aninra

I love a good agurkersalat - the popular Danish condiment made from freshly pickled dill cucumbers. For me, the wonderful tart freshness of the sour/sweet cucumber dish is a perfect complement to many an open-faced sandwich. And while it is available in shops in Denmerk, here in Canada, you need to make it yourself if you want to experience this deliciously-Scandianvian taste (which for me is a complete no-brainer, since it easy, and tastes so much better this way anyway).

Agurkersalat: Ready to eat!

Here are the basic ingredients you will need to make your agurkersalat (but as you will see, you can experiment):

• 1 whole seedless cucumber - sliced thinly
• 1 TBSP salt
• 1 1/2 cups vinegar
• 2 TBSP sugar
• 3 TBSP chopped dill
• A bit more salt and pepper, to taste

1. Using a sharp knife, thinly slice the entire cucumber.
2. Place the sliced cucumber in a bowl and toss with the coarse salt. The salt will help suck out the liquid from the cucumber flesh.
3. Put a small plate on top of the cucumbers in the bowl and weigh it down with a jar or other weighted object.
4. After about 2 hours, you will notice that the cucumber slices are basically sitting in a bowl of salty water. Drain the salty water, squeezing out as much excess liquid as possible (without crushing the cucumber).
5. Combine vinegar and sugar, heating slightly if necessary to dissolve. Make sure to cool thoroughly before adding to sliced cucumbers.
6. Pour in the vinegar/sugar and stir in the chopped dill. Allow the mixture to sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours (or overnight) before using to allow the flavours to blend.

OK, so that was la methode traditonelle - Anyway, I decided to play around with different locally available vinegars, to see what the resulting agurkersalat would be like. A delicious revelation? A disgusting aberration worthy only of contempt? Risks aside, this seemed like a good idea to me, since pickled condiments are such a big part of smørrebrød and I wanted to get a sense of whether I could improve my recipes by simply modifying the basic ingredients.

I went to the local supermarket to raid the vinegar section, thinking there would be a good selection of artisanal vinegars, but was dismayed to find about 25 varieties of Maille French vinegar a few boring looking Pastene options. So I left and went to my favorite green grocer. Here I found a couple of what seemed like worthy options. They were:

L'Ancestral Apple Cider Vinegar - A commonly available Quebec cider vinegar, which for my taste buds is a little too rough around the edges - but who knows, maybe it's great in agurkersalat (costs about $5 a bottle). Read more about it here.

Verger Corriveau Apple Cider Vinegar - A high-end artisanal vinegar with an exquisitely balanced fruit apple flavour - so nice you can almost drink it. (costs about $13/bottle)

I also decided to use a bottle of Allen's White Vinegar as my control.

BTW, if you are interested in really fine vinegars, check out the vinegar offerings from Claus Meyer's Nordhavn Vinegar Brewery in Copenhagen - I wish we could get these vinegars in Quebec!



Contestants in the agurkersalat vinegar death match

Next, I had to make some choices around the sweetener I would use to balance out the tangy vinegar. Normally, I'd just use a couple of table spoonfuls of organic sugar, but in the death match, I needed something more interesting. I opted for an  amber maple syrup and buckwheat honey from Miels d'Anicet (awesome locally-produced organic honeys - not cheap, but so good. You can find out more about it here). And of course, plain white table sugar as the control substance.

The three different pickling liquids (left to right) 1) White vinegar and plain sugar 2) L'Ancestral vinegar and maple syrup 3) Verger Corriveau & d'Anicet honey

And of course the cucumber. For this I used a seedless English variety, but I like the idea of trying the Lebanese kind becasue of its smaller size (something for another day).


Once the cucumbers were salted and drained, I divided them up along with the chopped dill between the three pickling liquid "contestants" and let them sit overnight to absorb the lovely flavours.

The three contestants, ready for their moment in the spotlight

Finally, it was time for the taste test. I gathered up my small group of smørrebrød experts and prepared our tasting samples. We used small, canapé-sized, slices of Danish rye bread with leverpostej (liver paté) as the base upon which to taste the agurkersalat. And then we went to town!

The main event!