A Midsummer Night's Smørrebrød

You don’t have to be Danish to appreciate smørrebrød, those open-face sandwiches—knife and fork sandwiches—composed upon dense, buttered rye bread, usually containing appropriately Nordic ingredients like pickled herring, beets, and pork paté. If you like bread, and noshy food in that tapas mode, you’ll like smørrebrød. As a summer evening meal it has the additional virtue that most of the toppings can be prepared ahead—or are themselves commercially prepared foods of the very best sort, like cheese, smoked fish, cured meats, etc. Finally, because finishing preparation is so simple, these mini-canvases beg to be decorated to the full extent of your garnishing imagination.

Bready. Noshy. Easy. Pretty. What, I ask, is not to like in that combination?

It’s usually this time of year, when we’ve just slipped past the solstice, and the gardens are really starting to produce, the market stalls are burgeoning as the plants make the most of that vital sunshine, that my appetite turns to smørrebrød. It’s an elegantly rustic (or is it rustically elegant?) kind of meal to enjoy in those long twilights as the strong sun softens on descent, spreading welcome shadows, and the heat of the day begins to mellow.

That pretty well describes the evening last weekend when we prepared a smørrebrød repast at the house and packed it in a cooler for a picnic on the hill. It was a bit warm and muggy in the valley, but we caught a nice breeze as we headed up the hill. I’d been cleaning up a little impromptu sort of dump at the edge of the woods this spring, hauling down old car batteries, car seats, beer cans and bottles, what have you. Then I ran the lawn tractor up there to mow a small picnic area. Among the detritus I’d found a piece of sheet metal and some cinder blocks, and these we turned to better purpose as a makeshift picnic table (pleasantly, though very rustically, reminiscent of a Parisian zinc bar). It was, I dare say, one of the best picnics ever.

We settled in very comfortably (so did the dogs, eventually) to enjoy the view of the green, green hills, mist-shrouded in the distance. The aspen leaves overhead kept up a  calming kerfuffle. There was even a floor show, of sorts, as the neighbor who rents our hayfield came to bale up the last few rows of the oats and grass they cut last week. Urban al fresco dining has its pleasures, but when was the last time you saw a John Deere tractor and baler on the Nicollet Mall?

As we ate our smørrebrød and sipped our pinot gris and watched the sun pass out of sight behind the western hills—though it would still be light for a couple of hours—I had a thought about terroir—you know, that idea that foods and wines can taste distinctly of the place they came from, express some quality of the soils in which they grow, the waters that sustain them, and the human cultures that have nurtured them through time. My idea had something to do with how a cuisine is shaped by the sense of the seasons experienced by the people who create it. And how, for us specifically and for northern peoples in general, our long annual journey from the abyss of winter’s frigid darkness to midsummer’s almost too abundant light and warmth, and back again, how this must have as great an impact on the savor of our food as the molds in the caves of Roquefort, or the chalky soils of Sancerre.

It profoundly affects what we eat, how we eat it, what we want to eat, and how we experience it in the context of the year. A midsummer picnic at 45 degrees north latitude must taste different from the same meal consumed in Florida or southern California; in those places, their own seasonal context would shape their experience of what they eat.  For me, high summer dining has meant that I’ve hardly wanted to look at a piece of red meat—give me vegetables, salads, simply prepared fish, cheese and bread. Oh, and maybe a glass of wine.

I made a small rye loaf that included a little birch syrup. You want a pretty dense bread, with a close crumb--not something like a baguette that's full of holes.  Then top to your heart's desire.  I don't let myself be constrained by any rules, but rather see the smørrebrød concept as the base for using the best of the local and seasonal.  One of my favorite, oft-repeated mantras--Ninety percent of good cooking is good shopping--is on full display here.  That is not to say, of course, that you should hie thee to a high-end supermarket, but rather that best ingredients make for best results.

The Superior shore was well represented in fresh herring from Cornucopia, smoked whitefish from Port Wing, cheese from Bayfield.  The Menomonie farmers market gave us snap peas, onions, beets, turnips, potatoes, and asparagus, and our garden contributed, too, with radishes, chives, and mustard greens.  There was a bit of home-smoked bacon in the potato and asparagus salad, and the yogurt cheese was home-cultured using wonderful fresh milk from just down the road.  Oh, and the mayo, also homemade, using eggs from our neighbor Tina's chickens, and Minnesota sunflower oil Smude.

On Wisconin! was surely the theme of this meal, especially as the sandwiches were literally presented on Wisconsin.  A more thorough description of the various toppin's below.

