Venison Rydberg

Biff Rydberg caught my attention as I was thumbing my way through a Swedish butchery book. Even though there was no photo and all the text was in Swedish there was something interesting about it. From my basic grasp of Swedish I understood it to be a more grown up version of Pytt i Panna – which is minced beef mixed with cubes of sautéed potatoes that is to Sweden what chilli con carne is to Texans.

Intrigued, I dipped into Marcus Samuelson’s Aquavit book and discovered that Biff Rydberg is indeed a Swedish classic. Apparently it was invented in a hotel in Stockholm – much like the Wallenberger. It’s a very simple dish of flash fried cubes of beef fillet accompanied by squares of fried potatoes, onions and an egg yolk. Super straightforward. High quality food, simply cooked. It could barely be more Scandinavian. Check out Nordic Nibbler's stunning blog post about this wonderful Scandi dish.

My first attempt at Biff Rydberg actually featured elk, rather than beef, supplied by a fabulous Swedish intern whose brother was a keen huntsman. I cubed the lean elk and served it with diced sautéed potatoes and an egg yolk. It was a big success but I forgot to photograph it and felt as though the meal had slipped away. At the time I remember thinking that it would have been even better with some more interesting root vegetables and some tarragon to make the egg yolk form a sort of bernaisey sauce as it mixes with the warm meat and hot potatoes.

When I moved back to London I planted a few Jerusalem artichokes in the spring along with some golden and pink stripy beetroot. All summer I wished them along and marveled as the artichokes grew up into the stratosphere. And cursed as the beetroot seemed to laugh at me as they tip-toed their way towards adulthood. They were destined for my alternative take on Biff Rydberg – along with some wild mushrooms, the tops from my beetroot and crucially, some venison.

The venison was wild and I didn’t know what cut it came from. So rather than flash frying it – it seemed more sensible to sear it and then let it braise gently with some rehydrated wild mushrooms, juniper and red wine.

And rather than using boring old potatoes, I gave the starches an upgrade with c combination of cubed celeriac, beetroot and artichokes which balanced the metallic savouriness of the game with some earthy sweetness.

It’s a lot of effort. But as the egg yolk mingles with the gamey meat and sweet, earthy vegetables you’ll hopefully agree it’s worth it. It was so satisfying to put my artichokes and beetroot to good use.

Ingredients

For the braised venison

500g of cubed wild venison

300ml of red wine

Handful of juniper berries

Handful of dried mushrooms – rehydrated in 500ml of hot water

3 sliced onions

1 minced clove of garlic

Dried tarragon

Dusting of plain flour

Salt and pepper

Vegetables

4 beetroot

½ celeriac

4 Jerusalem artichokes

Beetroot tops

Dressing

Fresh tarragon

2 egg yolks

1 lemon

Method

This isn’t a hard dish to cook. The only thing that is tricky is juggling lots of different aspects so that they are all ready at the same time. You need to do the 3 different tasks at the same time.

Dust the venison in flour and season with salt and pepper. Brown the meat in a pan. Remove from the pan. Then sauté the onions. Then deglaze the pan with red win and add the venison and juniper berries having given then a gentle bruising first. Chuck in some dried tarragon and the rehydrated wild mushrooms along with enough liquor to cover the meat. Cook in a low oven until the venison is soft. Set aside and get cracking with the other parts.

Bake the beetroot whole. When they are cooked peel off the skin and then slice into cubes and keep warm. Mine were so small there was no need to cut them.

Cut the celeriac into 2 cm and the Jerusalem arichokes into 4 cm chunks and then parboil in salted water until they are almost tender. Then drain, dry, season and roast in a hot oven for 20 minutes or so until golden.

Steam the beetroot tops (or spinach if using) just before serving.

Separate the venison, mushrooms and onions from the liquor and reduce this to a sticky, syrupy sauce.

Arrange the venison in the centre of the plate with an egg yolk nestling inside its shell. Then add the cubed root vegetables so that they fan out across the plate.  And fit the beetroot tops in where you find space. Adorn then meat with the mushroomy mixture and the now reduced sauce. Then scatter the fresh tarragon over the whole plate along with as much seasoning as you think is required. And finish with a little spritz of lemon juice to help the egg yolk and tarragon to meld.

Enjoy with a nice glass of red wine.

Swedish Bread and Butter Kanelbulle Pudding with Bourbon and Bananas

Gothenburgers are known as the jokers in straight laced Sweden. Whenever a cartoon character or film role requires an amusing protagonist, they always cast someone from Gothenburg. It bubbles up a lot at work with very few days passing without an email chain awash with Swedish puns that are so obvious that even I can spot them.

As a sign that I’ve gone slightly native, I’ve found myself creating recipes based on how good the pun would sound, rather than what the end result would taste like: truly a recipe for disaster. Whilst this might create entertaining fodder for a blog post, it doesn’t necessarily translate to deliciousness. I found myself creating a dinner party menu full of ideas that sounded funny but were duty bound to taste awful. Having got a laugh at the idea of Stromanoff (herring stroganoff) I changed tack and used salmon far more successfully instead. And even then I tried to ruin it by calling it “laxanoff”.

