and did his early work. They even have a small museum dedicated to him.  The museum has a small collection of things that relate to the period when Van Gogh lived in Zundert, as well as his other years in Holland.  Van Gogh made a number of drawings that showed the landscape and the people of the village. He was fascinated by the life of the peasant farmers who worked the land, and there are many drawings that depict them at work in the fields and in their homes.

Certainly a fitting tribute but the sweetest tribute of all is just down the street at the Luijckx [“Likes”] Chocolate Factory. Almost every morning you will find the shiny steel tank-truck outside the building, a tank-truck filled with twenty thousand gallons of the finest chocolate.  Chocolate that goes into the building to be molded. The free-flowing chocolate is poured into molds moving along a track. They're shaken to take out any air bubbles, then flipped so the form has only a thin coating. It's turned again and weighed to make sure it holds the proper amount. The chocolate cools and hardens to become little cups but the Luijckx system can form just about anything.  A substantial part of their business comes from producing special designs, things for Christmas, Easter, McChocolates, and the local specialty -- a reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait in chocolate. This is great stuff. It nourishes the mind and the body at the same time and it does it either in milk or semi-sweet chocolate. How few works of art can make that claim?

WOLF:  The idea of decorating a cake or forming it into a sculpture goes back for thousands of  years.  For centuries, cake makers and sugar workers were considered more as architects or builders than bakers. This is the preliminary design for the wedding cake at the marriage of the Princess Royal of Britain to Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia.  All of these designs were great to look at but murder to construct.  But modern technology has changed that.  Machines have been invented that mass produce many of the forms used by serious bakers, and Luijckx Chocolate pioneered much of the technology.

They're able to make a mold in almost any shape. The mold becomes the basis for a process that's very similar to that used for making pottery, another Dutch specialty.  The mold is either filled or coated with chocolate, and then the shape comes off.  From then on it's up to the cake decorator. A chocolate cup gets filled with whipped cream, soft ice cream or frozen yogurt; then a disc of cake goes on top.  The cup is flipped over and a touch of whipped cream goes on, a decoration of chocolate and a few slices of fruit. The pastry specialist starts with discs of cake that he coats with whipped cream, covers with chocolate blossoms and decorates with chocolate shapes and fruit. 

One day back in 1887 a Dutch farmer took a boatload of his cauliflower to town. He tied up at the town market and got ready to do some business. Unfortunately cauliflower was not on anybody's menu that day, and so he developed a new way of selling his entire boatload of cauliflower.  He announced that he would yell out a price for the entire boatload. Nobody made a bid.  He would come up with a lower price a few seconds later.  The first one to respond got the whole boatload -- and that is how the Dutch Fruit and Vegetable Auction System got started. Today the farmer yelling out his ever-decreasing price has been replaced with a computer, and the purchasers have buttons next to their seats to signal their purchase.  Farmers bring in their products, each is checked for quality, which is a primary responsibility of the system, a particular batch is selected and the auction begins.  The buyer wants the price to  go down as far as possible but there is always the danger that a competitive buyer will press his button first, purchase the lot and force you to go home without the product that you need. Talk about a job with pressure.  So next time you taste a Dutch endive or tomato or pepper, remember that it was a man with nerves of steel that made it possible.

(SOUND OF MEN AT AUCTION.)

WOLF:  Holland's central location between Germany, France and England has made it a major export area for many centuries, particularly in the area of agriculture. The Dutch produce over a hundred and twenty vegetables for export as well as home use.  Chef Robert Kranenborg is well known for his Dutch vegetable cookery and he has some good tips for vegetable cooking in general.

WOLF:  How did you get into that?

ROBERT KRANENBORG:  Well vegetables ... I... I love to do fish but to give... to add to fish... beautiful flavors you come to... do herbs and vegetables and people are always thinking that in Holland we eat a lot of vegetables but vegetables are always a garnish with fish or meat and it's never or... very less in function of the taste of the fish and meat.  So that's why I... I specialize myself in vegetables and to give the flavor... the taste of each vegetable has to go with something and it is not only a garnish which you can put with everything.

WOLF:  What are some of the tips that I should know as a vegetable cook?

KRANENBORG:  The cutting of the... of the vegetable is very important. If you want it... crispy you have to cut it thin and cook very less and if you... not blanch always the... the... the vegetables because... you... you lose a lot  of... of... of flavor into the water. Steaming it...

WOLF:  And nutrients.

KRANENBORG:  Yeah and nutrients... vitamins... and... steaming... steaming... vegetables can be very good or... just... stir-fry.

WOLF:  When I was flying into Amsterdam I noticed acres and acres of greenhouses. How did that business get started?

KRANENBORG:  Well it is all about weather who... make changes... who  changes everything.

WOLF:  Right.

KRANENBORG:  And in a little country ...which a lot of people are living... we're very democratic and we want everybody to have tomatoes, endive... or bell, bell peppers. We have too less... too less beautiful weather to grow that... in season. So we wanted to have more of that the whole year.  So we started to build greenhouses and to cultivate with... with temperature and... and... moisture... controlling.

WOLF:  So it gave you a lot of control over the environment.

KRANENBORG:  Over the environment.

WOLF:  It's a lot like building the dikes.

KRANENBORG:  No, no, no.

WOLF:  (LAUGHS) The question I hear most often is when you get the green vegetables, do you cover them or uncover them when you cook 'em?

KRANENBORG:  Yeah, that's a rule.  Green vegetables... don't put a cover on green vegetables when you blanch them and what is very important that you have to... to salt the water in green vegetables.

WOLF:  Why?

KRANENBORG:  It keeps the color. It keeps the color very good and... it is... it is necessary to have... to have it not...without salt.  It is... better, better taste. 

WOLF:  What are your favorite vegetables?

KRANENBORG:  Oh my favorite vegetables is sweet... sweet bell pepper. I can do everything with that.