Smoked whitefish salad combined about four ounces of flaked smoked whitefish with roughly three tablespoons of peas—we shelled some sugar snaps—two ounces of Wisconsin hickory nuts, chopped and lightly toasted in a dry skillet. (The nuts were a generous gift from my buddy Lucas “The Beard” Madsen; hickory trees grow in his part of southeastern Wisconsin, though they’re scarce here. Other local, wild alternatives would be black walnuts or hazelnuts; a good storebought option would be pecans.) To the fish, peas, and nuts I added some sliced red onion and about three tablespoons of mayonnaise—homemade in this case, and for a dinner like this I think it’s really worth the effort. Garnish with a little more red onion and thin slices of sugar snaps.

I was inordinately pleased with my checkboard composition of roasted baby beets and turnips. The base was fresh yogurt cheese (with just a dollop of chevre added in for body, and flavor) mixed with chopped chives and lots of coarsely ground pepper. Lay down a good bed of the cheese mixture, and decorate to your heart’s content. You can leave the vegetables round and create a fish-scale effect. I really liked the geometrical drama of the squares—just cut straight down around the sides of each little beet or turnip, and then slicing across produces squares.

Asparagus and potato salad was originally going to be oyster mushroom and potato sauté, but the little critters had honeycombed my ‘shrooms, so it was Plan B, which was just delightful. The potatoes were preroasted (along with the beets and turnips). Wash and slice the asparagus bite-size.  Dice up some good bacon fairly coarse, begin to render, then add the asparagus. Then add a couple of generous pinches of caraway seeds, about half as much cumin seed, and…mustard seed! About a teaspoon. Add the cut-up potatoes to warm and brown just a bit, and absorb the other flavors. This I served atop a generous spread of that homemade mayo.

Brie and radishes. A study in simplicity and the wonder of felicitous combinations. This one was just delicious. The cheese was one you probably haven’t heard of, but of which I predict you’ll be hearing quite a bit in the near future. It was Happy Hollow Creamery's “Snowy Spring Brie,” which we picked up at Ehler’s store in Cornucopia on the shore recently. Happy Hollow lists a Bayfield, WI address. This cheese, beautifully ripened, was exquisitely flavorful. Not even terribly expensive. If you happen to come across it, just buy it. Their Lazy Daisy raw milk cheddar is also excellent. As I say, I predict you’ll be hearing more about these cheeses and this creamery. For the sandwich: butter, cheese, radish, pepper, boom.

Last but surely not least, grilled Superior herring atop mustardy mustard greens. I’ve said plenty about this superb fish, which never disappoints—we usually get it hours after it’s been caught, so that’s a good start. I’ll have more to say in a future post about the greens preparation, which combines oil, mustard or other strongly flavored greens, more mustard—a good, strong Dijon style—a bit of honey, some vinegar, salt and pepper. This is going to be a standard greens preparation at our house right through the summer and fall. Butter, mustardy mustard greens, a piece of grilled fish, and a radish flower—yep, radish flower, you knew? They’re a bit sweet and a bit peppery at the same time.

Partly what inspired us to climb the hill for supper was a story we heard on  WPR's new show 45 North .  Last week Anne Strainchamps interviewed the British adventurer and writer Alastair Humphreys , who has bicycled around the world, run a marathon in the Sahara, and rowed the Atlantic, and now (maybe because he's tired...) is promoting the idea of "micro-adventures," mini-excursions in one's own backyard.  He's encouraging people just to get outside, and outside one's usual comfort zone--just grab a sleeping bag, a sandwich, and a bottle of wine, and go sleep on a hill, look at the stars, watch the sun come up.  I think it's just a brilliant idea whose simplicity is at the heart of its brilliance, and while we retired down the hill with the last fading light to all the comforts of home, we did feel as if we'd been away for a while, even if our adventure was, literally, in our own back yard.

And the food, if I need to say it, was good to the last pea.

Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw

Brandade Rampante

This is most definitely one to file under "Happy Accidents."  A piece of whitefish rubbed with salt and birch syrup, intended to cure for a day and be served like gravlax, is instead forgotten in the back of the fridge for a week.  Upon being unearthed it is found not to be spoiled or to have turned fishy, but instead is beautifully preserved, though much too salty to be eaten as is.  But a clever salvage operation then turns it into something extraordinary:  brandade rampante.  Which is to say: a mousse of salt fish, potato, butter, milk, and instead of the garlic traditional in this Provencal dish, lovely fresh ramps, among the first of the season. (Rampante, by the way, is indeed a French word, but it has nothing to do with ramps, the wild leeks; actually it means creeping, groveling, or obsequious, so my made-up usage is purely fanciful.)

This was just damned exquisite, a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts dish which I may never to able to replicate exactly, but I will try, and try to give you the best how-to I can.  This was a polish-the-plate meal--we practically scrubbed the finish off the gratin dishes with our toast trying to get the last rich, rampy molecule of flavor.  And then the next day, when we were out running some errands, driving in the car and not talking, out out of the blue Mary comes out with, "Man, that brandade last night was good."  And I looked over to see her gazing at some point in space, rapt in happy taste memory.

