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Sommersalat: smoked cheese and radish marks the beginning of summer

When the weather gets warm and the gardens are springing to life, it's the time of year to start making the delicious veggie smørrebrød called sommersalat (which translates to, drum roll.....summer salad). This distinctly Danish treat pops up at picnics across Denmark when the sun comes out and the weather gets warm. Personally, I have fond memories of enjoying smørrebrød with sommersalat in the garden of one of my uncle's my summer cottages in Hornbæk, on the Zealand coast north of Copenhagen. On those summer occassions, when the entire family would gather for enormous smørrebrød potluck, we could always count on my cousin Dorte to bring along the sommersalat. Thanks, Dorte!

Making sommersalat is very easy, but it requires one special ingredient - an unusually-prepared Danish dairy product similar to cream cheese but with one huge difference - it's been smoked! Called rygeost (or smoked cheese), you can find this in all Danish grocery stores, but if you live in Canada, you need to make it yourself - which is, of course, what I do.

There's more than one way to smoke a cheese...

I don't have a proper smoker on my back balcony, but I have been known to jerry rig my bar-b-q into a suitable system for adding a modicum of naturally smokey flavour to foods (eel, herring, mackerel, and of course, cheese). For rygeost, however, you have to use cold smoke, so you'll need a way of transporting the smoke away from to heat source and into a secondary container in which you place the cheese. Smoking cheese doesn't take too long, maybe 30-45 minutes, and should be done with a mildly scented wood (no mesquite or hickory - you ain't cookin' ribs, partner - I'd recommend maple or apple wood instead).

Peder S. Krøyer Self-portrait 1899

Given the fact that you'll probably need to smoke your own cheese, making sommersalat has a Danish Degree of Difficulty of Peder S. Krøyer Medium.

P. S. Krøyer (1851 - 1909), was a Danish painter and one of the most prominent members of the Skagen Painters, a community of Nordic artists who lived and worked in the picturesque Danish coastal town of Skagen (pronounced skay-en) at the end of the 19th century. He's best-known for his paintings depicting beach life in the Skagen area, using a color palette that brilliantly captured the magnificent summer sunlight  that bathed Denmark's most-northerly tip in the late-afternoons. His most famous painting is probably "Summer Evening on the Skagen Southern Beach with Anna Ancher and Marie Krøyer" which he painted in 1893.

Summer Evening on the Skagen Southern Beach with Anna Archer and Marie Krøyer, 1893, by P.S. Krøyer.

Read more about the Skagen Painters at the Skagen Museum website.

I've never been to Skagen, but I've always thought of it as the quintessential Danish summer vacation spot. It was to Skagen that my father and his four brothers would travel as children in order to escape the humdrum blahs of summertime in post-war Copenhagen (playing with rusty nails in the mean back alleyways of Sydhavn), preferring instead to frolic in the frigid northern waters at the confluence of the Skaggerak and Kattegat. Brrrrrrr.... On the other hand, Skagen beaches, like beaches in the other parts of Europe, are topless, so maybe the kids didn't mind the chilly water that much after all. If you'd  like to know more about tourism in Skagen, check this out. If you'd like to learn more about topless beaches, ask the internet.

Windswept beach at Skagen - a great place to eat sommersalat!

Inspired by the beach?

As I mentioned, I've never been to Skagen  - it is too far out of the way for a quick trip from Copenhagen (takes about 5 and a half hours to get there with a ferry ride to Ǻrhus - another place I've never been to - so I'd be able to kill 2 birds with one stone on this trip). For now I have to content myself with a lovely Skagen watch!
Ok, so this doesn't have anything to do with the summer, open-faced sandwiches, or sommersalat, but I like Skagen watches. The company is actually US-headquartered, but is run by a Danish couple, and they make ultra-thin, lightweight watches with typical Danish-design simplicity. Check out Skagen Denmark watches here. Believe it or not, I do not get corporate sponsorship for the contents of my blog posts. I just post about things I like for free.




Skagen - one place I'd love to visit - but it always seems too far!

 Anyway, now that I've successfully avoided talking about food for several paragraphs, and shamelssly flogging a few Danish brands, we should get back to making this week's pålæg sandwich topping - sommersalad. Yum! Smokey, crunchy, delicously creamy, but somehow light all at the same time!

But before we do, here's one last gratuitous plug for Denmark in the summer - where the days are long, the sun is warm, the sandwiches are topless, and so are the beaches! Life in Denmark can be so hyggelig!

Topless beaches & topless sandwiches Ah! Summer in Denmark ain't bad!

OK, here's what you need to know if you want to make your own sommersalat smorrebrød:

Ingredients for sommersalat

Ingredients for sommersalat

• 300 g rygeost (smoked cheese)
• 3 heaping tbsp mayonnaise
• 250 ml (1 cup) thinly sliced radish
• 250 ml (1 cup) chopped seedless cucumber
• 1 bunch chives, chopped
• salt and pepper, to taste
• A few slices of frizzy lettuce
• slices of buttered Danish rye bread

Instructions for making sommersalat

Sommersalat smørrebrød: a mini work of art on bread...

2) Add radish, cucumber, and chopped chives and then stir to combine.

3) Allow the mixture to sit in the fridge for an hour or so to let the flavours blend together.

4) Place a couple of heaping tablespoons of the sommersalat atop a slice of buttered Danish rye bread and then garnish with sliced radish and chopped chive. Enjoy with fork and knife and a crisp Danish lager. Skål!