Denmark

Meat and potatoes with dainty appetizers is the first thought to come to mind when thinking of Danish cuisine.   The appetizers tend to be very light while a heavier meal would follow with meats, sauces and potatoes.   Lately I seem to be noticing a pattern where the simpler the dish is in ingredients the harder it is to cook.    For example take a simple steak with salt and pepper only as your seasonings.   Because there are no spices, sauces etc involved in this steak it is very hard to mask a poorly done steak.  You must cook it just right with not too much or too little seasoning.   Danish cuisine is similar in a way even though sauces are quite liberally used the amount of seasonings is minimal.

The Menu

Pickled Herring on Potato

Steamed and then slightly fried the potatoes for crunch.  Creme fraise with dill then sprinkled with finely diced red onions and then topped with wine pickled herring.  This is a very simple appetizer to put together and when presented is quite elegant.   I would however top with a lingonberry the next time I make this.


Danish Scalloped Potatoes 

Thinly sliced onions, garlic, potatoes, nutmeg, rosemary and cream.  
The trick to scalloped potatoes is having uniform thickness when slicing.   I alternated layers of potatoes and onions while adding cream this way I would be assured that the potatoes or onions did not have a dry spot and would not stick to each other.   I used a bit too much cream and in the end had a hard time to brown the potatoes on top.


Pork Tenderloin in a Apple Mustard Sauce

I had an apple balsamic on hand and used this when deglazing the pork.   The slight acidity from the balsamic landed the perfect balance in the end.   I really like the method of searing the meat in a hot pan,  then making a pan sauce in the same pan and finally bringing the meat back to finish cooking.   These are simple recipes with few ingredients but really packed with flavour.

Drommekage (Danish Dream Cake

A very simple cake topped brown sugar, butter and coconut.  Here is another example of process when done right creates an amazing result.   The topping is only added about midway through baking and the topping is cooked stove top first to get the right consistency then only added to the cake.   The trick when cooking stove top is restraint as the tendency is to cook it till its nicely browned without compensating for the time its in the oven.

 Denmark was another example of simple ingredients cooked right to produce an outstanding result.  Sometimes because of our over processed food we are desperately looking for flavour through spices and sauces when all that is needed is good ingredients and technique.