Whilst the punning is fun and dangerous, I’ve found it very liberating as it lets you combine ideas and flavours with more energy, such as inventing a Swaesar Salad. Which leads me to one cultural mash up that worked brilliantly. I was fumbling around the supermarket trying to rustle up a fun dessert that married British and Swedish cultures, when I stumbled across the idea of creating a Scandi version of bread and butter pudding. Given that the Swedes have a pudding and baking culture that would make Greg Wallace walk around with a permanent boner, it felt like it could really work.

One of Sweden’s most iconic culinary emblems is the kanelbulle – which is a swirled a cinnamon bun, sprinkled with crystalised sugar that is as prevalent over here as a doughnut would be in the USA. They are part and parcel of any casual “fika” which sees Swedes devour a cheeky little cake with a friend and a coffee. But fika isn’t just coffee and a cake – it’s a cultural institution that Henry James could have waffled on about as a follow up to A Portrait of a Lady.

So with the unlikely pair of Greg Wallace and Henry James in mind I dreamt up the idea of creating a kanelbulle-bread and butter pudding. It works with croissants and marmalade, so why not cinnamon buns?

To make it a bit more grown up and to add offer up another flavour to enhance the cinnamon I decided to supplement it with bourbon, bananas and sultanas. And with this thought process, the world’s first kanelbulle bread and butter pudding was born. Here’s how to make it.

Ingredients

1 large family sized kanelbulle, 5 normal kanelbulle or a bag of mini kanelbulle
2 bananas sliced
100g of sultanas
500ml of custard
50ml of bourbon
100ml of cream
50g of brown sugar

Method

If you’re lucky enough to have a large kanelbulle, cut it into a series of 1 cm thick slices. Otherwise just slice the smaller ones and make do. Layer the slices with the bananas and then sprinkle with sultanas in a baking dish. Douse with bourbon. Add another layer just like the first and arrange the slices so they make a nice pattern. Then unleash the custard and cream. Let the custard and cream seep in and then sprinkle some brown sugar on top.



Bake in a medium oven for 30-40 minutes and serve with ice cream.





It far exceeded my expectations and I am now looking forward to cooking it again on October 4th - which is National Kanelbulle Day in Sweden.

Thank you Christian for the photographs. And to Bengt Olof Åradsson / Wikipedia for the image at the top.

Swedish Salmon Stroganoff

Swedish food culture is hard to articulate – for it doesn’t follow an easily digestible narrative. At first glance it seems healthy and fishy, but the more you dig into it, the more intriguing it becomes. So far I’ve detected three strands that compete and overlap.

The first area is that of the Nordic Diet which I have written about a fair bit, which sees meat and heavy carbs replaced by root vegetables, fish and slow release grains. Whilst it might seem like all Swedes eat this way, that isn’t very close to the truth. The reality is a bit more stodgy.

The second is Sweden’s native food culture, which isn’t that far off the hearty fare we know and love in Britain. Rich stews, lashings of potatoes, creamy sauces and overcooked vegetables are part and parcel of the Swedish cuisine that is called Husmanskost, or in other words, rustic homecooking from yesteryear. Like in Britain, this traditional and heavy approach to cooking has taken a back seat as daughters failed to pick up skills they would have otherwise learnt at their mother’s apron strings. But it is now making a comeback with Leif Mannerström at the helm.

The third strand is the way that Sweden has imported and bastardised many dishes from elsewhere such as Kåldolmar, much in the same way that we have done so with Indian food in the UK and the Americans do with Mexican food. They also love to slap doner kebab on pizzas and cover them, cravenly in burger sauce. Interestignly, one of Sweden’s most popular dishes is Korv Stroganoff, which sees beef fillet replaced by sausage. I made the mistake of mocking someone’s sausage stroganoff at work, only to find out it’s a cultural classic – up there with pickled herring and meatballs. So I wondered, could I bastardise the bastard to create the most illegitimate lovechild Sweden has ever seen. What if I replaced the sausage, which replaced the beef, with fish?

And lo, Swedish Salmon Stroganoff was born. I switched the shallots for fennel; the mushroom soup for lobster bisque; the parsley for tarragon; and kept everything else the same.

Serves 6

Ingredients

6 salmon fillets with the skin on
500g of button mushrooms
500ml of shrimp stock (or if desperate a can of lobster bisque)
300g of crème fraiche
Tarragon
Parsley
3 fennel bulbs
1 can of mushroom soup
Fennel seeds
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Lemon
Serve with roast courgettes and rice

Method

Slice the fennel up into slithers, season and sauté with the fennel seeds until soft. Then do the same with the mushrooms until cooked. Combine the two and then add the shrimp stock which you want to reduce by half. Once this has reduced, add the mushroom soup, tarragon, parsley and the crème fraiche.





Meanwhile, season the salmon fillets and sear the skin until crisp.



