Food we love

Our years of reading about food from many cultures, collecting recipes from family, from our own time in the food business, and being graciously given recipes by other restauranteurs, allows us to explore some of them in this podcast, and tell you some of the stories behind our favourite foods.

Questions or comments? Please get in touch. We'd love to hear from  you.

Transcript

Dick DeRyk 0:05

The food we love. Ah, yes, food. Long one of my favorite interests, and it shows. But consumed in moderation, that's okay. Or so I tell myself. My interest in food goes back to my years as a boy in Netherlands, where standard fare is much like what we used to say about English cuisine. Boil everything till it's mush, throw out the cooking water which has all the good stuff in it, and enjoy. Yes, there were some dishes that I still crave. We were eating kale in the 1950s before anyone in North America got on that bandwagon. It was boiled so the leaves were tender, then chopped very finely because whatever variety we had at home was akin to shoe leather and toughness, and then mixed with mashed potatoes. It was always eaten with smoked sausage. Kale in Dutch is boerenkool or farmer's cabbage. Smoked sausage is boerenworst or farmer's sausage, obviously made for each other. And there was the complete antithesis to bland food, Indonesian dishes, consisting mainly of a well-spiced rice dish in our house, which also included cubed pork roast, egg, and a dried veggie mix, which included spices and was reconstituted in boiling water before being added. We also ate it with shredded cabbage and onion, which was fried for several hours, by which time the liquid had long evaporated and the cabbage and onions were well fried, providing a mild antidote to the spices.

Dick DeRyk 3:13

Why was Indonesian food so prevalent in the Netherlands? Well, Indonesia was a Dutch colony until the Second World War. And after the war, most of the Dutch who lived there, including a spinster aunt who was a nurse there for decades, came back and brought the recipes and food with them. It was popular then and still is. If you go to the Netherlands, you will find a restaurant in almost every town that serves rijsttafel or rice table, your table literally loaded with nasi goreng, the fried rice, and multiple small side dishes and meats.

Dick DeRyk 3:51

In Yorkton, I was introduced to German dishes made by my mother-in-law, Anne Liebrecht, and carried on by her daughter, my wife Faye. Anne and August were of second or third generation German background, farmed at Rhein, and made the kind of food that most mothers handed down. Nothing fancy, but dishes intended to feed many at low cost. They were from farm backgrounds in Germany, with August's family having moved from what is now southern Poland and Ukraine, then the southern part of the Prussian Empire, to Nebraska in the mid-1800s, and from there in the very early 1900s to what is now the Rhein area of Saskatchewan, where land was free for homesteaders.

Dick DeRyk 4:40

August's father and uncle, Faye's grandfather and great uncle, made the trek from Nebraska to this part of the country in the spring, cross-country with a horse and wagon, no roads, no landmarks to guide them. When they arrived in the Rhein area, a half hour northeast of Yorkton in present-day Saskatchewan, they built a sod house because once you staked the homestead, it had to be occupied. One of the brothers stayed the winter. The other went back in the fall so he could bring the rest of the family the following spring. The two brothers were 13 and 14 years of age at the time.

Dick DeRyk 5:20

Our connection to German food also came from Herb and Amy Windt, who in the late 1970s and into the 80s and 90s owned and operated the Gladstone Inn on the corner of Broadway and Gladstone and Yorkton, now long closed after the last occupants, a Sushi restaurant, moved out. Amy was the cook, and Herb looked after the front of the house, later joined by their son Axel. The Gladstone Inn may be the last really fine dining room that Yorkton had. Not to play down the food available in Yorkton these days, but there is a difference between really fine dining, accompanied by very personal service and dishes not available elsewhere, and the good food available today. I suspect that decline is a result of the cost of providing both the food and the service, and the gradual fading of the old dining tradition, replaced over the years by more common and more standard dishes and bar food, and the need for speed as people don't linger for an evening over dinner.

Butterballs or butter dumplings

Dick DeRyk 6:28

Back in my newspaper and freelance days, I also wrote a regular food and recipe column for several of the local weekly newspapers. That is now 30 or more years ago, but I still get the occasional comment about a recipe someone saved all those years and still uses. In this podcast, we will talk about some of our favorite dishes, both family food and local recipes collected over the years. Depending on response, this may become a semi-regular topic because we have quite an extensive recipe file. All the recipes we talk about here can be found, downloaded, or printed at www.yorkton stories.ca in case any of them strike your fancy and you want to try them. Butterballs or butter dumplings. Or as best as I can do in German, butterklosse, little balls that we put in noodle soup.

Dick DeRyk 7:36

First, butterklosse or butter dumplings, which in our family have always been known as butterballs or butter glaze. In Netherlands and still now, we often make chicken noodle soup with small meatballs in them, basically chicken stock, thin noodles, and meatballs. But equally tasty and filling are butterballs. Kind of the poor man's meatballs, I guess. Simple ingredients, but a bit tricky to make.

