Pattaya Mail — Columns

Winebibber’s Grapevine  

Dolf Riks: The Spanish siege of Leyden and a pot of "Hutspot"

Hutspot, a mixture of potatoes, carrots and onions, is one of Holland’s national dishes. Although not exactly the pinnacle of fine cookery, Hutspot is a typical Dutch "piece de resistance". It is traditionally eaten by the people of Leyden on the third of October, the anniversary of the relief of the city from the six months’ Spanish siege in 1574. The burghers of Leyden were starving and there was not much, dead or alive, they had not consumed yet, including rats, mice and other vermin.

When the severely emaciated burghers woke up on that memorable morning of the third of October and noticed the silence in the Spanish camp, they thought at first that this was a sinister plot to trick them into opening the gates of the city. When it became obvious that, indeed, the enemy had abandoned their position, they rejoiced and went wild with glee. The Dutch rebels had pierced the dykes and the rushing waters (Holland’s great natural ally), as well as the sea gypsies (Water Geuzen) in their flat bottom boats, had driven the forces of the Duc d’Alva out of the trenches. One of the Leydeners, Gijsbert Cornelisz Schaeck, ventured out for confirmation and found a pot with Spanish "Hutspot". Although in reality a tiny portion, meant for one Spanish soldier, in due time this dish, as well as the herring and white bread distributed to the people later in the day, became a legend and the symbol of Leyden’s brave and obstinate resistance. It was the triumph of the Dutch revolt over their Iberian overlords and it turned the tide of the rebellion against Philips the Second, King of Spain.

Most people in Holland cherish "Hutspot", a simple dish, prepared with potatoes (Solanum Tuberosum), because - and this is still the general belief - this was what the Spanish ate in those days, having imported them from the Americas in the early sixteenth century (discovered to be cultivated by the Incas in the Colombian Andes mountains in 1536). Usually the modern "Hutspot is made with potatoes mashed with onions and carrots, flavoured with white pepper and salt and served with slabs of boiled brisket of beef. It is a rather sweet affair, as the carrots as well as the boiled onions tend to be sweet, and personally I am not one of its aficionados.

It is interesting to dwell on the fact that in the sixteenth century potatoes were practically unknown in Europe, even to the Spanish, who in fact accepted the wonderful staple at a much later date than the Dutch. A recipe for "Hussepot" is given in a "Eenen seer schonen ende excellenten Coc-boeck" (a very beautiful and excellent cookbook) printed in Dortrecht in 1601, twenty seven years after the siege of Leyden. Sixteenth century Dutch is not easy to read but with some difficulty I could translate it into something like this. Here it comes:

Take two to four kilos of beef. "Seeth" (boil) it in water with some salt. Add two or three whole onions, and a bunch of dried dill. Wrap two or three pieces of ginger, black pepper corns and some mace in a piece of cloth and add it also. After an hour or so, throw the onions away and cook until it is "enough" (that is how they put it). Throw away the dill, open the parcel with herbs and sprinkle it all over the meat and as a last touch slice the ginger and garnish the dish with it. Then it says: "Serve, it is ready and excellent." As you see, nothing is mentioned about potatoes for the plain reason that they were unknown, nor is anything said of what one should do with the broth which could have been very tasty and nourishing. Nor is mentioned what it is eaten with. Presumably bread. I believe the name "Hutspot" and "Hussepot" (in another Belgium (Flemish) cookbook dating from 1604 it is called "Heusepot" and made with veal), I think it originally meant "Huis Pot" or "House Pot" which makes one think of the French "Pot au Feu".

Of all the wonderful agricultural products the American Indians cultivated in pre-Columbian days, none had a greater impact on the European table than the lowly potato, food of the peasants and the poor. Like its cousin the tomato, another food from the New World, it also had an extremely difficult time becoming accepted.

The reasons were simple. Prejudice! Both plants belong to the Solanaceae family, of which the deadly poisonous nightshade is also a member as well, and the plants incited suspicion and fear. Until recently, there were, and actually still are, a few puzzling questions about the way the potato cultivation spread through Europe. The popular theory - and that was what I learned in my youth - was that the Spanish introduced it to the low countries and that Sir Francis Drake, the notorious scoundrel of the seven seas, presented them to Queen Elisabeth I in the latter half of the sixteenth century when he returned from a trip to Virginia in North America. Another version is that John Hawkins, a cousin of Drake and a prosperous slave trader, introduced them from Venezuela into Britain shortly after he started his appalling but at the time accepted business in 1562. All this has been proved in error, as the potato was unknown in Virginia as well as Venezuela at that particular time.

