1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (88 page)

An all-in-one breakfast special.

This wonderfully hearty, homey dish used to be a standard in Danish restaurants, especially for lunch. It has become increasingly difficult to find, although exceptions may be spotted in country restaurants or home kitchens doling out traditional comfort foods. But it just might be the poster child for Denmark’s best (and best known) food products: sweet, healthy pork; eggs individually stamped with a dated code to ensure freshness; cream-rich unsalted butter, considered by many to be Europe’s best; and milk from the contented cows that graze on bright green pastures in this rain-blessed land.

To prepare this lusty brunch or luncheon dish, crisp-fry slices of mellow, lean bacon. Set them aside to drain, leaving their rendered fat behind in the skillet. Whip up a sunny batter of eggs, potato flour, salt, white pepper, and rich Danish milk, and pour it into the hot fat, slowly cooking the mixture omelet-style over a low flame. When the top of the pancake is still somewhat creamy, lay the slices of bacon over it in a star pattern. Sprinkle on minced chives as the batter sets completely (a lid placed over the pan will help with setting). Cut the finished pancake into wedges with the edge of a spatula and serve it directly from the pan, along with buttered slices of rye bread.

Where:
In Copenhagen
, Slotskaelderen hos Gitte Kik, tel 45/33-11-15-37,
slotskaelderen.dk
;
in Odense, Denmark
, Carlslund, tel 45/65-91-11-25, restaurant-carlslund.dk.
Mail order:
For Danish-style bacon, amazon.com (search boczek dunski bacon).
Further information and recipes:
The Everything Nordic Cookbook
by Kari Schoening Diehl (2012);
food.com
(search flaeskeaeggekage).

The inspiration for this succulent beef dish is obviously the French filet mignon maître d’hôtel, a rare beefsteak enhanced with a soft spread of lemon-and parsley-brightened butter. For years the Danes offered their more elaborate
version: an inch-and-a-half-thick filet mignon cooked rare and topped with almost invisibly thin slices of lemon (seeds and rind removed), and a fat finger of butter rolled in heaps of finely minced curly parsley and placed as a crown on the lemon slices. As one cut down through the enticing meat, rich beef juices mingled with the mildly acidic sunny lemon; the cool, softening, sweet butter; and the chlorophyll-fresh accent of parsley.

Though these days the dish, which is also sometimes called
Pariserbøf
, is not often seen in Danish restaurants, fortunately it is easy enough to prepare at home. Filet mignon is the standard cut, but there’s no reason an even more flavorful sirloin strip steak could not be substituted. Whatever the cut, the steak should be pan-grilled in a little butter; the sort of heavy searing or charring that results from broiling under a flame or on the charcoal grill would throw the dish’s delicate flavors out of balance. The meat should be rosily rare and barely warm at its center, neither a near-raw blue nor a drab well-done—you want the juices to flow into the sublime mix.

Have the parsleyed fingers of butter and the trimmed and seeded lemon slices ready in advance and keep them chilled in the refrigerator, removing them just as you begin to prepare the steaks. Don’t forget a mound of slim fries (preferably as crisp as spun glass) and a sprightly clump of watercress.

Where:
In Copenhagen
, Sankt Annæ, tel 45/33-12-54-97,
restaurantsanktannae.dk
.
Further information and recipes:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961);
frenchfood.about.com
(search maitre d’hotel butter).
Tip:
Be sure the fillets are at room temperature before searing. If a thick finger of butter (unsalted, please) seems too heavy, follow the recipe for maître d’hôtel butter referenced above as sparingly or generously as you wish.

Veal frikadeller with red onions and horseradish on toast.

Savory and family-friendly, these fried meat cakes are the nurturing comfort food the Danes used to rely on as Americans do hamburgers—never mind that the hamburger may well have displaced
frikadeller
in Denmark. The gently “fried” (though actually sautéed) cakes are a light, puffy combination of ground veal and pork, made tender with a little flour and airy with a dash of soda water. Some egg, finely minced or ground onion, and salt and pepper are also incorporated into the ground meat mixture, and the whole is allowed to bind and ripen in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Shaped into meaty ovals, the frikadeller are then slowly and carefully sautéed in hot butter, the low heat ensuring that the meat remains juicy and tender as it is cooked through.

Whether they’re plated or heaped onto sliced bread for open sandwiches, the frikadeller are typically garnished with pickled beets and red cabbage. Mashed potatoes finish the dinner plate, while the sandwich may be decorated with a shimmering sliver of veal aspic.

Where:
In Copenhagen
, Kanal Caféen, tel 45/33-11-57-70,
kanalcafeen.dk
; Sankt Annæ, tel 45/33-12-54-97,
restaurantsanktannae.dk
;
in Elk Horn, IA
, Danish Inn, tel 712-764-4251,
danishinnrestaurant.com
;
in Santa Barbara, CA
, Andersen’s Danish Restaurant and Bakery, tel 805-962-5085,
andersenssantabarbara.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Scandinavian Christmas
by Trine Hahnemann (2012);
allrecipes.com
(search frikadeller).

