The Scandinavian Year – As regular readers will know, I’m such a fan of Scandi food, so when I discovered that Brontë Aurell, the Danish-born owner of London’s much-loved ScandiKitchen, had a new cookbook coming out, I was very keen to review it. The Scandinavian Year has been published this week – a beautifully written and photographed journey through seasonal Nordic recipes, traditions and rituals. It follows the Scandinavian year from start to finish: delicious winter warmers, springtime baking, midsummer feasts, and fresh summery dishes for next year. It’s a hardback, month by month journey through Scandinavia that will make you very keen to book a trip to experience some of that Nordic culture for yourself. But in the meantime, you can always visit one of her two ScandiKitchens in London (Fitzrovia and Victoria) for a spot of delicious food and some Scandi food shopping.
Published by Ryland Peters & Small at £25, this is a stunning collection of over 140 Scandinavian recipes.
Here are a couple to whet your Scandi appetite:
Riina’s salmon chowder
Lohikeitto
Riina manages ScandiKitchen’s operations and hails from Finland. She is also a great cook and this is her recipe for Lohikeitto, a traditional Finnish salmon chowder. It’s one of those dishes that is so simple to make that you might think the result would be simple too – but far from it. It’s a one-pot wonder that, with just a few minutes’ prep and a short, no-effort cooking time, makes a really delicious light midweek meal.
Lohikeitto has a long history in Finland. It was a meal prepared by families living along the thousands of lakes – and the soup has a warm place in the heart of the Finns today as a nostalgic working man’s meal.
30 g butter
1 large leek (200 g), sliced into half moons
180 ml dry white wine (optional)
400 g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-cm/¾ -inch cubes
2 carrots (200 g), peeled and cut into half moons
2 bay leaves
850 ml fish stock
500 g side of salmon, skin removed, boned and cut into 2-cm/¾ -inch chunks
150 ml double cream
a big handful of fresh dill, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
buttered rye bread, to serve (optional)
SERVES 4
Warm the butter in a large pan over a medium-high heat. Once melted and bubbling, add the leeks and saut. until they are soft.
Add the white wine, if using, and cook for 2 minutes.
Add the potatoes, carrots, bay leaves and fish stock. Cook for 15 minutes or until the potatoes and carrots are al dente. Add the salmon chunks and cream and give it a gentle stir. Let it simmer for 5 minutes until the salmon is just cooked. Finish with a large handful of chopped dill and generous grinds of salt and pepper.
DANISH DREAM CAKE
Drømmekage
This is a delicious cake and probably in the top three favourite cakes of the Danes,
maybe even the overall favourite. The story of this cake is that a young girl from a town called Brovst in Jutland baked this at a competition in the early 1950s – it was her grandmother’s recipe and was then known as Østergårdskage. It then became popular all over Denmark by the name ‘Dream Cake from Brovst’, marketed as a recipe by the flour company which judged the competition (although the company never credited the girl). As a final twist in the story, this is similar to an American cake from the early 1940s called a ‘Lazy Daisy Cake’, so the origins of the Drømmekage may be from further afield than a small farm in Jutland.
Traditionally this is made in a sheet pan (see below), but you can make as a round cake too (use a cake pan with a diameter of at least 26 cm/10 inches) – baking time will need adjusting, too.
50 g butter
200 ml milk
4 eggs
250 g caster/granulated sugar
275 g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or vanilla extract
a pinch of salt
TOPPING
100 g butter
150 g desiccated coconut
250 g dark brown sugar
75 ml whole milk
a pinch of salt
25 x 35-cm/10 x 14-inch cake pan, lined with baking parchment
MAKES 12–16 PIECES
Preheat the oven to 190°C/170°C fan/375°F/Gas 5.
To make the cake batter, melt the butter and mix with the milk, then leave to cool a little.
In a stand mixer, whisk the eggs and sugar until light and airy. Combine the dry ingredients, then sift into egg mixture, add the milk and butter, then fold together until incorporated.
Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake in the preheated oven for approx. 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out almost clean.
While the cake is baking, prepare the topping by combining all the ingredients together in a saucepan over a low heat, until the sugar and butter have melted.
Remove the cake from oven and pour the topping all over. Return the cake to the oven for 5 minutes to caramelise slightly. Allow to cool before slicing and eating.
The Seasoned Gastronome