This is not a thing. Yes, herring are cured, but not in lye.
Lutefisk is made from large white fish (eg. cod), not herring, and it's best known as a Norwegian dish. (Do Danes even eat the stuff?)
Well, some Swedes eat Surströmming, that's ... umm 'bad' as well.
I heard a joke that went like this:
To eat Surströmming, you need three lakes. One lake to open the can in (so it does not splash), another to rinse the fish and a third one to wash your hands in. Then avoid bathing in these lakes for the next decade.
>>Well, some Swedes eat Surströmming, that's ... umm 'bad' as well.
I don't get the hate about Surstroming. Had it in Sweden and I can totally see enjoying it with some pickled gherkin and few shots of vodka. But then I'm Polish so I'll eat pickled anything.
From the Wikipedia page: "German food critic and author Wolfgang Fassbender wrote that 'the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite, as opposed to before.'"
> I can think of one person I know who likes it, and most others hate it, with a few being closer to neutral on it.
It's the same way in the US. My father enjoys it, my wife and I tolerate it, and the rest of my family mostly just chokes down a piece out of Christmas tradition (and to clear up the plate for Swedish meatballs afterward)
Growing up in the 80s In the US lutefisk was a rumor... supposedly it hadn’t been seen since my grandfather last made it when my parents were kids and he’d been banned since then. I asked some friends in Norway and then said theres a joke to the effect that all the real Norwegians moved to Minnesota long ago. In any case, no one they knew had ever had it! I do remember we would make lefse around the holidays... I made it for my kids and they said it tasted like wet newspaper with butter and sugar... Of course they still ate it all.
My Norwegian Grandfather was born in Minnesota and migrated as a child to a Norwegian community in Alberta. In the 80s I went with my grandparents to an annual Lutefisk dinner, and they didn't eat the Lutefisk, nor would they let me try it. Too disgusting, they said. I've never actually tasted it.
Lefse however is the most popular traditional Norwegian dish that we make at Christmas (Lefse is basically a tortilla shell made with potatoes instead of corn or flour). While we regard lefse to be some kind of sacrosanct traditional Norwegian cuisine, in Norway they sell hotdogs wrapped in lefse.
So in addition to lefse and lutefisk, are there any other Norwegian foods you recommend? Ps, I’ve had a hot dog wrapped in lefse... it’s not bad.. especially with chili.
Yeah, Danish groceries really can't compete with Sweden's superior selection. I think it's better than it used to be as the grocery store duopoly is under siege by Norwegian and German chains.
Silkė - pickled herring - is quite popular in Lithuania throughout the year. You can have it on its own, but usually it is served with other vegetetables. My favourite is what I call silkė cake:
I would say that's mostly old by now and the new new is this bit: "he is partnering with Ikea – which feeds 660 million people a year, making it one of the 10 largest food-service operations in the world – to “veganise” its menu." The linked article from last summer is a good summary: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/we-tried-ike...
In my region, Ikea is known for cheap furniture and their tasty currywurst. They have plenty of other dishes of course and by my experience it is quite good for what it pretends to be.
Haven't seen that yet. The market in my vicinity always had vegetarian stuff. Maybe they now label everything that is vegan too.
I am no heavy meat eater but think all the fake stuff to be quite underwhelming. Quorn or however it is called can be spiced up quite well. I think they gave that to school children in the UK instead of meat because it was cheaper.
Overall I think it cannot compete with real meat, since that creates expectations. But cheese noodles can. Yeah, not vegan, but I don't really care about that from a diet perspective. Yes, cows could be treated better of course.
> Side note: I propose that vegan meatballs be called peatballs! (Peat is made out of plants, correct? I'm not super knowledgable about that stuff.)
Yeah, but peat isn't something you'd want to eat. Its amazing to smoke whisky in, though.
But, if you want to 'veganize' those meatballs, mushroom is a common savoury alternative, I'm told a lot of the impossible burger type ventures are opting on PEA protein: so may just name them PEAballs?
I worked at a Vegan/vegetarian place for 1/2 year just to get more rounded before I went off to Michelin star stuff, and its rather labour intensive to make this stuff just taste 1/4 as good as meat.
So my question was always: why not just serve better quality, locally sourced, organic/grass fed beef? And just eat less of it; a 50/50 mixture of beef to mushroom yields an amazing juicy, umami filled burger.
In NYC, IKEA is one of the last places you can take out the family without spending a fortune - though slightly insane to try and eat there on Sundays after the churches let out. The meatballs are a huge hit with all the kiddos, not just mine. Absolutly amazing they keep the cafeteria area so clean. Ikeas make good rest stops when traveling also - let the kids run around small-land for an hour, fill up on meatballs, hit the restrooms, grab a tray of cinnamon rolls, then on the road again.
Fun fact, the chef René Redzepi is actually of Albanian origin. Hence he has been infusing some of that cuisine into the restaurant's menu/ingredients....