Then pour the fennel and mushroom sauce into a baking tray and position the salmon so that the skin sits clear of the liquid and bake in a medium-hot preheated oven for 10 minutes until the salmon is only just cooked.





Serve with rice, roast courgettes, a grating of lemon zest and a segment of lemon. Then garnish with parsley and tarragon and let everyone tuck in. It’s great with a glass of fresh white wine such as a Sauvignon Blanc or a dry German Riesling.

Thank you to Christian for the atmospheric action shots from a recent dinner party where this dish made its debut. And thanks you to Sofia, Magnus, Nina, Anna and Leah for being such fantastic guinea pigs. But most importantly thanks for persuading me not to call this dish “Laxanoff”!

A Superior Swedish Shrimp Sandwich

Piercingly clear air. Baskingly warm sunshine. An almost un-Scandinavian feeling of camaraderie. Smiling faces sipping coffee. Children let loose from their reins. Beseandled feet. The most enchanting day so far of 2011.

I rarely get a weekend to myself in Gothenburg. So when they pop up I tend to try to indulge in all the things I love about this city. After a stimulating swim and sauna I tend to head to the fish church to stock up on seafood for the week ahead.

I always have my eye out for something a bit different and today an array of corral red shrimps caught my eye. They made the standard prawns look beige by comparison. The fishmonger explained that they were Scandinavia’s version of the King Prawn (Kungsräkor), from the deep chilly waters off the West Coast of Sweden and Norway. He said that they aren’t much known about and have a more lobstery taste than standard prawns. Interestingly, they very proudly display their provenance – indicating that these were from the waters around Styrsö and were caught at a depth of 280 metres. For those of you who thought that prawns were prawns, think again. They take their shellfish so seriously over here that they don’t just tell you where they were from, but also how deep they were caught.

Feeling more than a little bit giddy about the thought of eating my Kungsräkor (King Prawns) I quickly decided that they would make the perfect jewels in a regal shrimp sandwich. I picked up some glasört (samphire) and then headed off to my favourite café and baker (Da Matteo) where I found an exquisite loaf of rye sourdough that seemed to weigh as much as an ingot of gold. A slurp of their amazing cappuccino and a naughty chocolate croissant restored my energy levels and sent me speeding back on my bike to my apartment.

I inspected my Swedish Shellfish bible by Leif Mannerström and found a recipe for Shrimp Sandwiches. I loosely followed his advice but broke two of his golden rules – I switched the homemade mayonnaise for crème fraiche and tossed aside his dictat to only ever consider using soft white bread. I also added samphire and avocado to make it more indulgent. But the rest of the recipe isn’t far off. And it Is in line with his simple, rustic and honest approach so I am sure he wouldn’t shot at me too much. And to appease him further I kept the shells as he implores and made them into an incredibly rich stock.

Ingredients:

500g of Kungsräkor with roe
3 slices of rye bread
3 tablespoons of crème fraiche
3 radishes
½ avocado
Wedge of lemon
Salad leaves
Handful of blanched samphire
Salt and pepper
Method

Method:

Peel the prawns and chuck the shells into the pan you’ll make your stock in later. Plop the roe into a separate bowl. It’s a bit fiddly because the shells are thinner and more clingy than normal prawns, but it’s quite therapeutic.









Slice the rye bread and smear with crème fraiche. Lay the samphire on top and then create a layer of prawns that look as though they are spooning each other. Arrange some salad leaves around the outside, lob on a few slices of avocado and radish. Then finish it off with a smattering of lemon and a gung ho scattering of salt and pepper. Then anoint with the crimson roe.





In Sweden you can barely move for shrimp sandwiches. But it's hard to find a really good one. Too often there's too much mayonnaise and the prawns are tasteless. But not so here. The rye sourdough added texture, sweetness and acidity which helped to make the special shrimps taste even more of themselves. And the radishes and samphire, inspired by our trip to Aamanns in Copenhagen, turned this from being a standard shrimp sandwich into a superior shrimp sandwich.

Smoked Mackerel and Beetroot Speltotto

As regular readers know I am partial to a risotto. But with my loose adoption of the Nordic Diet, which spurns simple carbohydrates, I’ve not been able to enjoy them as freely as I’d like to. Trina Hahnemann instead suggests using whole grain risotto rice, but I’ve struggled to find it in Sweden – and even struggled to lay my hands on any on a recent trip to Florence. So instead, like a heroin addict trying to find a cure, I found solace, not in cough medicine, but in spelt. Sure, it doesn’t give you quite the same smack as a true risotto, but it packs twice as much protein and less sugars, so is better for you, without being too worthy.

In Sweden spelt is called dinkel, which is a name I rather like. Partly because it reminds me of Claudia Winkleman, but also because it just sounds so innocent. I bought a packet of dinkel grains from a brand called Saltå which I can’t recommend highly enough. Now, when I look on my shelves, I see a line of beautifully designed packages, replete with an iconic, lino cut image of an old fashioned mill, stamped onto reassuringly thick brown paper. I’ve got their whole grain spaghetti, their spelt flour, their red rice, their quinoa, their amazing porridge oats and now their spelt. Many of their products are bio-dynamic, most are organic, all are superbly made and none have ever let me down. They’ve managed to make the terribly dull world of goody two-shoes carbs, just a little bit sexy.

