On Eating Frog Legs and White Asparagus by Jennifer Brozek

Far further back than I care to admit, the large newspaper I worked for sent me to Amsterdam to attend a trade show. In among the many adventures I had on that trip, I discovered the incredible variety of cuisines that make Amsterdam such a pleasure to visit. The glories of a spread of rijsttafel dishes, gouda cheeses, crisp Dutch beers, and so many others. One of my favourite discoveries was bitterballen the crunchy bar snack with a savory creamy filling that were served alongside beers.

It got me thinking about culture and how food transcends boundaries. Rijstaffel (rice table) is the Dutch version of Indonesian cookery. It dates back to the glory days of the Dutch East India Company, where creaking wooden barques made the perilous journey around the Cape of Storms to venture to the far east colony of Batavia (present day Indonesia). The ships would return laden with exotic spices like nutmeg, mace, and cloves dried and sometimes ground to powder to survive the long journey back to Holland. At a time when the Dutch Republic was entering its golden age, cooks could not get enough of these new flavours and sought out exotic flavours and colours to impress their guest with a dazzling array of dishes.

The sailors also brought recipes back with them, curries, nasi goreng, gado gado sambals,fried bananas and others. Back in Amsterdam people tried to make these recipes, but lacking the fresh ingredients, they substituted dried spices.

While the colonial excesses of the rijsttafel banquets have long since fallen out of favour in Indonesia, they remain a staple of Dutch restaurant fare, as former colonials returned following independence.

What’s in a name? Bitterballen are part of the larger tradition of bittergarnituur, or savoury snacks to serve with beer. Ballen being the Dutch plural for ball. So, essentially, savoury balls to have with beer.

Bitterballen are one such incarnation of the mixture of cultures permeating Dutch food. The basic recipe was probably taken from a French croquette filled with ragout, a traditional way of using leftover meat. The filling is shredded cooked meat mixed with a thick roux, to which with the addition of nutmeg brings an exotic flavour.

In my latest science fiction novel, Plato Crater, Holly a young thief is sentenced to community service in one of the only antique rijsttafel restaurants still licensed to burn hydrocarbons. One of the first dishes she learns to cook is bitterballen. This is how I imagined the recipe to be:

INGREDIENTS

For the filling:
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 cup of flour
• 2 cups of shredded cooked beef or veal (usually taken from last night’s leftovers)
• 3 cups beef broth
• 1 small onion, chopped
• ¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• ¼ tsp powdered nutmeg
• ¼ cup finely grated parmesan cheese

For the breading:
• All-purpose flour
• 2 eggs whisked
• Breadcrumbs
• Vegetable oil for frying

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a large pan, sauté the onions in olive oil until translucent.
2. Add the butter and once melted, add the flour slowly to make a roux.
3. Gradually add the broth, while stirring continuously to ensure that the roux absorbs the liquid.
4. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens.
5. Add meat and parsley. Cook for around two minutes until the mixture resembles a thick gravy. Stir in the salt, pepper, parmesan and nutmeg.
6. Transfer the filling mixture to a shallow container and refrigerate for 2 hours or until is has a solid consistency.
7. Take a spoonful of mixture and roll it into a ball the size of a golf ball.
8. Dredge the bitterballen in the all-purpose flour, then the egg wash and finally roll it the breadcrumbs. This should make around 20 bitterballen.
9. Place the bitterballen on a shallow tray in the to the freezer for 30 minutes before frying.
10. Prepare oil for deepfrying, either using a small saucepan or a deep fryer.
11. Fry the bitterballen, a few at a time, until golden brown, remove and set on a plate covered in paper towels to absorb excess oil.
12. Now open a crisp Amstel or pale lager, and serve the bitterballen hot, with a side of Dijon or grainy mustard.

About the Author

CARLETON CHINNER is an Australian born writer who grew up on a remote farm in South Africa, where the trip to the town library was the highlight of his week. He devoured anything science fiction, fantasy and horror. And, when that wasn’t enough, turned to urban legend and traditional tribal histories which combined to provide a heady brew of stories.
He has settled in Australia as an adult but not before turning up unarmed at a gunfight, discovering dead bodies and fighting off sharks while spearfishing. When not writing, he works as a project manager on large corporate programs. Follow him on Twitter @sunfishau

The CITIES OF THE MOON series is Chinner’s debut series, now available as POD and in ebook form from good online stores everywhere. Book 2 Plato Crater is available from 31 October.

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In my prohibition-era, urban fantasy novelette, Water of Life, investigator Sean Joye searches the Southern Illinois hill country for Caleb, a missing moonshiner. His trek, beyond a flooded river and through a forest bristling with ice and fae ill intent, leads him to a strange old mountain woman. Miss Lutra would just as soon shoot him as feed him squirrel stew; but feed him she does, and the meal is delicious.

