Raising a Glass to Johannes van Dam, Who Taught Me How to Handle Gout

"Jesus, Jesus, allmächtiger Gott, 

ai, ai, ai, 

sei vorsichtig, Alois! 

Das Zipperl!"

~ Ludwig Bemelmans

Hotel Splendid

While otherwise in good health, I have developed gout, a sort of arthritis caused when uric acid crystalizes in joints. Although the condition has a genetic component, certain foods can aggravate it. Drinking alcohol to excess is almost certain to bring an attack. Mine is the classic version: a hot, swollen joint in my big toe. Fortunately, the attacks are infrequent, but when they strike, the pain is exquisite. Even a breeze could bring agony on those days. The writer Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) describes the condition in a paragraph that might as well be describing me:

Grandfather had several times a year attacks of very painful gout, which in Bavaria is called Zipperl. Much of the time, one or the other of his legs was wrapped in cotton and elephantine bandages. If people came near it, even Mother, he chased them away with his stick saying: "Ah, ah, ah" in an ecstasy of pain and widening his eyes as if he saw something very beautiful far away. Then he would rise up in his seat, while his voice changed to a whimpering "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

Johannes van Dam
Photo: Harry Meijer www.harrymeijer.com

My old friend Johannes van Dam coached me on how to deal with gout and what prescriptions to ask of my doctor. Johannes, an indefatigable food writer who dominated Amsterdam’s dining scene for decades, suffered from the affliction as well. When I used to visit the city — “our cosmopolitan village,” he called it — the two of us would eat all over town: bakeries, restaurants, cheese shops and butchers, markets, cafes, Indonesian and Chinese restaurants…wherever there was good food to be had. Forget American restaurant critics who traveled incognito; even the postman on the street would hail him by name. Now and then, we had tea or hot chocolate and simply watched movies at his flat above the Athenaeum bookstore in the center of town. Like my own home, his was packed with thousands of books dealing with food and drink.

It was he who told me about allopurinol to prevent an attack of gout and colchicine if one struck anyway. I learned also that a shot of Torodal (ketorolac tromethamine) on the first day of an attack can turn me from a bed-ridden invalid to a hobbling, cursing cripple. A vast improvement, believe it or not. Sadly, Johannes was struck by a heart attack the day we were to have dinner together in Amsterdam last year. While my travel companions hit coffee shops and the Van Gogh Museum the next day, I sat with van Dam in hospital. A friend of his, another well-known Dutch writer, came by to chat as well. On hearing that I was an American food historian, he made a slight jab. “Well, I suppose you must write about hot dogs and hamburgers, such things as that.” “No,” my old friend interjected before I could say a word, “He is a serious scholar; he is the American Johannes van Dam.” A lie, of course, but it was kind of him to say so.

Walking him down to the hospital’s newsstand, I shook his hand in the lobby and turned away, knowing it was the last we’d see each other. Van Dam, the man who taught me to love Amsterdam as if it were my own hometown, died not long after. "I know you love a stiff drink," he once told me, "but it has its problems and gout is one of them." Nevertheless, I'll raise a glass to Johannes van Dam. Just one.

Gout. Feh. Seems I may have it for life. If only the same could be said of old friends.

Note:

• In 2011, Van Dam and veteran barman Philip Duff each weighed in on the origins of the Dutch eggnog advocaat. Summertime is coming. Certainly not advocaat weather, but why not bookmark the recipe I use and bust it out once the weather turns cold? 
• The University of Amsterdam has awarded, the past two years, the Johannes van Dam Prize "given annually in recognition of an author’s extraordinary achievements in communicating gastronomical knowledge." Claudia Roden received the first prize, Harold McGee the second. 

On the Making of Vintage Glassware: Bert Haanstra's 1958 'Glas'

You may be tough, but are you roll-your-own-cigarette-
and-light-it-on-a-blazing-hot-jar tough?

Craft bartenders around the country pour vintage cocktails in vintage glassware as a matter of pride. Stemware, tumblers, and other barware from the 1930's-50's are easy enough to find even now that pikers know to check out thrift shops for great finds. We cocktail geeks like these glasses. Empirically true or not, a Champagne cocktail served in an elegant, hollow-stemmed 1915 coup tastes better than the same drink served in an Ikea coffee mug. Even delicate, small vintage glassware has a heft of historicity. They are mute witnesses to much of the liquid history we try to recreate (or surpass).

