Probably twenty years ago, the first words coming of your interlocutor’s mouth, after mentioning you were form Italy, were “Pizza, pasta and mandolino”.
Now– after been asked if I am Spanish and explaining the real situation – the maximum I can get is “Pizza, mafia and Berlusconi” (especially “Berlusconi”). However the culinary choice stays, and we can continue to be loved by foreigners, for our incredible and infinite list of recipes..
Denmark has never been recognized as having a popular food culture. You have never heard, somebody saying. “Oh, Denmark! Leverpstej, Smørrebrod and Queen Margarethe”.
First, because you know, that when you pronounce Danish words, all Danish population has this automatic reaction, of running at you, hunting you down, till they get you and correct your slightly foreign accent, thinking that it would cure the damage you did to the honorable Danish language. And, I mean: that little accent is never gonna disappear and, however it is JUST liver.
The second reason is..well it is obvious for Danes as well: you cannot brag about leverpostej. Maybe you can brag a bit about smorrebrod, but here most of the people (excluded indie foodies) will think: “Why should I pay 49 kr for just HALF sandwich? I want a whole sandwich”. Seems legit. And with this in particular, I have to congratulate with Danes: the English translation “open sandwich”…be realistic, nothing Is open, it is just an “incomplete sandwich”.
However,long time ago, it happen that in a Loppemarked, I found a Danish food magazine from the 80s, “A la carte – alt om mad og vin”, and I decided to take it, convinced I would have found the real secret of Danish food. And what I found was terrific.
What was that, about boiling vegetables like it was cool and making articles about salads where between ten different salads all the ingredient were the same except one , and , wait a minute, is this seriously an advertisement on already made Bolognese sauce in plastic bags you can buy and put in lasagna?!
The recipes where really simple with the predominance of cucumber, strawberries and carrots, but I thought as well that maybe, the reason was that, the way to approach un-traditional Danish cooking was starting from the scratch and therefore, making something that was not containing beer, pig meat and potatoes and was easy to make. Therefore I decided to deal with one of the 1982 suggested recipes. It would have been too easy to choose the “agurksuppe” (a soup of yogurt and cucumber, which in most of other country is called “tzaziki”)
I opted for something I thought it was elaborated, and not just an a variety of boiled vegetables. Therefore I picked the “Fisketerrine med broccoli”.
Which was not really cooking but smashing smoked fish with crème fraiche and gelée and, if you could make the effort, boil for 4 minutes some broccoli and put them in. Now, obviously, with the help of Google translator, I was , step by step understanding and following the recipe. But a problem came up: I did not read the recipe before, but only the list of ingredients, therefore when I collected all the ingredient I thought I could have that for dinner. But suddenly I came at that point of the page, the famous horrible point in the page, that states “put it into the fridge and WAIT.” And in my case, it was a period between four hours and two days, and I was already starving at that moment.
So I did the only reasonable thing to do: wait. Wait and organize a plan B that saw myself re arrange my dinner with what I had in the fridge and eat the terrine the day after.
It was probably one of the most salty things I ever ate in my life, (and salt was not even included in the ingredient list).but eatable. Like medicines: in small doses.
