What Is A Patat Special, Max Verstappen's Home Favorite?
I'll never shy away from an opportunity to fry some potatoes
Welcome to Grand Prix Gastronomy! In 2024, this series is dedicated to cooking the favorite dishes of every driver on the grid.
The Foods That Max Verstappen Loves
I'll be honest: I did not expect Max Verstappen to have any particularly good answers to the favorite food question. The reigning World Champion tends to be pretty reticent when it comes to answering interview questions, especially if they're silly ones. But I've underestimated the good Max Verstappen — he's had a ton of different, thoughtful answers to this question.
In 2020, Max Verstappen's YouTube posted a nearly eight-minute long video interview with G-Star RAW where they talk about nothing but food and drink. On his “first day” whiteboard for the 2023 F1 season, he says his favorite foods are tomato soup and beef carpaccio. But I'm pulling from that G-Star RAW vid, because he talks about the “typical” Dutch dishes he loves: "I do like mashed potatoes. And I don't know if it's really Dutch, but when I'm with my mom or dad I also like to have a french fries special or a frikandel special. I can enjoy that so much."
I had to Google a frinkandel special, and I'm going to be honest: it is not the vibe. But the “french fries special” intrigued me. It's a little bit of an awkward name for a dish, which made me think it referred to something specific — and I was right. The Dutch have something called the “patat special” or “friet special,” which is a big ol’ cone of fries topped with mayonnaise, chopped white onion, and either ketchup or curry sauce. That's fun; it's the kind of food I could imagine being a childhood favorite, or the kind of thing that really reminds you of home. But there are other ultra-fun Dutch street foods involving fries, and so, that's what we'll be cooking.
This Week's Recipes
Rather than opt just for ketchup-and-mayo topped fries, I decided on something called “patatje oorlog,” or “war fries.” At the base is a cone of thick-sliced fried potatoes, which will subsequently be piled with an absolute mess of toppings: peanuty satay sauce and diced raw onions with ketchup and mayonnaise on the side.
This week, I pulled my recipe from Tara's Multicultural Table, a blog that blends travel writing with local recipes. The patatje oorlog recipe she shares is accompanied by a fun tale of her family's trip to the Netherlands as well as research on the dish, so I felt confident I could trust her recipe.
Core Recipe:
Cooking Patatje Oorlog
First, I want to note that there are two ingredients in this dish that you'll want to source: sambal oelek and kecap manis. Samal oelek is an Indonesian chili paste that will absolutely change your life if you're the kind of human who loves Asian-adjacent hot sauces like sriracha. Sambal oelek is made of crushed red chilis, vinegar, and salt, while some blends have shallots, garlic, ginger, and/or shrimp paste. The second is kecap manis, a thick, sweetened soy sauce that's also from Indonesia. The base is obviously soy sauce, but it's thickened with palm sugar molasses, which gives it a syrupy consistency and a sweeter taste. I'd say that the kecap manis isn't super necessary for this dish if you have soy sauce and brown sugar on hand, but you definitely do not want to miss out on the sambal oelek.
Alright, let's get cooking!
This is a pretty chill recipe, so go ahead and start by prepping your potatoes. Wash, peel, and slice them into fry-size pieces, then pop ‘em in a bowl of cold water and let them sit in the fridge for a while. This helps get rid of the starches on the potatoes. Ideally, you want to leave your potatoes in the water for a few hours, but if you're short on time, rinse and drain your potatoes a few times before soaking them in clean water while you make the sauce.
And that's where we're going next! Finely chop your onion and garlic, then grate your ginger. You'll sauté the onion on the stove in a little bit of peanut oil, just until they're soft. After that, you'll toss in the garlic, sambal oelek, and ginger — it won't even take a minute for that to get fragrant, which is when you put in your peanut butter.
You definitely want natural peanut butter for this, not Jif or Skippy. You want a more liquid-y peanut butter. Once you've stirred your onion mix into the peanut butter, add in some chicken broth, kecap manis, and dark brown sugar, stir, and then let simmer. It won't take a terribly long time, but I did keep my satay sauce on the stove over a low heat while I fried my potatoes.
If you cooked along with me last year, then you'll know that fries are pretty simple to make, and if you are a Fry Guy like myself, you'll benefit heartily by investing in a small deep fryer — otherwise you can use a pot with a few inches of oil and a metal slotted spoon.
Drain your potato pieces and pat them dry as you heat the oil to 325˚F. Add your fries to the oil and let them cook until they're soft all the way through, about five to seven minutes. Remove them and let drain on a towel-lined plate while you make the rest of the fries. You do not want the fries to be super browned or crispy yet — we're going to do a double-fry.
Once you've completed the first cook, turn your oil heat up to 375˚F, then start adding your once-cooked fries back into the oil. You'll only need two or three minutes in the fryer this time; when you pull the fries out, they should look nicely browned and should be crisp. Salt ‘em when they're fresh out of the fryer.
To assemble your war fries, toss a pile of fries onto a plate and pour some satay sauce over it, then sprinkle your diced raw onions on top. Pour yourself a glass of wine, and dig in!
The Wine List
This week, I've opted for Gewürztraminer wine as my war fries pairing, which a lot of folks call the grown-up version of Moscato. On the nose, it reminds me a lot of an old lady's perfume — aromatic, floral, fruity, and intense. It's that cloying sweetness of rose and lychee that makes it special.
When you sip it, it's a really full-bodied white wine that's really fresh and flavorful, but it's not too overwhelmingly sweet. You want to drink it super cold, right out of the fridge.
Gewürztraminer tastes great, and it pairs really well with super flavorful dishes — especially nutty, gingery dishes. Sweet, cold wines go really well with the salty bite of the french fries, while aromatic wines go wonderfully with the intense satay sauces. In Gewürztraminer, you've got the very best of both worlds.
So, What's The Verdict?
Alright, allow me to admit something here… I did change the recipe just a little bit more to fit my tastes, but I promise, I made no substitutions or swaps. Instead, I just added in a lot of sambal oelek. Like, maybe three or four (or five) times as much as the recipe called for. As I tasted the sauce while it cooked, I thought it was good, but the peanut flavor definitely dominated over everything else. I wanted more variety and complexity, so I sambal’d that oelek. The result was amazing.
I'll admit that I was a little bit skeptical about the dish as a whole, but I shouldn't have been. I'm struggling to think of a food built on a fry base that isn't a banger, and the satay sauce on top was honestly incredible. It reminds me a lot of the Midwest pantry stir fry my mom used to make when I was a kid, where her sauce was made up of peanut butter and soy sauce. It's simple, but it's great.
The crispy fries pair so well with the sweet-salty-tangy sauce and onion combo that I honestly am forever changed. I know that this dish isn't exactly the one that Max Verstappen mentioned as being his favorite, but I like to think he's at least had and enjoyed it before — even if it's not exactly the kind of healthy meal an F1 driver would normally eat.
Ready… Set… COOK!
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