The ‘Dikke Koek’ Pan

So called in my birth family. A wedding present to my parents, it’s been in use, mostly, for more than three quarters of a century. I may have had it sitting decoratively on a shelf for a few years but is now back in almost daily use.

And still going strong, though the enamel is a bit worn at the edges. I trust this eroding enamel on cast iron a lot more than eroding teflon and modern stone wear.

I do stir fries in it, and also fry-ups which are a more elemental and robust fare than the meticulously sliced and diced former dish.

For a fry-up I like to start with a tablespoon of oil. Throw in roughly diced cooked chicken, precooked sausage or other meat, about a tablespoon’s worth per person. Fry till meat starts to get brown. Add in about the same amount of diced capsicum. Give the mass a bit of a stir.

People not on a low FODMAP diet might’ve started with onion and garlic. But next in for me are a few tablespoons of cooked rice, or cooked pasta, or a root vegetable. I’ll hold back the carbohydrates if I’m having this on toast.

Pile the pan full of washed and dried green leaves … I use half a bag of prewashed three leaf salad from the supermarket … and stir to melt down. Break an egg over the pan and half stir that goodness in too. ( Yes! Discard the eggshell!)

Empty into a bowl or on toast on a plate. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

The ‘Dikke Koek’ of the title is something else entirely. if you know any Dutch or Afrikaans you’ll know already that Dikke means thick or fat, and koek means cake.

If you were going to say koek means biscuit or cookie … they are brothers and sisters of the same ilk. Baked goeds. Koek.

Dikke koek was a favourite birthday dinner dessert.

The savoury part of such a dinner often consisted of capucijners—in English known as marrowfats or grey peas—with bacon/spek, a green salad, fried potatoes and appelmoes (smashed apples). Yum!

You’d hardly think that after a first course as sturdy as that, anyone would still be able to fit in a serve of dikke koek met cinnamon sauce! But, you know, teenagers? They have hollow legs.

In the years when these birthday meals were cooked there would often be three teenagers at the table, plus an equal number of slightly younger kids.

Dikke koek is an old recipe—I’ll be very surprised to learn whether people in the Netherlands still eat it. Its formal name in the cookbook we get it from (published in 1939) is ‘broeder’… Why? A mystery to me.

The cookbook was my mother’s home economics textbook in secondary school.