New Scandinavian Cooking

>> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> No, take me home Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.

>> Viestad: Hi, and welcome to "New Scandinavian Cooking" from Aalborg and to this program that will take us from northern Denmark to southern Norway.

I'm Andreas Viestad, and it's really not that far between the northernmost tip of Denmark and the southern tip of Norway.

Still, it's difficult to imagine two landscapes that are more different.

Here, it's flat and fertile.

On the other side, it's wild and rugged, and in today's program, I'll utilize both.

I'll harvest from both, and right now is the beginning of the duck hunting season, and the air is thick with anticipation, and I'm going to join a local hunting crew on an early morning hunt, and I'm going to prepare wild duck in a generous Danish way with red cabbage and potatoes cooked in duck fat.

Then I'll cross the ocean to Norway on the Fjord Line and prepare wild duck in a completely different way, making sure we use every part of the animal, and on my way over, I'll make Danish meatballs with dill-stewed cabbage and elderflower mayonnaise.

And here it is, Danish meatballs made by a Norwegian.

It's 4:00 a.m. in the morning.

We're in the marshlands outside of Aalborg.

This is the first day of the annual duck hunt.

[ Quacking ] And after we've taken our positions, it's all a waiting game.

There's a small little channel here.

Listen.

Those were shots fired on the other side of that peninsula.

This is where the birds will trek.

[ Quack ] [ Gunshots ] Those were the two first birds of the day.

The dog is now out to see if it can find them.

>> [ Conversing in Scandinavian language ] >> Viestad: Oh.

Such a beautiful little duck.

It looks just like a duckling, but it is a fully grown individual, and it is sad to see it like this, but that's the hard reality of life.

When we eat meat, we eat dead animals, and at least this animal had a happy life until about 25 seconds ago.

Hunting in Denmark was traditionally reserved for kings and nobility.

Affluent nobles built these castles, many places around Jutland, to show their position in society and to use during the few weeks of the hunting season.

This is Store Restrup Castle, which, today, is a castle about 12 kilometers, 7 miles, outside the city center of Aalborg.

The main building in Baroque style was built by Count Christian von Leventzau Restrup in 1723, but he never lived here.

He just came here for a few days during hunting season.

The rest of the time, he lived in Copenhagen.

Hunting today is quite a bit different from the old days.

Almost everyone can go hunting as long as you have a valid hunting license and you've paid the annual yearly permit fee.

It is easy to think that a duck is simply a duck, but the domesticated duck, the one we normally eat, has been bred by us humans for thousands of years, and it is bred to be bigger and fatter and less agile, and it's fed a monotonous diet of mainly grains, where as this, the wild duck, is adapted to life in the wild.

It's smaller.

It's leaner, and it eats a variety of different foods.

As a consequence, the flavor is completely different.

It's much, much more gamy.

And I want to keep that flavor, so I'm adding as little as possible.

I'm just rubbing it with salt.

Then I'm adding a couple of sage leaves to add flavor mainly but also to protect the skin a little bit, and I'm searing it properly in a pot, and I'm using duck fat, which is, in a way, cheating a bit because it is fat from a domesticated duck.

That adds a rich, rich flavor.

You can also use butter.

And when it's well seared on all sides, I'm adding a handful of prunes, which is quite typical for the sort of rich cooking taking place in this mansions in Denmark, and then I'm roasting it in an open pot in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 Celsius, for about 20 minutes.

[ Clock ticking ] [ Alarm rings ] And I'm going to serve with potatoes that are cooked in duck fat, and duck fat is such a fantastic ingredient in the kitchen.

If I were to have a tattoo, it would say, simply, "duck fat."

You can fry almost anything in it, mushrooms, fish, meats or, as in this case, potatoes, and it might be smart to put something behind the potato, a wooden spatula or something, as to prevent you from cutting all the way through the potato, and it just adds something special to it, so I'm just making incisions around halfway down these lovely new potatoes.

Then I'm adding one sprig of thyme.

Now the potatoes are nice and crispy, and if you do this at home, don't turn on your kitchen fan.

Then your house will be filled with the wonderful smell of duck fat.

And I just place the potatoes on a kitchen towel to remove some of the fat, even though it's super delicious.

And I'll also serve with sweet and sour red cabbage.

Red cabbage is incredibly beautiful.

It's also very easy to prepare.

It's just stir-frying or sauting, mainly using the liquid it has inside, and I'm just using a little bit of fat as well.

Can you guess what kind of fat?

And about half an onion, finely chopped.

Black currant juice, this is a sweetened black currant juice.

And black currant and red cabbage go very well together.

A little bit of vinegar.

This is apple cider vinegar.

You can also use white wine vinegar.

And then some aquavit.

Aquavit is the spiced liquor of Scandinavia.