Not knowing quite what to do with my spelt I consulted Twitter and was sent in the direction of the Sharpham Park website which suggested using pearled spelt as a risotto rice substitute. I’ve shamelessly stolen the term “speltotto” from the chaps at Sharpham, although maybe Dinkelotto would be more fitting. As ever, my beetroot fetish continues unabated and it always goes well with smoked mackerel, a splodge of goat’s curd and a sprinkling of chives. Previous experience of making beetroot risottos has meant that I’ve given their recipe a sharp tweak to get the maximum beet-impact.

Ingredients

100g Dinkel / Spelt per person
1 smoked mackerel
1 finely chopped shallot
1 glass of white wine
Goat’s curd or goat’s cheese
4 beetroot
Chives
1 litre of stock
Olive oil
Butter
Salt
Pepper

Method

Peel the beetroot and dice them very finely. Then add them to a pan, cover with the stock and simmer until the beetroot is tender. Reserve the liquid, for this will be your ruby red stock. Sharpham Park suggest grating, but if you do this, I think you miss out on texture and colour.

Fry the shallot until tender. Add the spelt as you would do with risotto rice. Then after it has crackled for a minute add the wine. Let it huff and puff like a thirsty dragon and then add the crimson beetroot stock and reserve the beetroot solids. Continue until the spelt has absorbed the liquid and has softened which could take anywhere from 20 minutes to 50! (You can reduce the cooking time by soaking the spelt overnight). Add the beetroot pieces towards the end.

Then when the spelt is cooked beat in some butter and season with gusto. Integrate the smoked mackerel and goat’s cheese. And finally, sprinkle over some chopped chives.



It’s an earthy, toothsome, beast, so works well with something piercing to offset the deep flavours – a decent glass or two of dry German Riesling would hit the spot. My final piece of advice, aside from not wearing white, is to make a big batch and enjoy it for lunch the next day and also as alarmingly coloured arancini.

Plaice stuffed with smoked salmon, horseradish and dill

I was dead set on buying some artic char from the fishmonger for dinner. But when I saw that plaice (or rödspätta in Swedish) was a quarter of the price the decision to spend £2.50 rather than a tenner was an easy one to make.

So out went my idea of gorging on artic char with a horseradish crust and instead I was left with a large flatfish and a desire to do something more interesting than just smother it in butter and bake it with white wine and dill. My search for interesting Swedish plaice recipes yielded a handful of recipes couldn’t have been more dull, so I turned instead to an idea that I spotted on Jamie Oliver’s website. He suggests stuffing flat fish with prawns, parsley, lemon and onions. I didn’t fancy the recipe, but I loved the technique. So I switched things around and stuffed my plaice with a Swedish combination of smoked salmon, freshly grated horseradish and dill – all mixed together with plenty of butter, pepper and lemon zest. It’s cheap, super tasty and looks rather fancy for plain old plaice.

Serves 1

Ingredients

1 good sized plaice
100g of chopped up smoked salmon (trimmings are fine)
An inch of horseradish, grated
40g butter
1 lemon
2 sprigs of dill
Glass of white wine
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method

With a very sharp knife slice the plaice along the central bone from just below the head to the tail on the upper side. Carefully slice along the bone so that the fillets flab backwards to reveal a cavity. If this seems complicated watch this.

Mix the butter, horseradish, smoked salmon, dill, pepper, salt and lemon zest. Form it into a ball and stuff it into the cavity. Lay the fish in an oiled baking dish and pour in a slug of white wine. Season with salt and pepper and scatter in a few cloves of garlic and wedges of lemon. Cook in a very hot oven for 4 minutes and then baste the fish with the juices. Cook for a further 4 minutes and then, if done, serve as it is or with some plain boiled potatoes and guzzle a nice glass of Grüner or Sauvignon Blanc.

The horseradish, smoked salmon and dill proved to be a punch stuffing which really livened the plaice up. Having tried it once, it’s a technique I’m keen to repeat with some other innovative stuffings. I imagine chipotle butter might be fun.

De-vine Kåldolmar

Since moving to Gothenburg I’ve tried to learn about Swedish culture and language through the medium of food. It seems to be the best way to uncover the truths about what makes this country tick. The more you read and eat the more you encounter the paradoxes and culinary riddles that slice through Swedish culture. My latest lesson involves 18th century battles, a town named Bender, a king called Karl and the Swedification of the classic Turkish dish of stuffed vine leaves into cabbagey kåldolmar.

The story of kåldolmar dates back to the early 1700s and offers a glimpse of Sweden’s once mighty past and tetchy relationship with its bellicose northern European neighbours. Apparently, King Karl XII, after losing the decisive Battle of Poltava in 1709 to Russia and their Polish and Norwegian allies, went into exile in a Turkish town called Bender. Whilst he was there, living off the generosity of his Ottoman allies, he spied on their warships and returned home to Sweden several years later with blueprints for a rejuvenated navy and more importantly a taste for dolmas.



