Once in a while, we all just want something that is easy to make and tastes great, right? When I'm in that kind of a mood, this smørrebrød, a variation on the classic roast beef with pickles and fried onions, is a completely delicious treat that is both a personal favorite of mine and a sure-fire crowd pleaser.

Roast beef with remoulade and fried onions! Amazing!

For this sandwich, you'll need:
Sliced Roast Beef - I recommend roasting the beef yourself, ideally using a meat thermometer to properly gauge when the meat is cooked. It's pretty simple: Coat the roast with salt, pepper, and thyme then brown on all sides in a frying pan. Then pop it in the oven at 350F until you reach 145F on the meat thermometer. This gives you a roast that is cooked to medium.

Roast until a 145F internal temperature

Once the roast is cooked, remove it from the oven and set it aside while you prepare the other ingredients. Also, I find it much easier to slice thinly once its cooled off a bit. 

Cool roast and slice thinly

Remoulade - Remoulade is a condiment that is something like tartare sauce. I add one good dollop to each sandwich, which has a tart taste and crunchy texture and goes so well with roast beef.

Remoulade: Before and After

You can make enough remoulade for four sandwiches by combining:

• 1/4 cup Mayonnaise
• 1 TBSP Dijon Mustard
• 3 TBSP Diced Pickles
• 1 TBSP Chopped Capers
• 1 TBSP Chopped Taragon
• 1/4 tsp powdered tumeric (to give a yellow color)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Fried Onions - Crispy and addictively delicious on their own (like potato chips), fried onions provide the perfect savoury flavour and crisp to round out this (and probably any other) smørrebrød. To make them, take half a large white onion and slice it thinly. Dredge the onion slices in a few tablespoons of flour (I like to use rye). Meanwhile, heat about a cup and a half of canola oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the floured onions in 2 batches. Stir occassionally with a slotted spoon (not plastic!) The onions are done when they are golden brown. Remove from oil and place them on paper towel to soak excess oil. Continue until all onions are fried.

1) Flour the sliced onions
2) Fry them in canola oil
3) Remove to paper towel and enjoy atop smorrebrod

And if you're feeling crazy, you'll want to add some shaved horseradish root to give it a little extra kick! Now you are ready, so combine all the ingredients atop buttered Danish rye bread and enjoy with fork and knife sitting at your kitchen table. A cold beer to wash it down, and all is right in the world.

To be enjoyed heartily - always with fork and knife

Or better yet, pack a roast beef & remoulade smørrebrød picnic basket and head out in search of a magical spot - preferably somewhere in the Danish countryside, somewhere where Vikings roamed the lands. Maybe even find a spot marked by Viking burial stones arranged into the shape of a longship. Then, once you've found this spot, wait for a rainbow to appear. And then, only then, enjoy your picnic while contemplating the fact that the mighty Thor himself may have once travelled to Earth across Bifrost (the Rainbow bridge) to this very spot and handed a reasonable facsimile of the sandwich that you are now eating to a passing human. And imagine that it was thus that the gods gave this wonderful smørrebrød to be enjoyed by all who can make it!!! 

Yes, I was really present when this phenomenon occurred!!!
Was it perhaps Odin passing on the secrets of smørrebrød to me?

Tartarmad - good, old fashion smørrebrød

Sadly, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes not, some wonderfully delicious delectables fall out of fashion and spontaneously disappear from dining room tables. Tartarmad - or Danish smørrebrød of steak tartare on hearty rye bread - is a perfect example of one such casualty of the fast-paced world of changing food tastes - it has been gone from popular cuisine for ages and ages. Whether it is due to fears of eating raw meat and eggs, or just because there are so many other yummy treats to eat these days, Tartarmad is definitely not on today's culinary radar.

Tartarmad:
Back on the culinary radar

But fear not! I love Tartarmad, and this week's post will show you just what you need to do in order to bring the oldie but goodie back into style in your home...