But we rarely see how such things were made. A nearly wordless documentary gives us a look inside micentury glassmaking, both hand-blown and industrial. Distorted VHS pirate copies of Bert Haanstra's 1958 Glas used to make the rounds among glassblowing students. The tape I saw in the 1980's was a copy of a copy of a copy, going back untold generations. I was very much into the glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly, but that old bootleg of Glas was nearly unwatchable.

The short industrial film is on YouTube now, however, in a much cleaner copy. Set to a light jazz score, it follows craftsmen and factory workers as they blow, turn, smash, and form glass into bottles, stemware, candlesticks, pitchers, and jars. Some of the men try to inject a little dramatic interpretation in their scenes, but most just roll and blow, roll and blow.



Goes well with:

• Predating Glas by only a few years, Hans Fischerkoesen's nightmarish Durch Nacht zum Licht ("Through Night to Light") pitches Underberg Bitters. I enjoy Underberg, but I'm pretty sure this wet-sheet nightmare of a campaign would not get greenlighted today.

Amsterdamse Krulletter, a Script from Amsterdam's Brown Cafes

It's no revelation that I like booze. Sooner or later with new acquaintances, I pin Amsterdam as one of my favorite places in the world. But a quirk kept a little tighter to my chest is that I'm a complete typography and font geek.

Oh, I'll spend hours after I should have gone to bed, staying up staring at the glowing screen until tears of fatigue flow freely down my cheeks. I grew up in a house with not only a butter churn, but also printers' drawers; early exposure to block lettering instilled an abiding interest in minding p's and q's. More than once, as I've trawled through the offerings of online font vendors, trying out phrases, and learning how various designers have used this or that font, dawn has taken me by surprise.
 

Ramiro Espinoza has combined all three elements — booze, Amsterdam, and fonts — in one tale. Espinoza lives in Amsterdam where he runs the digital font foundry, Re-Type. Intrigued by the cursive, curly script he found on the city's "brown cafes" (i.e., neighborhood pubs) and concerned that they were disappearing as old facades succumbed to renovations and new owners, he set about tracking down why the pubs in particular used this distinctive hand-painted font.

In a way, my research into the ‘Amsterdamse Krulletter’ (Amsterdam’s Curly Letter) began eight years ago as I was walking down the streets of what is possibly the city’s most beautiful district, the Jordaan. As every local knows, this area hosts quite a few of the old, traditional pubs that the locals call ‘bruin cafés’ (brown cafés). In urban environments, type designers are always looking at letters, and especially at hand-painted ones. It didn’t take me very long to notice that many of the pubs in the area had their windows painted in a very interesting and beautifully executed script. Later I discovered they had been painted throughout other parts of Amsterdam too, notably also in the De Pijp area. 

Espinoza tracks some of the examples to Leo Beukeboom who began painting for Heineken Brewery in 1967 and who hand-lettered signs for pubs sponsored by Heineken. "But," he writes, "the history of the style goes back further than that." Espinoza lays out his detective work on this beery lettering with additional connections to Amstel Brewery and 17th century Dutch calligraphy.

Read his ILoveTypography.com article and check out additional photos here.

Edit: Thanks to Jacob Grier for reminding me that the ancient Dutch distiller Bols uses some now-familiar lettering on its genever bottles. It is used again here (right) on the 2011 release of its barrel-aged genever. The regular version comes in a smoked-glass bottle while the barrel-aged genever is sold in tall but hefty traditional stone jugs. It's a nice nod to Amsterdam's drinking history.

Feh. Mistakes when I'm alone are bad enough, but making them here in this public forum is deeply embarrassing. The why of it doesn't matter, but I posted copy without checking facts. Sorry about that. Good news, though: we've heard from ReType Foundry more about the Bols script. Seems we should be looking toward England rather than the Netherlands for this one:

A note on pronunciation: Americans tend to pronounce this malt-wine spirit "GEN-uh-ver" but every Dutchmen I know calls it "ye-NAY-ver." On his show The Layover, Anthony Bourdain either plays it safe or forgets; he uses both.

