We started these international dinners because we like good food and don't want to prepare it ourselves. Well, that was one of the reasons. Other slightly more altruistic reasons include my (Ron's) curiosity to see the faces behind the stories I keep hearing from her (Anne-Wil), a chance to show off our home, and impressing people (the ladies, mostly) by showing how incredibly well house-trained I am.
It is also offering an opportunity to the students to meet each other socially — some international students manage to get through their one year here without really getting to know their fellow victims. Well, perhaps that was the main reason...
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The dinners take place in our home, are informal, and would bring tears to the eyes of any self-respecting chef. (We manage to keep our eyes dry without undue effort.) Normally there are some 20 to 25 students and hangers-on present, including the kind souls who agreed to prepare one or more dishes from their home country.
We are not very particular as to the overall composition of the menu (although we try to include a starter, one or more main dishes, and a dessert of sorts), so don't be surprised if you go from Mexican to Greek to Lebanese, then finish off with some German concoction.
Drinks are also available: mostly soft drinks and fruit juices, but also some wines, beers and lagers, and a bottle of rum that we can't seem to get rid of. If you want to introduce your favourite beverage to a larger audience, by all means feel free to do so.
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The dinners are organised on a more or less regular basis: every 4 to 6 weeks during the academic year. We try to avoid the mad rush before examination periods and generally get in touch with you through the various student email lists. That was the good news.
The bad news is that someone has to prepare all that delicious food. This requires volunteers. (That's you.) So for each occasion, we beg, implore, twist arms, and throw in some dark hints about the upcoming grade marking process to coax people into enlisting themselves as a "cook".
In practice, this means that you buy ingredients, arrange them into an appetising looking mess, then call it a meal (with all this foreign food, who are we to doubt you). For a really professional touch, you may want to think of a name for the dish, and if you declare that this is the original recipe that was handed down from generation to generation since times immortal, your success is ensured. We do expect you to partake of your own dish, however, so this may place some restrictions on what you want to do to the food.
By the way: most of the cooking is normally done in our kitchen — we arrange with the cooks what they need by way of pots and pans. We'll even chop the onions for you, so you don't have to cry your eyes out.
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We are Dutch ourselves and this inevitably shows in the financial arrangements, which are known in English-speaking countries as "going Dutch". In essence, we expect you to share in the costs of the food. We ask the various cooks to tell us how much they spent on the ingredients, perform some mathemagical operations on the numbers thus obtained, and then tell you that you have to pay 3 pounds each. Or something to that effect. Presumably, the cooks receive their expenses back (less their own contribution), but no one has ever checked the books.
By the way: the drinks come free, courtesy of the house (that's us). Even the Dutch have their weak sides...
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Here are some things to take into account: because of religious or other reasons, some people don't eat meat (or only kosher or halal meat) or don't take alcohol.
Don't be put off by that either as a cook or as an eater — we keep an eye on things and will ensure that suitable alternatives are available. It does help, though, if the cooks are at least vaguely aware of the ingredients they are using (and perhaps choose an acceptable substitute if the recipe allows).
Conversely, if you have specific dietary restrictions (including for example diabetes or a tendency to develop skin rashes after eating cheese — we get all sorts here), do let us know. With 10 or more nationalities present you can't always please all people all of the time, but we have a pretty good hit rate.
Did we whet your appetite?
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Copyright © 1999-2000 Anne-Wil Harzing
and Ron van der Wal. All rights reserved.
Legal notices and colophon. This page was last modified on 7-11-99 19:03 |