Kartoffelmad (Potato Food)
Ok, here is the thing. Kartoffelmad is a snap to make - even small children can do it (though if there are any children under the age of 12 planning on following this recipe, please ask your parents for help boiling the potatoes!), but the success of the final product is highly dependent on the quality of the ingredients that go into making it. You must not take shortcuts - it's not worth it. Eat something else instead. Life is too short to eat bland, starchy potatoes on store-bought German pumpernickel.
So how do you do it right? Let's start with the bread. Only real Danish rye bread will do this sandwich justice. So much is riding on it!
Next comes the potatoes. Do yourself a favour and ditch the gnarly old baking potatoes. Instead, pick new potatoes or fingerlings - both are delicious. They should be boiled slowly in lightly salted water and allowed to cool thoroughly before eating. Peeling is optional. Fork and knife are not.
Finally, the mayonnaise. Of course, you can use the Hellman's store bought variety, but that would be no fun. Why not make the mayonnaise yourself? It'll taste so much better and it raises the Danish Degree of Difficulty to just slightly about Very Easy! There is a recipe below for making your own mayonnaise.
Oh, and chives. Lots of freshly chopped chives. Or, in a pinch, use green onions.
Finally, if you really want to spare no expense on this sandwich, serve it on a real blue-fluted Royal Copenhagen porcelain plate. You've probably noticed these plates in a number of my other posts. Let me tell you a bit about them...
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| Kartoffelmad - simply beautiful! |
Sometimes you want to eat something that takes a ridiculously long time to make and some times you don't. And if you're in the mood for simple, then look no further - kartoffelmad is for you! One of the simplest - yet most satisfying smørrebrød - it is made from buttered Danish rye bread, slices of boiled potato, mayonnaise, chives, and a bit of salt and pepper. As with many other delicious smørrebrød, kartoffelmad is especially good at lunchtime, washed down with a nice cold øl (beer).
Kartoffel means potato and mad means food, so I very astutely refer to this smørrebrød as potatofood. I like the way the name rolls off the tip of my tongue. It's funny, the name of this Danish open-faced sandwich reminds me of a saying, a saying that states that that people who speak Danish sound like they are speaking with a potato in their mouth. (From eating kartoffelmad?)
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| Danish: Hard to learn even without a potato in your mouth |
As a language, Danish is really complicated for so many reasons - the tongue twisting pronunciations, extra genders, funny letters in the alphabet, articles that come after the noun, and the ever popular compound words - these are my top reasons for struggling with this Nordic tongue. Compound words like Beskæftigelsesministeriet (Ministry of Education) are probably the best example of how complex things can get - I can't even tell where one part of the word ends and another one starts and good luck if you want to look this up in a dictionary! It makes the learning process very tricky, indeed. Luckily, kartoffelmad is a nice simple example of a compound word:
kartoffel + mad = potato + food = deeeee-licious!
kartoffel + mad = potato + food = deeeee-licious!
Ok, here is the thing. Kartoffelmad is a snap to make - even small children can do it (though if there are any children under the age of 12 planning on following this recipe, please ask your parents for help boiling the potatoes!), but the success of the final product is highly dependent on the quality of the ingredients that go into making it. You must not take shortcuts - it's not worth it. Eat something else instead. Life is too short to eat bland, starchy potatoes on store-bought German pumpernickel.
So how do you do it right? Let's start with the bread. Only real Danish rye bread will do this sandwich justice. So much is riding on it!
Next comes the potatoes. Do yourself a favour and ditch the gnarly old baking potatoes. Instead, pick new potatoes or fingerlings - both are delicious. They should be boiled slowly in lightly salted water and allowed to cool thoroughly before eating. Peeling is optional. Fork and knife are not.
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| Left: Fingerling potatoes. Yum! Center: New potatoes. Also yum! Right: Gnarly old, warty potatoes. Avoid! |
Oh, and chives. Lots of freshly chopped chives. Or, in a pinch, use green onions.
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| Royal Copenhagen Porcelain, for when your smørrebrød deserves only the best |
Royal Copenhagen is the purveyor of porcelain to Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark (Queen Magrethe II). The company was founded in 1775, which apparently makes Royal Copenhagen one of the world’s oldest companies. It's main flagship store is located in the heart of Copenhagen (right next to Georg Jensen - see post from a few weeks ago). If you are interested in the Danish Royal Family, you can learn more about them here.
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| Royal Copenhagen head office |
Royal Copenhagen is crazily expensive, very beautiful, and is the standard in elegant Danish tableware. If you are dying to procure some RC porcelain for your own sandwich creations, you can buy it online here. In Denmark, it is not uncommon for families to hand down their dinnerware from one generation to the next (that is exactly how I got some of it).
Making Mayonnaise
Here is a recipe for making your own mayonnaise. My way requires a hand blender, but in a pinch, you can make it by hand but you'll have to look up the instructions somewhere else (like Epicurious.com).
Ingredients:
- 250 ml Sunflower oil
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- A pinch of salt
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| Homemade Mayonnaise |
Instructions
- Place all the ingredients together into a wide-mouthed 1L Mason jar (or other suitably large receptacle).
- Insert the hand blender into the jar all the way to the bottom, then turn it on, and slowly lift the blender up from the bottom of the jar. As the blender rises, the mayonnaise begins to emulsify.
- Keep lifting the hand blender all the way up, until the mayonnaise is thick all the way through. You may need to give the mayonnaise a final few stirs with a spoon to complete the emulsification.
- If the mayonnaise doesn't come together, try adding a few more drops of lemon juice (or vinegar) and try again with the hand blender.
Note on home-made mayonnaise: When you make it yourself, it's a real delight the eat, but you can't keep it in the refrigerator forever While spoiling times may vary, I'd recommend not keeping the mayonnaise for more than a week. So don't make more than a cup or so at a time or it'll just end up going to waste.
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