I'm going with the cloggies on this one. Grab yourself a bottle or two. Good stuff to hand on hand.

Amsterdam's Canals: A Drunkard's Deathtrap

Understand that Amsterdam is one of my most favorite cities in the world. In fact, when I lived in Philadelphia, I kept a bag packed for those weekends when roundtrip airfare to Amsterdam dropped under $200. It didn't happen often, but when it did, I knew I'd soon be eating breakfast at Cafe Luxembourg overlooking Spui, the cobblestoned square at the heart of so many of my Amsterdam adventures.

A "private" model from whatsupwithamsterdam.com

Heavy drinking and concomitant public urination is so common in the city, however, that residents have a term for it: "wild pissing" (wild plassen in Dutch). Despite the presence of outdoor pissoirs throughout the city, such pubic conveniences aren't always used. Anything is fair game when a full bladder demands attention — trees and buildings, for instance. Even the city's famous canals are not exempt from a good hosing down.

Earlier this year, Radio Netherlands relates a story from De Telegraaf that 51 people have died in those canals over the last three years. One was the result of crime. The other 50?

De Telegraaf newspaper concludes that the other deaths were the fault of the victims themselves: they fell into the water and were unable to get out...Most of the canal casualties are apparently men who fall in while attempting to urinate into the water from the side.

How is it determined that men fell to their deaths while urinating? The article doesn't specify. Of course, witness statements might help establish that. But my guess is that their open flies were the common giveaway.

The article makes no mention, either, of the obvious: many of these drowned men with their supposedly open zippers had to have been drunk enough to lose their balance at the canals' edges and, hands occupied, tumble into the dark waters below: an ignominious end.

Please, dear readers, should you visit Amsterdam, have a few drinks too many, and find yourself outside, use the public toilets. That's why they are there. If the completely open four-man pissers make you a bit shy, keep an eye out for older, more private ones like the one above.

And before your flight back home, be sure to piss on a fly in Schiphol Airport.

Drinking Advocaat

I think it is better always 

to have a drink before people arrive 

and that way, 

you’re just a bit more mellow...

~ Nigella Lawson

Now that we’ve established some semblance of a nomenclature and etymology for the egg liqueur advocaat, three questions arise:

1. Who makes the stuff?
2. Once you’ve got it, what do you do with it?
3. If you can’t find it, is there an easy way to make it at home?

Last things first: yes, there’s an easy way to make advocaat at home. My own recipe with fresh eggs and VSOP brandy makes 1.4 liters of about 37-proof egg liqueur (see below).

If you’re put off by the prospect of making your own, though, three main brands are common enough to find on the shelf at your local boozery or through online vendors ; Bols (from Holland), Verpoorten (Germany), and Warninks (made by DeKuyper Royal Distillers in Holland). A bottle of any of these is readily available for $17-28.

Just as eggnog and even bourbon find their ways into a variety of desserts from cookies to cake, so, too, does advocaat. Most simply, it’s drizzled over ice cream. It’s also incorporated into cream fillings for cakes and pastries, sauce (just add it to vanilla sauce), folded into tiramisu, paired with baked fruit, and hundreds of other desserts.

In its drinking form (rather than the thicker, slightly cooked, incarnation), advocaat is indistinguishable from German eierlikör. One could easily slap alternate labels on the same product for different markets. Our European colleagues have been guzzling the infamous Snowball made with these egg liqueurs for some time. Popular — or at least well-known — in the UK, it’s simply one part advocaat to two parts lemonade (British lemonade, i.e., Sprite, 7-Up, or bitter lemon soda). Here, Nigella Lawson bangs one out:



Recipes for homemade advocaat typically call for anywhere from half to a full liter of alcohol per dozen eggs. I take a middle path with slightly fewer eggs and split the difference on the booze. The result? More boozy than some, not as much as others.

Here’s how we make drinking advocaat around these parts. For a thicker, spoonable, version, use whole eggs, ditch the milk, and heat the mixture in a double boiler.