Our revered root vegetable was indeed brought to Spain by the conquistadors who encountered it in 1536 in the Andes, cultivated by the Chibcha Indians (Incas), in what is now Columbia and Peru. According to one source, it was at first thought to be lust provoking but after it landed in Spain in approximately 1560, for some reason it lost its appeal as a love bulb and a nourishing food. What exactly happened at that stage is still a bit vague. Its travels through Europe were until a short while ago also a mystery until the bulb emerged in Northwestern Europe at the end of the seventeenth century. The Swiss, Germans and the Dutch adopted the potato long before the French and the English. What could be the reason? How did it arrive in Switzerland, Germany and the Low Countries while not known in France or even Spain where it had landed from the Americas in the first place? These and other stories about the potatoes I will discuss in next week’s edition of the Pattaya Mail.

Dear Hillary,
My husband has been working in Thailand for the past 4 years. Since my daughter still had to finish school in Europe, I stayed with her for the first two years and came only for a few brief visits to Thailand. After she finished her school and got a job, I decided to join my husband here. We are always in contact with my daughter, making regular phone calls, writing each other faxes and now, since we have a computer at home, sending e- mails. My daughter, now 20, has a flat in my old aunt’s house and I always thought she was well taken are of. Recently she came to Pattaya to visit us, together with her new boyfriend. All was fine and we liked the young man. He behaved very well, was polite and seemed to love my daughter. After they went back, I asked all my old friends if they know something about his background. It was a shock for me to learn that this pleasant young man has a long history of crime. He was convicted for robbery and fraud and had to spend several months in prison. I also heard that he was on drugs before, but is supposed to be ‘clean’ now.

I informed my daughter about everything I have heard and asked her to stop this relationship. She got very angry with me and told me to mind my own business. She also told me she knows everything about him, understands why he did what he did, and she loves him the way he is. I fear very much for the well-being of my daughter and I am afraid one of these days she will pay bitterly for all the trust she invests in this man. I haven’t told my husband yet for I am afraid he will be very angry and he might mess up things even more. What do you think I can do about this situation?

Worried

Dear Worried,
Your daughter is obviously in love, and right now there is nothing you can do about it. Don’t make the big mistake so many parents do and try to talk her out of this relationship. The more you talk against her boyfriend, the more she will defend him. All you can do right now is try to keep a watchful eye on the situation and wait. Since you are not together with her every day, ask your aunt, some other relatives and your old friends to do this for you. You also must tell your husband about it. He is the father and it might make things worse if he finds out later by himself.

Maybe you have the chance, together with your husband, to visit your daughter or invite her to come and visit you again. Then you must try to have an objective discussion amongst the three of you about the whole situation. Don’t talk bad about the young man; just make your daughter aware of the danger of such a problematic relationship. In the end, she will have to decide what’s best for her.

  Thai Idiom:

Mao Rak

‘Drunk Love’

‘Well, there is certainly enough of that in Pattaya.’

‘I agree with the ‘drunk’ part, but I’m not sure about the love.’

Mao Rak is a term used when one is in the first stages of romantic love and the world seems wonderful.

During this phase, one feels intense euphoria.

Sometimes a person may even seem drunk.

So, if someone asks you, Mao lao, rüü?’(Are you drunk on alcohol?), you should answer,

Mai mao lao, mao rak!’ (I’m not drunk on alcohol, I’m drunk on love.)

Of course, the rude awakening follows shortly.

The tones are flat and high, respectively.

  Family Money

Investing in the markets - Part III

Two weeks ago we discussed how market forces determine stock prices, and last week touched on how stocks and bonds outperform cash over the long term.

That being so, why doesn’t everyone make money on the stock markets? Why don’t they simply take a position (i.e., buy some stock in a sound firm) and watch it increase in value over the years?

Why some people lose

At the risk of repeating what’s been said in previous articles, the most common reasons are: 1. Most people don’t understand how markets work; 2. Most people don’t have sufficient information to pick winning stocks before they rise too high to be worth buying; 3. Most people don’t have sufficient capital to spread their risks across several markets, or even across several stocks in their own home market; 4. Most people tend to be emotional investors, led by the twin emotions of greed & fear, rather than making buying or selling decisions based on market information, macro- and micro-economics, and good old common sense.

