1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (91 page)

Another preparation, “Dry Jutlanders”—named after the peninsula that forms the bulk of Denmark’s mainland—is a notable treat in summer. A specialty in Frederikshavn, where the best plaice is caught, the smallest fish are cleaned, trimmed, and tied together in pairs to be salted down for two to three hours. Dried outdoors in the breezy shade until their skin can be stripped off, the fillets can be floured and fried in butter, and are typically served with Danish rye bread.

Where:
In Copenhagen
, Schønnemann, tel 45/33-12-07-85,
restaurantschonnemann.dk
.
Further information and recipes:
The River Cottage Fish Book
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher (2012).
Tip:
Along with summer fluke, grey sole is also a fair substitute.

Rullepølse
is the sort of creation that makes you wonder who thought of it first. The detailed work involved in making the enticingly spicy rolled-up “sausage” is a tribute to ingenuity, turning undesirable cuts of meat into a delicacy that one cannot live without. The meat involved is usually one of the tougher cuts of pork, beef, veal, or lamb, the last being the most tender and earthily flavorful.

Boned, split, and flattened, the meat of choice is spread with minced onion or shallots, parsley, crushed black peppercorns, cloves, and allspice—and, commercially, with a bit of salt peter, the curing agent sodium nitrate. Rolled up jelly-roll style and firmly tied, the meat is brined for a few days. Then it’s off to a poaching session, after which it is fitted into a wooden box with a screw-down lid and compressed into a small, flat-topped roll.

Several days later, it is finally sliced paper-thin, the creamy rings of fat entwining with the bright pink meat and the green glints of parsley. Most often rullepølse is served in an open sandwich, atop Danish rye bread spread with pork drippings or fresh lard, and garnished with glistening amber meat aspic—a treat similar to the peppery, garlicky rolled beef fast disappearing from Jewish delicatessens because it is costly to produce.

Where:
In Minneapolis
, Ingebretsen’s, tel 800-279-9333,
ingebretsens.com
;
in Solvang, CA
, Nielsen’s Market, tel 805-688-3236,
nielsensmarket.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Danish Cooking and Baking Traditions
by Arthur L. Meyer (2011);
cooks.com
(search rullepolse).

An exquisite array of Denmark’s famous sandwiches.

Buttered bread (
smørrebrød
) is the modest name for what are surely the world’s most beautiful sandwiches—they are served open, the better to display the handiwork of the artful chefs who painstakingly prepare their
paalaeg
, or toppings.

A Danish mainstay, especially for lunch and between-meal snacks, open sandwiches are said to have come into their own in the eighteenth century, presaging two trends we now consider cutting-edge: meals made up of small dishes, and the fashion for foods piled high in towering Pisa-like arrangements.

To attain impressive heights of sandwich verticality, open-sandwich chefs master the art of cutting, folding, and splaying cucumbers,
tomatoes, sausage slices, and roasted meats into the flower petals and butterfly wings they use to crown their creations. Added to the mix might be spirals of slim fried onions or little hills of sunny, custardy scrambled eggs soft-cooked with cream. Sprigs of dill and parsley and sprinklings of chives and tarragon lend color and aroma.

The sandwiches are customarily ordered in courses—two, three, or four to a meal, depending on one’s capacity and the size of the smørrebrød. Fish comes out first: ruby-red slivers of
maatjes
herring (see
listing
) topped with curls of red onion and tomato. Glazed flat bronze fillets of smoked eel with cloudlets of horseradish-spiked whipped cream. Coral slices of smoked salmon mantled with scrambled eggs.

Then come the meats. Rare roast beef with browned onions and perhaps a raw egg yolk. The same garnish on the popular beef tartare, here scraped to order with a razorlike knife rather than ground. Slices of soft, creamy liver pâté trimmed with bacon strips, a shiny slice of meaty aspic, and a few sautéed wild mushrooms. Cool sausages decked out with Italian salad (a red, white, and green combination of peas or tiny cuts of green beans, carrots or pimiento, and cauliflower) and accompanied by tarragon-perfumed mayonnaise lightened with whipped cream. As a novel “dessert,” a raw egg yolk and a ring or two of onion might soften the bite of Denmark’s tangy blue cheese.

Spread thick to act as a buffer between bread and dangerously juicy toppings, Denmark’s justly famous butter is extremely important to the success of any open sandwich. So is its bread, generally the moist and grainy
rugbrød
, or rye bread, though a few paalaeg require other varieties. Crisp-crusted, soft white French bread is de rigueur for the meat of crustaceans—lobster, crab, and the tiny Danish shrimp,
rejer
, the latter mounded and garnished with only a twist of lemon and a sprig of dill; for strong cheeses, crisp
knäkebrød
or tangy sourdoughs are just the thing. No matter what the bread or the filling, the sandwiches are best washed down with a glass of the country’s yeasty golden beer.

Variety is the spice of life, which is why some restaurants feature open sandwiches in abundance, with certain menus listing up to 250 choices. Such is the volume at Ida Davidsen’s celebrated Copenhagen mecca, where the tradition begun in 1883 by Ida’s great-grandfather, Oskar Davidsen, lives on. Her restaurant is a must-stop for any newcomer to the smørrebrød custom, although an honest open-sandwich exploration should follow up at lower-key, more quietly traditional local favorites such as the Kanal Caféen and Sankt Annæ, also in the Danish capital.