Dick DeRyk 8:06

Butterklosse is basically breadcrumbs, melted butter or margarine, boiling milk, eggs, and seasoning. That is all mixed together and formed into small balls, which are then used immediately, or when a big batch is made in our home, put on a baking sheet and individually frozen to be transferred to a big bag so as many as needed to be taken out anytime. The tricky part of the making is that the amount of egg that goes into them needs to be just right. Too little, then they fall apart and you end up with breadcrumb soup, which, by the way, is also a thing. Look it up online.

Dick DeRyk 8:47

Towards the end of the mixing process, eggs are added one or two at a time. A few balls are made and dropped into boiling water to make sure they hold together. When the mixture is right, they will hold, keep their shape, and float to the top to indicate that they are done. Once they pass that test, the rest of the butter balls are formed. The recipe on our website will make 150 to 200 of them, depending on size. Feel free to adjust the ingredients in the proper proportions to reduce the quantity. But don't take any shortcuts with the making of them.

Dick DeRyk 9:28

And making them really isn't that difficult. Our seven-year-old great-grandson learned to make them last year from great-grandma. And this summer, on a visit, he was joined by his almost three-year-old brother. The older one and his classmates, then in grade one, were given a project at Thanksgiving last October to draw a picture of what they are most thankful for. His was a stickman drawing of him at the table with a soup bowl in front of him and a scribbled and totally misspelled caption that he was most thankful for butterglaze. If his little brother was talking at the time, he would have totally agreed. The torch has been passed to another generation.

Gladstone Inn house dressing

Dick DeRyk 10:14

A word of caution, though. Because her granddaughter only eats gluten-free food, we tried to make the butterballs with gluten-free breadcrumbs. It was a no-go. In fact, it was a disaster. The gluten-free crumbs, while they may work for some purposes, do not absorb the butter and milk and egg as regular breadcrumbs do, and they will not hold together. Sorry, those who are gluten-free, but we have not found a way to make that work as much as we want it to. Gladstone Inn house dressing. A salad dressing a little different than most, in that it blends in boiled eggs, unlike mayonnaise, which is made with raw eggs.

Kroketten (Dutch croquettes)

Dick DeRyk 11:05

The Gladstone Inn, which I mentioned, made a very distinct house dressing, unlike any we had had before, and which we still make. It is a salad dressing, but our grandson-in-law also uses it on his steaks. The recipe originated with Jeanne Milliken, then the wife of a local lawyer, and she passed it on to Amy. Amy, understandably, guarded it closely because it was their signature salad dressing. But we did eventually receive the recipe from her son, Axel. It's easy to make, but you need a blender. If my memory is correct, the herb that was in the original recipe was tarragon. And I don't know when it was changed or who made the change, but we have long made it with basil. I would suggest that you can't go wrong with using whatever your favorite herb is, or use a mixture of several. Kroketten or Dutch meat croquettes. Deep fried, savory, good for a meal, good as an appetizer.

Dick DeRyk 12:19

Meanwhile, back in Netherlands, they were and still are cranking out kroketten or croquettes. They are cylinder-shaped or round, filled with a very stiff seasoned white sauce and meat, then rolled in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs and deep fried. You may want to try them in the air fryer. We haven't, and I can't guarantee that it will work, but it might be worth a try.

Dick DeRyk 12:45

In Netherlands, kroketten are widely available in vending machines in train stations, downtown areas, anywhere there may be hungry people. Insert your coins or credit card, open a little window, and take out your kroketten. They now also come in varieties with added spices and herbs, but we stick with the basic ones for which the recipe is provided.

Dick DeRyk 13:10

In case you're wondering, we have also tried to make these with gluten-free flour and crumbs, with the same disastrous results as the butterballs.

Irish soda bread

Dick DeRyk 13:22

When made in cylinder shape, about four inches long and an inch in diameter, they can be eaten out of hand and usually dipped in Dijon or coarse European-style mustard. I like mine with a mixture of mayonnaise and Dijon. Or they are split in half the long way and eaten on a slice of good bread. The round version is called bitterballen in Dutch, which has nothing to do with the taste we call bitter. In Dutch, bitters are cocktails, alcoholic drinks. The bitterballen are served as appetizers with bitters or beer. No idea why that shape, the round shape, is for appies, other than you can make more out of a batch, so they go further. Irish soda bread. This may be the easiest bread you've ever made. It may also be the best bread you've ever made.

Dick DeRyk 14:40

In the late 1980s, among about six Yorkton businesses we owned or co-owned at the time, was a bistro style restaurant on Second Avenue in the space now occupied by Wanders Sweet Discoveries, a very good bakery offering European-style pastries as well as light meals, coffee, and tea.

