I was in Denmark on vacation this summer and was reminded about just how good freshly baked Danish rye bread (rugbrød) can taste - nutty, satisfyingly chewy, with a distinctively sour finish that lingers in your mouth. Great as the foundation of a myriad of open-sandwiches (smørrebrød), but also lovely for breakfast with just with a bit of butter and strawberry jam. 

In Copenhagen, I was especially impressed by the wonderful offerings from Meyers Bageri - not only for their fine breads and pastries, but more so for the philosophical approach to bread, and the break-making ingredients they sold on-premises: malt syrup, fresh-milled wheat and rye flours, live sour dough - pure and simple ingredients of high quality that anybody could buy for making their own fantastic breads at home.  

Meyers bageri in Copenhagen, items for purchase, "fresh flour" brochure

This got me inspired to revisit my own approach to rye bread making - could I make it easier and well adapted to ingredients available in North America? I wanted to find out. So, I spent a couple of months after my vacation back in Canada working things out - testing variations - and I am very happy to say that I have a new and improved technique for making Danish rye bread - one that I find is really easy to make and tastes super good - just like rugbrød in Denmark. 

So what is the secret? A healthy and active rye sourdough leaven that you use to make a sourdough starter. This is what imparts the sour character that is so typical of Danish rye bread. Although not hard to make, it takes some time to get going. But once its ready, you have the vital main ingredient to wonderfully complex breads. If you have access to fresh rye sourdough leaven, great! If not, you can find an excellent recipe with very detailed steps and photos here (from the Tartine Bread Experiment blog). 

My personal rye bread sourdough leaven

Once you have the leaven, you need to make your sourdough starter. Here's what you do the night before you plan on baking your bread:

• In a medium sized bowl, add 1 tablespoon of fresh leaven to 100ml lukewarm water, then stir in 100g rye flour. 
• Mix thoroughly, scrape the sides of the bowl clean, and cover.
• Let rise undisturbed overnight.
• The next morning, you have a bowl of sour dough starter and you are ready to go...

Danish rye bread ingredients, including sourdough starter (front)

 The rest is a snap. In terms of the qualities of ingredients, check this out...

And here are the steps for making your own Danish rye bread:

- Mix together all the dry ingredients in a big bowl

- Add the starter to the warm water and stir it up a bit 

- Pour the water over the dry ingredients and mix it all together thoroughly with a spatula or wooden spoon

- Transfer to a greased 9" x 5" loaf pan like this one (which I bought at Canadian Tire for ten  bucks)

- Sprinkle a tablespoon or so of sesame seeds over top of the loaf 

(See image below)

 

Danish rye bread steps continued:

- Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 3-4 hours in a warm place (until the dough rises a bit above the top of the bread pan)

- Put pan in oven, turn heat to 350F and let bake for 1 hour and 40 minutes, spritzing water into the oven periodically. 

Note: After about 1 hour, I cover the loaf with aluminum foil to keep the top from burning 

- Turn off heat, remove loaf from the pan and let cool in the warm oven for about an hour

- Remove from over, let cool completely, slice thinly with a good bread knife and enjoy!

Before and after baking - yummy golden delicious!

Regarding the ingredients: You can pretty much find all the ingredients in local grocery or specialty food stores, the one exception being the cracked rye (which can be trickier to find). If you can't find it, you can either buy whole rye and crack it yourself with a grain mill (which is what I do), or order it online, for instance from the Bob's Red Mill site here. 

For the mixed seeds, I use 30-30-10-10 % mix of sunflower, pumpkin, flax and sesame. But try different things as you please. 

Good luck with your bread! If you make it, I really look forward to hearing about how it goes. Here's how my most recent batch turned out...so delicious!

A slice of delicious Danish rye bread

My rugbrøod  video has been on Youtube for almost a year now, but I thought it might be useful to make it available on my blog as well. I hope you enjoy! 

I love a good tartarmad as much as anybody and have already posted about the traditional way of preparing it, but I've been stricken with the uncontrollable urge to explore non-traditional variations of classic smørrebrød, and wanted to share a recent discovery with fans of Danish Sandwiches!

A delicious treat for lunch and day of the week!
Just looking at it now makes my mouth water!

First of all, I have to acknowledge Aamanns restaurant in Copenhagen as the source of this new tasty treat. I was perusing the various blogs with posts about smørrebrød and I came across a great post by some food-savvy tourists who were visiting Copenhagen and ended up spending some quality time at my favourite smørrebrød joint. In the blog, they went into painstaking detail on the many sandwiches they ordered, taking close-up photos of each. It is from one of these photos that found my inspiration.