WOLF:  The Dutch are famous for their sweet bell peppers that they grow in dozens of different colors, and they grow them in hothouses. This recipe starts with a red bell pepper that's peeled, cut into big flat strips and cooked in oil for about ten minutes until it's soft. A little vegetable oil is heated in a saute pan and in goes a half cup of chopped red pepper, half cup of chopped onion, a sliced tomato with the seeds removed, a little water and a clove of garlic. That's covered and simmered for seven minutes.  And into another pan: a little oil, strips of fennel or celery, leeks, eggplant, mushrooms, carrots, cilantro, coriander, tarragon.  That simmers for seven minutes. A heatproof baking pan is used for the final assembly.  In go the flat strips of red pepper, then a layer of the cooked vegetable strips, more red pepper, more vegetable strips, more red pepper. That's heated in a three hundred and fifty degree oven for three minutes.  A mixture of onions and peppers and tomatoes go into a blender for sixty seconds.  The layered peppers come out of the oven onto a serving plate and the sauce on top. That's it.

Holland's mild climate, high quality marshy soil, and regular rainfall promote the year-round growth of excellent grass, grass which in turn produces excellent cattle, cattle that have been used to produce milk for at least four thousand years and cheese for a least a thousand.  The country's natural waterways played a big part in the development of the cheese business. Almost every farmer had a waterway touching some point on his land.  When his cheese was made, he would load it onto a barge and sail off to market.  It could have been a small town just down the canal from his farm or he could join up with a major river like the Rhine and end up selling his cheese in France or Germany. Because the Dutch sailors were such good navigators, they were able to develop a coastal trade and end up selling their cheeses as far south as Portugal and Spain.  At  one point in time, cheese became so valuable that it was used a form of money -- but it was very difficult to keep any small change in your pocket.

Over the years the technology of cheese making has changed some, but the story is more or less the same. Today Holland is the world's largest exporter of cheese. It ships out millions and millions of pounds of cheese each year.  So if you want to get an accurate picture of the history of the Dutch, just say cheese.

The Denboer family farm has been here in Holland for at least three hundred years. The land was reclaimed from the sea and a giant dike stands right behind the farmhouse, just in case the sea ever tries to get it  back. The Denboers raise their own cows and use the milk to produce cheese in the most traditional of  Dutch farmhouse methods.  The milk goes into a large tub.  An enzyme from the lining of a calf's stomach called rennet is added to the milk. The rennet causes the milk solids, called the curd, to separate from the liquid, called the whey.  The milk solids are taken out and placed into a form. Pressure is added to squeeze out additional liquid and give the cheese its shape. At that point the  cheese is submerged in a brine bath, really just salted water but it adds flavor to the cheese... and the cheese comes out of the bath and sits on the shelf to mature for two weeks.  At that point the cheese is ready to go to market.  Cheese is just an ancient method for preserving the valuable nutrients in milk.  All of the calcium and protein that's in the milk is not in the cheese but it's in there in a concentrated form. It takes about ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese, and in moderation, cheese is an excellent source of nutrients.

WOLF:  It's pronounced "houda" in Dutch and Gouda in English. It's the name of the most famous cheese produced in Holland, and it's also the name of the town where the cheese was originally developed.  Starting in the 1200s, if you lived in a Dutch town, you wanted that town  to have weighing rights; that is, the right to weigh the cheeses made by the local farmers and put the town's official seal of approval on those cheeses. It was the equivalent of today having a major league football franchise.  Big deal stuff.  And as soon as your town got weighing rights, it got a weigh house in which the activity was conducted, like building your own stadium.  Gouda got theirs in 1668.  It's right across the street from the city hall, which just serves to point out the importance of the cheese business to the town fathers. Most of the cheese exported from Holland is named after the towns from which it comes. Edam: skimmed milk, mild flavors, smooth texture, easy to spot because it usually comes in a red ball. Masdam: it's Holland's answer to Swiss cheese with a mild, nutty flavor.  And of course gouda: starts mild and creamy but becomes more robust the longer it's aged.  So check the cheese to make sure it has the town seal on it.  That's the only way to be sure it's gouda enough.

WOLF:  This the VanLoon House in Amsterdam, built in 1602. This is the master bedroom, the small bedroom, the painted room, the drawing room, the dining room, the smoking room, the garden room, no bathrooms, but a splendid garden and a coach house behind, with fake windows on the first floor. Curtains were painted on the glass windows so the coachman and his family couldn't look into the garden. These days it's a museum. 

It's also available for private parties. About twenty years ago KLM, the Royal Dutch Airline of Holland, figured out that they were throwing a dinner party every day for about forty thousand people. Just happened that that party was on board their airplanes.  Well, they couldn't hold on to all of that knowledge and keep it private so they opened up KLM Party Services. It's a catering operation that'll throw a party for you anywhere in Holland.  And because it's an airline, they'll fly your guests in from anywhere in the world. They'll do a big bash for twenty thousand businessmen or they'll do a small private candlelit party just for two in this romantic museum.  One thing, however, that they do feel very, very strongly about: during the romantic candlelit dinner for two, you must keep your seat belt lightly fastened at all times.

The VanLoon Museum is a fascinating restoration of a private home as it was in Amsterdam during the 1700's.  The dining room has a two-hundred-and-forty-piece Amstel china service, particularly impressive because it was purchased before the invention of the dishwashing machine.  Portraits of the VanLoon brothers as newlyweds with their wives... the perfect setting for a romantic supper.  And if you come to dinner here, one of the KLM master chefs like Paulo Arpasanna will cook any menu that you like.  Today he's preparing a Dutch cheese soup.

A little butter goes into a pot, followed by a cup of sliced leeks and two cups of peeled new potatoes. Two cups of sliced broccoli stalks, six cups of chicken stock. Cover goes on... and the soup simmers for twenty minutes.  Then the broccoli flowerettes go in for the last two minutes of cooking... nto the blender... touch of cream or  milk, back into the pot to heat up. While that's happening, a wedge of Dutch cheese is cut from a baby wheel and grated.  About a cup of  gouda or edam goes into the soup.  Stir that for a minute then into a bowl, a little garnish  and it's finished.

WOLF:  One of the reasons for all of the good food here in Holland was the Dutch approach to their colonies during the sixteen- and seventeen-hundreds.  When the English, French or Spanish would develop a colony, many of their citizens would move in and stay there.  But not the Dutch. They loved their home country too much. They would go to their colonies, do their business and come home.  And when they came home, they brought the best of that colony’s cooking with them. 

WOLF:  Please join us next time as we travel around the world looking for things that taste good and make it easier to eat well.  I'm Burt Wolf.