The sweetened condensed milk is not traditional — or even strictly necessary — but it does creep up in some Dutch recipes. I like the additional smoothness and slightly cooked taste it lends to the finished drink, but feel free to omit it. Should you do so, add up to an additional ¾ cup of sugar. Likewise, if you just can’t get enough liquor inside you, this recipe will easily admit another 250ml/1 cup of 40% abv alcohol.

Rowley’s Authentic San Diego Advocaat

10 egg yolks
250g/1.25 c sugar
3-4 gratings of fresh nutmeg
A pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
750ml brandy, neutral grain spirits, or vodka

Strain the egg yolks through a medium sieve into a large mixing bowl to remove the chalazae (those repugnant, curled little white cords that attach the yolk to the shell). Add the sugar, salt, and nutmeg. Whisk gently to combine.

Stir in the vanilla extract, sweetened condensed milk and alcohol. Whisk vigorously, then pour into sterilized bottles. Seal. It's drinkable now, but better after two weeks in the refrigerator.

Makes about 1400ml of 18% abv advocaat.

Notes

• Clear spirits such as vodka or NGS will not affect the color of the drink noticeably. Many people prefer them for this reason. I use aged brandy which lends a slightly darker cast to the drink.
• Hold me in contempt if you will, but I use Paul Masson Grande Amber VSOP for this. Best brandy in the world? No, of course not. One of the best you'll ever get for under $10 per bottle, though. Recently, I scored a 750ml bottle at a local pharmacy for $8. Love those Christmas liquor sales...
• Clean egg yolks and whites off kitchen and cocktail gear with an initial rinse of cool water. Hot water can cook the stuff and make it much harder to remove.

Throat-Rippers, Neck Oil, and a Dose of Advocaat

This time last year, I wrote about three drinks that meld booze and eggs; Elise Hannemann’s 1904 eierpunsch, William Verpoorten’s modern-day eierlikör, and — from the pages of Playboy magazine — Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s eggnog.

One drink I didn’t get to at the time was advocaat, a venerable Dutch egg liqueur that's not dissimilar to eierlikör, but which comes in two forms. The first, more familiar to Americans, Britons, and others outside the Netherlands, is a pourable, eggnog-like drink. Such “drinking” advocaat is for the export market and would not pass muster among old-timers in Amsterdam, Groningen, or Delft. On the contrary, domestic Dutch advocaat traditionally has been a boozy, custardlike concoction served in small cups and eaten with spoons. Both, however, have their devotees.

The domestic stuff, made with egg yolks and whites, is sometimes called dikke advocaat (“thick” advocaat) in Holland while the version we're more likely to encounter abroad is variously known as dunne (“thin”) advocaat or schenkadvocaat (“pouradvocaat”) or drinkadvocaat, made with the yolks only. Just to confuse things, most people who drink/eat the stuff call it all just “advocaat” without modifiers.

The word itself in Dutch means “attorney” or “lawyer” but there’s no obvious connection to the legal profession at all. It is also so similar to adpokat, an Indonesian word for avocado, that two rival modern explanations for this egg-and-liquor concoction’s name have arisen.

Dropping Dutch anchor in Indonesian waters, 1669

The first is that the name somehow refers to a booze-and-avocado tipple created or adapted by the globe-trotting merchants of the VOC (the United East Indies Company) during its 17th century heyday. Irishman Philip Duff is a long-time resident of the Netherlands, a vocal proponent of its distilling traditions, and an internationally known bar and beverage consultant. He gets asked about this lawyer/avocado thing a lot.

Duff — along with many other knowledgeable souls — feel that the word's origins are well and truly lost. In an email to me, he admits, however, that he favors the avocado angle as a result of the VOC’s voyages abroad and dominance of Indonesia in particular:

The likelihood of there being a booze of some sort made, flavoured or mixed with avocado pulp is more than even, and it's not too much of a stretch to imagine this evolving into something with eggs back in Holland, eggs having both a bit of the colour and texture of avocados. Or...

The word "abocado" crops up in Spanish and Portuguese and refers to smoothness, mellowness, sweetness - opening the door to the possibility that an eggs-and-booze drink originated in south/central America and was named there, then the name was bastardised when it was brought back to Holland.

Not everyone buys this, though. When I asked Amsterdam culinary journalist and historian Johannes van Dam about the origin of the word, he wrote:

Personally I do not think the name of the drink comes from avocado, because that fruit was not really known here when the drink was already known by that name.