One of the things I love about Aamanns, and its especially true with this sandwich, is how the various ingredients so thoroughly complement each other - texture, flavour, and appearance are all harmoniously in balance and wonderfully unified by the Danish rye bread. I also love the way Aamanns comes up with new variations on traditional themes in a way that allows the old and the new to co-exist together.

From a design & architecture standpoint, this is something I pick up on when I visit Denmark. Sure it’s a very old country with a rich history, but the people don’t live in the past – they are constantly updating their environment to bring the old and the new together in ways I find very cool. For instance, you can see many examples in Copenhagen where new modern structures (say the Metro system) stand in juxtaposition to the historic landmarks (say Kongens Nytorv), in a way that enhances the overall appearance. (This is just my non-scholarly opinion – there may be groups of design advocates out there who will want my head on a platter for saying this – who knows???)

Here are a couple of architectural examples of the old and the new living side-by-side in Copenhagen:

 

Metro system at Kongens Nytorv:
Pyramids provide entrance for lighting in undergound system

UNIBANK Headquarters, Copenhagen:
New modern architecture, part of its surroundings

OK, let’s get back to the topic at hand – something I feel a lot more comfortable bloggin about - a new tartarmad sandwich. You'll need:


Fancy tartarmad: What you'll need to make it

• Buttered Danish rye bread
• Chopped uncooked beef
• Creamy egg sauce (though egg yolks would be just fine, too)
• Cornichon
• Red onion rings
• Fresh tarragon
• Crispy sliced potatoes

Buttered Danish rye is the foundation upon which this great sandwich is built. Homemade is best, but don't let that get in the way of enjoying this masterpiece - store bought is better than nothing.

Chopped beef: It only takes a few minutes,
but watch your fingers! 

Chopped beef - When making tartar, you want to get a great piece of meet from an excellent quality butcher. Ask for something like flank steak or sirloin of you want something with a bit of fat (i.e taste). Use filet mignon if you want the ultimate in tenderness. You need about 200g for 4 sandwiches. Then you want to take that tasty meat and hand chop it with a sharp knife as finely as you can reasonably manage. Season with salt and pepper and refrigerate until ready to use.

Egg yolk or "Magic Sauce" - Egg yolk, with its rich velvety texture, goes so well with raw meat it's scary. Cooked egg yolks, on the other hand, don't work at all and are a very poor substitute for the real raw thing. And while I love eating raw egg yolks with tartar, some people get all weird about possibly poisoning themselves, so here are a couple of alternatives:

·    Quickly pasteurize the egg yolks in a double-boiler until they are warm, but not cooked. Careful that the yolks don’t seize up.

·    Whip up a batch of what my friends and I mysteriously call Magic Sauce – basically a rich custard-like mixture with a slight hint of mustard. Here’s my recipe:



The things you'll need for Magic Sauce...

Ingredients for Magic Sauce:

• 3 egg yolks, beaten
• 125ml whipping cream
• 1 heaping TBSP Dijon mustard
• Salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Gently heat the cream until it is frothy and very hot

2. Pour a little bit of hot cream into the yolks, stirring constantly, to temper the yolks. This will ensure that they do not curdle when added to the rest of the cream.

3. Add the yolks into the rest of the cream and heat over a bain-marie while stirring constantly until the mixture has thickened (about 5 minutes).

Whip it good!

4. Remove from heat and allow the mixture to cool completely.

5. Add the mustard, salt and pepper and refrigerate until ready to use. It should have the consistency of mayonnaise.

Red onions, cornichon, tarragon, and crispy potatoes – These ingredients should all be readily available to you. If you want to be really fancy, you can deep fry your own potato slices, but my taste testers were more than happy to eat this sandwich topped with potato chips (use a good unsalted kind of chip from a company like Miss Vickie’s or Cape Cod)

Some Assembly Required

To assemble the sandwich, you simply spread out enough chopped up beef to cover the rye bread, add a dollop or two of “Magic Sauce” and cover artfully with the remaining ingredients. Enjoy with a cold beer, fork and knife!

This smørrebrød looks great, tastes great, and is easy to make. What more can you ask for!

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...

1) Combine smoked cheese and mayonnaise in a large bowl until mixed.

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!

Remember, if you can't find fresh cheese in your 'hood, you can always make it yourself. I won't go into it in this blog post, but you can basically get there with a yogurt machine and cheese cloth. Read about it here. Then all you have to do is smoke it. Lickety-split!