Burt Wolf's Table: Amsterdam - #203

BURT WOLF:  Amsterdam, one of the world's most beautiful and romantic cities. We'll tour the town's canals... discover the traditional foods... visit one of the finest hotels ever built... and learn some easy but great tasting Dutch recipes. Plus we'll discover the six-thousand-year- old secret that made beer drinking popular around the world.   So join me in Amsterdam at Burt Wolf's Table.

WOLF:  Some time during the 1100s, a group of herring fishermen settled near here along the Amstel River. That community eventually became the city of Amsterdam. So I think it's only fair to say that from the very beginning, the story of Amsterdam has been the story of something good to eat.  But the real golden age of Amsterdam was the 1600s.  Amsterdam was Europe's center for business as well as its cultural capital. It all started in 1595 when a Dutch trading ship landed in what was then called the East Indies: Indonesia, Bali, Java, Borneo, Sumatra; lands which produced some of the world's most valuable spices. Those were the places that Columbus had been looking for, and when the Dutch got there they took control of a spice trade to Europe that made many Dutchman wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Actually, those dreams weren't very wild at all, because even then the Dutch were very structured and not showy. Much of the wealth from that spice trade was used to build homes along the canals of Amsterdam. Amsterdam was actually put  together by connecting islands with about five hundred bridges and most citizens get around on bicycles. The town has only seven hundred and fifty thousand people but a million bikes. You could, if you want, get from place to place just as well by boat.

Thomas Schmidt is the executive assistant manager of Amsterdam's Amstel Hotel. He borrowed one of the hotel's boats so we could take a tour of the city... a tour with two objectives:  first, to see the traditional sights, and second, to stop along the way and eat the traditional foods.

THOMAS SCHMIDT:  And here you have a very typical bridge...which is still operating.  If a boat passes through here, there are two bridge guards who will open up the bridge to you; every time you pass a bridge and he takes a bicycle and drives along the channel, opens the bridge and then he goes to the next.

WOLF:  Bicycle goes along with the boat.

SCHMIDT:  That's right.

WOLF:  And opens it up for you. That's really great.

SCHMIDT:  But most of the time the bicycle is faster than the boat, so that's no problem.

WOLF:  (LAUGHS)

SCHMIDT:  Here we're going into the typically Dutch channel.  What you see on the right hand side, left hand side, houseboats.

WOLF:  People live on these...boats?

SCHMIDT:  People live on them, yes, that's right.

WOLF:  It looks like it's a nice place to live.

SCHMIDT:  It is. It is actually. You see even  the people create their own garden and terrace and they're trying to... to feel at home here you know. And there's another thing you probably have noticed, the... hook hanging on each house. This is meant to... bring up the corniches, and if you move from one to the other house, you bring it up from the outside, through the window.

WOLF:  Oh that's right. The stairs are so narrow in these houses that you can't bring a bed or a piano upstairs, and even today they use that hook on the top of the house to bring their furniture in when they move.

SCHMIDT:  That's right.

WOLF:  Amazing.

SCHMIDT:  That's right. You see also different type of the decorations. This one is... more of  the very heavy decorated and they have some more simple as well.  People showed the...their richness on the outside of the... house by building a gable which is more decorated or less decorated, and there's not much space in the small houses to show your decoration of your richness so the gable was a nice place to do that.

WOLF:  The ornateness of the crown.

SCHMIDT:  That's right. That's right.

WOLF:  One of the great pleasures of a canal tour of Amsterdam is that you can tie up, go ashore and see what's cooking in the streets. 

Each city around the world has its own customary street foods, and eating them as you move around the town has become almost a ritual for the citizens.  In Amsterdam there are a group of  very traditional street foods.  Maybe it's because Amsterdam was originally founded some seven hundred years ago by herring fisherman or maybe it's just because the Dutch love herring. We don't know, but we do know that Amsterdam has dozens of small street stands where people eat herring.  The fish is very fresh, lightly salted, cleaned and served on a paper plate with some chopped onion. The herring is held in the air above your head and eaten bite by bite. There are also street vendors for french fried potatoes, freshly cut and deep fried right in front of you. They're served with mayonnaise, a peanut sauce or ketchup.  The third classic street food of Amsterdam is the waffle.  They're freshly made by vendors who set up their stoves in the town's open markets. They're thin and crisp.  Two waffles are put together like a sandwich and the filling;  it's made up of a maple-based sugar syrup.   And licorice, an anise-flavored candy that they make both sweet and salty.  So those are the street foods of Amsterdam: licorice, herring, french fries and little waffles. What an unbeatable meal.

As you move through the streets of Amsterdam you will see at rather regular intervals the “Brown Cafes.” There are five hundred of them in the downtown area. The Brown Cafe is to Amsterdam very much what the pub is to London: a neighborhood gathering spot, an extension of the living room, a place to come in and have a beer or a coffee, to read a book or a newspaper. They're called Brown Cafes because the wood used in their construction is always dark because the lighting level is kept low, and because the  walls which have been stained with smoke and nicotine are never washed or painted. This is probably the most famous of the brown cafes.  It's Cafe Hoppe and it first opened for business in 1670. The Brown Cafes are an essential part of each of Amsterdam's neighborhoods and very often attract a particular clientele. One might be the place for writers to meet, another frequented by painters.  They even have a cafe where they will let television reporters come in.  They're a real reflection of the neighborhood and a great place to get to know the people of the city, which is not hard for North Americans, since English is the second language of just about everybody in Holland.   And the people of Amsterdam are anxious to test out their English vocabulary.

BARTENDER:  That’s what’s cooking today; He’s Burt Wolf.

WOLF:  See what I mean?