First of all, let's talk about ingredients. With tartarmad, probably more than any other sandwich in the pantheon of all-time great smørrebrød, you are relying heavily on the quality of its component ingredients - you absolutely need the freshest, highest quality ingredients, especially in terms of beef and eggs. The few extra dollars you'll need to spend on great meat from a top butcher is worth it, in terms of the final taste, and of course in terms of food safety. And the eggs - if you can get farm fresh, free-range eggs, the flavour will be that much better (and safer). And needless to say, it all comes together on thick slices of buttered Danish rye bread.

Ooey, gooey good!

Simply put, I love this smørrebrød. I love the way the ingredients come together harmoniously and combine to make an ooey-gooey-good lunch. With savoury, tender meat, smooth egg yolk, chewy rye bread, crunchy pickles, and potent horseradish you are getting an exhilarating sandwich experience like few others. It's like eating in a great French bistro, without the surly waiter. Add a bowl of pommes frites, and you have an unforgettable treat.

Clean is good...

A note on food safety and hygiene: I am no food safety expert, but I am not squeamish when it comes to eating things raw. I do realize that not everybody shares my zeal for "living dangerously". So here is my advice for those of you who are thinking of taking a stab at "extreme" tartare eating for the first time. If you have any doubt about the quality of the produce, don't take any chances. Avoid the back alley free-range egg merchants and the suspicious meat rack at the supermarket. Mad Cow and Salmonella have funny names, but that is where the humour ends.

So ends my public service announcement. Now on with the recipe...

Sirloin! Perfect for tartarmad.

So let's start with the meat. You want to go to a good butcher and get a whole (unground) piece of nice quality meat - I suggest sirloin here. It's tender and has a bit of fat to make it taste slightly richer than, say, filet mignon. 500g of sirloin will get you enough meat for 5 or 6 generous smørrebrød.

Once you've got your meat, you need to chop it by hand with a really sharp knife. This is for a couple of reasons. 1) It helps to ensure the best possible hygiene, as meat grinders are notoriously hard to keep really spick and span, and 2) you end up with a nicer coarse texture to the meat. Tender, high-quality meat need not be ground beyond recognition  - there is nothing to hide!

Chop sirloin by hand

Chopping sirloin is not hard, but it tasks a bit of patience. Make sure you work on a clean surface, work fast (without risking your fingers), and try to keep the meat as cold as possible to inhibit the formation of unwanted bacteria.

Once you've chopped it to the desired degree of coarseness, give it a dash of seasoning (salt and pepper), and even throw in a couple of table spoons of minced onion. Then wrap it up in plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to eat.

Nothing to hide  - Yum!

Meanwhile, prepare the other accompaniments:

• Slice a small onion into rings 
• Grate horseradish, if you can find it fresh
• Dice pickles and red beets
• Separate the egg yolks from the egg white (you'll need one egg yolk per open sandwich)
• Put out 3-4 spoons of capers

When you are ready to build the sandwich, here's what you need to do:

1. Start by buttering the rye bread.
2. Cover the bread completely with a generous portion of seasoned chopped sirloin, then flatten the meat out evenly across the top of the bread using a fork.
3. Place an onion ring atop in the centre of the meat.
4. Place one egg yolk inside the onion ring.
5. Serve with accompaniments such as horseradish, pickles, capers, and red beets. 
6. Enjoy with fork and knife and large glass of Danish lager. Skål!

Tartarmad: old-school goodness and pretty, too!

Like with all cuisines from countries with northern climates, what we eat changes with the seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter all have their own characteristic tastes and this holds true for Danish smørrebrød.

For instance, some smørrebrød, like shrimp, are at their best in the spring. This is when the tiny shrimp are harvested. Tomatoes and chives are perfect in the summer when fruit and vegetables are plentiful and ripe. In the winter, I like something that provides warmth and comfort while whisking away the bone-chilling feeling that pervades our frigid nights. This week's blog post is dedicated to one such smørrebrød, a succulent and savoury meat treat that is perfect in the colder, dark months or winter. It is a true Danish comfort food made simply from roast beef, fried onions, sliced pickles and grated horseradish heaped high on buttered Danish rye bread.