This in and of itself would seem to put an end to the avocado argument. Van Dam prefers another explanation: that the word is meant to evoke a soothing throat lubrication, such as might be required for attorneys.

Katadreuffe and De Gankelaar prepare for court battle  in Mike van Diem's 1997 Character

The popular rationale for the attorney angle goes like this: In the course of their work, attorneys must speak often and eloquently. Such a rich alcoholic drink — so the thinking goes — would both soothe their throats and relax the nervous among them to better prepare them for their loquacious undertakings.

Writing in 2006, Dutch linguistic journalist Ewoud Sanders examined various origin theories offered over the last century for the word. There's no clear winner, but he offered a convincing explanation for the side of the attorneys:

For now the battle for the origin of a little advocaat is undecided, but personally I think most of the oldest theory, that advocaat is a drink for the lawyer to keep his throat lubricated. Not so much because I think many lawyers are useful speakers, but because [in calling it that] you’re naming this motif (as linguists call it) that can also found in other drink names. Thus, a glass of genever is a keelsmeerdertje [throat lubricator] or smeerolie [lubricating oil], and the Germans know designations for spirits including Gurgelwasser [garglewater], Halsöl [neck oil] (also for beer), Rachenputzer [throat polisher] and, as other extreme, Rachenreißer [throat ripper].

Considering that opera singers have been known to gargle and swallow olive oil to soothe their throats, that in many parts of the US I've heard alcohol dubbed "throat oil," and that even Mississippi state representative Noah "Soggy" Sweats, Jr. referred to alcohol in his famous 1950's Whiskey Speech as the "oil of conversation" — well, the idea of calling alcohol as lubricant (even if it's a tongue-in-cheek circumlocution) is compelling.

Until proven otherwise, I'm betting on the lawyers. Linguistics aside — and more pressing — how do we make the stuff? Next up: advocaat recipes.

Goes well with:

• Ewoud Sanders' essay Doe mij maar een advocaatje (in Dutch — the translation above is my own and comes with the usual caveats).
• Planning a trip to Amsterdam? Check out Johannes van Dam's restaurant reviews in Het Parool.

Kruidnoten Liqueur, A Genever Recipe

Hiram Walker makes a gingerbread liqueur, biscotti-flavored cordial is not unheard of, and in his The Joy of Mixology Gaz Regan gives a recipe for a Jägermeister-spiked Oatmeal Cookie cocktail. Americans, though, simply don’t make cookie-flavored cocktails and cordials at home. Not often, anyway.

Fitting then, that the Dutch — who, after all, ran the first commercial still in America in the 17th century and gave us our word cookie — have a recipe combining the two. In a post last month, Lizet Kruyff relates a recipe for kruidnotenlikeur from Maak van de noot een deugd (roughly “Make a virtue out of nothing”), a new Dutch cookbook devoted entirely to cooking with kruidnoten.

Kruidnoten are tiny gingerbread cookies, cousins to the Christmastime specialty peppernuts. A direct translation is "spice nuts" but "nuts" refers to their diminutive size; they are no more likely to contain nuts than are peppernuts (or doughnuts, for that matter). Typical spices in the little cookies include ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, white pepper, cloves, and coriander, but such things vary with the baker.

With the help of Renée de Vries, an internet specialist at the University of Amsterdam, I tracked down online excerpts from the book. Why? Well, because Kruyff’s blog calls for 12 liters of genever, a Dutch spirit enjoying a modest renaissance in the US. Even counting my personal stash of current and vintage bottlings, there are probably not 12 liters of the stuff in our entire neighborhood. Plus only 500 grams of sugar to make a cordial with that much liquor? Something is not right. A look at the original reveals that her "12" liters is actually "1/2" liter. Big difference.

My somewhat loose and streamlined translation follows. For sticklers, see the original recipe below. Kruyff suggests both using white rum as an optional base spirit and, if you're so inclined, adding a splash of cream after the maceration. The original recipe notes that you can use cane sugar for a "warmer" taste and darker color.