WOLF:  Amstel is the name of the river on which Amsterdam was originally founded. It's also the name of the city's landmark hotel which happens to sit on the bank of its namesake river. The Amstel Hotel was built in 1867 and immediately became the hotel in town. It was elegant. It was efficient and it did everything it possibly could to please its guests.  And from the very beginning it had an unusual association with good health. In 1870 a Doctor John Metzger decided to conduct his practice from the hotel.  Doctor Metzger believed that there was a direct relationship between exercise and good health, and so he had a gym built into the hotel. Remember this is 1870, very early for that kind of stuff. Eventually word of Dr. Metzger’s approach to well-being spread to many European cities, and the Amstel Hotel became famous as the place to go for rejuvenation. In 1990 the Intercontinental Hotels group closed the Amstel and spent two years and forty million dollars rejuvenating the hotel. Today it's like a country residence of a European nobleman, with a few features that are quite impressive even for European noblemen. There's a butler on each floor to take care of your needs twenty-four hours a day. To make sure you don't soil your hands on your morning newspaper, he irons them. That's a new one for me. Old Dr. Metzger 's love of physical fitness is carried on in the health center that offers a personal fitness trainer to all guests. The kitchen is under the direction of Master Chef Robert Kranenborg, who's made the hotel's restaurant one of the most respected establishments in the city. Robert produces the classics of Dutch and French cooking as well as a series of light dishes that fit right in with the health club. The hotel's wine list is rather unusual. They decided that the top price for a bottle of wine on their list should be a hundred gilders. That's about sixty-five dollars. And they searched the world to get the best wines under that price. They have a tea service but they are more serious about making good tea than any hotel I've ever seen. The water which the hotel uses to make tea is purified in a reverse-osmosis filter to remove minerals and other trace elements that might affect the taste of the tea. Each tea is taste-tested each day. They use a special pot that controls the contact between the tea and the water and the time of each brewing is carefully monitored. They have even developed a special tea which they hope will help their guests adjust to jet lag. One of the most talked about aspects of the hotel are the showers. The shower heads were made especially for the Amstel and they're about a foot wide. They give you the feeling that you are standing under a waterfall. Just another example of this hotel showering its guests with luxury.

Since Amsterdam was originally settled by fisherman, and fishing has been a major part of Dutch life for over a thousand years, it's only natural to find some excellent fish cookery in Dutch kitchens. Robert Kranenborg is well-known for his work at the Amstel Hotel, but he's also a respected author with a new book on fish cookery.

ROBERT KRANENBORG: Well, about fish cookery you have to know that the...you have a good confident supplier with very, very fresh fish and to cook it right away once you come home, the same day and...you have to know that...the temperature of the fish is very important. You have to stop cooking when your fish is at three- quarters of... cooking time. So the heat which is... which is in the fish...will spread and when you serve it it will be... exactly like it should... like it should be. 

WOLF:  During the 1980's, North America saw an enormous increase in fish consumption. Scientific evidence indicated that there were elements in fish that actually might reduce the risk of heart attack and the fish industry spent an enormous amount of time and money promoting the fact that fish in general is low in calories and low in fat. But the marketers of fish ran into one enormous problem; millions of home cooks felt that they just didn't know how to cook fish properly.

Chef Kranenborg demonstrates a very simple fish cooking technique from his new book. A little water is brought to boil in a saucepan. A heat- proof plate goes on top, a little oil in the plate and then the fish... whatever fish you like, but make sure the fish is cut to similar size so it will take about the same time to cook, and a second plate on top. Everything cooks for five minutes. Meanwhile a salad is made from strips of spinach, cucumber, asparagus, red onion, a little vegetable oil and a little vinegar. The salad goes into a serving bowl and the cooked fish on top. 

KRANENBORG:  The secret of this is that... china keeps...spread the heat very good so it will not cook but it will keep hot and that is what we want with fish. You have to taste the fish like it should be and not overcook it.  The thickness of the china is enough.

WOLF:  During the early 1600's there was an extraordinary increase in world trade.  Everyone in Europe who had a boat wanted to take off for some distant port in the hope of buying something and selling it for big bucks when he got back home.  That trade created a worldwide Dutch empire, and in Holland, an enormous amount of local wealth. Holland became the financial capital of Europe, and in 1602 the Dutch East India Company was formed, and in a very unusual move for the time, shares were offered to the general public, which allowed the general public to share in the wealth. Within ten years Holland was the largest importer of spices to Europe. The most important part of the Dutch empire were its holdings in what is now Indonesia, some eight thousand islands stretching over three thousand miles and packed with things to bring back and sell.  Spices were an essential part of that trade, but the Dutch also introduced coffee plantations that became quite significant. Most of the coffee was shipped back to Europe from a port known as Java.  It became such an important port that the world java is now a synonym for coffee. That four- hundred-year-old relationship between the Dutch and the East Indies has had an enormous impact on Dutch cooking.  A lot of the East Indian flavoring techniques are part of Dutch cooking today and there are Indonesian restaurants all over the country that serve great food from Borneo and Bali.

WOLF:  Holland's four-hundred-year-old history of trading with the East Indies has influenced the way the chefs of this country do their  work. Marcel Drissen, the sous-chef at Amsterdam's Amstel Hotel, illustrates the point with his choice of seasonings for his chicken curry. Two boneless, skinless chicken breasts are cut into bite-sized pieces and browned in a little vegetable oil for two minutes, and removed and held aside. Into the same pan, thin sticks of eggplant, a little curry powder, a cup of chicken broth, a few sprigs of thyme, a few minutes of cooking, quarter cup of coconut cream, half cup of sour cream (low-fat sour cream works just as well and so does plain low-fat yogurt), salt, pepper; the chicken goes back in, chopped tomato, a moment to warm everything up, but be careful... too much heat will separate the yogurt if you use that instead of sour cream. Into a serving bowl, a garnish of eggplant chips. Curry and coconut: you can certainly taste the East Indies in this dish.

The city plan of Amsterdam is based on three canals that form three semi-circles, one inside the other. Together they are described as the Canal Girdle. The outside canal in English is called the Prince's Canal. In the middle is the Emperor's Canal, and on the inside the Gentleman's Canal. It's interesting that the most elegant and ambitious of the three is the Gentleman's Canal, not those named with royal titles.  It's a reminder that for centuries the people of Amsterdam have loved the small businessman, the individual entrepreneur, and like most people, the owner of a small business tries to keep his taxes as low as he honestly can -- or at least to get the most for his money.

