If you are an American, reading this, when you think French fries, you think McDonald's.
Oh you poor, deprived people. I don't say this because I spent a lot of time in France—mais non, I have never tasted a fry a la Francaise.
I say this because I spent my childhood in Holland, where fries are a national treasure.
Known as "patat," Dutch fries are prepared fresh—not frozen!—at a variety of fries stands that, much like hot-dog stands in the Yankee New York, appear on street corners, in shopping malls, and anywhere else the fry urge could strike.
Perhaps it is not surprising that in Holland, where the potato is given almost as much reverence as the Dutch royal family, the number-one snack food would be crafted from the sleepy spud, while you there in the New World, who prefer to worship red meat, have made hot-dogs and hamburgers your fast food staples.
Whatever the case, you can be certain that if you are traveling to the Netherlands (or Holland, it's the same..) you will come upon the tantalizing scent of frying potatoes wafting around a corner and forcing you to follow your nose to its source. The fries you order there will be the thick, steak fry variety, and they'll be served to you in a paper cone and topped with a dollop of creamy mayonnaise (a distant relative of your Yankee globby mayo).
Fries are so commonly served this way that to order them one simply asks for patat "met", or "with." The fry stand will also have a menu of other toppings, including sate sauce, a chunky peanut sauce that we the Dutch discovered during our colonization of Indonesia and promptly incorporated into their fry culture.
French fries? Called frites in Northern Belgium (part of the Netherlands until 1873), the homeland of all this confusion.
And the British named it chips...food barbarians...a culture which they exported to your USA so easily....))
Oh you poor, deprived people. I don't say this because I spent a lot of time in France—mais non, I have never tasted a fry a la Francaise.
I say this because I spent my childhood in Holland, where fries are a national treasure.
Known as "patat," Dutch fries are prepared fresh—not frozen!—at a variety of fries stands that, much like hot-dog stands in the Yankee New York, appear on street corners, in shopping malls, and anywhere else the fry urge could strike.
Perhaps it is not surprising that in Holland, where the potato is given almost as much reverence as the Dutch royal family, the number-one snack food would be crafted from the sleepy spud, while you there in the New World, who prefer to worship red meat, have made hot-dogs and hamburgers your fast food staples.
Whatever the case, you can be certain that if you are traveling to the Netherlands (or Holland, it's the same..) you will come upon the tantalizing scent of frying potatoes wafting around a corner and forcing you to follow your nose to its source. The fries you order there will be the thick, steak fry variety, and they'll be served to you in a paper cone and topped with a dollop of creamy mayonnaise (a distant relative of your Yankee globby mayo).
Fries are so commonly served this way that to order them one simply asks for patat "met", or "with." The fry stand will also have a menu of other toppings, including sate sauce, a chunky peanut sauce that we the Dutch discovered during our colonization of Indonesia and promptly incorporated into their fry culture.
French fries? Called frites in Northern Belgium (part of the Netherlands until 1873), the homeland of all this confusion.
And the British named it chips...food barbarians...a culture which they exported to your USA so easily....))
