All Things Dutch Gallery

Local business is a connection for Dutch people longing for a taste of home.

By JODY FEINBERG The Patriot Ledger

Breakfast cereals get a bum rap for their sugar content, so imagine what nutritionists would say about the Dutch tradition of shaking chocolate sprinkles or flakes onto buttered bread for breakfast.

Perhaps little, if they actually tasted it, said Dan Waterman of Hingham, who sells the sprinkles, flakes and other Dutch products through his mail-order business All Things Dutch.

"The chocolate adheres to the butter and when you bite into it, it's very delicious," said Waterman, who grew up in Loosdrecht, Holland. "Nowadays, people are much more conscious about sugar. But the people who order (hagelslag) figure a little bit isn't going to hurt them."

Along with tulips, windmills and Delft china, the Dutch are renowned for their sweets, particularly their chocolate, licorice and a unique cookie called stroopwafels. Though these items rarely are stocked in retail stores, they're readily available through All Things Dutch and other mail and web-based businesses.

Waterman purchased All Things Dutch about 10 years ago, after he retired from managing the New England office of Encyclopaedia Britannica. For years, friends would ask him to bring home treats whenever he traveled to Holland. With about 8 million people of Dutch heritage in the United States, Waterman correctly figured demand existed to expand the business.

Since then, the All Things Dutch mailing list has grown from 10,000 to 200,000 people. The majority live in 10 states. California, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Florida, Washington and Iowa.

"I found there was a huge market for people who sold ethnic items," he said. "All those people hungering to get back to foods their grandmother served or to try something new."

But you don't need to be Dutch to explore and appreciate the special chocolates, licorice and cookies, as well as the holiday traditions surrounding them. Business is especially busy now, since the Dutch celebrate Saint Nicholas Day on Dec. 5, when children receive treats from Sinterklaas, the forerunner of the American and English Santa Claus.

Traditionally, children receive a milk- or dark-chocolate letter for the first initial of their name, as well as a chocolate Black Piet, the helper who carries the bag of goodies for Sinterklaas.

"It wouldn't be Sinterklaas without the letters," said Elsbeth Kalendarian, president of the Dutch Club, a cultural and social club for people of Dutch descent.

Kalendarian, who grew up near Utrecht, is excited about the club's Sinterklaas party this Saturday in Belmont, for which she has bought scores of chocolate letters, dot-sized spice cookies and other holiday treats. One of her favorite is banketstaaf, a small pastry log of filo dough filled with almond paste that is available only at this time of year.

"Sinterklaas and his helper will throw out and pass out candies and cookies to the children," she said. "And the kids all make little gifts for Sinterklaas. We keep things relatively simple, but it's a lot of fun."

Arnold Roest of Duxbury, who grew up in Amsterdam, likes to give non-Dutch friends holiday gifts of some of his favorite Dutch foods, like the chocolate bread toppings and stroopwafels, a waffle-like cookie sandwich with syrup inside.

"They always go over well here," said Roest, a financial analyst.

Some of his favorites, like licorice drop, are more of an acquired taste.

"I'm a drop-a-holic," he confessed. "The Dutch are huge licorice eaters, but it isn't big here."

And he's a big fan of chocolate jimmies and flakes.

"I grew up eating those," he said. "They're 100 percent chocolate, not artificial, and they're delicious. I like the jimmies the best because they stick to the bread better."

In the history of chocolate making, the Dutch are known for several breakthroughs by a chemist Conrad J. van Houten that laid the basis for solid candy. The two most popular brands of Dutch chocolate are Droste and Verkade, Waterman said. Holiday favorites are chocolate wreaths, leaves and cocoa.

"Even a little piece of it will make your entire mouth come alive and you will have this chocolate euphoria," Waterman said. "The chocolate from the Netherlands is absolutely renowned all over the world. Whenever you go to a gourmet shop, you'll find Dutch chocolates."

A uniquely Dutch treat is drop, licorice candies that are unlike licorice familiar to Americans.

"I don't want to downgrade anything American, but licorice made here tastes sort of plastic," Waterman said. "Our licorice has a little tang, a little more bite to it. Ours is full of flavor."

The licorice comes in sweet, salty, hard and soft varieties and a multitude of shapes, like coins, farm animals, cats, Scottie dogs and fish. It has been called a Dutch obsession. It comes in more than 50 shapes, tastes and textures and is eaten by about 80 percent of Holland's residents.

"We came up with a way for people to taste a lot of choices by putting them together in a sampler," Waterman said. "They're fun because you spread them all out on the table and people have their favorites."

The Dutch also have fun with candy coated anise seeds, which they give as gifts for a birth - blue and white for a boy and pink and white for a girl. The licorice-flavored candies, called Muisjes, usually are eaten on bread or rusk, a biscuit.

The signature cookie is the stroopwafel. Stroopwafels, a waffle-like sandwich cookie with a layer of syrup, are sold hot off the waffle press by street vendors in Holland. Here, people heat them over a steaming hot drink to bring out their taste and chewy texture. Speculaas, windmill shaped cookies spiced with a little ginger, also are popular.

All Things Dutch also sells Dutch soups, cheese, coffees, teas, cereals and pancake mix, as well as a variety of foods from Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. Roest is a fan of Indonesian spices and noodle and rice packages.

"You just can't get them around here," he said. "My mom used to cook them all the time and they're delicious."

In her Bedford home, Kalenderian always keeps a supply of her favorite Dutch treats to share for tea time with her family and whoever drops by.

"It's not just that the traditional foods taste good, but that they mean to me that we have little treats together at tea time," she said. "In Holland, there's always a cup of tea ready around 4 o'clock and people just drop in on each other. People still make the time to relax and connect with each other."

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