My favorite cooking show host is Andreas Viestad of New Scandinavian Cooking that airs on PBS. There’s just something about Scandinavian cooking shows that I love, and especially when Andreas Viestad is hosting.
They cook these godawful dishes involving fermented fish and root vegetables and they all seem so happy. They live up there in Norland[2] and for some reason they do all their cooking shows outdoors. Andreas will be on camera standing in the snow with the wind howling and his teeth chattering, trying to cook some hideous mixture of rutabagas and reindeer and he’s just happy as can be.
I want to live like that.
My beloved Debbie, knowing my obsession, got me Viestad’s “Kitchen of Light”[3] cookbook, along with a package of salt cod and other Scandinavian goodies.
Tonight with winter upon us it seemed like a good time to cook some Scandinavian delights. I built a big fire in the firepit and prepared gravlaks, rye bread, and salt cod stew.
Gravlaks is cured salmon. This particular recipe had you cure a salmon steak in aquavit (vodka with caraway seeds), fennel seeds, dill, juniper berries, and salt and pepper for a week.
Here’s the slab of cured salmon.
And then sliced up in a lovely presentation with dill pickles and sour cream.
I was surprised how good it was. As is only sensible I was quite suspicious of a piece of raw fish that had sat in my refrigerator for a week. But it was firm and spicy with dill and fennel and caraway. Delicious on a slice of rye bread.
Speaking of which:
This is from the Cooks Illustrated “Almost No-Knead Bread” recipe. It is a delicious crusty bread. Perfect with gravlaks, and even better with salt cod stew.
Salt cod is just cod cured in salt. On the box it had the list of ingredients; they were: “cod, salt.” It must be well-cured, because the box also said, “Best before 11/13.”
You soak and rinse the cod to get rid of all the salt and then you’re ready to use it. This particular recipe has you put down a layer of sliced potatoes, a layer of sliced onions, and then the cod.
And then a layer of tomatoes and peppers, and spices.
This is starting to look pretty good. I’m feeling Scandinavian! In keeping with the cooking and shivering theme, I cooked it in our Jay Rosswurm Signature Big Stone Cooking Area firepit.
I started with a hot fire which brought the stew to a boil then let the fire burn down and simmered the stew for a couple of hours.
When Debbie got home I took the stew off and built up the fire and we dined. I was still skeptical of the salt cod stew even after having tasted it as it cooked. I thought it would be an inedible salty fishy mess. But it was just splendid. The salt cod was tough before cooking, but after simmering it was tender and moist. The stew was fishy, but not too much so. Salty, but not too much so. It was hearty and rich and tasted refreshingly like the sea.
Debbie and I sat by the fire and ate stew with rye bread and watched the stars and then the Milky Way pop up. And like Andreas, with the cold sinking into my bones and starting to shiver, I felt very, very happy and couldn’t help but smile.
[1] If you don’t get the “Lars, Lars, and Lars” reference, you need to waste hours of your life, as I have, watching “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” over and over again.
[2] Surely you get the “Norland” reference, don’t you? You don’t? You haven’t wasted endless hours of your life watching “Best in Show” over and over again?
[3] Not to be confused with my cousin-in-law, the “Painter of Light”
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