In 'The Nordic Cookbook,' An In-Depth Take On Region's Diverse Cuisine
Magnus Nilsson is the head chef at Fäviken restaurant in Sweden and author of The Nordic Cookbook.
When the idea to write a Nordic cookbook landed on Magnus Nilsson's desk, he was against it. He says it was offensive that someone would think all of Nordic cuisine could fit, let alone belong, in one book.
"The Nordic is a geographical region, not really a cultural region," says the author, who's also head chef at the Michelin-starred Faviken restaurant, 400 miles north of Stockholm. "It's too big, and too varied." (It includes Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and several groups of autonomous islands.)
He eventually came around.
Over 700 pages long, The Nordic Cookbook could have been a series of Nordic cookbooks, and writing it turned into quite a journey for Nilsson. "A lot of the things in the book are dishes that I wasn't accustomed to before writing the book," he tells Weekend Edition's Scott Simon.
In writing the book, Nilsson wanted to readers to understand each Nordic culture through its food. "It was very important to me that it's not just some recipes put in a nice book. It's a document of food culture the way it looks today in the Nordic region, but also how it used to look," he says.
Reindeer blood pancakes reveal, for example, that the Sami people of northern Scandinavia live in a cold, unforgiving landscape. They needed to make use of every part of the animal, including its blood.
Nordic items clockwise from top left: sugared cloudberries; Norwegian thick salt-pork pancakes, waffles; thick oven-baked pancake; blood pancakes; pancake torte.
On the other side of the region, Denmark has an open-faced sandwich called Smørrebrød. It's a slice of buttered rye thickly layered with a range of toppings including deli cold cuts, smoked eel, pate, pickled herring, mackerel, cucumber, boiled eggs and rich sauces.
"They really say a lot about Denmark as a country, being the gateway in trade between the Nordics and mainland Europe. It's also a really rich agricultural region," Nilsson says.
That cultural and geographical connection finds its way into Nilsson's own cooking. "It makes sense to choose as much of my produce from the immediate surrounding as possible," he says. "Growing up in this remote part of Sweden, everything that has shaped food culture in the area is also a big part of the way I run my restaurant."
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Transcript
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Magnus Nilsson's "The Nordic Cookbook" looks more like an encyclopedia, more like an SUV, in fact, with a fjord on the cover. The Swedish chef and food writers put together a compendium of 700 recipes from a region the fine food world now treats as some kind of discovery. There's lots of versions of various pickled fishes in the book but also puffin stuffed with cake, fresh eel cooked on straw and Sami blood pancakes with smoked reindeer fat.
You pour maple syrup over those?
MAGNUS NILSSON: (Laughter) I guess you could.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Well, chef Magnus Nilsson joins us now. He's, by the way, head chef at a famous restaurant 400 miles north of Stockholm, which is pretty dark at this time of year. Welcome to the sun, chef Nilsson.
NILSSON: Thank you so much.
SIMON: I gather - at first, you thought this might be a short book. Why?
NILSSON: I thought, and actually, at first, I didn't want to do it when it was proposed to me. And I was even a little bit offended by the fact that someone wants to kind of lump this very, very large region into one book. You know, the Nordics is a geographical region. It's not really a cultural region.
SIMON: Now, our research team tells us split pea soup is a dish that reaches across the region we're talking about.
NILSSON: It is. One thing that ties the whole region together is the fact that you'll have four very distinctive seasons, and at least one of them, regardless where in the region you are, is going to be a season where you can't really harvest any plant materials for food. So a lot of those dishes that are based on something that can be stored really well through winter like, for example, the dried peas for the split pea soup, they are actually dishes that you can find, if not in the whole region, at least in parts of it.
SIMON: You know, I can't delay asking you about the blood pancakes with smoked reindeer fat.
NILSSON: So that particular recipe - it's one that comes from the semi-nomadic Sami culture, but blood used in food is quite common.
SIMON: Yeah. Well, I - forgive me. Reindeer blood, you don't get off a shelf, I'm guessing.
NILSSON: No. And the thing is that this book, to me, it was very important that it's not just a bunch of recipes put in a nice book. It's also really a document of food culture. And I think that out of those 700 or something recipes that are in the book, there are probably at least 50 of them that I doubt that anyone is actually going to cook. But they're still really important because they explain something about food culture, you know.
SIMON: Yeah. And, I mean, I'm just guessing - blood pancakes with smoked reindeer fat makes the point that the Sami people, living in arduous circumstances, have to make use of every part of the reindeer.
NILSSON: It does, you know. It tells that story in a really, really clear and very good way.
SIMON: If we were to say - chef, could you make us one recipe from this book, what might you try?
NILSSON: I think I would go for an open sandwich, actually because that's something that's very - it's as close to a pan-Nordic dish that you'll get. And it says a lot about the place where it's prepared and eaten in the way it's shaped, you know.
Like, for example, in Denmark, they have these open sandwiches that they're very famous for. And they really say a lot about, you know, Denmark as a country, being a very rich agriculture region, and you see this on these sandwiches. You know, they're fully laden with a huge spectrum of different toppings, very sort of rich and opulent sandwiches that you can't even - you know, you have to eat them from a plate with knife and a fork, right?
SIMON: Yeah.
NILSSON: And then if you go up to where I grew up, a sandwich there would probably be more of a, you know, a piece of flatbread with a layer of butter and a layer of cheese on it that you would eat standing up. And I think it's a very interesting thing, you know, those things that, you know, are kind of a broader concept exist in a big geographic region but that vary a lot depending on where you are.
SIMON: Chef Magnus Nilsson of "The Nordic Cookbook." Thank you, chef.
NILSSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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