homemade remoulade - danish-style!

i recently had a bit of a conversation about remoulade on a post on the new york times cooking community page on facebook. i posted the picture above and waxed a bit philosophical about the joy and sense of connection that using my mother's vintage autumn leaves bowls bring to me now that she's gone.

that day, i was making a big batch of danish frikadeller (meatballs) and remoulade for a family gathering. i mentioned that both were danish and, it being the internet, a bunch of people jumped in to correct me and inform me that the french would be surprised to hear that remoulade was danish. but i maintain that this version is indeed very danish and no danish hotdog, fish filet or meatball or even serving of french fries is complete without it.

most people buy it ready-made and i have the ready-made kind in my fridge as well, but when i'm putting in effort to make homemade meatballs, fish cakes or hand-breaded fish filets, i like to make it myself.

you start with half a cup of mayo, half a cup of creme fraiche and a couple of good spoons of dijon mustard. you stir them together and add a dash of salt and a teaspoon of sugar.

then you need a bit of pickle. i usually dice up a couple of small gherkins, but last evening, i found i was out, but that there was a jar of capers lurking in the door of the fridge - they worked just as well - you just need a bit of pickle to balance out the other flavors.

then you dice a good-sized carrot and a couple of florets of cauliflower. this was for a small batch for just husband and i - if you're making more, adjust upwards to your taste. dice them small and blanch them in boiling water for a couple of minutes. you don't want them to lose their crunch, but you don't want the to be raw either.

then you toss them into the mayo mixture and stir it up. taste it and see if it needs a bit more sugar, salt or a few more capers. the danish commercial version leans quite sweet, so our palates are trained to that, so i tend to err on the side of a bit more sugar.

at christmas, i got this lovely fiery honey mustard seasoning in trade joe's and found yesterday that it was the PERFECT ingredient - it added just the right sweetness and a bit of bite that made for what was probably my best batch of remoulade ever. i had bought some salmon fars from the fish truck that comes to our grocery store on tuesdays and it was just delicious with the fishcakes i made from that.

the recipe

serves 2

1/2 C mayonnaise
1/2 C creme fraiche or sour cream (i used 38%, but 18% is fine if you're watching calories)
2 T dijon mustard
2 gherkins or a handful of capers, chopped
1 medium carrot - diced
2 big florets of cauliflower - diced
1 generous tablespoon of sugar
salt to taste
secret ingredient: trader joe's fiery honey mustard if you have it

mix the mayo, creme fraiche, dijon and sugar. dice the carrots and cauliflower and blanche them for 2 minutes in boiling water. cool them down under cold water and add them to the mayo mixture. chop the gherkins/capers and add the to the mix. taste and add more sugar, salt, gherkin/capers, fiery honey mustard until the flavors are in balance.

eat it with a fish filet, fish cakes or with a pork meatball. dip your fries in it. top a roast beef sandwich with it. the possibilities are endless!

also, you can see in picture at the top, that there were some green flecks - i had fennel fronds in the garden at that time and added some of those for a bit of green and a hint of that anise-y flavor. you could chop and add some parsley if you want a bit of green in yours. really, the possibilities are endless, so just play around with it!

* sorry for these less-than-stellar photos, it's the dark time of year and in these dreary, grey, rainy days, the light isn't great around here. 

hindbærsnitter - a little slice of heaven

hindbærsnitter - a perennial favorite in any danish bakery. small squares of crisp, buttery dough, stuck together by raspberry jam and topped with a simple frosting glaze and a few sprinkles. my child loves them and i often grab one of those packages of four that's temptingly laid out by the cash register at grocery stores that have a bakery. but no more will i be tempted by the kind the you buy, because i have discovered how sinfully and deliciously easy they are to make. and how much better the homemade ones taste, especially if you use your own homemade raspberry jam.

the ingredient list is not long, the effort is minimal and result absolutely delicious. they're sort of a danish version of a pop tart that doesn't need toasting.

hindbærsnitter (danish pop tarts)

the dough:

200 grams butter

100 grams powdered sugar

300 grams flour

2 egg yolks

raspberry jam

the frosting:

200 grams powdered sugar

a few tablespoons of milk

a little dash of vanilla

sprinkles

put the butter and powdered ingredients in your food processer and blitz them up until they are thoroughly combined and the contents look a bit grainy. add the egg yolks one by one. mix it only until it comes together into a ball of dough. my dough is very yellow thanks to the eggs coming from our own chickens. i have made these three time and on one occasion i needed to add 3 egg yolks to make it come together properly - but that's because some of our eggs are smaller than the kind you can buy in the store. you can see whether the dough has come together properly or not - if it hasn't come together in a ball, it probably needs an extra yolk.

divide the dough into two discs of equal size and refrigerate for up to an hour. roll out the dough between two pieces of baking paper into discs of roughly equal size and shape. bake them in a pre-heated (180°C/350°F) oven for approx. 10 minutes. keep an eye on them, as the dough is delicate and will brown alarmingly quickly! slide one crust onto your counter, keeping it on the baking parchment. spread it with a generous layer of raspberry jam. then, carefully slide the other disc of dough onto the top, fully covering the jam. i have yet to do this successfully - the dough is very delicate and will easily break - however, you can cover the cracks with frosting and it will not affect the taste, so it's ok. 

while they are cooling a little bit, mix up your frosting - you could use a squeeze of lemon instead of milk if you'd like a lemony touch to your frosting - put in only enough liquid to make an easily-spreadable/pourable glaze and put it immediately on top of your dough. add sprinkles if you like - i do it because it's traditional, but they don't really NEED the sprinkles.