Dinner with Miss Lutra

Letting old ladies feed me hasn’t failed me yet. The stew and bread smelled great. My stomach growled as I sat down at the oak-plank dining table, and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day.

Miss Lutra invited me to say grace over our meal, but apparently found my “For these thy gifts make us truly thankful” a poor effort and jazzed up the prayer with a blessing on the squirrel, the forest, the other animals of the forest, the creek, the farmland, Caleb”””who is lost from us but will be delivered whole and sound, if not now, at the final trumpet,” me, my people, her people, and herself. Although mostly focused on my rumbling stomach, at the final “amen” I remembered not to cross myself, the Church of Rome not so very popular in these parts.

Miss Lutra had filled out the scant meat from a single squirrel with potatoes and turnips, and the meal was quite tasty. Between mouthfuls of hot stew, only marred by the occasional buckshot pellet, I said, “I don’t mean to be abrupt, ma’am, but was Caleb here today or not?”

The old lady cut off a hunk of hot bread with her enormous knife and wiped her bowl with it, sopping up the peppery gravy. “You ain’t from around here, are you, Mr. Sean Joye? Sound like you could even be from over the waters.”

“Do I now? Does that make a matter where Caleb went?” Through the tiny window, I could see dark clouds full of snow gathering low over the woods. “Or does it make a matter of what you’ll tell me?”

Squirrel Stew For Two

While Miss Lutra has a long lifetime of putting together a bit of this and a pinch of that to keep her household fed, I need recipes. She’s not one to share her secrets, of course, but hinted at the following squirrel stew instructions:

• A squirrel or two, cleaned and cut into pieces (or, 1 pound of chicken thighs with skins and bones)
• 1 teaspoon salt, divided
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper, divided
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper, divided
• 1-3 Tablespoon bacon fat, as needed
• A handful of mushrooms (if you got “˜em)
• 2-3 Tablespoons flour (Depends on how much fat the meat renders. You need equal portions fat and flour.)
• ¼ cup moonshine (Irish whiskey works OK.)
• 2-3 Cups chicken broth (divided)
• 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped well
• Several sprigs of rosemary
• Several leaves of sage
• An onion, chopped well
• 2-3 potatoes, peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces
• 2-3 turnips, peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces
• A carrot, peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces

Melt two tablespoons of the bacon fat in a cast-iron stew pot or Dutch oven. Salt and pepper the squirrel (or chicken thighs, if you can’t get one) with about half the seasonings and then brown for five to ten minutes in the bacon fat.

Remove the meat and brown the mushrooms, if you’re using them.

Next, brown the chopped onion.

Now use the bacon fat and rendered grease to make a gravy. (You need equal amounts of fat and flour for the roux””the gravy base. Add more bacon fat, if needed””depends on how much fat was soaked up by the mushrooms. Dissolve the flour in the fat and brown it””about as dark as a pecan or an acorn””over low heat. Keep stirring the roux, scraping up any bits of meat stuck to the pan. This might take a while, depending on how dark you like the roux. Don’t rush it. Then stir in the moonshine and two cups of the broth. It’s gravy!)

Warm the herbs and garlic in the gravy until they smell good, then add the vegetables, half a teaspoon or so of salt and red and black pepper if you like it, and more broth to cover. Stir it a bit. Nestle the browned meat among the vegetables.

Bring the stew to a boil, then lower heat to simmer, covered, for an hour or so.

After about an hour, uncover and fish out the meat to cool a bit (ten minutes or so) on a cutting board.

Add the cooked mushrooms to the stew and continue to simmer, uncovered if it seems a bit too thin.

After the meat cools, cut it away from the bones, chop, and put back in the stew. Adjust the seasonings as needed.

Serve with hot, crusty bread and apple pie for dessert.

BIO: Kathy L. Brown lives and writes in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Her hometown and its history inspire her fiction. When she’s not thinking about how haunted everything is, she enjoys hiking, crafts, and cooking for her family. Her novella The Resurrectionist and novelette Water of Life are available as paperback and e-books from Amazon.com. The Resurrectionist is also available from Ingram. Kathy’s short fiction has appeared in the Bards and Sages Anthology Great Tome of Forgotten Relics and Artifacts (The Great Tomes Series, Volume One), with earlier works in Bards and Sages Quarterly, Golden Visions Magazine, and Mused Literary Journal. Hippocrene has published several poems. Follow her on Instagram at kathylbrownwrites, Facebook at kbKathylbrown, and Twitter at KL_Brown. Kathy’s blog, Kathy L. Brown Writes The Storytelling Blog, lives at kathylbrown.com.

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