I've made brandade a couple of times before using store-bought salt cod, a product which is a staple in Provencal cooking--odd, considering that they've got this rather famous source of fresh seafood, i.e., the Mediterranean, right on their doorstep.  It's well loved in Spain, too, particularly among the Basque.  Salt cod is generally very salty and very dry, and requires at least a day's soaking, and several changes of water, to make it palatable.  While I have enjoyed my previous iterations of brandade, I have found that the salt cod itself, even after soaking, poaching, and puréeing, still has a somewhat fibrous texture and a slight bitterness.  Probably because my salted whitefish had the sugar and acidity of the birch syrup, and was not buried in salt, it retained a lot more moisture.  There was no fishiness, no bitterness, and the texture was excellent.  It could still be easily cut into thin slices, as seen here:

 I'm kind of winging it here, because I don't remember exactly how much salt and syrup I used, but I did glance at my recipe for maple-cured lake trout gravlax in the book, and that calls for an 8 to 12 ounce fillet, 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, and 3 tablespoons of salt.  I think I only had about 6 ounces of fish, the end of a big fillet, and I hit it with a generous tablespoon of birch syrup and a scant 2 tablespoons of salt. (I'll try to do a side-by-side taste test with my next piece of whitefish, one with maple, one with birch, and see if there's a difference; I realize birch syrup is not easy to come by.)

I did this on a piece of plastic wrap, snugged the fish up, set it flesh side down on a plate--and promptly forgot about it, for at least a week.  When I rediscovered it, all the syrup had dried up and the fish was encased in a salty crust.  I rinsed it off and dried it, tasted it and determined that it was still edible, then wrapped it loosely in parchment paper and put it back in the fridge--this is how I store my home-smoked bacon, too, and I believe the fish would have kept indefinitely in this state.

To make the brandade, I loosely followed Mireille Johnston's recipe from Cuisine of the Sun, my go-to book for southern French cooking.  But my recipe was heavier on the potato, lighter on the fish.  I subbed local sunflower oil (Smude) for olive oil, and of course, the ramps instead of garlic.  Here's my recipe:

Love my kitchen chalkboard.  That's just blackboard paint on a piece of plywood.  Now I'll translate:  I cut my fish into four pieces, and soaked it in water for a few hours, changing the water maybe three times.  It was still fairly salty at the end of this brief soaking, but I didn't add any additional salt to the dish, and when it all came together it was nicely seasoned.  After the fish soaked, I put it in a small saucepan of water and brought the water to a boil, turned it off, set it aside, and let it cool a bit.  Then I skinned the fish--you could remove the skin before boiling and/or soaking if you like.  It came off easily once the fish was cooked.

Previously I had quartered and boiled a small potato, a russet of about 5 ounces, I'd say.  I chopped my four small ramps, sautéed the bulb part in about a tablespoon of butter until just nicely wilted but not browned, then added the greens and removed it from the heat.

Then the puréeing:  this batch was small enough to do in my mini-chop, but you could use a regular food processor or a blender.  In goes the fish, peeled potato, the juice of 1/4 of a small lemon, milk, and sunflower oil.  In total I used 1/3 cup of whole milk and 2 tablespoons of oil--I added these a little at a time, so the whizzing didn't get too messy.  Once everything was in, I blended it very well, into a smooth, mousse-like texture.  Then I dumped it into a mixing bowl and added the sautéed ramps, 2 tablespoons more of soft butter, and a good grind of pepper.  Yes, it's rich, but the portion is not huge, and it was the main course for us.

I divided the mixture into two small gratin dishes, and topped them generously with homemade fresh breadcrumbs that I had moistened with a bit more butter.  Into a 425 oven for around 15 minutes, until the crumbs were toasty brown and the brandade was bubbling up around the edges.  And, serve it forth.

Nice toasts of a homemade sesame batard, a delightful white wine from the Loire, a chenin blanc (this wine was new to us; got it at Zipp's on Franklin in Minneapolis, and I would definitely get it again).  And a salad of Minnesota hydroponic frisée and Minnesota tomatoes--huh?  Minnesota tomatoes in May? Yes, Living Waters hydroponic tomatoes that we got at Seward Co-op, really remarkably good--and they come on the vine, with that gorgeous aroma of midsummer garden to them.  A surprise.

Brandade is not always served in a gratin like this.  Once you've whizzed it up, it's fully edible, and in Provence it might be served in a bowl along with a plate of crudités for dipping, or stuffed in a tomato, as we might do tuna salad (if we were ladies who lunched, that is...).  I hope I can recreate that wonderful salt whitefish on the next try, and if I do, this will go on the regular rotation.  One more use for our splendid local "seafood," Lake Superior whitefish, from Halvorson Fisheries in Corny on the South Shore, of course.


Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw