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I am looking for the name of a dish that I used to eat a few years ago in The Hague, Netherlands. It looked like a cordon-bleu stuffed with chopped vegetables (carrots, onions, fennel, and maybe millet) for what I remember. The outer part was kind of a fried breaded crust.

It was served as the main course at the vegetarian desk of the cafeteria, and now I blame myself for not paying attention to its name.

Does someone have a clue of the name of that dish ?

EDIT : As requested, here are some precisions about the shape. It was half-oval shaped : one side was straight and the other side was rounded (like on this picture)

dounyy
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    I'm hoping someone will write a general answer about the various options, but if not, it might help if you could clarify what you mean by "looked like a cordon-bleu" - in particular, how exactly was it shaped? People seem to have some pretty variable ideas of exactly what shape that means. – Cascabel Feb 12 '16 at 23:40
  • @Jefromi I have edited my post with some precisions on the shape – dounyy Feb 15 '16 at 08:50

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The Dutch make a few dishes similar to what you describe. (note: I'm assuming that your 'like a cordon-bleu' doesn't mean it's breaded stuffed chicken, as you mentioned it was vegetarian)

If they're smaller (one or two bites), they'd be bitterballen. They're normally meat-filled, but they can be filled with vegetables, too.

If they were larger, they'd be kroketten

update: to clarify, I am not Dutch, and moved from the Netherlands 30 years ago. As a non-native Dutch speaker, I had (possibly incorrectly) assumed that 'kroketten' was a class of food / style of preparation. From Marc Luxen's answer and Cerberus's comments, I'm going to assume that the term is similar to American 'burger'. If someone ordered a 'burger' and you gave them a veggie burger, it'd not be what they expected. (and similarly, we have 'cheeseburger', 'veggieburger' and other compound words that are more specific)

(and there hadn't been complaints about people answering in comments, I wouldn't have made this an answer ... as I had to make an assumption about what made it 'cordon bleu'-like. I assumed something stuffed, then breaded & fried, possibly with cheese or other dairy).

... and I'm making this community wiki so that any native Dutch person can correct it, as I don't know how to undo it being marked as correct.

Joe
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  • The "like a cordon-bleu" referred to the shape and outer texture, your assumption is obviously good. I looked at kroketten, and found this picture [from Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Croquettes_with_red_lettuce.jpg), which match pretty much, except that the Béchamel given in the description was not in what I tasted. – dounyy Feb 12 '16 at 16:29
  • @dounyy : it's made thick enough that it's almost a dough. It's possible that there was some German influence, and they used potato instead. – Joe Feb 12 '16 at 16:48
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    No, bitterballen kroketten are made of beef stew. They never look like cordon blues, because they are small balls or cylinders. Wrong answer. – Marc Luxen Feb 12 '16 at 19:50
  • @MarcLuxen I don't think "like a cordon-bleu" is really specific enough to tell for sure whether small balls or bigger flat cylinders are the right shape, so both your answer and Joe's seem useful. – Cascabel Feb 12 '16 at 20:03
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    @jefromi. I am Dutch. I made countless kroketten and bitterballen. I have seen even more. I also know very well what a cordon blue looks like. I seriously doubt if you have seen or eaten bitterballen and kroketten. It is a nasi schijf. Beef stew does not have "millet-like" things in it. That was rice. Rice is nasi in indonesian, hence nasi-schijf. – Marc Luxen Feb 12 '16 at 20:30
  • @MarcLuxen So it sounds like your objection is really just about the contents, which is totally reasonable. It sounded like you were basing it just as much on the appearance, and while *you* may have a very specific idea of what all these things look like, the OP might not, so it's good to keep a slightly more open mind before leaping to conclusions based on things like that. – Cascabel Feb 12 '16 at 21:00
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    @MarcLuxen Also worth noting: the page about kroketten that Joe linked appears to have been written by someone Dutch, and says "Not only can the main ingredient be different (meat, fish, shrimp, vegetables)...", suggesting that this answer might well be correct, despite it not being the original or most common type of kroketten. – Cascabel Feb 12 '16 at 21:36
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    @Jef If the main ingredient is different, but it is still cylindrical and deep-fried with a (crumb-like) crust, it is not normally called a kroket, but rather a groentekroket, a viskroket, etc. It is like salmon carpaccio: you would never expect that if the menu said merely "carpaccio". So you could say a groentekroket is a kind of kroket, but you would not call the dish simply a kroket. At any rate, a cordon-bleu is normally not shaped like a cylinder, let a lone like a (smallish) ball, so it is very unlikely that that the OP's dish would be called a kroket or a bitterbal in Dutch. – Cerberus Feb 12 '16 at 22:51
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    @jefromi : It could have been a cordon-blue-shaped-millet-kroket, but unfortunately Dutch has no word for these, because they are extremely rare. I have never seen one. But you never know. It is good to keep an open mind of course, and an outsiders view helps with that. – Marc Luxen Feb 12 '16 at 23:27
  • @Cerberus Honestly, if you took that comment plus a couple of the other related things you mentioned in chat (about exactly what shape things are, to sidestep the "what shape is cordon bleu" issue) and stuck them in the answer, it'd probably be the best one here. – Cascabel Feb 13 '16 at 23:14
  • @Cerberus : see my update. – Joe Feb 14 '16 at 00:28
  • @MarcLuxen : see my update – Joe Feb 14 '16 at 00:28
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    Ok, let me clarify a few things. I have originally accepted this answer because, even though the kroketten or bitterball were not exactly what I was looking for, they still are *close enough* to what I expected. Regarding the millet, I have to tell you that I said millet with a big doubt. Indeed, I remember the presence of something rather neutral that made me think about millet, but it was likely not millet. And regarding the shape : is it this important ? The chef used to make them half-circular, but I guess he could have made them spherical or cylindrical as well... – dounyy Feb 14 '16 at 18:24
  • @Joe BTW I removed the green tick as you seemed to request. But without a better answer, I consider that yours is the best answer I got so far – dounyy Feb 14 '16 at 18:27
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You had a nasischijf. It is the Indonesian nasi goreng dish (rice with veggies and spices) in a crust, deep fried. You usually get it in snackbars or from a snackbar-wall. You eat it with sambal, Indonesian chilli-paste. Here are the Google image search results for "nasischijf".

Marc Luxen
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    FYI, I removed the back and forth because some of it had been flagged and because my edit made it obsolete. It's fine that you rolled back my edit - you can write the answers you want to write - but I do find this form less helpful. You're telling the OP that they *definitely* had a nasischijf, which requires rice, and it doesn't sound like the OP had something with rice. – Cascabel Feb 13 '16 at 01:13
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    It really looks like what you are showing, except that I *definitely* did not eat rice. Thanks for the contribution though ;) – dounyy Feb 14 '16 at 18:15
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    It that case it is not something regular, but an inspired cook who used something else than rice. This is as close as we can get! We would in any case definitely not call it a kroket. A kroket is based on ragout. Next time, try them all ;-) – Marc Luxen Feb 14 '16 at 23:13
  • This is a possibility indeed. My initial guess regarding the millet was due to the fact that I often met it in vegan dishes (for some reason... proteins maybe?); and the chef may have replaced the rice with millet for that reason. – dounyy Feb 15 '16 at 08:54
  • Yes maybe. Millet is not that commonly used in NL though...quinoa is very trendy at the moment, maybe that? – Marc Luxen Feb 15 '16 at 09:13
  • No, it was not quinoa. Quinoa is very easy to identify, and it was not what I ate. It was small brown grains, such as semolina but slightly bigger and not as steady. Maybe crushed spelt? – dounyy Feb 15 '16 at 10:48
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    AH! Yes, my guess it was couscous (semolina). Couscous is popular in NL. So you had a couscousschijf, as it were...or, to say it different, a crusted tabouleh ;-) – Marc Luxen Feb 15 '16 at 11:19