WOLF:  During the 1700's the people here paid their homeowner's tax based on the width of the front of their house, and that's why so many houses along the canals are so narrow.  But those same houses go up and they go back, and as they go back they get wider. A pie-shaped house with the thinnest part facing the street helped cut down on your taxes and let you keep a bigger slice of your own economic pie. That's the Trippenhuis,  built in 1662. It's like a Venetian palace. Across the street is the narrowest house in Amsterdam. The story goes that the Tripp family coachman was expressing his wish for a home on the canal, even if it was only as wide as the door of his master's house. Mr. Tripp overheard him and built him just that: a house as wide as the Tripp door. The extraordinary architecture of Amsterdam is one of its greatest joys.  The government has designated some seven thousand buildings in the old center as historically significant.  The character of these streets, which tells the history of the city for almost eight centuries, will be preserved. The people of Amsterdam have done a pretty good job of preserving their heritage.  Holding onto the old buildings was essential.

WOLF:  And they've built museums for just about everything Dutch that you can think of. They're also doing a good job of holding onto their gastronomic heritage. There are chefs all over this town who are researching old recipes, reproducing them and making the gastronomic past part of the present.  DePoort Restaurant, at the center of the town's oldest area, started as a beer brewery in 1592.  It was the place where Heineken was first made.  Today the restaurant offers some of the most traditional home foods of Holland:  Dutch pea soup, a meal in itself with a piece of pork and slices of sausage; herring in various forms; hotspot, which is a combination of mashed potatoes, sauteed onions and carrots.  Made me go out and get a pair of wooden shoes; a wonderful Dutch dish. And giant pancakes served with apples or preserves. These are the real Dutch treats. 

The Dutch city of Amsterdam is a visual treat, with its tree-lined canals, magnificent old houses and picturesque streets. Amsterdam can also be a gastronomic treat. The point is made at Amsterdam Amstel Hotel by Pastry Chef Jost Von Velsen as he prepares classic Dutch butter cookies. First ingredient into the  bowl is butter, only fitting for a butter cookie, then some sugar and some more sugar and an egg.  Flour is added in and everything is mixed together by hand.  Doing it this way, by hand, helps to blend the ingredients together more smoothly.  The dough rests in the refrigerator for an hour and is then rolled out to a thickness of about a half an inch. Three-inch rounds are cut out, placed onto parchment paper, given a quick paint job with egg wash, and a criss- cross pattern.  At which point they are placed into round cookie forms. You can buy these cookie forms or you can take a bunch of your standard food cans and cut out the top and bottom. Then into a preheated oven for twenty minutes and they're ready to serve.

WOLF:  KLM, the Royal Dutch Airline of Holland, is the oldest airline still operating. It made its first flight in 1920.  The concept of eating or drinking on an aircraft was unheard of; even when transcontinental flights were introduced, there was very little food on board. The airport in Amsterdam has an aircraft museum, and this an actual plane from the 20's. Just before you took off you were issued a leather jacket, a pair of goggles, a hot water bottle and a set of earplugs. The final destination might have been half a world away but the actual trip was  made up of many small flights. Very often the stops were scheduled around meal times. So you could get out of the aircraft and go into a restaurant or a hotel dining room and eat properly. These days, however, in-flight food is considered a major part of an airline's activities.

The average KLM 747 takes on five-and-a- half tons of food for each flight. They offer fourteen different types of special meals. The latest and fastest-growing  trend at KLM is for meals that reflect the public's interest in food for good health. You can order a low-salt meal, a low- cholesterol meal or a low-calorie meal...or you could live it up... in moderation of course.

WOLF:  Most airlines started by flying people around in their home country, from one local town to another.  But that was not true for KLM.  Holland is a country with such a small geographic area that you're almost better off getting around it by car or bike or canal boat. As a result of that fact, from the very beginning KLM has been an international airline and that's had an interesting effect on its approach to food. For over four hundred years the people of Holland have been trading with the Dutch East Indies, an area that we now call Indonesia. So KLM has two menus on its flights; one traditional European, the other Indonesian or Asian. They also have many other ethnic kitchens including Japanese, Italian, Indian and Chinese. They have some amazing equipment too. I thought this was part of a satellite dish system.  Not quite, it's the ultimate grinder, but then, so is television. This is the world's fastest slicer; six hundred slices per minute, good for any kind of meat. This is my favorite. It's a giant frying pan; the steak goes on, when it's done the steak is turned.  When it's ready, it's slipped on to a tray. Awesome technology -- but when forty thousand people are coming to dinner you need a little technology.

WOLF:  One of the most popular tourist attractions in Amsterdam is the old Heineken Brewery. The original facility was called the Haystack Brewery and it started its production in 1572. In 1863 it was taken over by Gerhart Heineken, who at the ripe old age of twenty-two decided he could make a better beer. Today the original plant is a museum devoted to the history of beer. They have an interesting collection of art and artifacts that tell the story of the history of beer making.  It starts with material from ancient Mesopotamia and takes you right through some of your major European painters.  They also have an extensive collection of beer drinking vessels, including this unusual number: Her Royal Majesty holds a bowl above her head from which you drink an aquavit or vodka.  Then she flips over and her base fills with beer. The main reason that beer has been so popular in so many parts of the world for so many centuries is because very often beer was the only safe thing for someone to drink.  The open water found in lakes and rivers was highly polluted, and though no one actually understood the concept of bacteria at the time, they knew from experience that drinking water was dangerous.  Experience also taught them that drinking beer was safe, and the reason is quite simple; when you make beer, the water that's in it is brought to a boil.  The boiling water kills the bacteria.  So people concluded that drinking water could kill you.  Drinking beer in moderation was quite safe.

WOLF:  Here are ancient stone carvings that go back over six thousand years and clearly show people making beer.  The ancient Egyptians even put beer into the tombs of their kings so they could have a drink in the afterlife; talk about a six- pack to go.  Here at the Heineken Brewery in Holland, you can see the process pretty much the way it's been going on for the past two thousand years. It all starts with a grain called barley that people have been eating since prehistoric times. Because barley grows well in soil, even if that soil has some salt in it and because it has a very shallow root system, it was one of the earliest crops planted by the Dutch when they reclaimed their land from the sea.  Brewers start the beer making process by taking the barley and mixing it with water. The process that results is called germination, kind of wakes up the sugar in the barley.  They let that go on for a week and then they stop the process by toasting the barley. The germinated and toasted grain is called malt. The malt is transferred into a big copper kettle mixed with water and heated.  The starch in the malt changes to sugar.  Hops, which are the leaves of a vine, are added to give flavor and help preserve the beer.  The solids are filtered out and the remaining liquid is called wort. The wort is mixed with a special yeast that converts the sugar in the wort to alcohol and you have young beer. The young beer rests in a storage tank for four to six weeks, at which time it's old enough to have its own  bottle.