Battle of Poltava (1709) painted by Denis Martens the Younger in 1726

The linguists amongst you will know that “dolma” means “stuffed thing” in Turkish which highlights the versatility of this dish. You’ll find different varieties of dolma across the old Ottoman Empire with fillings ranging from ground meat, to aubergine, courgette, peppers and rice, but typically the shell is a vine leaf. It’s hard to know which particularly style of dolma was Karl’s favourite, but from my experience of Swedes I’d guess that it was at the meatier end of the spectrum.



Dolmas from Norwichnuts on Flickr

In the chillier climes of Sweden, vine leaves were hard to come by, but Karl and his followers still hankered after the exotic taste of dolmas. So being the creative and practical nation that they are, the Swedes adapted the dish to use cabbage instead of vine leaves as a sturdy casing for the minced pork. They also switched carbs away from the rice you’ll find inside dolmas and now serve these meaty parcels with boiled potatoes, gravy and lingonberry jelly. For a decent recipe for classic Swedish Kåldolmar look no further than Annes Food.

One of my frustrations since moving across the North Sea is that the trend for smuggling enchanting tastes back from the Middle East, started by King Karl, doesn’t seem to have continued, despite the large and vibrant Middle Eastern population in Sweden. Fine, you can get donner kebab on your pizza, and plenty of curious spies in your meatballs, but so far, I haven’t found anywhere that expertly grills spiced meat over charcoals like Antepliler in Manor Park or any of the middle eastern delights you’ll find on the Edgware Road or Yottam Ottolenghi’s delis and books. Where’s the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi version of Tayyabs in Gothenburg?

One of the most interesting recipes in the Nordic Diet cookbook sees the classic, meaty, kåldolmar given a healthy, fishy update. Trina Hahnneman kicks out the pork and replaces it with plaice, mustard, leeks and courgettes.

I gave them a twist of my own and have found the process of wrapping fish in blanched cabbage to be a very therapeutic process. The technique is pretty simple and is the basis for a wide range of healthy and delicious variations.



Smoked Mackerel Kåldolmar with Pototto (Potato Risotto)

Inspired by Marcus Sameulsson's excellent Aquavit cookbook and Trina Hahnemann's Nordic Diet

Serves 2

4 cabbage leaves
4 smoked mackerel fillets
Dijon mustard
400 grams of waxy potatoes – diced into 8mm cubes
Vegetable stock
Horseradish
Dill
1 onion
Olive oil
Butter
2 glasses of white wine
Salt and pepper

Blanch four cabbage leaves in salted water and refresh in running cold water. Allow to cool and then remove the tough stem which acts as a structural spine. This will make the leaves more foldable.

Place a mackerel fillet in the centre of each leaf and smear with a dollop of mustard and anoint with lemon zest and ground black pepper. Then wrap them up like you would with a burrito. For guidance take a look at Cheryl Marie’s blog.

Finely dice the onion and sweat in olive oil. Then add in the 8mm cubes of potato. Add a glass of white wine and then ladle in stock and stir, as you would do with a risotto. It won’t take very long to cook so keep an eye on it. Add some thyme or tarragon as you go depending on what’s to hand and what you feel like. Beat in some butter at the end and keep warm.

Place the cabbage parcels in a baking dish and pour in a glass of white wine. Cook for 10 minutes. And then serve on top of a bed of posotto with plenty of seasoning, a sprinkling of grated horseradish and a scattering of dill.



Fish parcel wrapped in cabbage from Trina Hahnneman’s Nordic Diet

Serves 2

4 cabbage leaves
400g of white fish fillets
1 courgette
1 leek
1 red pepper
Olive oil
Lemon zest
Salt and pepper
1 glass of white wine

Blanch and refresh the cabbage leaves in the same manner as the first recipe. Place a 100g piece of fish in each parcel and then add a spoonful of diced courgette, red pepper and leek. Then add a dab of butter, a dusting of lemon zest and plenty of seasoning. Then wrap them up and place them in a baking dish with a glug of olive oil and a glass of white wine.



Bake for 12 minutes until the fish is just done and serve. I partnered it with fregola, roast peppers and tomatoes which gave a sweet, red counterpoint to the savoury greens.



It works just as well with minced fish and langoustine tails. When I next have a load of langoustine or crayfish, I’ll formalise it into a recipe. Roll on "Kåldolmens dag" which celebrates the Cabbage Roll on 30 November.

Salt Roast Beetroot with Orange and Ginger Sauce

My beetroot fetish is getting out of control. Like an alcoholic slipping a slug of vodka into his orange juice at breakfast time and a dash of whisky into his coffee on the way to work, I’ve found beetroot weedling its way into burgers, meatball, salads, gnocchi and souffles recently. When I wake up with beetroot ice cream slathered over my chest I’ll know it’s got the better of me.

