Scandinavian Fruit Soup

I actually really enjoyed this dish. I wasn’t able to find any dried peaches, which is too bad because I think they would have been a great addition but it was still a great dish. Perhaps a nicer quality of cream to go on top would be nice, but I really don’t have any complaints.

Dansk Kage (Danish Pastry)

These pastries were actually one of the more successful baking goods from the book. A delicious marzipan filling permeated with the faint flavour of lemon extract. Cooking time was generous, but my oven runs hot.

Grilled Gravad Lax (Grilled Marinated Salmon)

This dish didn’t work out for me but only because my piece of salmon wasn’t adequately large enough for the recipe, so my marinade overwhelmed it with salt. However, this is a classic style of gravad lax using a simple marinade of salt, sugar, and dill and I would certainly try it again another day to see if I could get it right. The mustard sauce accompaniment also didn’t really work out but that’s because my olive oil wasn’t the best quality and gave the sauce a strong unpleasant flavour.

Fish Pudding with Mushroom Cream Sauce

This dish garnered the most skepticism from my peers in the lead up to my “Scandinavian Christmas Dinner.” Ironically, however, this was actually the star of the night.  A halibut fish pudding (more like a souffle) which I made in a fish mold as an extra touch. This was  a lot of fun. The flavours were great and the mushroom cream sauce accompaniment worked great. It’s not really a dish that I will probably do again. But it was a great success nonetheless.

Sillsalad (Herring Salad)

I was particularly curious about this salad with its unusual combination of ingredients. In the end however, I found the use of salt herring a little overly pungent in the salad. Not a bad salad, but for a particular palette we might say.

Danish Open Sandwiches

Nice, simple sandwiches that work well as hors d’oeuvres.

Cheese, Shrimps, and Mayonnaise

Scrambled Egg and Smoked Salmon

Liver Paste and Ham

Salmon Butter and Asparagus 

Grouse in Cream

I actually used Cornish Hens instead of Grouse. I wasn’t such a big fan of the cream sauce however, the lingonberry preserve that I got from Ikea was a wonderful sauce to accompany the hen. A nice substitute for cranberry sauce.

Gurkas Norge (Stuffed Cucumbers Norwegian Style)

These two inch high cucumber appetizers were one of my favourite dishes from my recent “Scandinavian Christmas Dinner,” with its combination of dill, anchovies, and cream cheese. However, I did receive a few complaints that they would have been better as bite sized medallions. Which, I really can’t disagree with.

Mutton and Cabbage

Classic boiled dinner that yields a tender piece of lamb. I enjoy these hearty winter dishes with some spicy mustard. Despite its utter simplicity, it is precisely for this reason that I could see myself making this dish again and again. It also produced the most delicious soup stock in the world.

Walnut Cake with Marzipan

 

I had high expectations for this cake, considering it was praised a “perfect cake.” And so I made it for my girlfriend’s birthday cake. Personally though, I found it overly sweet. And the marzipan ‘crust’ didn’t really lift off the serving plate very well for each serving. In the future I would probably cut all the icing sugar out of the marzipan and put it directly into one of the layers of the cake. But honestly, I probably won’t be returning to this recipe again, it could certainly be tweaked but there are so many great cake recipes in the world that there isn’t much incentive to work on this diamond in the rough.