In Norway, it's typical to cask-mature it.

It almost always contains quite a lot of caraway.

Here, it's not cask-matured, and with a very distinct caraway flavor, and that goes for the cook, and a sprinkle of caraway for the cabbage, and then I'm adding the liver and the heart, and even if you think that you don't like liver, you will like duck liver.

It is mild and absolutely sublime.

Then I'll just let this simmer for 5 to 7 minutes, adjusting with a little bit of salt, and that's it.

Hi, Christian.

>> Hi.

>> Viestad: Here is this year's first duck.

>> Yes.

>> Viestad: I hope you like it.

I tried to prepare it in a Danish way, a little bit richer than we would serve it in Norway.

>> Yep.

>> Viestad: Cool.

>> Some duck.

It's good.

>> Viestad: Remember that you can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

There's something special every time I go to stay in a historic site like the Store Restrop Castle Hotel.

You really feel like a king when you wake up in the morning.

My Danish adventure is over, and it's time to embark on the Fjord Line ferry that sails from Hirtshals in Denmark to Langesund in Norway.

You might have heard of Swedish meatballs, and they're delicious.

I like them a lot, but here in Scandinavia, the Danish meatballs are just as famous, and they're a little bit different.

They're very, very generous.

Here I've got about half a kilo, a little more than a pound of veal, and about half of that of fatty pork, so pork belly, and I'm just chopping that into chunk-size pieces.

The first recipe for Danish meatballs, or frikadeller, is from 1710, and at that point in time, it was really food for the very few and the very rich for two reasons.

One was that meat was very expensive, very exclusive.

The second was that it was so complicated to make because they didn't have meat grinders, so you'd have to have a servant who could spend most of the day just chopping and chopping and chopping and chopping and chopping the meat until it was fine enough.

Well, today, it's quite different.

We've got grinders, and this is what you'll get served if you stop in any caf or restaurant all around Denmark.

One of the things that I find fascinating by going back to original recipes is to find how sophisticated they are, very often at least, and one of the things with the old recipes for frikadeller, or Danish meatballs, is that they contain a lot of spices.

They were also part of the show-off in the kitchen.

They want to show off by serving the most expensive meats and using the most complicated techniques but also the most exotic ingredients.

Here, I've got coriander seed, and coriander is basically the same plant as the fresh coriander or cilantro, but the flavor is very, very different.

It's rich and aromatic, and it doesn't have that sort of soapy sting that fresh coriander has, so I'm adding quite a lot of it, about a tablespoon, and then another spice that was very popular in the old days but has gone somewhat out of fashion is allspice.

I think that it was much appreciated because it tasted a lot like other, more expensive spices, and also because it was used a lot in savory dishes, and today's we've sort of reverted to just using salt and pepper, and I'm using six allspice berries, so about between half a teaspoon and a teaspoon if you buy it already ground, and then salt, and there's one thing you've got to remember.

If you add salt to meat before you grind it, it becomes a little bit sticky, and you absolutely don't want that if you're making hamburgers, but you actually do want that when you're making meatballs like this.

And then one small white onion that I just... and coarsely chop.

The meat grinder grinds up everything, including the spices and the onion, and I run the meat mixture through the grinder twice to get a finer texture.

And now comes the part that is a little bit challenging to me because whenever I work with minced meats, I try to make sure that it doesn't become sticky, but here, you actually want a sticky patty, and you're actually working to get it more sticky, so I'm adding 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour; half a cup, 1.2 deciliters, of milk; and just working this together until one sticky mess.

Actually, it's supposed to be a little bit looser than this, so I'm adding a little bit more milk, and then I'm going to form the patty into meatballs, and the best thing is to use a spoon and your hand.

Just make it wet so it doesn't stick, and then just form it like this.

Really quite simple.

And I'm going to serve the meatballs with dill-stewed cabbage.

This is simply finely shredded summer cabbage with just a little bit of water in the bottom of the pan.

I'm giving it a quick boil.

And when it's boiling, I'm adding one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, a good splash of full-fat cream and a tablespoon or so of fresh dill, and to get even more dill flavor, I'm a little bit of dill oil made by my good friend Nicolai Ellitsgaard, who has been featured on the show before, who is a Danish chef living in Norway, so that's very suitable for this dish.

And then a small drizzle of salt, and I think that using cabbage this way, with herbs and a little bit of acidity, is such an ingenious thing, and it goes really well, both together with sort of fatty food like this but also with fresh fish.

The Danes, they have completely fallen in love with mayonnaise, and they have different mayonnaise-based sauces that go with various dishes.

I'm going to serve this with an almost classic remoulade, so that's basically just a classic mayonnaise with some chopped caper berries and chopped dill pickles, pickled cucumber, and then I've got a little bit of elderflower as well, which lends it a sort of nice perfumed taste, and the classic herbs tarragon and parsley.