One of my favourite discoveries since moving to Sweden has been a very stylish cookery book called Aquavit by a Swede called Marcus Samuelsson with an Ethiopian background who now lives and cooks in New York. It’s full of imaginative ideas that set the mind thumping and photographs that make you want to tear off the page and serve it for supper. His recipe for roasted beets in an orange and ginger sauce set off my beetroot radar and wouldn’t let me go until I had cooked it.



Roasted Beets in Orange-Ginger Sauce – from Aquavit cookbook review on Amazon.

Serves 4 to 6

“Roasting beets on a bed of salt keeps them moist and flavorful (you can do the same with baked potatoes). Garlic roasts alongside the beets, then the soft garlic pulp is added to a tangy citrus sauce flavored with traditional Swedish seasonings.

Ingredients

About 2 cups coarse salt
8 medium beets, trimmed and scrubbed
2 heads garlic
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 cup Chicken Stock
1 tablespoon honey
1 3-inch piece ginger, peeled and finely chopped
4 cardamom pods
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

2. Spread a layer of coarse salt on a small baking sheet and place the beets and garlic on it. Roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the beets are fork-tender and the garlic is soft enough to squeeze out of the skin; the garlic may be done before the beets. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly.

3. Meanwhile, combine the orange juice, stock, honey, ginger, and cardamom in a medium saucepan, bring to a simmer, and simmer for about 30 minutes, until reduced by half. Strain the sauce into a saucepan and set aside.

4. When the beets are cool enough to handle, peel them and cut them into 1/2-inch dice. Put in a medium bowl. Separate the garlic cloves, squeeze the garlic pulp out of the skins, and add to the bowl.

5. Reheat the sauce over low heat, stirring a few times, and pour the sauce over the beets. Garnish with the tarragon and serve.”





I roasted some chicken legs along side the beetroot and boiled some cracked wheat to add some ballast. It was healthy, tasty, creative and slaked my beetroot thirst for another day. The tangy orange and ginger sauce is incredibly moreish and would be a great complement to a pork chop or duck breast. And having discovered roasting beets on a bed of salt from Marcus Samuelsson, I've not cooked beetroot any other way since. It keeps them moist, full of flavour and stops them losing their colour.

Swaesar Salad™

One of the reasons Brits get on so well with Gothenburgers is a shared love of the risible pun. Folk from Gothenburg will chortle with rosy cheeks and mischievous grins when they slip a cheeky double entendre into a punishing business meeting. It’s one of Gothenburg’s defining characteristics and sets it apart (so I am told by locals) from the rest of straight laced Sweden.

Whenever cartoons call for a comic character they always have a Gothenburg accent, whilst the posh protagonist tends to be from Stockholm and the rural dim wit inevitably hails from southern Sweden’s farming region. It seems like every country has their own version of the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman joke.

Another of Gothenburg’s defining characteristics is a love of herring which is called “sill” on the West Coast and “strömming” on Stockholm’s East Coast. So it’s quite fitting that one evening after a long day at work I had the “sill-y” idea of creating a Gothenburg version of the Caesar salad which switched the increasingly overfished anchovy with plentiful herring. To my glee it worked far better than I had imagined and I’ve got a feeling that you could bottle this stuff and sell it up and down the West Coast to pun loving Swedes. So here is my Swedish Caesar Salad – AKA The Swaesar Salad™. I adapted a herring themed caesar salad recipe on Canada’s Food Network website.

Ingredients

Dressing

2 table spoons of minced pickled herring without the liquid
2 cloves of garlic
2 egg yolks
Juice from half a lemon
100ml of sunflower oil
50g of hard Swedish ewe’s cheese – like Pecorino
Salt
Pepper

Salad

1 Iceberg lettuce
100g of lardons
100g of böckling (hot smoked herring which isn’t unlike kippers or more accurately bloaters)
2 slices of pumpernickel cut into small squares
Swedish sheep’s cheese or alternatively Pecorino or Parmesan

Method

Begin by whisking the egg yolks with the garlic, herring and lemon. Then add the salt and pepper. Then, as if making mayonnaise pour in the oil, in a thin, slow stream. Whisk as you go until it thickens. Taste for seasoning. It will be quite salty from the herring so don’t go mad on the white stuff. Plus you are going to add salty bacon and cheese. Put the dressing in the fridge and then when you are feeling hungry assemble your salad.

To do this cut the flappy leaves away from the lettuce and concentrate on the crunchy leaves in the centre. Give them a wash and then fry your lardons in a heavy bottomed pan along with the cubes of pumpernickel. This won’t take very long. The chocolaty brown bread will add some sweetness and crunch to the salad and give it a much more interesting flavour than the normal white bread croutons.

Dress the leaves with the Swaesar™ sauce in a large bowl and then grate the hard sheep’s cheese on top. If you can’t find a suitable Swedish cheese then Parmesan or Pecorino will do. Add the lardons, pumpernickel and chunks of bokling and tuck in.

It’s not very Swedish to speak about yourself let alone your own achievements, but I’m very proud to say that this is one of my favourite creations to date. The sauce tasted authentically like Caesar dressing but with a noticeable Swedish flavour of subtle herring which arguably makes it even more savoury than the classic dish. The pumpernickel along with the lardons does a great job of giving the dish a sweeter note that stands up to the more savoury aspect. The böckling’s smokiness then gives the whole plate an extra level of sophistication.