Kruidnoten Liqueur

1/2 liter jonge genever or vodka
3 handsful of kruidnoten
200ml water
500 grams of cane sugar

Push the kruidnoten through the bottle's opening. Put the bottle away for about six weeks in a dark closet. Give the bottle a shake now and then to show it who's boss and so that the flavors can blend. Do not worry if it looks nasty.

After six or seven weeks, strain through cheesecloth or a clean tea towel into another bottle. Do this again if you doubt whether particles remain.

Make the syrup. Put the sugar and water in a saucepan with a thick bottom. Bring to the boil, stirring. Stir until all sugar is dissolved. Let cool, mix with the kruidnoten infusion and pour into a pretty bottle.

Proost!

Karin Sitalsing, Marije Sietsma en Helga de Graaf (2011)
Maak van de noot een deugd: koken met kruidnoten
120 pages (hardback)
Loopvis
ISBN: 9081764802
€ 17,95

Bar Food: Rowley's Bitterballen

Bitterballen are the quintessential Dutch bar food. Hot, crunchy, salty, meaty; they are tastier (and more appetizing) than dried little bar pretzels that everyone at the bar has been pawing at before you. The size of small meatballs, these snappy little hors d'oeuvres are miniature croquettes (kroketten in Dutch) which are, in and of themselves, particularly beloved by the cloggies. Plus, a bar manager’s delight—they drive you to drink, hence spend, more.

If you’ve been taken with Genevieve, Anchor Distilling’s take on genever, but aren’t quite sure what to do with it, the most approachable way to introduce it to your guests is with a batch of these little buggers. A dollop of hot mustard (Dijon, for instance) is standard.

Rowley’s Bitterballen

Béchamel/White Sauce
2 Tbl unsalted butter (30g/1oz)
3 Tbl flour (1.25 oz/35g)

1 cup milk or stock (250ml) (I like to use a 1:1 mixture of the two)
Salt, pepper, and whole nutmeg freshly ground to taste
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Make a very light roux by melting the butter in a saucepan, then adding the flour. Cook the roux, stirring until it just starts to turn golden.

Add the liquid, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, stirring the sauce until it’s smooth, using a whisk if necessary. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring often, until the mass is thickened.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir several ounces of the sauce into the beaten eggs to temper them, then add the new mix back to the remaining sauce. Cook the whole thing just to the boiling point, stirring all the while.

Take off the heat, add several gratings of fresh nutmeg, correct the seasonings, and set this sauce aside while making the filling.

Filling
½ c minced onion (60g)
2 Tbl. unsalted butter (30g/1oz)
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1.5 cup ham, minced or ground (180g/6oz)
1 cup cooked chicken or veal, minced or ground (120g/4oz)
1 Tbl flat-leaf (aka Italian) parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp dried thyme
¼ tsp hot sauce such as Tabasco, Crystal, or Texas Pete’s
Salt and pepper to taste

Dried bread crumbs (or panko for greater crunchiness)
2 eggs, beaten

Melt the butter in a skillet, and sauté the onion until it’s soft. Add the garlic and sauté until it’s fragrant, but not browned. Add the meats and heat through. Add remaining ingredients, including the roux, but excluding the eggs and bread crumbs, and set aside to chill.

Scoop about a rounded tablespoon of filling and shape each into a ball about an inch across. Repeat until the filling is used, setting each aside. Roll the entire batch in breadcrumbs, then dip the balls into the beaten eggs and roll once more in breadcrumbs. Allow to rest 30-45 minutes for the breading to dry some and adhere better once they are fried. Freeze any you don’t intend to use within the next day, then deep-fry the rest in vegetable oil at 350°F/177°C until they are a deep golden color. Serve piping hot with mustard and ice-cold shots of genever.

Makes around two dozen.

Goes well with:

• Het Jenever Museum
• Het volkomen krokettenboek, a comprehensive book of croquette recipes (in Dutch) by culinary journalist Johannes van Dam. Van Dam may contradict me, but many croquette recipes may be converted to bitterballen simply by making the shape smaller and round. Lobster bitterballen, anyone? Country ham?
• Chef John Folse is a juggernaut of Cajun cookery. His recipe for boudin balls isn't all that dissimilar to bitterballen and would fit in just fine in a bar food snack-off.

I gotta go. I'm hungry.

.