It's lovely how the mild meatballs carry the aromatic spices in a really nice way that goes fabulously well together with the dill-flavored cabbage.

And here it is, Danish meatballs made by a Norwegian.

Remember that you can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

Hunting is also very popular in Norway, and I meet up with Anita Vindheim, member of the Norwegian Association for Hunters and Anglers.

One early morning, I joined her on a duck hunt in Telemark.

>> [ Speaking Norwegian ] >> Viestad: [ Chuckles ] That's our catch, a very nice wild duck.

This is a female.

[ Birds chirping ] Preparing duck leaves you with a choice between aesthetics on the one side and taste and economy on the other side, and I do like roasting a whole duck.

I think that it adds something, that you can see the entire animal, but it also takes something away, the fact that each part of the animal should really be prepared in a different way.

The breast is best when it's still pink in the middle, whereas the thighs, they need a little more heat.

So I'm just going to fry the thighs on relatively low heat for a long time, for about 25 to 30 minutes, but there's more to the duck than just breasts and thigh.

You know, the rest of the animal, like the back, where there's practically no meat, but there's still a lot of flavor there, so I've put the entire carcass into a pot, added water and let it simmer for about 2 hours.

And then I've got this beautiful rich stock.

While the thighs cook in the pan, I'm going to pick a few extra ingredients that are to be found just here on this island.

Here on the coast of Telemark, Vigdis Kjorholt and her husband, Tom Erik Okland, manage the island of Langoy.

It's a restaurant, but it's also more than that.

It's about understanding nature.

And foraging for wild herbs and mushrooms is an important part of the activities here as well as brewing beer.

>> There's a pretty unique biodiversity out here.

There's really a lot of species.

>> Viestad: Sorry.

Is this... >> This is field garlic.

>> Viestad: Yeah, it looks like chives.

>> Yeah, it does.

It tastes like chives, too, and a little garlic.

>> Viestad: It does, like garlicky chives.

>> Yep.

>> Viestad: Or if you've ever had a kitchen garden, if you have some chives that you've starved that you forgot to water, they become... You know, they nearly die out, but what is left is a little bit of harder, a little bit drier and more... >> And little stronger.

Yeah, 'cause it's quite strong, this one.

>> Viestad: Yeah, it is.

>> Sea kale.

>> Viestad: That looks like we're entering a field.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: But this actually grows wild.

>> Yeah, it does, a lot of it here.

>> Viestad: And this is a part of the cabbage family?

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Viestad: And it tastes, yeah, quite like kale but not actually... not as strong as kale.

It's milder and a little bit sweeter.

>> It is a little milder and a little bit saltier, I think.

>> Viestad: Mm-hmm.

Because it grows in this salty environment.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: Mm.

Like the sweetest broccoli I've ever had.

>> Try the smaller ones with smaller leaves.

Taste a little bit different.

It's stronger, but it's not as bitter.

>> Viestad: It's not as health food.

It doesn't have the repulsiveness of health food.

[ Chuckles ] Mm.

Mm.

And do you have more stuff growing here?

>> Yeah.

There's some mustard over here, sea mustard.

>> Viestad: Oh, let's check it out.

Hmm.

[ Chuckles ] Oh!

It tastes really like mustard.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: Like this strong English mustard.

>> Mm-hmm.

It's in the mustard family.

It's called sea rocket, and I think, also, a little bit like horseradish.

It tastes like horseradish.

>> Viestad: It does.

I mean, there's something about flavors that very often when something is very strong, we tend to think of it as hot, but this is really strong but in a cold way, in a way.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: Hmm.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: These wild herbs are such a resource, not only the fact that they're free and that they taste just as good as something that you could buy, but the most important thing, I think, is that they taste different than anything that you could buy in the store, so they add new flavors to the world, and they make the world a richer place.

The stock is rich and clear and gamy, and it just needs a little bit of salt.

This is local salt from the island.

And it needs a little bit of sweetness.

Luckily, Vigdis and Tom Erik make their own beer, which is delicious, but I'm sacrificing the rest of the glass for the pot.

Mm.

And then I fry the breast, skin side down first for about 7 to 8 minutes and then just 4 or 5 minutes on the cut side.

Then I'm adding some vegetables as well, some Jerusalem artichoke and turnip that I'm peeling and chopping and adding to the stock the last few minutes, and the breast is still a little bit undercooked, but it will continue cooking as I pour over the hot stock.

[ Speaking Norwegian ] Remember that you can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

!Skal.

!>> Skal.

!>> Skal.

[ Fog horn blows ] >> For more of the "New Scandinavian Cooking" experience, visit our website or Facebook page.

>> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> No, take me home Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.