Perhaps is what makes Noma so successful, as he has combined the best of two cultures.... (Nordic and South Europe)
One of his Albanian 'students' opened a very successful restaurant in Tirana, which is very delicious:
for an article which practically browbeats us with environmental concern and "brutal inequality" it really is odd they celebrate Noma where lunches cost on the order of $375 without drinks[0][1]. So basically we have a group of pretentious activists bemoaning the well being of the planet and the little guy while eating a mere lunch that is more most of those little people see per month if not year.
Spare me.
I tried to read the article with an open mind but the amount of preaching was a bit over the top so I went restaurant hunting and outside of the Ikea mentions this what you get, the elite basically having the food equivalent to Papal dispensations. Probably the same bunch which jets from high profile high visibility environment conference to the next.
You do not reshape the world on four hundred dollar lunches.
There are many options if you want expensive food, Noma done research in what the next thing in food will be to be sustainable. Of course it's a PR thing, but by backing some edgy projects they lend their name to a worthy cause making it easier to get funding for these projects.
You do not reshape the world by critizing people for trying.
Imagine a corporate executive comes to eat at Noma but to afford that $375 meal, he had to make enough money by offshoring clothing manufacturing to Bangladesh to some worker paid $1/day working in harsh conditions. I feel it matters how that money is earned and spent. I'd rather that executive pay $2/day plus improved working conditions to that worker and instead have a more modest meal.
Much of the article is about the democratic food changes brought about by Claus Meyer, Noma's original owner and the one who recruited Rene Redzepi for the original concept (and eventually sold Noma to Redzepi). What Redzepi is doing is definitely experimental and for the jet-set crowd, whereas the article details how Claus Meyer is working with Ikea and putting food in supermarkets...
> You do not reshape the world on four hundred dollar lunches.
> Much of the article is about the democratic food changes brought about by Claus Meyer, Noma's original owner and the one who recruited Rene Redzepi for the original concept (and eventually sold Noma to Redzepi). What Redzepi is doing is definitely experimental and for the jet-set crowd, whereas the article details how Claus Meyer is working with Ikea and putting food in supermarkets...
You're judging the efforts of the staff by the clientele they serve? Big mistake.
I actually met the current creative staff at Noma when they came and dined at our restaurant, and they're super humble guys. I was expecting them to be in suits and ordering the most expensive wines, they were guests of Kimbal so it was all comp'd anyway. But instead they were in Dickies jackets and jeans and were interested in hearing about what we do/did as a farm-to-table and met our Team in BOH.
The current creative director at Noma is also the same guy who worked under Ferran at El Bulli, and if you haven't realized or can appreciate what they've done for food you're either entirely oblivious or beyond help.
Just the amount of attention that has been placed on food education and sustainable Ag practices, and sourcing locally and from organic farmers alone have made massive strides, MAD (Rene's conference) [1] is also a premier platform for launching these projects.
Granted, more can always be done, but restaurants are poor business ventures, and the staff are overworked and underpaid.
I'm sure the Noma guys are humble. Noma is notorious for using free labour and underpaying and overworking everyone else. Their restaurant literally couldn't exist in most countries as they'd violate a ton of labour laws...
> restaurants are poor business ventures
They're actually great ventures, there's just a lot of restaurateurs who don't know how to make money.
Anyhow, Noma is influential in the foodie world, but their influence on popular culture and eating habits outside Scandinavia is way overstated.
> Noma is notorious for using free labour and underpaying and overworking everyone else. Their restaurant literally couldn't exist in most countries as they'd violate a ton of labour laws...
That's any restaurant, you don't work at these places because its a good business proposition with good work-life balance, you do it mainly out of passion. It just so happens that Michelin awarded places have deeper talent pools to draw from.
I should know, I worked at a new 'concept' headed by a 3-star chef and lasted 5 weeks before I realized what a scam it was and walked out. Just for context, I've been a Sous-chef but I'm often the highest paid BOH hourly worker in most my restaurant jobs as just a cook, making more per hour than almost all sous-chefs on a weekly basis with 1/2 the responsibilities. I can usually jump from BOH or FOH if/when needed.
I also had the privilege of working with one of the rockstars from El Bulli Hotel, who pretty much said the same.
> They're actually great ventures, there's just a lot of restaurateurs who don't know how to make money.
What first hand experience do you have with this? I've ran kitchens before (granted, it was in Europe) and the food, maintenance, utility and labour costs are only ever really reasonable when you run lean as hell and alcohol sales are through the roof (think late Spring/Summer and holidays). Otherwise buy-outs are the only thing to be seen as a healthy ROI.
> Anyhow, Noma is influential in the foodie world, but their influence on popular culture and eating habits outside Scandinavia is way overstated.
I grant you a lot of it is good PR, as most high-profile 'foodie/chef' stuff typically is. but it has made a significant impact in the end consumer that wasn't there. And its trying to disrupt archaic, bloated budgets in Government run crony-capitalist systems (school lunch programs).
Dan Barber's trajectory to its current notoriety is a good example of how collaborative efforts help elevate profiles:
Now, would I personally travel to eat at Noma DK/MX, no... not really. I'm not into molecular gastronomy, I come from a Scientific background with several years working in a lab, and most of their novelty relies on HS level lab/bench work.
