Hotchpot is a typical winterfood in Nederland, where all kinds of vegetables are cooked and mashed together with potatoes. And there is also a fruit variant with apples, called: "hoite bliksem" {Oldambtsters} or freely translated to English: "hot blizzard". Basicly what they all have in common are: potatoes. That is the main ingredient. Artist Vincent van Gogh made our food habits world famous by his painting from 1885, called the potato eaters. Potatoes got very popular after it got imported from Brazil in the 17th century. And it took a while before it became known that the part to be eaten was hidden in the soil underneath the plant. And here in Groningen there are all kinds of stuff made of potatoes, like glue, for instance. But that might be a subject for another post.
art Public Domain/cc0 by Vincent van Gogh 'Aardappel eters'{potato eaters} made in Nuenen {NL}, April 1885
Easy as pie: hotchpot
That is the main secret about cooking a hotchpot, it is simple. Most of the time I use a semi flowery type of potato. And I cook a huge pot right away. Meaning 2,5 Kilogram of potatoes, cut into little blocks. Most of the time I use 1 Kilogram of vegetable, or apples, versus 2,5 Kilogram of flowery potatoes. But you can change this ratio to your own taste, of course. Now with the Kohlrabi, turnip family, it depends on the weight of vegetable. Last time I had about 1,4 Kilogram, unpeeled, same goes for the weight of the potatoes, I measure unpeeled. Make sure you cut the Kohlrabi in small blocks also. Because this will reduce the cooking time drasticly.
Then it is time to have a pan that fits all that goodies together, a 3 liter pan should do the trick just fine. Now this amount of hotchpot could easily feed a family of eight. Or you could freeze some in, or eat for two days, invite others to join in, be creative, or change the ratio. But I often cook two days portions for my family. That put aside, moving on...
Potatoes first, on top of them the Kohlrabi. Then some salt, I do that on guess work, handpalm, little piramid, think about 4 grams. To spice it up a bit I use 'Sambal Badjak', but the traditional way is to use white and/ or black pepper. But I use 'Sambal Badjak' a lot, almost in every foodtype I make. It is an Indonesian version of baked chilli pasta, it is darkred and gives a less 'burning right through the stomache' experience. Still I use about a table spoon amount of it. And to top it off, a table spoon of sugar syrup, the dark one. For just that extra bit of taste I add some margarine.
Fill it up with hot (boiled, could be needed in some places on our planet) water, that will take down cooking time. Just fill it up until you it almost reaches the top of the ingredients.
Cooking fast, mash it up
About 15 minutes cooking time should be enough. When it starts to cook, just lower the fire until it just boils quietly. Most of the time I do use 13 minutes then try the vegetable and potato, to see of they are cooked. If not I add two more minutes. But Kohlrabi tends to be more tough to cook. Still, I like my vegetables to have a byte to it, so I have to do some chewing at least. Anyway, cooking should not take more than 20 minutes.
Now it is time to pour most of the cooking fluid out, leave a bit in, so it won't become to dry after mashing it up. Before I start to mash it up I add another piece of margarine, just to smooth it out a bit. And it helps the taste, also, we need that extra layer of fat in winter, or the extra calories to keep us warm. Although some think that the earth already has warmed up enough that we do not need the extra fat in winter anymore. Do not know if that is true, I still hope to ice skate on natural ice coming weekend. So I do still use margarine.
Wot, no meat?
Well, in the last years I became what is known as a flexitarian, don't blame me, blame the mainstream media for that. For me it is that I rarely do eat meat. Also in my family there is a vegatarian. So, that means I would have to cook seperately every time. The challenge became: how to make a nice tasting diner, without meat. And during the years I succeeded. Even in such a way that it became normal for me to not even consider using some kind of meat. But, that does not mean you can not cook bacon with your version of hotchpot, for instance. No need to add extra margarine then I guess.
Meat adds it's own kind of flavour, some do add sausages for instance on top of the hotchpot, or a beef product. Now, I really do not know what the cooking time would be then. But I think quite a bit more. Yet, the fun of hotchpot is actually that almost anything goes. Although not everybody might like your idea of orange cucumber potato hotchpot, you could always have a go at it. Maybe you got onto something there even! Keep me updated...
We need more energy
With hotchpot some kind of gravy, can be done vegetarian too, is often used. In my version I first season {Bifteki style} some tiny mushrooms and fry them in sunflower oil. Then add the gravy mixture and let that boil on a small fire for a bit. And that really tops it off. Strangly enough the mushrooms are gone first...
And there you have it, another piece of local 'Oaldamster' cuisine: "Stamppot Knoaln", we love it here, like most of the hotchpot variations. Next one I'm going to make is "Hoite Bliksem", the one with the apples. And it is going to be hot, because I will add some extra sambal badjak. ;-)
Have a nice on!
image 'kohlrabi' cc-by-sa Rainer Zenz {assumed} source WikiPedia
Why Nederish? Explained in another post, TIL: Dutch actually should be written as Deutsch