Dried and pickled fish keep forever. People were hungry and needed food through the winter. Desperation.
More gets eaten, apparently, in the US than Norway. Once in a while our Norwegian colleagues would thump their chests about Vikings. I got accolades from my compatriots for the comeback that “there are only Norwegians in Norway - all the Vikings are in Minnesota.” grin Seriously, this is in the early 90s and some of the old guard on our joint team dated back to the Norwegian resistance in WWII. Those guys, if you will excuse the expression, were bad-a$$.
This describes it PERFECTLY! For my Norwegian self, lutefisk was a one and done taste. You never want to prepare it inside the house, because the smell sticks around forever. Whoo boy!
Seems everything is from the Middle East, lol. I just saw on Searching for Italy - Sicily that spaghetti was invented by the Arabs, who ate it with raisins & cinnamon. Okay. And how about Jamaican allspice in Scandinavian meatballs? More randomness. As my Louisiana-born grandma liked to say “It’s all gumbo”.
The recipe said Flæskesteg is a Christmas dish especially for the Danish people, and this tradition slowly traveled to its neighbours in the north. The pork roast with rind was score across the fat, it was then rubbed with salt and cooked with black pepper, cloves and bay leaves in oven for 45 minutes. Potatoes were boiled with water, and cooked in pan with melted sugar caramel to coat. Served with a meat reduction sauce with heavy cream. The cabbage apple slaw had walnut and pomegranate with sherry vinegar and mustard and brown sugar.
Stuffed pork tenderloin with celery and hazelnuts
This Icelandic weekend meat roll was quite a success for us. The stuffing included celeriac, celery, hazelnut, tarragon sauté with red onion and butter.
Another Icelandic dish. Salt, sugar, mustard seeds and dill covered the wild salmon filet for 12 hours and then wash off. Served as an appetizer with sourdough bread with cucumber, radish and fresh onion. I like how the fish was cooked with the salt, but found it slightly too salty.
We’re kind of on the same food tip. I was just looking at a Gravlax recipe but have frozen salmon and will wait to do it with fresh. And I bought a tenderloin to stuff but hadn’t thought about a Scandinavian preparation. Nice!
Yes, well, ancient civilizations, trade, explorers, conquerors, and so on. I’m intrigued by origin stories of food that came from elsewhere with explorers, traders, amd wars. And things that are exported similarly.
Your dinner is lovely @naf. Not Scandanavian but I’m now craving lox and bagels. The cucumbers and sour cream sauce make me think of tzatziki which is unlikely to be found in Scandanavia outside of Greek restaurants.
I usually buy lox vacuum packed. You have motivated me to try pickling my own.
You’re just a bundle of good ideas today.
ETA: Looked up making my own lox. I’m in. How incredibly simple for something so wonderful. We always have salmon in our freezer so this might be a Sunday prep for breakfast Wednesday.
I’m wondering if there are substantial Mediterranean communities in Scandinavia. I was doing a search for Rugbrød (Danish rye bread) and came across a local restaurant called Gravlax that serves “Scandinavian & Turkish Cuisine” - Tzatziki is on the menu. These various food influences must have to do with countries that had big ports cities.
The photos online look more croquette-ish.
