Grandma's Danish Cooking

Ben and I have always enjoyed sightseeing through food. Whenever we visit a new place we do our best to immerse ourselves in the local cuisine. We loved the southern BBQ in Atlanta and Nashville, the fresh lobster in Boston was amazing, and who can forget the fantastic Vancouver sushi! So, it is only natural that we would continue our love of food, cooking and exploration in our new home.

You can expect many more blogs in the future about food. Grocery shopping here is quite different and I have a lot of things left to discover. For instance, someone recently told me that the first Sunday of the month is shopping Sunday; I am not sure if this means longer operating hours for stores or more sales....i will let you know as soon as I find out. I try to buy one random grocery item each week. Last week, i bought some random little fish that were on sale. While I was hoping that they were sardines, and I could replicate the delicious sardine dish I had in Plaka, it was herring. Oh well...they were still delicious in a butter, lemon and mustard sauce. While herring is a very traditional Danish ingredient, I do not think the recipe I used was a truly Danish preparation method.


In an attempt to cook truly Danish food at home, we decided to purchase a traditional Danish cook book. I ventured down to the local Bog&Ide (a much smaller version of Chapters) in search of a cookbook. I easily found the cookbook section, but quickly discovered that all the cookbooks are in Danish (which I should have guessed). When I quickly discovered that I could not pick out a 'traditional Danish cookbook' from the available cookbooks, I asked a store employee to point me in the right direction of traditional danish cooking. His first two suggestions were Joy of Cooking-esque Danish cookbooks; huge volumes filled with many recipes and no pictures. And entirely in Danish. Ugh. I could just imagine myself google-translating pages after pages of recipes, trying to figure out how to properly wash the kartofler.

I think the employee could sense I was overwhelmed with the huge volumes; thankfully he had a third option that was more my speed. The title, Mormors Mad, means 'Grandmother's food while the additional wording on the cover says "food for those who know everything about the wok and pasta, but misses grandmother's pots". He told me this cookbook takes traditional danish recipes and puts a modern spin on them. While the Mormors Mad is also entirely in Danish, it has the fantastic selling feature of pictures with every recipe!


So it was decided: this cookbook would be an integral part of our transition into a Danish way of life, both by learning the language and the cooking. The cookbook is conveniently divided into four sections, one for each of the seasons.

Stay tuned for some yummy cooking in the near future.....