How some people win

How then can average people make money on the stock markets, and hedge their bets at the same time?

Taking a position - buying a good stock and holding onto it for a long period - is certainly one way that many people make a handsome profit. But few people have the nerve to stay in when the market tumbles, even though that tumble will almost certainly recover within a few years. And with all your investment eggs in one basket, you have to wait for the basket to mend itself, which might take quite some time.

Fear drives the faint-hearted to sell out "before the market drops even more"... Result? They lose money.

But the loss was only a loss on paper until they cashed in their investment. Then it became a real one.

The secret of success in any business venture is buy cheap, sell dear. Why so many investors persist in doing quite the opposite is beyond me.

What should they have done when they saw the market melting under their feet? Buy more!

If it was a good stock when they originally bought it, and the fundamentals of the company haven’t changed, then it’s an even better value stock when the market has taken a downturn. It may take several years to reap the gains if the market is depressed or the economy is in trouble. But history tells us over and over again that in the longer term the markets have always recovered eventually (although many Americans may not have thought so in 1930! Interestingly, 1 US dollar invested in the Dow Jones Industrial Index in 1929 would be worth somewhere in excess of US$650,000 today...)

The wise and patient investor will come out on top eventually.

The institutional bandwagon

Another way average people can get a slice of the stock market or bond market pie and play with the "big boys" is by pooling their resources with thousands of other average people, and jumping on the institutional bandwagon.

Bringing enough money to bear on a market can influence not only individual stocks within that market, but even the market itself.

Institutions who manage mutual funds or unit trusts do this every day. The fund managers are highly trained and motivated individuals who have access to the latest information not only on individual companies’ stocks, but on the macro- and micro-economics of individual countries, regional influences, and the global economy, supported by teams of economists, researchers and analysts. They spend all day every day deciding which stocks to buy and sell, where, and when. Their whole job revolves around making their fund do better than their competitors, and better than the market average.

No individual could possibly compete - in theory at least.

An enormous range of institutional funds are available nowadays. These include not only specialised funds which can only invest in specific markets (such as a UK Gilts fund which can only hold fixed-interest securities in the UK, or a Thailand Stock market fund which can only hold stocks in the SET), to regional funds which can alter the weighting of their portfolio holdings in favour of one or another market, but still only within a set geographical area (for example an ASEAN stock market fund, or a European stock market fund).

The list goes on. There are money funds for ultra-cautious investors, or those who want to play the international money markets. There are sectoral funds which may be able to invest anywhere in the world, but only in certain areas of activity (such as a Healthcare fund, for example, or a Technology fund, or a Privatisation fund which invests in nationalised industries which are being sold off to the private sector).

There are broad-based actively-managed discretionary funds which invest across the whole world’s markets but increase or decrease their holdings in any one market or asset class (cash, bonds, equities or even commodities & futures) as market conditions indicate. Thus the overall portfolio moves to become more conservative in ‘bad’ times and more aggressive in ‘good’ times, at the discretion of the fund managers. (This type of fund is therefore a fine choice for unsophisticated investors who have neither the time nor the interest to follow their investments, let alone individual markets!)

The list of institutional funds covers page after page of the world’s leading financial newspapers, and the question then becomes which ones to choose to construct your own portfolio...

And then we’re back at that same old problem of why many people don’t succeed with their investment strategy: they didn’t know how, etc., etc.

Which is why people like me exist - to help guide people through this difficult maze and assist them with their financial planning and investment strategy.

If you have any comments or queries on this article, or about other topics concerning investment matters, write to Leslie Wright, c/o Family Money, Pattaya Mail, or fax him directly on (038) 232522 or e-mail him at [email protected]. Further details and back articles can be accessed on his firm’s website on www.westminsterthailand.com.

  Health & Nutrition Facts: Defining low-fat diet

Fat is an ever popular topic. Yet, it’s not as evil as some claim it to be. Fat is a nutrient necessary for good health. You actually cannot live without it! Fat carries vitamins A, D, E, and K from your food into your bloodstream. Fat supplies energy to power physical activity and body processes that keep you alive. In order to maintain healthy skin, and for children to grow normally, fat is vital. A certain amount of body fat serves to cushion your body organs and protect them from injury. Fat acts as insulation to help maintain your body temperature.