Well preserved Danish fried herring...

Many people ask me about the history of smørrebrød, and how far back the tradition dates. For instance, we're these wonderful open-faced sandwiches popular in the 1800s? Or going back even further, did the Vikings enjoy eating smørrebrød? Or what about 2000 years ago? Do we have any way of knowing what early Danes were eating? Perhaps they were enjoying eating charred herring on unleavened whole-grain bread with the help of flint cutlery? Wouldn't that be amazing!?!

Tollund Man: Well-preserved Iron-age Dane

Luckily we do know something about the lives of Danes from 2000 years ago thanks, in part, to the discovery of the Tollund Man in 1950. This discovery is an amazing story, and I encourage you to read about it on Wikipedia or many of the other sites dedicated to these naturally preserved corpses found in Northern European Peat Bogs. But since I brought it up, I may as well give you a bit of info...These corpses, known as Bog People, were preserved thanks to the acidic quality and the lack of oxygen in the swamps in which their bodies were buried.

The Tollund Man, who appears to have been ritually sacrificed by hanging due to the presence of a noose around his neck, seems to have enjoyed a last meal that was 100% smørrebrød free (so much for my theory). In his stomach were the remains of what must have been a deee-licious iron-age porridge made from veggies and seeds and included barley, linseed, and chamomile, plus a couple of things I've never heard of - bristle grass, which doesn't sound that good, and "gold of pleasure", which sounds pretty darn good if you ask me. Actually, this porridge sounds kinda like something NOMA would serve these days.

OK, so I am a bit disappointed that there was no "Bog Herring" preserved in Tollund Man's stomach, but thanks to adventurous archeologists, I can at least debunk my own myth and safely state that Danish open-faced sandwiches were not eaten on a daily basis by iron-age Bog People - at least not in the 24 hours preceding their execution. Maybe the Viking diet included sandwiches, but that will have to be a topic for another day.

The search for ancient smørrebrød continues...

By the way, if you are interested in seeing the Tollund Man in the darkly preserved flesh (at least his head),  you should visit the Silkeborg Museum in Silkeborg, Denmark, a town about 10km from where the body was discovered. I've never made the trip myself, but what's not to like about a museum dedicated to bog people and other historical artefacts?

So what does all this have to do with smørrebrød? Well, frankly, nothing. But corpses preserved in acid got me thinking about edible things you could preserve in vinegar - like fried herring filets. And in fact, pickled fried herring is a classic topping for Danish open-faced sandwiches served on buttered Danish rye bread - it truly would have been a dish worthy of an iron-age Dane's last meal - but is easy enough to make that you can enjoy it any day.

Here is what you need to know in order to make your own pickled fried herring:

Ingredients Pickling liquid

Ingredients:

• 250ml white vinegar
• 200ml sugar
• 1 tbsp coarse salt
• 1/2 tsp whole all-spice
• 1/2 tsp mustard seed
• 1/2 tsp pepercorns
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 egg, beaten (optional)
• 100 ml rye flour
• 6 herring filets
• butter for frying

Instructions

1) Gently heat the vinegar in a small pot until boiling, add the sugar and salt, and stir until dissolved.

2) Reduce heat, add the spices, and simmer for about 3 minutes, then remove from feat and allow to cool completely.

3) Meanwhile, while the liquid is cooling, dredge the herring filets in rye flour (after optionally dipping them in the egg). Shake of excess flour.

Dredge filets in flour - I prefer without egg

4) Place a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat, add the butter, and then fry the herring filets for about 3-4 minutes per side.

Fry 'em up in batches

5) Place the fried filets in a glass casserole just big enough to hold the filets in a single layer.

6) Once the pickling liquid is cool, pour it over the filets and let them rest together for about 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Give it 24 hours to let the acidity and spice do its trick!

7) Serve on buttered Danish rye bread, garnish with a couple of slices of red onion and dill, and enjoy with fork and knife!

Yet another Danish classic - easy to make and oh so tasty!

Chocolate smørrebrød anyone?

Everybody loves chocolate, right? And the Danes are no different. In fact, they love chocolate so much they eat it on open-faced sandwiches...for breakfast! Admittedly, it' mostly a thing kids do, but if you ever feel like indulging your inner Danish child, butter up a slice of Danish rye and eat it topped with a couple of thin slices of chocolate, and then go crazy!

