Danish Christmas Lunch 2008

On Christmas day we had a couple of guests over for a Danish style Christmas lunch. The concept of a such a lunch is to sit at a table for several hours, eating a selection of cold and warm dishes served in succession while talking and drinking strong and/or dark beer (such as these) and aquavit ('snaps').


For this particular lunch we served...

To drink: Erdmandli Zuger Amber and Hopfemandli Lager Dunkel from Brauerei Baar in Baar, Switzerland. Both of these are nicely dark beers that go well with the food here.

To eat: First fish
1a. pickled herring with rings of red onion, curry sauce,^[1] and hard boiled eggs (on whole-grain dark rye bread).
1b. leek herring (on whole-grain dark rye bread).
1c. smoked salmon with mayonnaise and lemon wedges (on white bread).
1d. marinated salmon ('gravad laks') with honey-mustard sauce (on white bread).

Bonus drink (particularly to go with herrings): In small glasses, shots of our own import of Danish aquavit, Myrica flavoured aquavit ('porsesnaps') from Aalborg/Danish Distillers - a personal favourite of mine (and one of the few drink issues where I seem to agree with my mother).

After the fish followed a warm dish:
2. oven-warmed liver pâté with freshly sautéed bacon and mushrooms, and optional pickled beetroots (on dark or white bread as preferred).

Followed by a selection of sliced meats:
3a. horse salami.
3b. cold pork roast (on whole-grain dark rye bread with red-cabbage sauerkraut).
3c. cold duck roast (on whole-grain dark rye bread with red-cabbage sauerkraut).

At this point we were ready to entertain with with cheeses and fruits, but our guests looked about ready to burst already, so we decided to skip directly to the sweets:
4a. flourless chocolate-brazil nut cake
4b. cookie selection: Finnish breads, Swedish chocolate breads, Palestinian cookies, and pistachio shortbreads.

And so went the entire afternoon. One doesn't really need much of a dinner after such a lunch...

^[1] To get a more strongly yellow curry sauce I added pure ground turmeric.