World Cuisine - Scandinavia

Introduction

Scandinavia is the geographical region encompassing the Scandinavian peninsula in Northern Europe. It includes the countries of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Scandinavian cuisine is generally based on simple cooking styles, often very mild and not spicy. While most of Europe emphasizes lunch as the main meal of the day, dinner is emphasized more in Scandinavia, with a quick cold lunch being served and dinner being served by 6pm. A similar custom to the traditional English tea is also observed where bread, biscuits, cookies, pastry and coffee are served around 2-3pm. Norwegian cuisine often consists mainly of a meat dish, with vast wild areas providing an abundance of fish and game - smoked salmon being one of the most famous food products related to Norway. Danish cuisine normally consists of high levels of meat and less vegetables, due to the climate not providing plentiful time for agriculture. Thus, many dishes rely on seasonal fruits and vegetables, as well as including many preserved meats. Lack of vegetation due to long winters causes a similar situation in Sweden, where root vegetables such as rutabaga and potatoes are used along side abundant fish, particularly Herring, to create many traditional Swedish dishes.

Recipes

Cucumber Salad

Servings: 4

2 Cucumbers
2 oz Sour Cream
1/2 oz Cider Vinegar
1/2 oz Vegetable Oil
Pinch of granulated sugar
1/2 tablespoon chopped dill
Salt and Pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Peel, cut in half lengthwise and seed the cucumbers, slice crosswise very fine, sprinkle with salt and let them stand for 30 minutes (this is known as "purging" which is done with high moisture vegetables such as cucumber or eggplant to prevent dishes from becoming over-moist)
2. Drain the cucumbers and squeeze/pat dry.
3. Combine sour cream, vinegar, oil, sugar, and dill.
4. Add cucumbers and mix thoroughly, season to taste.

Frikadellen - (Meat Patties)

Servings: 4

3 oz Onions, fine dice
1 oz Butter
1 1/2 oz Pork butt, ground on medium die
2 Eggs
1/2 oz parsley chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste
Breadcrumbs as needed

Frying mixture:

4 oz butter
4 oz oil

Preparation:

1. Sweat the onions in butter until translucent; cool and add to the meat
2. Add eggs, parsley and seasoning to the meat and mix thoroughly, add breadcrumbs if mixture is too moist
3. Season and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. Scoop meat into 2 oz patties and dip in bread crumbs to coat the outside.
5. Pan-fry the patties in butter and oil mixture until golden brown on the outside and cooked thoroughly.

Creamed Potatoes

Servings: 4

1 1/2 lbs Red Bliss potatoes
Heavy cream as needed
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Peel, wash and cut the potatoes into 1/2" cubes
2. Place potato into a sauté pan, add heavy cream until almost at the top of the potato.
3. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer, then place in oven and cook at 350°F until potatoes are tender and cream has almost been absorbed. Season to taste and serve.

Green Beans

Servings: 4

1 lb Green Beans, trimmed
1 oz butter
Salt and Pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. String and parboil green beans in boiling salt water for approximately 6-8 minutes, stopping when desired tenderness is achieved.
2. Shock beans in ice water, drain and chill until needed.
3. Heat a sauté pan, add butter, let it get light brown then toss beans until coated and re-heated. Season to taste and serve.

Sautéed Mushrooms

Servings: 4

2 oz Butter
1 oz Onion, diced
1 lb Mushrooms, quartered
Salt and White Pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Sweat the onions in butter until translucent.
2. Add the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper, sautéing until cooked and the moisture has evaporated.

Practical

We started the day by preparing the cucumber for purging as this would take some time to sit, as well as wanting to serve the salad first. Once the cucumbers were prepared, we mixed the dressing and left it to chill.

Next we prepared the meat mixture for the frikadellen as this also needed to chill briefly. The meat was ground then mixed with seasoning, covered and placed in the refrigerator to cool.

We then worked on preparing our mise-en-place for the remaining vegetable dishes so they could be quickly finished when the frikadellen was being cooked. We prepped the beans as called for, and removed the stems and quartered the mushrooms.

Once we were satisfied with the amount of liquid purged from the cucumber it was dried and mixed with the dressing, then served. We then pan-fried our frikadellen while sautéing the beans and mushrooms, and plated these three items and served them.

Observations

While we have prepared the mushrooms and beans many times before, we usually sliced the mushrooms rather than quartering, so that was a slight change. I personally prefer quartering as I find the mushrooms hold their shape better and provide a more substantial flavour when eaten individually quartered rather than sliced. The cucumber salad was very good, the dill flavour going well with the crispness of the cucumbers. Chef noted that we need to be careful with the amount of salt used for purging as it can be very easy to make the dish excessively salty this way. While ours was still fine, we probably used just a little too much salt.

The frikadellen was very good, although quite difficult to cook well. As with all breaded items, if cooked at too high a temperature, the bread crumbs will quickly go beyond golden brown to dark or even black. This means that a combination of appropriate size and shape along with low pan-frying temperature must be used to achieve appropriate results. Our first attempt did not finish cooking before the bread crumbs were too dark, and while our second attempt remedied this after flattening out the patties slightly, Chef noted our colour was still slightly dark. The best patties in class were a very nice brown and well cooked through, obviously done at a more appropriate temperature than ours were.