brew up a fresh pot of tea or coffee and watch them disappear. my family is absolutely madly in love with them and they disappear like crazy around here. in fact, this is the last one and i'm off to make another batch right now.

a danish julefrokost

the julefrokost or christmas lunch is an essential part of danish culture. in a work context, it's an excuse to eat too much, drink too much and have a quick shag in a dark corner with one of your coworkers. in the home context, it's an excuse to eat too much and drink too much and generally have a hyggeligt time. hyggeligt is always translated as cozy, but it's much more than that word in english conveys - it carries with it the glow of candlelight and the art of keeping a sustained pleasant level of drunkenness for twelve hours straight, something at which the danes excel.

we're doing a family julefrokost on friday and one with our best friends on saturday. the menu at both will undoubtedly encompass the tradition. essential items include:

* several kinds of herring - usually one in a red wine vinegar,  one in a tomato-based sauce and a curry one (a very mild curry, we are talking the danes here, so it's not a chili curry).
* smørrebrød - danish open-faced sandwiches with toppings that include shrimp, boiled eggs, mayo and dill, fish filet with a yellow remoulade (in the tartar sauce family), creamy chicken salad with canned white asparagus (eewww), warm liver paté (leverpostej) topped with bacon and sautéed mushrooms and served with red beet pickles, a variety of hard sausages and various incarnations of ham served with the appropriate accompaniments (i'll do a separate post about all of this one day).
* tarteletter - light, fluffy pastry shells filled with chicken and more canned white asparagus or mixed seafood in a creamy white sauce.
* flæskesteg - pork roast with the cracklings on top, crisped to perfection, served with white and brown (caramelized) potatoes and red cabbage.
* bowls heaped with mandarin oranges, nuts, dried figs, dates and apricots that you can graze on in between.
* beer, snaps and loads of red wine.

as you can imagine, it takes quite a long time to eat all of this and it's all eaten in a special order - herring and snaps first, then fish, chicken, then pork products cold, followed by warm pork products. and there are all sorts of rules about which kind of bread goes with which - herring on dark bread that's been spread with lard and shrimp on light bread. of course, the danes will tell you there are no rules, but you can be sure there are indeed rules when you can tell by looking around at the horrified faces that you've just violated them by putting your warm leverpostej on white bread.

at the saturday julefrokost, there are ten couples involved and each couple brings a course. i bring something different every year, according to my mood (tho' i'm not allowed to bring dessert because there's an italian woman who brings tiramisu every year). one year it was a pepped up chili flæskesteg (because i can't leave the tradition well enough alone) and this year, i had the bright idea of making homemade pickled herring.

the problem with making pickled herring is that you don't actually know how it's going to turn out 'til you get there with it, so if it's vile, i'll be in big trouble, as herring starts the whole thing off. i spent a lot of time searching for recipes and pouring over old-fashioned danish cookbooks and i arrived at two recipes. one called for poaching the herring in the oven with the vinegar/sugar solution over it and so it is actually cooked and the one (pictured above) calls for letting the vinegar do the "cooking" for me.

for both recipes, i salted my fresh herring fillets (which i got from my fishmonger) and let them sit in the outside (now known as the herring) refrigerator for 24 hours.

poached pickled herring

8 fresh herring, sprinkled with 200g sea salt and a spoonful of sugar and allowed to sit overnight in the refrigerator

marinade:

450ml white wine vinegar

300ml water

250g sugar

1 T allspice berries

1 T black peppercorns

3 bay leaves (preferably fresh)
2 sliced carrots
3 sliced red onions
2 tsp. grated, fresh horseradish
1 orange, thinly sliced, rind and all

place the marinade ingredients in a pan and bring it to a boil. place the fish in an oven-proof dish (rinsing off the salt) and pour the hot marinade over, baking in the oven at 200℃/375℉ for 20 minutes. transfer the fish to a prepared, sterile jar and pour over as much of the marinade as will fit. refrigerate up to a week before use.

i intend to use the poached herring recipe as a base for a herring salad with apple and creme frâiche.

herring with creme frâiche and apple salad

8 preserved herring fillets

250ml creme frâiche or sour cream

4 red apples, cored and sliced

2-3 T chives, chopped

2 small red onions, peeled and sliced

1 tsp. dijon mustard

juice of a half a lemon

1 pinch cayenne pepper

chopped dill

salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste

cut the herring into bite-sized chunks. mix the creme frâiche, chives, mustard, lemon juice and seasoning together in a bow, add the herring, apples and onions, cover and refrigerate for 4-5 hours. sprinkle with chopped dill and serve with rye bread.

pickled herring

8 salted herring fillets

marinade:
3 T sugar
1 T peppercorns
1 T allspice
3 fresh bay leaves
2 small sliced red onions
250ml white wine vinegar

cut your salted, rinsed herring fillets into bite sized-pieces and stuff them tightly into a sterilized jar, layering in peppercorns, allspice, bay leaves and onion slices as you go. stir together the sugar and vinegar until the sugar is dissolved, pour over the herring filets until they are completely covered by vinegar. if you need a bit more than 250ml, add more vinegar until they are covered.

refrigerate up to one week before serving on rye bread with slices of red onion and boiled egg.

* * *

i'll admit that i'm apprehensive about how these are going to turn out. me, the non-dane in the bunch, making the essential herring that kicks the whole thing off. i'm going to bring a salmon ceviche with grapefruit as a backup in case these are vile. and i'm also bringing homemade horseradish snaps and cranberry snaps, in the hopes that it will help it glide down a bit easier. but as a last resort, i'm also thinking about bringing one of these to distract and redeem myself at the end in case it goes wrong, even tho' the italian woman is bringing tiramisu:

nigella's buche de noel (photo from last year)