Kings Day 2015 and the national day of party, celebration, and if you happen to wonder into it unknowingly, you'd be immediately forgiven for mistaking it for the last days on earth. I'm not sure at which precise moment Koningsdag switches from a sweet Sunday stroll to the aftermath of a week-long festival, huge rock concert, and litter wrestling competition, but it does.
Strolling and wading through the madness with mum, dad, and Em last weekend, the sea of orange was the only constant. The national Dutch colour looking it's boldly royal best under a spring sun. The Billingham family tend to tan well, and fast, which meant that our skin tones were also joining in the sea of orange. Glancing at dad enjoying a walk-a-long biertje along the Prinsengracht, his newly olive complexion matched perfectly the fluorescent sunglasses hurriedly purchased earlier that morning, I thought that 'Orange Food Week' was the only natural choice this week. We'd toyed with the idea of 'Dutch Food Week', but to my ignorant English eyes, that's all too heavy and stodgy for this spring sunshine.
Orange can be a divisive colour. People rarely look good in orange, with the obvious exception of Dutch national holidays, and it can be a difficult colour to pair with anything else. However, in the world of food and all things edible, orange is a surprisingly frequent and versatile colour. To start with, there's the humble orange which unselfishly gives all of itself to orange juice, mousse, smoothies, chocolate orange, orange ice-cream, orange and green salad, and orange yoghurt. There are orange peppers, carrots, mangoes, sweet potatoes, passion fruit, butternut squash, pumpkins, apricots, egg yolks (they're not yellow), and all of those before we've even though of mixing yellow and red. There's campari, BBQ sauce, and red lentils (they're orange).
The sweet potato fries speak for themselves - just add a generous amount of olive oil before frying, but not too much so they become soggy - but a sweet potato shepherds pie? Yes! Boiled and mashed along with some natural yoghurt and nutmeg, the colour is as rich as the taste, a charming change to the tried and tested plain spud shepherds or cottage pie. The nutmeg combined well with other spices to give a healthy orange glow to our cosy and spicy cauliflower soup. Our humble orange was used to all of it's potential in our take on a classic Spanish Orange & Almond cake. It was also put to good use in bringing the Campari, gin, and Martini together to form the perfect Negroni. Don'y have too many of these of you have to cycle, though. Who says orange has to be reserved just for a Dutch Kings Day? Wear it in your kitchen now!