WOLF:  Not bad for a town that started as a bunch of huts for herring fishermen. They still eat that herring in the street, but they also eat just about everything else -- and usually at a very high quality.  So if you like good food in a very relaxed town, this is the place for you.  Please join us next time as we travel around the world looking for things that taste good and make it easier to eat well.  I'm Burt Wolf. 

Travels & Traditions: Holland - #806

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The two most powerful forces in the history of Holland are wind and water. For over a thousand years, the people living in this part of the world have had an amazing ability to take advantage of these two forces. Perhaps the most obvious example is the windmill.

BURT WOLF: The Dutch used windmills to turn the pumps that drew the water off the land, over the dikes, and back to the sea. Much of Holland’s actual land surface was created by windpower moving water. The farmland that evolved from this system formed the basis for Holland's extensive agriculture and dairy industries. It was also windpower that moved the Dutch ships across the surface of the seas during the 1600's and made Holland the most powerful trading nation of the time, and the absolute center of commerce and culture. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: During the early 1600's there was an extraordinary expansion in worldwide trade. In Europe just about everybody who had a boat wanted to push off for some distant port in the hope of buying something there and bringing it back home and selling it for big bucks. For the Dutch, it created a giant worldwide trading empire -- and back home in Holland, an enormous amount of money. A lot of that money was used to commission works of art. Art that the Dutch appreciated in terms of aesthetics, but that they also considered to be a great commercial investment -- and boy, were they right.

BURT WOLF: Holland's golden age of the 1600's was the time of Rembrandt -- not a bad investment -- and Van Dyke, Franz Hals and Vermeer. These works can give us a detailed picture of what Dutch life was like at the time, especially when it comes to food. The Dutch masters have left us a picture of the period's menu: cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, fish, beer. The same foods and drinks that make up the traditional meals of today's Dutch family. Very often the way a food was shown was meant to tell a story. The Merry Family by Jan Steen looks like a great Sunday afternoon lunch with the kids -- but when you look at it closely you see that the children are following the bad habits of their parents: drinking, smoking, overeating. The painting is actually a warning against weak morals, a seventeenth- century cry for improved family values. The Dutch love of art has continued, and so has their ability to produce some of the world's finest painters. 

Vincent Van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853 and died in 1890. Almost all of his paintings were made during the 1880's, and though he was able to sell only a few of his works during his lifetime, his paintings have become some of the most valuable. In 1990 a Van Gogh sold for more than eighty million dollars. In the center of Amsterdam is the Van Gogh Museum, built to make his works available to the public. Over one hundred Van Gogh works are on continual exhibition. 

Food has always been an important subject for Dutch painters and Van Gogh was no exception. This still life of apples and pears was a color study that produced a completely yellow picture. He also presented people eating and drinking in cafes and one of his favorite works was The Potato Eaters.

LOUIS VAN TILBORGH ONCAMERA: He...he tried to do something with the light which is...very difficult. I mean he... from the beginning...

BURT WOLF: Louis VanTilburg is the curator of the museum's Van Gogh collection.

VAN TILBORGH ON CAMERA: The Potato Eaters is an important painting because it's actually the first mature painting that Van Gogh really made. Before that time, that means from l880 until '80...'85... he made more or less studies. He didn't make... pictures which he thought were good enough for the market... for the art market. He was just learning the trade more or less, and with The Potato Eaters he first thought that he could launch own career... artistically and commercially. He thought that he could send it to...to an exhibition in Paris and could present himself with that picture to... art dealers.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: It doesn't have any of the bright colors that so many of us expect in a Van Gogh.

VAN TILBORGH ON CAMERA: He... always like to exaggerate. He did that in France and he also did that in Holland and in Holland at that time... gay colors were not in fashion but dark colors were, that he exaggerated. I mean if you would compare his pictures to the pictures of his... of his colleagues at the time... his... his pictures are much more...darker ...even...even more to say black.

This pic... picture... if you very... look very carefully at the... the hands... the way it is constructed it's very... I mean the people are sitting there... cramped. They're not looking at each other. For instance, the lady on the right has to pour coffee. Someone has to... take a fork and take in the potato. It's all very clear... very defined but as a total... it's not sensible at all because there is talk at a table. They interact and they do that... don't do that in that picture and... I think he himself was aware of the fact that he did not succeed in that, because he never made a picture like this any more... five persons around the table that... was too... too difficult for him.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The fact that they were using potatoes to make an entire meal is an interesting reminder of how important the potato was to the European peasant farmer. During the seventeen and eighteen hundreds it was very often the only food they had, and because of its high nutritional content, was actually enough to keep them alive. For Van Gogh, the peasant and the potato were examples of a purer and simpler lifestyle, but in the case of the potato that's only true if you leave off the sour cream.

VINCENT IN CHOCOLATE

BURT WOLF: About an hour's drive into the Dutch countryside from Amsterdam is the small village of Zundert. And this is the building that put Zundert on the map.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Zundert is where Vincent Van Gogh grew up and did his early work. They even have a small museum dedicated to him. 

BURT WOLF: The museum has a small collection of things that relate to the period when Van Gogh lived in Zundert, as well as his other years in Holland. Van Gogh made a number of drawings that showed the landscape and the people of the village. He was fascinated by the life of the peasant farmers who worked the land, and there are many drawings that show them at work in the fields and in their homes.

Certainly a fitting tribute, but the sweetest tribute of all is just down the street at the Luijckx Chocolate Factory. Almost every morning you will find the shiny steel tank-truck outside the building, a tank-truck filled with twenty thousand gallons of the finest chocolate. Chocolate that goes into the building to be molded. The free-flowing chocolate is poured into molds moving along a track. They're shaken to take out any air bubbles, then flipped so the form has only a thin coating. It's turned again and weighed to make sure it holds the proper amount. The chocolate cools and hardens to become little cups but the Luijckx system can form just about anything. A substantial part of their business comes from producing special designs, things for Christmas, Easter, McChocolates, and the local specialty -- a reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait in chocolate.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: This is great stuff. It nourishes the mind and the body at the same time and it does it either in milk or semi-sweet chocolate. How few works of art can make that claim?