Scandinavia’s famous salt-and-sugar-cured salmon.

Gravlax (aka gravad lax), the cured raw salmon with a silky texture and a sunset-coral hue, combines overtones of dill with the contrasting accents of its sugar, salt, and pepper cure. Named after an ancient curing process in which fishermen preserved their catch by burying it in sand with sugar and salt—the
grav
means “buried” and the
lax
means “salmon”—it is surely one of Scandinavia’s greatest contributions to gourmandise.

Delectable when thinly sliced onto lightly buttered, thin whole-grain brown rye bread such as the Danish
rugbrød
or the cracklingly crisp caraway-flavored flatbread
knäckebröd
, and delicious alongside chive-sprinkled scrambled eggs, it also makes an enticing main course when cut into inch-thick slabs and lightly glazed under the grill, a step that imparts briny-sweet overtones as the salt and sugar in the cure caramelize. In all cases, lemon and freshly snipped dill are the typical garnishes, as is a tangy sauce of blended sweet and hot mustards thickened with minced dill. (Iced aquavit or vodka are standard accompaniments.)

As so often happens to very popular foods, gravlax’s reputation has at times suffered because of its success, with purveyors who are inept or greedy (or both) taking shortcuts in its processing, using inferior ingredients, or keeping them around so long that the fish turns waxy and the dill bitter. Other damaging shortcuts: using salmon that are farmed for quick fattening or that come from warm waters, both sure to result in a bland and overly fatty product.

Fortunately, it is easy enough to take matters into one’s own hands—and, when shopping for salmon to cure at home, to tell the wild from the farmed. The latter bears numerous white stripes of fat in a sort of moiré pattern, while wild salmon has a finer grain and shows much less white fat. Farmed salmon may also have a deeper red-orange color than wild, usually because a coloring agent was added to the feed. Still, because wild salmon is extremely expensive as well as scarce, substituting relatively lean high-quality farmed salmon is permissible.

No compromise can be broached in the cure, which should be prepared with fresh dill and worked into the fish flesh by hand. A new faction of cooks promotes a very quick
cure—often no more than a few hours long—but for a more traditional richness and a firm texture, anywhere from forty-eight to seventy-two hours is the norm, depending on personal taste and the thickness of the fish. A longer cure ensures that any lurking parasites, possible in raw salmon, will be killed, as both salt and sugar draw water out of anything that lives, parasites and bacteria included. (Salt being, after all, the reason the Dead Sea remains dead.)

Serves 10 to 12 as an appetizer

For the salmon

About 5 pounds center-cut skin-on salmon fillet, cut into

2 equal-size fillets 2 to 3 tablespoons aquavit or vodka

1 cup sugar

1 cup kosher salt

2 teaspoons white peppercorns, crushed

1 large bunch of fresh dill

About 2 tablespoons dried dill seed

For the mustard sauce

1 cup German or Swedish sweet mustard or prepared honey mustard

1 cup hot Dijon mustard

1½ teaspoons sugar

2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar

⅓ cup olive oil or mild vegetable oil

⅔ cup minced fresh dill

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Thinly sliced squares of Danish whole-grain rye bread,
rugbrød
, or dark Westphalian pumpernickel, for serving

Minced fresh dill for garnish

1.
Prepare the salmon: Work your fingers over the flesh side of each salmon fillet and, using tweezers or your fingertips, carefully pull out any fine bones. Pour one generous tablespoon of aquavit or vodka over the flesh side of each fillet and let stand for about 15 minutes.

2.
Combine the sugar, kosher salt, and peppercorns in a bowl. Rinse the fresh dill under cold running water and pat it dry with paper towels.

3.
Sprinkle a thin layer of the sugar mixture in the bottom of a large glass or ceramic baking dish that is about 2½ inches deep (a baking dish used for lasagna is perfect; see
Note
). Arrange 5 or 6 sprigs of dill, stems and all, on top.

4.
Pat the flesh side of the salmon fillets dry with paper towels. Gradually work about one third of the remaining sugar mixture into the flesh side of a salmon fillet, packing it on until no more can be absorbed. Repeat with the remaining fillet. Place 1 fillet, skin side down, in the baking dish on top of the dill sprigs. Sprinkle half of the dill seeds over the fillet. Cover the fish thoroughly with a very thick layer of 15 to 20 dill sprigs.

5.
Sprinkle the layer of dill sprigs with the remaining dill seeds. Place the remaining salmon fillet, flesh side down, over the dill to make a sort of sandwich. Sprinkle the remaining sugar mixture over the skin of the top fillet. Add a few sprigs of dill to the baking dish, placing them around the fillets.