Chocolate pålæg sent via airmail

Get this. In Danish supermarkets you can buy chocolate slices specially prepared for the purpose of placing atop bread! It is available in either a milk or a dark variety, comes thinly sliced, and is cut to fit perfectly on a half a piece of Danish rye bread. But don't worry, you can enjoy your chocolate slices on pretty much any kind of bread for that matter. This isn't exactly gourmet cuisine, so you can get away with murder here. Toasted english muffins, baguette, melba toast, heck croutons! Whatever makes you happy.

Homemade chocolate slices

But what if you are not in Denmark and want to treat yourself to a little slice of chocolatey breakfast heaven? Short of asking an uncle to send you a few packages in the mail (which is what I do), what are your options? Ah, worry not! You can make prepared chocolate slices yourself. All you need is some chocolate, a thermometer, and the technique I will describe in a moment. But first, I need to digress slightly...

All this talk of chocolate makes me want a cup of coffee. I, like many canadians of Danish origin, drink copious amounts of coffee (see per capita consumption data here for the main coffee drinking nations). And while there are many ways of preparing coffee - most of which I enjoy - I really enjoy coffee made using a Bodum coffee press. If you like coffee and haven't experienced this manner of preparing coffee, you have to check it out. And another thing, since the Bodum system doesn't keep coffee warm, many Danes also have a coffee thermos. I love these. They add a real "je ne sais quoi" - or a "det ved jeg ikke" as they (do not) say in Danish - to the morning breakfast table. Check out the classic Stelton thermos for a touch of retro Danish style.   

Bodum - Danish for great coffee...

   

Stelton: Great for keeping coffee warm!

   

Tempering Chocolate

Ok, now back to making your own chocolate slices for Chocolate open-faced sandwiches. The trick is to use tempered chocolate - chocolate that has been melted, cooled to a specific temperature and then heated slightly. This results in a chocolate that sets firmly and maintains a nice glossy sheen - just what you want when enjoying your morning breakfast! And it doesn't melt all over your fingers the second you touch it. Here is how to temper your chocolate and make pålæg:

• Things you will need: You will need an accurate chocolate thermometer for tempering chocolate and a non-stick, heat resistant surface to work on (I like silpat silicone mats for this).

• Ingredients: Start with about 500g semi-sweet bakers chocolate. If you are using chunks, you'll need to chop them up into small pieces. You call also use chocolate chips - but use dark chocolate. Milk chocolate can also be tempered, but requires a slightly different procedure (the temperatures are different). 

• Getting ready: Prepare a small double boiler by placing one small pot in another pot containing water, heat the water until it starts to boil, then reduce heat to a gentle simmer.

• Heating: Place about 2/3 of the chocolate into the double boiler and melt it until it reaches 45-47 degrees Celsius. You can go hotter, but then cooling takes longer.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler

• Cooling: Remove the chocolate from the hot water, and, bit by bit, stir the unmelted chocolate into the melted stuff until you reach 26-27 C. Adding unmelted chocolate helps cool the whole thing faster.  

• Heating again: Put the pot containing the chocolate back into the hot water and stir for about 30 seconds until the temperature reaches 32 C. Your chocolate is now ready to use.  

Chocolate, spread thinly

• Forming: To form the slices, use a spatula to spread chocolate thinly across the silicone mat and then create rectangular segments using a dull knife. Allow the chocolate to cool thoroughly and peel off the mat. You're ready for a saturday morning delight with the kids!

Thin chocolate layer, segmented into rectangles

What else do Danes do with Chocolate?

Canadian flødeboller

While chocolate on your open-faced sandwich may seem like a revelation, Denmark has another interesting chocolate specialty - called flødeboller. These delights are basically cookie topped with marshmallow and then dipped in chocolate. If you like the sound of this, you can find an approximation, albeit a poor one, in Canadian supermarkets - they are called Whippets cookies. As a child visiting Denmark, I always had an amazing time - mainly because my father and I would make a point of visiting one of the many old-time candy shops located on Strøget (the central Copenhagen walking street) to gorge on flødeboller in their many different  shapes and sizes - some plain milk chocolate, some coated in dark chocolate, some stuffed with marzipan, and some adorned with shredded coconut - so many options - as a kid, it boggles the mind. Just to keep you guessing, I have not included a photo, but you can check here for a Danish website with really authentic looking flødeboller. This is not my speciality, so I am leaving these to the experts. Enjoy!

Dyrlægens Natmad - takes time, but it's worth it!

