Kaasplankje (Dutch Cheese Board)

For all its frying vats, the Dutch drinks table rests on something far older and simpler: cheese. A kaasplankje, a cheese board, is the most Dutch borrel offering imaginable, because this is a nation built on dairy: its reclaimed polders are grazed by the cows that fill the weigh-houses of Gouda, Edam and Alkmaar. Done well, it needs no cooking and no cleverness, only good cheese chosen with care and served at the right temperature.

A board that tastes of the polder

Where a French board wanders through soft-ripened and washed-rind cheeses, a Dutch one plants its flag firmly in aged Gouda. The star is oude kaas: Gouda matured a year or more until it is dry, deep amber, and shot through with crunchy tyrosine crystals. Around it sit younger, springier belegen, the cumin-studded Leidse, and perhaps a raw-milk boerenkaas from a farm. This is not nostalgia but the living present of the Dutch larder, the nieuwe-keuken impulse to celebrate what the country actually makes rather than import a foreign template.

Temperature and order

The two decisions that matter cost nothing. First, temperature: cheese eaten straight from the fridge is a waste, its flavour locked and its texture waxy, so bring it all out a full hour ahead. Second, order: arrange from young to old so the palate climbs, ending on the crystalline old Gouda that would flatten anything tasted after it.

The Dutch cheese board is a map of the polder: young grass to old cellar, all of it grazed on reclaimed land.

Then add the native flourishes: grainy mustard and sticky appelstroop for dipping the old cheese, a few pickles, some nuts, dark rye. A cube of oude kaas pressed into mustard, chased with a cold jenever, is the whole spirit of the borrel in one bite.