Last month, I saved a review of The New Nordic cookbook from my Flipboard, and sort of forgot about it. I happened to be going through my saved articles and found it again earlier last week. Everything about the book seemed like my jam, so I ordered it online. This week it arrived and it was time to start cooking!
New Nordic cuisine centres on an idea: the celebration of traditional Scandinavian ingredients- gathered from the forest, sea and land- by preparing them in contemporary ways. The flavours are earthy, clean and subtle, often with soft contrasts of sweet and sour. This is the way that Scandinavia eats today.
The New Nordic is a collection of recipes, as well as descriptions of the techniques used to prepare the food. I'm okay with pickling, but I am not going to smoke my own meat. Most of the recipes are unfamiliar to me and look like the might need a bit of practice to perfect.
I do know how to make my own family's Danish rye bread, but the one here is a bit different. It has a lot of seeds in it. Mine is pretty plain. I'd love to try the book's recipe for Black Bread and a flatbread called Tunnbröd (looks like a tortilla).
What I did make from the book was Carrot and Cardamom Cake. It turned out well, though next time I will use a different pan. I had to bake it longer than suggested and the extra time dried out the edges. The cream cheese frosting was yum!
A lot of the recipe ingredients are measured by weight, which is not usually how I bake, so that required a different mindset. Luckily, I own a kitchen scale. There is also a number of ingredients that I don't have on hand and will require some hunting around the supermarkets to find. There is a list of substitutions at the back. Most of the ingredients aren't too exotic though. It's easy to find rhubarb, radish, and carrot around here.
The New Nordic is worth buying for the photography alone. Not only do the food photos look delicious and homey, but the landscapes are beautiful.
If you like interesting ethnic cuisine and lovely photography, get yourself a copy of The New Nordic by Simon Bajada.
Check out the other Weekend Cooking participants posts.
This sounds like a book I would enjoy more for the photography and exposure to Scandinavian cuisine...not sure I would actually cook from it. The carrot and cardamom cake looks delicious though!
Ooooohhhhh - This sounds like my kind of book. Love pretty cookbooks, plus I loved the food when I was in Denmark, and I'm assuming many of the recipes will be similar to the foods I ate there. On to my wish list it goes.
I would think so. The author was a chef in Sweden at one point.
I've been using my kitchen scale a lot lately. But I actually prefer cookbooks that aren't too lush and expensive looking, because I always spill and splash on the pages!
lol! Yeah, me too, but I had to have this one. I wish all cookbooks would come with an ebook version.
When I think of food from this region I think of dried fish, flat breads and pickled things. Do I need a cookbook for that? LOL. I jest. I want to take a trip to Norway some day.
lol! There is a lot of that, but a lot of interesting stuff too, like cardamom, licorice, juniper berries. I'd love to visit the region someday.
Cream cheese frosty? That must be good.
Also, I want to eat that berries-with-milk on the cover.
That's a yogurt-like product called ymer. It looks really good!