SAY CHEESE

BURT WOLF: Holland's mild climate, high quality marshy soil, and regular rainfall promote the year-round growth of excellent grass, grass which in turn produces excellent cattle, cattle that have been used to produce milk for at least four thousand years and cheese for a least a thousand. The country's natural waterways play a big part in the development of the cheese business. Almost every farmer had a waterway touching some point on his land. When his cheese was made, he would load it onto a barge and sail off to market. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: It could have been a small town just down the canal from his farm or he could join up with a major river like the Rhine and end up selling his cheese in France or Germany. Because the Dutch sailors were such good navigators, they were able to develop a coastal trade and end up selling their cheeses as far south as Portugal and Spain. At one point in time, cheese became so valuable that it was used a form of money -- but it was very difficult to keep any small change in your pocket.

BURT WOLF: Over the years the technology of cheese making has changed some, but the story is pretty much the same. Today Holland is the world's largest exporter of cheese. It ships out many millions of pounds of cheese each year. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: So if you want to get an accurate picture of the history of the Dutch, just say cheese.

BURT WOLF: The Denboer family farm has been here in Holland for at least three hundred years. The land was reclaimed from the sea and a giant dike stands behind the farmhouse, just in case the sea ever tries to get back in. The Denboers raise their own cows and use the milk to produce cheese in the most traditional of Dutch farmhouse methods. The milk goes into a large tub. An enzyme from the lining of a calf's stomach, called rennet, is added to the milk. The rennet causes the milk solids, called the curd, to separate from the liquid, called the whey. The milk solids are taken out and placed into a form. Pressure is added to squeeze out additional liquid and give the cheese its shape. At that point the cheese is submerged into a brine bath, really just salted water but it adds flavor to the cheese, when the cheese comes out of the bath it sits on the shelf to mature for two weeks. At that point the cheese is ready to go to market. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Cheese is just an ancient method for preserving the valuable nutrients in milk. All of the calcium and protein that's in the milk is now in the cheese but it's in there in a concentrated form. It takes about ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese, and in moderation, cheese is an excellent source of nutrients.

BURT WOLF: It's pronounced "houda" in Dutch and Gouda in English. It's the name of the most famous cheese produced in Holland, and it's also the name of the town where the cheese was originally developed. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Starting in the 1200s, if you lived in a Dutch town, you wanted that town to have weighing rights; that is, the right to weigh the cheeses made by the local farmers and put the town's official seal of approval on those cheese. It was the equivalent of today having a major league football franchise. Big deal stuff. 

BURT WOLF: And as soon as your town got weighing rights, it got a weigh house in which the activity was conducted, like building your own stadium. Gouda got theirs in 1668. It's right across the street from the city hall, which just serves to point out the importance of the cheese business to the town fathers. Most of the cheese exported from Holland is named after the towns from which it comes. Edam: skimmed milk, mild flavors, smooth texture, easy to spot because it usually comes in a red ball. Masdam: it's Holland's answer to Swiss cheese with a mild, nutty flavor. And of course gouda: starts mild and creamy but becomes more robust the longer it's aged. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: So check the cheese to make sure it has the town seal on it. That's the only way to be sure it's gouda enough.

AMSTERDAM

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Some time during the 1100s, a group of herring fishermen settled near here along the Amstel River. That community eventually became the city of Amsterdam. So I think it's only fair to say that from the very beginning, the story of Amsterdam has been the story of something good to eat. 

BURT WOLF: But the real golden age of Amsterdam was the 1600s. Amsterdam was Europe's center for business as well as its cultural capital. It all started in 1595 when a Dutch trading ship landed in what was then called the East Indies now Indonesia: Bali, Java, Borneo, Sumatra; lands which produced some of the world's most valuable spices.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Those were the places that Columbus had been looking for, and when the Dutch got there they took control of a spice trade to Europe that made many Dutchman wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Actually, those dreams weren't very wild at all, because even then the Dutch were very structured and not showy. Much of the wealth from that spice trade was used to build homes along the canals of Amsterdam.

BURT WOLF: Amsterdam was actually put together by connecting ninety islands with about five hundred bridges --- most citizens get around on bicycles. The town has only seven hundred and fifty thousand people but a million bikes. You could, if you want to, get from place to place just as well by boat.

Thomas Schmidt is the executive assistant manager of Amsterdam's Amstel Hotel. He borrowed one of the hotel's boats so we could take a tour of the city... a tour with two objectives: first, to see the traditional sights, and second, to stop along the way and eat the traditional foods.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: And here you have a very typical bridge...which is still operating. If a boat passes through here, there are two bridge guards who will open up the bridge to you; every time you pass a bridge and he takes a bicycle and drives along the channel, opens the bridge and then he goes to the next.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Bicycle goes along with the boat.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: That's right.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: And opens it up for you. That's really great.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: But most of the time the bicycle is faster than the boat, so that's no problem.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CMAERA: Here we're going into the typically Dutch channel. What you see on the right hand side, left hand side, houseboats.

BURT WOLF CAMERA: People live on these...boats?

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: People live on them, yes, that's right.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: It looks like it's a nice place to live.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: It is. It is actually. You see even the people create their own garden and terrace and they're trying to... to feel at home here you know. And there's another thing you probably have noticed, the... hook hanging on each house. This is meant to... bring up the corniches, and if you move from one to the other house, you bring it up from the outside, through the window.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Oh that's right. The stairs are so narrow in these houses that you can't bring a bed or a piano upstairs, and even today they use that hook on the top of the house to bring their furniture in when they move.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: That's right.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Amazing.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: That's right. You see also different type of the decorations. This one is... more of the very heavy decorated and they have some more simple as well. People showed the...their richness on the outside of the... house by building a gable which is more decorated or less decorated, and there's not much space in the small houses to show your decoration of your richness so the gable was a nice place to do that.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The ornateness of the crown.

THOMAS SCHMIDT ON CAMERA: That's right. That's right.

BURT WOLF: One of the great pleasures of a canal tour of Amsterdam is that you can tie up, go ashore and see what's cooking in the streets. 