Where:
In Copenhagen
, Ida Davidsen, tel 45/33-91-36-55,
idadavidsen.dk
; Kanal Caféen, tel 45/33-11-57-70,
kanalcafeen.dk
; Sankt Annæ, tel 45/33-12-54-97,
restaurantsanktannae.dk
;
in Santa Barbara, CA
, Andersen’s Danish Restaurant and Bakery, tel 805-962-5085,
andersenssantabarbara.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Scandinavian Baking
by Trine Hahnemann (2014);
Open Your Heart to the Danish Open …
by Ida Davidsen and Mia Davidsen (1999);
The Oskar Davidsen Book of Open Sandwiches
by James R. White (1962).

Traditional Danish pastries on display.

Visitors looking for authentic pastries in Denmark are usually surprised to discover that the wonderfully buttery treats they seek are known as “Vienna breads,” or
wienerbrød.
A second surprise comes when they taste these delectable pastries in any of their traditional forms—especially if the sentence “I’ll have a Danish” brings to mind a series of heavy, greasy coffee shop disasters that call diplomatic relations between Denmark and the U.S. into question.

The real thing is based on yeast puff pastry, the yeast adding moisture and a particular nose-twitching pungency to the flavor, and butter folded in between many layers of dough creating that optimum flakiness. (Some insist that margarine makes for a more desirable and workable dough, but pay no heed.)

Once the basic dough is ready, wienerbrød takes on many forms and ingests many fillings. In the snail-like swirls known as
snegle
, it entwines walnuts, currants, cinnamon, and sugar. Strips filled with almond paste fan out into the much-loved cockscombs, or
kamme.
Big square puffs are filled with custard and dabbed with red currant jelly for substantial envelopes, or
spandau.
Apricot jam defines the large double twists known as apricot slips or
abrikossnitte
, and a big, round ring of connected buns flavored only with butter, sugar, and drizzlings of white icing is known simply as butter cake, or
smørkage.
The list of wienerbrød goes on. Some are miniature; some enriched with apples, prunes, or lemon cream; all are intended to take morning or afternoon coffee to a whole new, delectable level.

Lest you be left wondering: To the Austrians this danish is known as a
plunder.

Where:
In Copenhagen
, Conditori & Cafe H.C. Andersen, tel 45/33-32-80-98,
h-c-andersen.dk
; Lagkagehuset, tel 45/72-14-47-00,
lagkagehuset.dk
;
in Santa Barbara, CA
, Andersen’s Danish Restaurant and Bakery, tel 805-962-5085,
andersenssantabarbara.com
;
in Glendale, CA
, Berolina Bakery, tel 818-249-6506,
berolinabakery.com
;
in Seattle
, Larsens Danish Bakery, tel 800-626-8631,
larsensbakery.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Scandinavian Baking
by Trine Hahnemann (2014);
mydanishkitchen.com
(search kanelsnegle);
taste.com.au
(search spandau).

Eat your reindeer this holiday season, by way of these traditional Nordic Christmas cookies. (Fittingly enough, they come from Finland, where reindeer meat is more common than in any other Scandinavian country.) Crisp, buttery, and aromatic with cardamom, these memorably shaped Stags’ Antlers are easy to bake and keep well, stored in an airtight container, preferably a metal cookie tin.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter

¾ cup sugar

1 extra large egg, plus 2 egg yolks

¼ cup heavy (whipping) cream

1 teaspoon cardamom

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup cornstarch

1.
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F. Lightly butter a baking sheet.

2.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and egg yolks. Stir in the cream, cardamom, and salt.

3.
In a medium-size bowl, sift the flour together with the baking soda and cornstarch, then sift the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Blend thoroughly, kneading the dough slightly until it is firm enough to roll out.

4.
Flour a work surface and a rolling pin and roll out the dough to a ¼-inch thickness. Cut the dough into strips that are 2 inches long by 1 inch wide. Make 2 slits on 1 edge of each strip, about ¾ inch from each end, cutting down a little more than half the width of the strip. Curve the strips gently to open the slits slightly. Place the strips of dough 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet.

5.
Bake the cookies until pale golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer the baked cookies to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining dough.

Further information and additional recipe:
ifood.tv
(search stags antlers).
Tip:
Full flavor will develop if the antlers are stored for twenty-four hours before being eaten.

What you will need for this memorable experience, a traditional and unabashedly festive custom in Finland and Sweden: a few of the thick, ring-shaped sausages known as
falukorv
, and access to a sauna. If possible, that sauna
should be in a rustic hut at the edge of an ice-cold, clear lake—handy for jumping into when things get too hot inside.

Although a sauna, heated by hot stones, is basically a dry “bath,” occasional moisture is needed to induce sweating and keep participants from shriveling like raisins. Hence, intermittent dousings of the occupants and rocks with pails of cold water, or more picturesquely, light beatings with birch branches of sweet-smelling leaves soaked in cold water.