A hyggelig cafe in Copenhagen. Where is it?

Speaking of comfort food, I should probably use this opportunity to introduce everybody to a very Danish concept called HYGGELIG (pronounced with great difficulty as something like hu-ger-li). This little word is used all the time in converesation by Danes and is often cited by foreigners as "the word" that can most quintessentially sum up the totality of Danish psyche - the never-ending pursuit of hyggelig. So what does it mean? Well, unfortunately it doesn't really translate to a single English word, but perhaps words like Cozy or Snug come close to capturing the meaning of hyggelig. For me, it simply means that something is enjoyable, pleasant, happy, fun, and cozy all at the same time. It is an adjective that can be applied to many nouns, but I find it is used most often by Danes to describe parties, dinners, homes, and other places where one has enjoyed themselves a great deal. So, with this concept in mind, I find that eating smørrebrød together with friends and family can be a very hyggelig thing.

Hyggelig homes near Roskilde. Where is it?

So, getting back to the subject of this week's post - roast beef. Yum!  In my opinion, what makes this smørrebrød so good is that the combination of ingredients are just so perfectly together, certainly in terms of the savory, tart and spicy flavours, but also in terms of the different textural components - tender beef, chewy rye bread, crunchy pickles and the silky smoothness of carmelized onions.

Sliced flank steak

Building the Open-faced Sandwich 

In terms of preparing the smørrebrød, there is not much to do. Of course, roast beef is the basis for this sandwich, so you want to make sure you have excellent meat. Roasting in the oven is an option, but I prefer to simply fry a thick flank steak until it is done to medium-rare (you know the steak is cooked when a meat thermometer inserted into the middle of the steak reaches a temperature of about 145 F). Once cooked, allow the meat to cool for about 15 minutes and then slice as thinly as you can. Place the slices of beef on a slice of buttered rye bread.

Place the following garnishes atop the sliced steak and you're ready to go: 3-4 rings of fried onion, 1 sliced dill pickle, 1 tablespoon of freshly grated horseradish (prepared horseradish will also work), and optionally a sprinkling of chopped chives.

The Danish Degree of Difficulty for this smørrebrød is Brigitte Nielsen Easy as no special ingredients are needed other than the Danish rye bread (recipe here) and Brigitte Nielsen probably loves to make it (I'm not suggesting she is easy). For those of you who were not alive in the 1980s, Brigitte Nielsen is a fantastisk Danish actress best known for her dramatic roles in great films such as Rocky IV and Red Sonja.

Brigitte Nielsen Shopping for Horseradish

If there is one ingredient that may pose problems for North American shoppers it's fresh horseradish. Horseradish is a perennial plant of the brassica family (like broccoli and mustard). The amazingly phallic-looking horseradish root has no aroma, however when grated, enzymes in the damaged root produce a compound called allyl isothiocyanate that can irritate the nose and eyes. This is what gives horseradish its punch. (You can read lots more about amazing horseradish at Wikipedia). If you can't find fresh horseradish, use the prepared variety instead. Personally, I think it works great here, too.

By the way, if you don't believe me about the phallic appearance of horseradish, check out the pics at the following blog.

Ida Davidsen's in Copenhagen

If you want to experience a wonderful roast beef open-faced sandwich in the most traditional of Danish sandwich establishments, you have to visit Ida Davidsen's Restaurant on Store Kongensgade in Copenhagen. The reference in smørrebrød for generations (since around the 1880s), this restaurant touts a list of sandwiches at least 250 long. While smorrebrod is an everyday food in Denmark, at Ida Davidsen's the presentation and ingredients are decidedly more fancy. Her philosophy on the presentation is very interesting - when it comes to smorrebrod in a restaurant, the rye bread must always be completely covered by the pålaeg (toppings). If you can see the bread, it's cheap - like something you would eat in the woods or when on a picnic with your hands - not something dignified that must be eaten with fork and knife! I confess that occasionally my bread is visible - which is something I'll have to work on - but Ida Davidsen's family have had five generations to perfect their art, so please don't judge me too harshly.

So delicious even with visible bread