Chicken with Baked Rhubarb and Cucumber and Radish Salad

I love the way rhubarb unfurls out of the spring soil to display a Mateus flushed shard of swollen stem and tough, poisonous leaves. I love the ritual of forcing rhubarb in darkened conditions to beat your neighbours to serving the first rhubarb of the season. I think back longingly of my grandmother’s hit or miss rhubarb fool that was always delicious, if a little stringy. And will almost always order a rhubarb dessert if I see it on the menu. Unfortunately, we don’t eat much rhubarb as a family because the acid gives us all joint ache. But it’s worth the discomfort.

Up until now I’d not thought too much about rhubarb (shocking I know). But the more I read, the more interesting it becomes. For starters who knew that rhubarb is actually a vegetable and is in the Rheum family and is therefore closely related to sorrel? Or that in America it is legally a fruit because a judge said so in 1947? Or that it originated in Asia and has only been cultivated in the western world for the last two or three hundred years? Or that the roots can be dried and used as a tonic to cure constipation and circulatory issues? Or, more importantly, that this enigmatic stem is amazing with chicken?

Trina Hahnemann’s recipe for “chicken with baked rhubarb and cucumber -radish salad” immediately stood out from her Nordic Diet cookbook, partly because of the stunning photograph but more significantly because of its weirdness.



But when you think about it, the idea makes a lot of sense. Chicken is great with lemon and other acid driven accompaniments, so long as it is balanced by something sweet to take the tartness away.

Ingredients

Chicken legs
2 stalks of rhubarb
A few spoons of honey (she uses raw sugar – but I prefer honey)
Salt
Pepper
1 Cucumber
10 Radishes
Yoghurt (preferably goats’)
1 clove of garlic
Chopped mint

Method

Season the chicken legs and roast for 30 minutes. Meanwhile chop the rhubarb into 2 inch long batons and lightly coat in honey. After 30 minutes add the rhubarb and cook for a further 15 minutes.

To make the salad finely slice the radishes and de-seed, then finely slice the cucumber. Mix with just enough yoghurt, a finely minced clove of garlic and the chopped mint. Season.

Serve the chicken with the salad and garnish with a sprig of mint. It’s a great way to use up a glut of rhubarb in late spring or as a way of causing a bit of Steingarten-esque debate about the differences between fruit and vegetables. I think it is a fantastic idea and am looking forward to experimenting further. I wonder what a rhubarb-ified version of honey lemon chicken would be like?

Further reading

Other rhubarb chicken recipes on Rhubarb Compendium including roast chicken stuffed with rhubarb and the psychopathically named chicken smothered in rhubarb

Rhubarb as an accompaniment to fish in the Independent

Mackerel with roasted rhubarb from Nigel Slater

Savoury recipes for rhubarb on Chowhound

Jeffrey Steingarten’s Man Who Ate Everything (including a spellbinding chapter called Ripeness is All about the differences between fruit and vegetables)

Trina Hahnemann’s – The Nordic Diet on Amazon

The science of rhubarb poisoning

This post is part of little series dedicated to The Nordic Diet cookbook which was sent to me by Quadrille.

Super Healthy Fish Cakes

If meatballs are the indulgent Yin then fish cakes must be the healthy Yang in Scandinavian culture. In Sweden, fish cakes are called “fiskbulle”, which literally translates as “fish patty”, which is a rather unpleasant sounding expression that doesn’t do them justice. They are so ubiquitous that you can buy them in tins and there are as many fish cake recipes over here as there are for sausages back in Blighty.

In my experience fish cakes are normally heavy on the stodgy potato and light on the fish which yields one of the most bland mouthfuls you will ever come across. They’re a great way of padding out a pub menu and making a few quid out of some iffy leftovers. But these prejudices were shattered when I tried Trina Hahnemann’s recipe for fish cakes in The Nordic Diet cookbook.



She switches mashed potato for porridge oats, grated courgette and carrot which lightens the texture and adds colour and moisture. I took the recipe a bit further by trying Niamh’s trick or coating the patties in breadcrumbs which created a crisp coating if you are feeling a bit more indulgent. And I can’t stand rapeseed oil so used sunflower oil instead. The book suggests pairing the fish cakes with potatoes and asparagus which would have been great but all I had was some barley and kale which was a shame.

Ingredients – makes 6 fishcakes

500g of minced fish – a mixture of salmon and white fish such as pollack, coley or ling
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp porridge oats
2 egg whites
2 finely grated carrots
1 grated courgette
Pinch of thyme
Sunflower oil for frying
Knob of butter
Japanese panko breadcrumbs
Pepper

Method

Choose your fish judiciously and have it minced. You don’t want anything too classy or endangered like cod or haddock. But try to include some salmon as much for colour as flavour. In Sweden they are very happy to mince your chosen fish in front of you in the fishmongers and very often have it pre-minced in pre-weighed bags. But in the UK you may want to finely mince the fish with a sharp knife or give it a very brief pulse in a food processor.