While not enough fat is harmful, too much can cause problems as well. Diets high in fat are linked to some types of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The current recommendation is that fat should provide no more than 30% of your total daily calories. This guideline is recommended so you can evaluate the relation of fat to calories in specific foods in your overall diet. What’s so magical about 30%? This amount is typically lower than what most people consume and it’s a reasonable goal to achieve. Most experts would prefer a goal of 20 to 25%, which would help to reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers even more. However, getting 20 to 25% of calories from fat is too difficult for most people.

You know about the health benefits of a low-fat diet, but how to achieve such a diet is another matter. One of the most perplexing tasks you’re ever likely to encounter is calculating just how much fat you actually eat. First of all, you need to know how many calories you eat in an average day. You would also have to know exactly how many fat grams there are in the foods you eat. This can get difficult without food labels and with foods made from scratch, from restaurants, by friends, etc. Once you found your caloric and fat intake you would begin multiplying and dividing these numbers to come up with a percentage of fat calories.

What about skipping all those numbers and calculations and still keeping your fat intake at or below 30%? Some common sense rules can help you keep your diet low in fat:

Ask yourself how often you eat the following foods: hot dogs, sausages, luncheon meats, bacon, deep-fat fried foods, hamburgers, fatty cuts of meat, cheese, donuts, cookies, cakes, pies and other pastries, oily or creamy salad dressings, potato chips and other salty snacks like nuts, butter, margarine, eggs, whole milk, and premium ice cream. If you answer "never," "seldom," or "infrequently and in small amounts," you are probably getting less than 30% of your calories from fat. But if your favorite snack is potato chips or ice cream, and you usually have a donut or pastry at breakfast, cashew chicken for lunch, and a slab of meat for dinner, you are not eating a low-fat diet by any definition.

Try to be a semi-vegetarian. An easy way to accomplish this is by following the 1/2, 1/4, 1/4 plate rule. Half your plate should contain vegetables and fruits, 1/4 of the plate should consist of carbohydrates (such as bread, noodles, rice, etc., and starchy vegetables like corn and potatoes), and 1/4 should contain a low-fat protein food. A low-fat diet is one in which fruits, vegetables, and grains are dominant. Think of meat, poultry, and fish as side dishes, to be consumed once a day instead of at every meal.

Read labels. Unfortunately not every food here in Thailand has a label and if it does we often cannot decipher it. A lot of imported products contain nutrition labels. It’s always worth checking the labeling and noticing the amount of fat and calories derived from fat. Most labels contain ingredients listed in descending order of the amount found in the food. For example bread has flour listed first on the label. Foods with labels listing shortening, oil, hydrogenated oil, butter, or other fats as one of the first ingredients will tend to be higher in fat and calories.

Switch to nonfat or low-fat milk and dairy products. This switch can make a big difference. Whole milk has 8 grams of fat and 150 calories per 8 ounce cup. Nonfat milk has just a trace of fat and 90 calories. If you switched from drinking a glass of whole milk to nonfat milk every day for a month, you would save about 200 grams of fat and 1,800 calories. That’s about half a pound of fat!

Adopt low-fat or nonfat cooking methods. Baking, broiling, roasting, poaching, steaming, stir fried, and grilling, are all low fat cooking methods. Avoid foods that are fried, basted with fats, sautéed, or served with sauces and gravies. Always trim visible fat from meat and discard poultry skin.

Watch portion sizes. It is possible to sabotage a low fat diet. Most low-fat diets are low in calories, but not all are. It simply is not true that you can eat whatever you want, in any quantity, as long as you stick to low-fat foods. Calories DO count. A low-fat diet can be high in calories if you depend too much on some of the new low-fat cakes, cookies, ice cream, and other products. A common misconception is that low-fat means low calorie. These low-fat versions typically contain a lot of sugar and thus calories, but few nutrients and little fiber. If you increase your calorie intake on a low-fat diet and gain weight, that will cancel out many of the benefits you would get from cutting down on fat.

When adopting low-fat eating strategies into your lifestyle, take it slow. Make changes you can stick with in the long-term and enjoy the benefits of your healthy diet.

Readers may write Laura care of the Pattaya Mail with questions or special topics they would like to see addressed.

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