Sulawesi pork

Dick DeRyk 14:47

Our restaurant was called the Yum Yum Tree, and with every meal we would provide a slice of Irish soda bread. And there were often requests for extra slices. There's really no bread more easy to make than Irish soda bread. Throw everything together, don't overmix, bake, and done. Slice it, toast it or not, spread it with butter and or whatever else you like. Good Seville orange marmalade is my favorite, and that's it. Make it in a bread loaf pan for slicing, or make it in a flat baking dish for dishing out chunks. Either works, but you may have to reduce the baking time, which is given for a loaf pan in the recipe on the website. Of course, just stick in a toothpick, and regardless of what pan you're using, if it comes out clean, it's done. Sulawesi pork, from an island in Indonesia, part of the Indonesian food that we love to make.

Dick DeRyk 15:57

And now Indonesian food. Indonesia, located south of the Philippines, between Malaysia and Australia, is a vast country consisting of more than 18,000 islands, about a third of them inhabited, with a population of almost 300 million. With a population and landmass that spread out, it is no wonder that many parts of the country have their own cultures, including the food they eat.

Dick DeRyk 16:27

I first heard of the island of Sulawesi, north of the main island and just east of Borneo, when I was learning about Southeast Asian food. In the 1970s, I subscribed to the Time- Life Foods of the World books. Each month I would get a book loaded with photos of food from a specific part of the world, together with a spiral-bound recipe book. I read them cover to cover, read all the recipes, and tried those that sounded like they might be to our taste. We no longer have the books. They went out the door somewhere along the way, likely when we downsized for a move to our condo 13 years ago. We still have the favored recipes, including this one.

Dick DeRyk 17:17

This recipe is for Sulawesi pork. Sulawesi is a large island, part of Indonesia, and these days Islam is the predominant religion, followed by Protestant Christianity and Hindu. I don't know if Islam was the main religion back in the 1970s and 80s when I first ran across this recipe, since Muslim people don't eat pork, or perhaps only the non-Muslim population ate this particular recipe. We make this in large batches. Feel free to reduce the recipe on the website proportionately, and then freeze it in portions to be taken out in barbecue season or put under the broiler in the oven in winter.

Dick DeRyk 18:06

Like all recipes, you may want to tweak this to your taste. If you're not a fan of hot peppers, don't worry about the jalapenos that are included. They don't lend a lot of heat to the final product, but are important for the marinating and the final taste. You want to use pork shoulder, as called for in the recipe. It has a coarser grain and more fatty, which allows the marinade to work its way into the meat. We have tried it with denser cuts of pork, like pork loin or leg roast. It's not the same. Pork shoulder, which is also generally cheaper, is by far the best choice. And don't trim off all the fat. It too will be marinated and broil or barbecue nicely, ending up a bit like marinated piggy puffs.

Bierocks

Dick DeRyk 19:04

Limes and salt are the essential ingredients here, since they infuse the meat and basically start the so-called cooking process before you actually cook it. You'll know that the proportions of marinade and meat are right when, after marinating, the meat has started to turn whitish, as if it was cooking. The salt and the acid in the limes do that, while the limes, onion, and fresh ginger root add tons of flavor. But be sure to do the marinating in a large glass or plastic bowl. The salt and acid will attack any metal bowl, changing both the bowl and the flavor of the meat. A pocket of dough with a filling of cabbage, onion, and meat. A meal all in one package.

Dick DeRyk 20:01

And finally, for this podcast about food, bierocks, B-I-E-R-O-C-K-S. Pockets of bread or bun dough filled with fried cabbage, onion, and ground beef. Or, I suppose, any other meat of your choice.

Dick DeRyk 20:19

Every culture in the world has a food that is contained in pastry or similar, eaten out of hand, supplying basic nutrition. All of those, including bierocks from what is now Germany and Eastern Europe, grew out of the need for people to have an all-in-one food item that they could take with them on travels or work or farming or herding cattle that wouldn't spoil because it was already cooked and baked and could be eaten hot or cold. Think of Italian calzone, think of Spanish empanadas, think of Czech kolaches, think of South Asian samosas, think of Jewish knish, think of Mexican tamales, think of Greek spanakopita, and more.

Dick DeRyk 21:20

Bierocks are in the same category. We provide a dough recipe but use any favorite dough recipe, whether it be bread or sweet bun dough. Try to avoid refrigerated or frozen pre-made dough, which is much harder to work with. It just doesn't roll out and hold its shape as well, we find, but the choice is yours to experiment with.

Dick DeRyk 21:35

As in many of our recipes, if you're going to go through the work of making dough and the filling and stuffing and baking the bierocks, make a large batch and freeze them. Warm them up slowly in the oven, preferably not the microwave, cut into them, slather them with butter, and enjoy.