Dyrlægens Natmad, along with Sol Over Gudhjem, is one of the very few named Danish open-faced sandwiches. The name translates to Veterinarian’s Night Snack, which always struck me as odd as a child, since the sandwich contains a lot of meat and I assumed that the name was implying that the veterinarian was eating his former patients!

The sandwich is sinfully delicious, made from paté, rich meat aspic (called sky in Danish), and a kind of corned beef (called saltkød - I make it from silverside veal). Frankly, because of the meaty ingredients, I always thought it would have made more sense to refer to the sandwich as the Vegetarian’s Nightmare. Anyway, it’s eaten on buttered Danish rye bread, or better yet, rendered bacon fat, and it’s super delicious - like nothing else in this world. Trust me.   

Grocery shopping in Denmark is different! (Images from Super Best and Nemlig)

If you live in Denmark, the ingredients for this sandwich are readily available in the supermarket, but if you live in North America, like I do, you’ll just have to make the ingredients yourself. And this will require some planning and coordination, since pretty much each and every darn element of this sandwich takes time and plenty of manual labour. 

Tycho Brahe and his nose...

As such, the Danish Degree of Difficulty for Dyrlægens Natmad is a Tycho Brahe Hard – not impossibly hard, just a lot of painstakingly detailed work – much like the accurate astronomical measurements carried about throughout the lifetime of Tycho Brahe, the notable Danish Astronomer of the late 1500s. 

The observations and precision work carried out by Brahe (1546-1601) ultimately contributed to Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion – one of the most revolutionary scientific discoveries of the time. You may not have known this, but Johannes Kepler was, in fact, assistant to Tycho Brahe, and thus had access to all of Brahe's astronomical measurements. Kepler used this data in figuring our the planetary motion, but who cares about Kepler? Let's just say that, thanks to Tycho Brahe, we know that our solar system is more than a giant celestial mobile hanging from some heavenly bedroom ceiling.

So what does this have to do with Smørrebrød? Nothing. But it is interesting and could – if greatly embellished with loads of artist license and maybe even a few outright falsehoods - allow me to concoct a plausible reason for how this week’s open-faced sandwich came to be tagged with an “official” name. So here is my version of the story...

The Round Tower

In the early 1600s, astronomy was really hot, thanks in part to the earlier work of Tycho Brahe. Apparently a sucker for a good fad, King Christian IV (1577-1648) commissioned the building of an astronomical observatory called Rundtårnen (or the Round Tower, which today is one of Copenhagen's most famous landmarks). Offering wonderfully unobstructed views over Copenhagen, the Round Tower was built with a 210 m long spiral ramp which climbed up the inside of the tour towards the observatory. This ramp was built as it was the King’s wish to be transported to the top of the Round Tower by horse carriage. It’s good to be the king! (By the way, if you want to learn more about King Christian IV, check out his Facebook page here)

The King’s horses were kept in a stable at the top of the Round Tower. Next to this stable there lived a veterinarian whose job it was to tend to the horses’ medical needs – should there be any. It was a lonely job, as royal visits to the observatory were few and far between. Anyway, rumour has it that the veterinarian often enjoyed his midnight snack by himself while looking out over the city of Copenhagen. His favourite midnight snack? You got it – paté, sky, saltkød on buttered rugbrød.
 Anyway, you get the picture...

The Round Tower's 210m spiral ramp - perfect for horses carrying kings

Actually, there does seem to be a generally accepted reason for the sandwich’s name – if you speak Danish, or know how to use Google Translate, you can read it here... ). Personally, I like my version of the “truth” better.

Copenhagen as viewed from the Round Tower

One last thing about Tycho Brahe from the “strange but true” file. Apparently, he lost his nose in a sword duel (It's all fun and games until somebody loses a nose!). In order to cover his injury, he wore a fake nose made of silver and gold making him the first bling’ed out astronomer. Pretty cool, eh? If you want to read more about Tycho Brahe’s nose, check this out... 

Making Dyrlægens Natmad

Step-by-step...

Now lets get down to the business of making this week's open-faced sandwich. First of all, you need dense Danish rye bread. You can find the recipe here.




Next, you want to cover it with either butter or rendered bacon fat (I like my bacon fat cooked with a bit of apple and thyme). 




Then, liberally spread a few tablespoons of Danish leverpostej (liver paté). You can find the leverpostej recipe here. If you were to stop at this point, you'd have a very tasty sandwich. But we're far from finished. 




Next comes a few thin slices of saltkød. Saltkød is basically like corned beef. Made from veal, you should use the silverside cut, which comes from the cattle hindquarter and explains the meat's characteristic multi-colour shimmer. 