Add a generous pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Then add the egg whites, porridge oats and grated veg and mix thoroughly. It should all come together and not fall apart. If it’s too dry add egg white. If it’s too wet add oats. Leave it to chill in the fridge for an hour or so.

When you are ready for dinner remove the mixture from the fridge and form into patties. If you are feeling indulgent pour breadcrumbs on a chopping board and press the patties into them so they stick. Then fry until golden.







The fish cakes were moist, lightly textured and full of fishy flavour. Not cloying at all and far lighter than their cousins from across the North Sea. The substitution of potato for carrot and courgette makes them far better for you as well according to the principles of The Nordic Diet. I had them with a minty yoghurt sauce and nutritious but very dull barley and kale splodge which is all I had in the fridge.

The yoghurt was a good match but the greens and grain were anything but. A fennel and caper salad would have been a much better platefellow. You could also experiment with adding ginger, chilli and lemongrass to the mix to give them an oriental aspect and pair them with some steamed Chinese cabbage and stir fried vegetables. But whatever you do, don’t think you can substitute fresh fish for tinned mussels and smoked mackerel, courgettes for Swede or consider using rapeseed oil because I’ve tried it and it tastes pretty gross!



This post is part of little series dedicated to The Nordic Diet cookbook which was sent to me by Quadrille.

Embracing The Nordic Diet

One of the things that strikes you when walking around Gothenburg isn’t the stunning beauty of the city, or the overwhelming sight of gorgeous Swedes. It took me a while to work it out. It was an absence rather than a presence. And then I realised as I bumped into a fat person. Fatties are rare in Sweden. So much so that you land up staring at them and joking about whether they are Americans! Sure you see some big people. But they tend to be big boned Vikings rather than lardy layabouts.

A confluence of events spurred me into changing my diet to be more Scandinavian – my shirts were uncomfortable, I found myself wearing jumpers the whole time and I saw a sickening photograph of myself on a beach. And then, as if the fat Gods were watching, a nice person from Quadrille sent me a copy of The Nordic Diet. Initially I was sceptical and scoffed at the idea of a book with the word “diet” in the title. But then I did some background reading and cooked a couple of recipes… and now I am scoffing at myself for scoffing in the first place.

The Nordic Diet, by Trina Hahnemann, is inspired by the fact that the Nordic countries have very low levels of obesity. It stands to reason, therefore, that the dietary patterns of this part of the world might play a role. As you can imagine there’s plenty of debate because it is so hard to prove, but it is being championed by Arne Astruo from the University of Copenhagen who have put £12million behind it. Nutritionists are touting it as a more suitable alternative for Brits than the rather expensive and tricky Mediterranean diet which calls for lashings of olive oil, tomatoes and fresh fish. The Daily Mail says, “Nutritionists even predict the Viking diet could be to the 21st century what the Mediterranean diet was to the 20th.”

The Nordic Diet echoes the Mediterranean Diet’s slow approach to eating but takes things a few steps further by suggesting that we cut down our meat intake and instead eat more lean game, berries, brassicas, fish, vegetables and ancient grains that release their energy stores more slowly and provide more fibre.

Given that meat is expensive in Sweden and that the fish is so fresh, I’ve found myself naturally synching with this Nordic approach to eating. It’s left me feeling healthier, a stone or two lighter, less impoverished and far more appreciative of good meat when I eat it. It’s also led to me discovering new dishes and has encouraged me to experiment more with vegetables and grains like beetroot, kale and spelt. The only weird thing about it is that none of my Swedish friends have ever heard of it!



Trina Hahnemann’s book is an inspirational foundation for living a healthier, more balanced life. The opening section explains the nuts and bolts of the “diet” which is as much about lifestyle as it about hardcore nutrition. The book then continues to offer ideas for salads, soups, fishy and meaty main courses as well as puddings and solid advice about Scandinavian baking. I’ve tried many of the ideas in the book such as delicious beetroot burgers, roast chicken with rhubarb, fabulous fish cakes and fish wrapped in cabbage leaves and will be sharing these dishes with your shortly.









My only criticisms are that there aren’t enough recipes and that every now and again they aren’t quite as exciting as they could be. But that’s the flip side of a diet book I guess. But I can’t criticise the amount of flavour the recipes deliver given the simple ingredients they involve. So as well as sharing my experiences with Trina’s recipes I am also going to give a few ideas of my own that are based on the principles of The Nordic Diet but with a few twists. In the meantime, if you are feeling a bit podgy and are keen for a culinary adventure rather than lots of cut backs, then join me in embracing The Nordic Diet.

Thanks to Quadrille for the book and for helping me fit into my old wardrobe. And I hope these photos of the book's wonderful photos aren't some horrific breach of copyright!

Further reading:

Collection of Nordic Diet links on my Delicious feed
Trina Hahnemann's Scandinavian Kitchen on Amazon
Trina Hahnemann's The Nordic Diet on Amazon