Hot dogs

No, there is nothing wrong with colours of your monitor: these sausages really are bright red.

I don't know why there's a tradition for bright red sausages in Denmark, but kids do seem to love them (I know I did). When I recently went to Denmark for a short trip one of my new Swedish colleagues - who is from Scania in south-western Sweden and therefore has been to Denmark several times - asked me to bring back some red sausages because he missed them so.^[1]

Since I was at it, nostalgia got the better of me and I decided to get a pack for myself and make some good old-fashioned hot dogs. I'm not sure what the colouring agent used is, but is has some water-solubility as the water I boiled them in was nicely red by the time they were done.

For the hot dogs I used ketchup, remoulade, roasted onions and cornichons - had I been in the mood for spending a little more time on it, I would have added finely diced raw onion and substituted the cornichons with home-made cucumber salad. Many next time

^[1] Since that I have discovered that a supermarket close to where I live actually does sell these, so hauling them back from Denmark seems silly...

Danish Beer - Part IV (Nørrebro Bryghus)

Over the past years, I've heard a number of good things about Nørrebro Bryghus in Copenhagen, but as it has only come into existence since I stopped living in Denmark (as a consequence of the relatively recent surge in micro-breweries in Denmark), it wasn't till recently that I had a chance to visit it myself.


When you enter you have the choice of going upstairs (restaurant) or downstairs (bar) - as I came mainly for beer I chose downstairs. I was happy to see that they have a good number of beers that they make themselves (I think 8), but from the way the menu was written I suspect there's isn't quite the same rotation of beers as certain other places I like (although clearly there was some rotation).

I went for a 4-beer sampler and had Ravnsborg Red (ale), Golden Spike (IPA), Globe Ale, and La Granja Stout. While I quite liked both of the first two, I didn't find the taste of the Globe Ale as interesting as the concept (an environmental impact conscious beer) .. and the stout was clearly a mistake on my part. If I had read the description more carefully, I would have surely noticed that it contains coffee - which I don't like. If you want a coffee stout, by all means, check it out. For snacking I had some beer-roasted almonds - which turned out to be hotter than the name suggested as they also contained chilli.


The night ended with Stuykman Wit and Vårsaison ('spring season') both of which were in the Belgian style. Would I return to this place? Yes, indeed I would.

Chunky Potato Salad

As I have been alluding to in several posts over the past couple of months another move was impending. As you might have guessed the recent lack of posts coincided (more or less) with the actual time of the move: Now I'm in Sweden and things are very similar to what I grew up with in Denmark and yet oddly - sometimes surprisingly - different. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that.

When I lived in Denmark I never really gave much thought to the differences between yoghurt and what is known as tykmælk ('thick milk'), which I used to consume on a regular basis. Then I moved to the US and realised I had only the option of yoghurt - and still didn't give much thought to it. I have to say that there were times when I missed a milk product similar to tykmælk - the taste and the texture being different from yoghurt - but I got by with yoghurt.

Now that I'm in Sweden, I'm realising that tykmælk is common Scandinavian tradition. The taste and texture is due to the different bacterial cultures used for fermenting the milk. Here in Sweden it's called filmjölk or simply fil. To my delight I can also get A-fil, which appears highly similar to the Danish product A38 (an old favourite of mine) in that it's fermented with lactobacillus acidophilus - in the following recipe I used A-fil, which as these things goes might be difficult to get if you're not in the Scandinavian countries, but for substituting I would choose a plain yoghurt, preferably a less viscous variety.

Ingredients:
- 8 potatoes, large chunks, boiled
- 2 eggs, hard-boiled, quartered
- 1/2 cucumber, cut in large chunks
- 3 tomatoes, cut in boats
- a hand-full of caper berries
dressing:
- 3 dL (a little more than 1 cup) A-fil^[1]
- 1 tbsp mustard
- salt
- pepper
- fresh basil, chopped
- one onion, finely chopped

The potatoes were rinsed and cut into largish chunks and boiled till tender - the water was discarded and the potato chunks were allowed to cool.
The eggs were boiled hard, cooled, then peeled and quartered.
The cucumber and tomatoes were cut in similarly large chunks.

For the dressing, mustard was stirred into the A-fil, then added salt, pepper, freshly chopped basil and finely diced onion.

Everything was mixed in a large bowl.

Served with fried lamb sausage, mustard, and ketchup.

UPDATE: It's actually better after having stood overnight in the fridge..

^[1] Lactobacillus acidophilus-fermented milk.