Sliced saltkød - tender and meaty!

If you want to make saltkød, you first salt the meat to cure it, then you cook it in a flavoured broth to spice it. It takes about a day and a half to make - but most of the time is due to the curing process. You'll probably need to explain exactly what cut of meat you need to a butcher. Use this web page as a guide. It worked for me. The recipe for saltkød is below.

Sky - like precious gems in a spoon!

Still building vertically, you top the other meats with a few shiny cubes of sky, basically meat aspic. Making aspic from scratch (in other words without the addition of gelatine) takes more than a little while, in fact it takes an eternity. It involves slowly simmering meat, bones, and vegetables in water until it's all reduced to a very small amount of deeply brown liquid. You then strain it all, throw away the solid parts, and chill the rest until the aspic is set. What's that? Your aspic's not firm enough? You can always reheat it and continue the reducing process if you find that the aspic is not "tight" enough. In all, the entire process can take anywhere from 5-7 hours. So patience is needed - but homemade aspic tastes so good - the meaty richness just melts in your mouth and it adds so much character to Dyrlægens Natmad. You can find a recipe for sky at the bottom of this post.

Dyrlægens Natmad:
Wash it down with a beer!

Finally, crown the majestic smørrebrød by adding a few rings of crunchy red onions plus a small bunch of cress of radish sprouts. Then you are finally ready to savour the most Danish of open-faced sandwiches.



About Saltkød

Normally when making cured meats like saltkød or corned beef, the meat is first brined in a spiced salt solution for at least a week prior to cooking. I find that you can expedite the process by simply giving the meat a good salt rub the day before you are planning on cooking it - this helps to draw out the moisture and salts the meat. It may not be exactly the same, but since I'm not planning on bringing my saltkød on any month-long seafaring expeditions, I'm less concerned with the preservation properties, and more into how it tastes. This recipe works.     

Salted silverside veal shank

Ingredients for Saltkød

• 1 kg silverside veal shank (boned)
• 3 tbsp coarse salt
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 parsnip, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 small celery root, peeled and chopped
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/4 tsp whole all-spice
• 1/4 tsp whole peppercorn
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 bunch parley
• 2 sprigs of thyme

Cooking saltkød - Get rid of the scum!

Instructions for making saltkød

1. Combine the salt and sugar, and rub it in to the veal, coating everywhere. Place the veal in a plastic bag and let sit in refrigerator for 24 hours.
2. Place the cured veal in large casserole.
3. Add the vegetables and spices and cover with water.
4. Heat until boiling and then reduce heat and simmer for about 45 minutes. Periodically, skim the foam that forms on top. 
5. Remove from heat, and allow the meat to cool thoroughly sitting in the broth.
6. Slice thinly and enjoy with Dyrlaegens Natmad!

About Sky

Instructions for making sky

1) Begin by placing the bones, meat and onion on a baking sheet, and then broil it under a hot broiler for about 5 minutes per side. This browns the meat and ultimately adds a richer flavour to the aspic.

Roasted meat and bones gives flavour and body!

2) Add the oil to a large pot and quickly sweat the vegetables over medium-high heat.

3) Add the wine, tomato paste and spices and simmer a few minutes.

4) Add the meat, bones, and onion to the pot and cover with water (about 3 litres).

Simmer for hours - you'll need patience.

5) Heat until just boiling and then reduce the heat and simmer. Make sure you do not disturb the ingredients in the pot for about 5 hours. You will need to periodically skim the foam off the top of the broth (this foam, if not removed, will end up affecting the taste and appearance of your stock).

6) When the liquid is sufficiently reduced, strain in a fine mesh sieve and discard meat and vegetables.

7) You should have 500ml or less. If you don't, return the liquid to a small pot and keep reducing slowly.

8) Once you've finished reducing the stock, add salt to taste, pour the liquid into a small clean container and allow it to cool completely in the refrigerator until the aspic is firmly set.

9) Enjoy atop a Dyrlægens Natmad or with a sharp Danish cheese like Samsø. Don't forget the fork and knife!

Ingredients

Sky is meat aspic. It takes time to make. If you want to cheat and make something quickly, just add some gelatine to beef broth. But don't tell your guests. They won't be excited by your ingenuity.

Ingredients for sky

• 1 kg beef bones
• 1 pork shank
• 300g beef cubes
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 parsnip, peeled and chopped
• 1 onion
• 1/2 bunch of parsley
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1/2 cup of red wine
• a bit of olive oil
• Water
• Salt to taste