Called yellow gold, Dutch cheese ranks one of The Netherland’s largest exports, right up there with tulips, and not matter how you cut it, who wouldn’t appreciate a table laden with beautiful cheese and flowers?
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” G.K. Chesterton.
De Gaulle’s ponderings over how to govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese make me wonder where he got the specific number. I can’t find one for Holland, although cheese is ubiquitous and each variety is attached to a specific location of production. Cheese is a gift from the flat green fields of dairy cattle dotting the countryside. The Dutch landscape is cheese landscape, and has been perhaps since Roman times.
Cheese in US vs Cheese in the Netherlands
Gouda (pronounced by the Dutch with a hard throat clearing ‘G’) and Edam are two popular Dutch cheeses also available in the States. They appear in The Netherlands in great colored rounds, from which you can have a wedge cut to bring home. Leyden cheese, which I have not seen in the US, is a pleasant surprise with flavorful studs of savory cumin and caraway seed for a spicy flavor.
The first time I ate Dutch cheese, I was confronted with a cheese knife.
You can’t eat cheese in Holland without one. We had one in a remote drawer of my American kitchen growing up, but I have little memory of actually using it. When confronted with a thick Dutch style wedge of cheese, the American will invariably cut it into smaller bite-sized pieces and place it on crackers, usually in the evening with a glass of wine.
Dutch Cheese: Can you cut it?
Of course the Dutch have evening cheese and crackers, but I was surprised to find them also eating cheese for breakfast. One morning as I forced the cheese slicer’s blade down into the cheese in an attempt to break off a chunk, a close relative recoiled in horror, demanding, “How could you not know how to cut the cheese?”
Tremendous wording. While the laughter subsided, I learned the proper approach.
Cheese sandwiches are consumed for breakfast, lunch, and snack time across The Netherlands. Holland is fueled by cheese.
(And coffee, but coffee is another story.)
[…] live in the Netherlands for as long as you want, but you’ll probably never get to try all the variations of cheese. Dutch people have so many different types of cheese, that you can eat it every day and never get […]
Yes, but you still haven’t explained how to cut into and eat from a ball of cheese with a wax rid.