Each city around the world has its own customary street foods, and eating them as you move around the town has become almost a ritual for the citizens. In Amsterdam there are a group of very traditional street foods. Maybe it's because Amsterdam was originally founded some seven hundred years ago by herring fisherman or maybe it's just because the Dutch love herring. I don't know, but I do know that Amsterdam has dozens of small street stands where people eat herring. The fish is very fresh, lightly salted, cleaned and served on a paper plate with some chopped onion. The herring is held in the air above your head and eaten bite by bite. There are also street vendors for french fried potatoes, freshly cut and deep fried right in front of you. They're served with mayonnaise, a peanut sauce or ketchup. The third classic street food of Amsterdam is the waffle. They're freshly made by vendors who set up their stoves in the town's open markets. They're thin and crisp. Two waffles are put together like a sandwich and the filling; it's made up of a maple-based sugar syrup. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: And licorice, an anise-flavored candy that they make both sweet and salty. So those are the street foods of Amsterdam: licorice, herring, french fries and little waffles. What an unbeatable meal.

BURT WOLF: As you move through the streets of Amsterdam you will see at regular intervals the “Brown Cafes.” There are five hundred of them in the downtown area.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The Brown Cafe is to Amsterdam very much what the pub is to London: a neighborhood gathering spot, an extension of the living room, a place to come in and have a beer or a coffee, to read a book or a newspaper.

BURT WOLF: They're called Brown Cafes because the wood used in their construction is always dark because the lighting level is kept low, and because the walls which have been stained with smoke and nicotine are never washed or painted.

This is probably the most famous of the brown cafes. It's Cafe Hoppe and it first opened for business in 1670. The Brown Cafes are an essential part of each of Amsterdam's neighborhoods and very often attract a particular clientele. One might be the place for writers to meet, another frequented by painters.  They're a real reflection of the neighborhood and a great place to get to know the people of the city.

DUTCH TREATS

BURT WOLF: The city plan of Amsterdam is based on three canals that form three semi-circles, one inside the other. Together they are described as the Canal Girdle. The outside canal in English is called the Prince's Canal. In the middle is the Emperor's Canal, and on the inside, the Gentleman's Canal. It's interesting that the most elegant and ambitious of the three is the Gentleman's Canal, not those named with royal titles.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA:  It's a reminder that for centuries the people of Amsterdam have loved the small businessman, the individual entrepreneur, and like most people, the owner of a small business tries to keep his taxes as low as he honestly can -- or at least to get the most for his money.

BURT WOLF: During the 1700's the people here paid their homeowner's tax based on the width of the front of But those same houses go up and they go back, and as they go back they get wider. A pie-shaped house with the thinnest part facing the street helped to cut down on your taxes and let you keep a bigger slice of your own economic pie. That's the Trippenhuis, built in 1662. It's like a Venetian palace. Across the street is the narrowest house in Amsterdam. The story goes that the Tripp family coachman was expressing his wish for a home on the canal, even if it was only as wide as the door of his master's house. Mr. Tripp overheard him and built him just that: a house as wide as the Tripp door. The extraordinary architecture of Amsterdam is one of its greatest joys. The government has designated some seven thousand buildings in the old center as historically significant. The character of these streets tells the history of the city for almost eight centuries. The people of Amsterdam have done a pretty good job of preserving their heritage. Holding onto the old buildings was essential.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: And they've built museums for just about everything Dutch that you can think of. They're also doing a good job of holding onto their gastronomic heritage. There are chefs all over this town who are researching old recipes, reproducing them and making the gastronomic past part of the present. 

BURT WOLF: DePoort Restaurant, at the center of the town's oldest area, started as a beer brewery in 1592. It was the place where Heineken was first made. Today the restaurant offers some of the most traditional home foods of Holland: Dutch pea soup, a meal in itself with pieces of pork and slices of sausage; herring in various forms; hotspot, which is a combination of mashed potatoes, sauteed onions and carrots. Made me go out and get a pair of wooden shoes; a wonderful Dutch dish. And giant pancakes served with apples or preserves. These are the real Dutch treats. 

BEER HERE

BURT WOLF: One of the most popular tourist attractions in Amsterdam is the old Heineken Brewery. The original facility was called the Haystack Brewery and it started its production in 1572. In 1863 it was taken over by Gerhart Heineken, who at the ripe old age of twenty-two decided he could make a better beer. Today the original plant is a museum devoted to the history of beer. They have an interesting collection of art and artifacts that tell the history of beer making. It starts with material from ancient Mesopotamia and takes you right through some of the major European painters. They also have an extensive collection of beer drinking vessels, including this unusual number: Her Royal Majesty holds a bowl above her head from which you drink an aquavit or vodka. Then she flips over and her base fills with beer.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The main reason that beer has been so popular in so many parts of the world for so many centuries is because very often beer was the only safe thing for someone to drink. The open water found in lakes and rivers was highly polluted, and though no one actually understood the concept of bacteria at the time, they knew from experience that drinking water was dangerous. Experience also taught them that drinking beer was safe, and the reason is quite simple; when you make beer, the water that's in it is brought to a boil. The boiling water kills the bacteria. So people concluded that drinking water could kill you. Drinking beer in moderation was quite safe.

BURT WOLF: There are ancient stone carvings that go back over six thousand years and clearly show people making beer. The ancient Egyptians even put beer into the tombs of their kings so they could have a drink in the afterlife; talk about a six pack to go. 

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Here at the Heineken Brewery in Holland, you can see the process pretty much the way it's been going on for the past two thousand years. It all starts with a grain called barley that people have been eating since prehistoric times. Because barley grows well in soil, even if that soil has some salt in it and because it has a very shallow root system, it was one of the earliest crops planted by the Dutch when they reclaimed their land from the sea. Brewers start the beer making process by taking the barley and mixing it with water. The process that results is called germination, kind of wakes up the sugar in the barley. They let that go on for a week and then they stop the process by toasting the barley.

BURT WOLF: The germinated and toasted grain is called malt. The malt is transferred into a big copper kettle mixed with water and heated. The starch in the malt changes to sugar. Hops, which are the leaves of a vine, are added to give flavor and help preserve the beer. The solids are filtered out and the remaining liquid is called wort. The wort is mixed with a special yeast that converts the sugar in the wort to alcohol and you have young beer. The young beer rests in a storage tank for four to six weeks, at which time it's old enough to have its own bottle.

For TRAVELS & TRADITIONS, I’m Burt Wolf.