Its interesting, and I'm glad they're successful; but unless I'm a being treated to a menu for free I'm not going, also I'm not there target demographic as I cook.
47 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 74.7 ms ] threadThis is not a thing. Yes, herring are cured, but not in lye. Lutefisk is made from large white fish (eg. cod), not herring, and it's best known as a Norwegian dish. (Do Danes even eat the stuff?)
I heard a joke that went like this:
To eat Surströmming, you need three lakes. One lake to open the can in (so it does not splash), another to rinse the fish and a third one to wash your hands in. Then avoid bathing in these lakes for the next decade.
I don't get the hate about Surstroming. Had it in Sweden and I can totally see enjoying it with some pickled gherkin and few shots of vodka. But then I'm Polish so I'll eat pickled anything.
(Hint: for starters you have to open it under water people!)
It has been fading though.
Living in Norway, I can think of one person I know who likes it, and most others hate it, with a few being closer to neutral on it.
It's the same way in the US. My father enjoys it, my wife and I tolerate it, and the rest of my family mostly just chokes down a piece out of Christmas tradition (and to clear up the plate for Swedish meatballs afterward)
Lefse however is the most popular traditional Norwegian dish that we make at Christmas (Lefse is basically a tortilla shell made with potatoes instead of corn or flour). While we regard lefse to be some kind of sacrosanct traditional Norwegian cuisine, in Norway they sell hotdogs wrapped in lefse.
Nope, but the more traditional-sounding pickled herring is huge here.
I expected to see 10 types in every supermarket, as in Sweden¹. Instead, it's curry (!), dill, plain, and (if I'm very lucky) my favourite, mustard.
I've been known to stock up on the more extravagant flavours in Malmø. Skärgårds (skerry? archipelago?) and ramslök (ramson) are the best.
¹ https://www.abba.se/produkter/sill/ — 17 types!
https://lithuanianintheusa.com/2018/03/28/traditional-dresse...
I'm not sure how it became so popular here, considering we don't have that much of a coastline.
I am no heavy meat eater but think all the fake stuff to be quite underwhelming. Quorn or however it is called can be spiced up quite well. I think they gave that to school children in the UK instead of meat because it was cheaper.
Overall I think it cannot compete with real meat, since that creates expectations. But cheese noodles can. Yeah, not vegan, but I don't really care about that from a diet perspective. Yes, cows could be treated better of course.
Side note: I propose that vegan meatballs be called peatballs! (Peat is made out of plants, correct? I'm not super knowledgable about that stuff.)
So no, doesn't really work well as a word for foodstuffs.
Yeah, but peat isn't something you'd want to eat. Its amazing to smoke whisky in, though.
But, if you want to 'veganize' those meatballs, mushroom is a common savoury alternative, I'm told a lot of the impossible burger type ventures are opting on PEA protein: so may just name them PEAballs?
I worked at a Vegan/vegetarian place for 1/2 year just to get more rounded before I went off to Michelin star stuff, and its rather labour intensive to make this stuff just taste 1/4 as good as meat.
So my question was always: why not just serve better quality, locally sourced, organic/grass fed beef? And just eat less of it; a 50/50 mixture of beef to mushroom yields an amazing juicy, umami filled burger.
Perhaps is what makes Noma so successful, as he has combined the best of two cultures.... (Nordic and South Europe)
One of his Albanian 'students' opened a very successful restaurant in Tirana, which is very delicious:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g294446-d10080...
Spare me.
I tried to read the article with an open mind but the amount of preaching was a bit over the top so I went restaurant hunting and outside of the Ikea mentions this what you get, the elite basically having the food equivalent to Papal dispensations. Probably the same bunch which jets from high profile high visibility environment conference to the next.
You do not reshape the world on four hundred dollar lunches.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/dining/noma-restaurant-co...
[1] https://noma.dk/food-and-wine/
You do not reshape the world by critizing people for trying.
> Much of the article is about the democratic food changes brought about by Claus Meyer, Noma's original owner and the one who recruited Rene Redzepi for the original concept (and eventually sold Noma to Redzepi). What Redzepi is doing is definitely experimental and for the jet-set crowd, whereas the article details how Claus Meyer is working with Ikea and putting food in supermarkets...
You're judging the efforts of the staff by the clientele they serve? Big mistake.
I actually met the current creative staff at Noma when they came and dined at our restaurant, and they're super humble guys. I was expecting them to be in suits and ordering the most expensive wines, they were guests of Kimbal so it was all comp'd anyway. But instead they were in Dickies jackets and jeans and were interested in hearing about what we do/did as a farm-to-table and met our Team in BOH.
The current creative director at Noma is also the same guy who worked under Ferran at El Bulli, and if you haven't realized or can appreciate what they've done for food you're either entirely oblivious or beyond help.
Just the amount of attention that has been placed on food education and sustainable Ag practices, and sourcing locally and from organic farmers alone have made massive strides, MAD (Rene's conference) [1] is also a premier platform for launching these projects.
Granted, more can always be done, but restaurants are poor business ventures, and the staff are overworked and underpaid.
1: https://madfeed.co/
> restaurants are poor business ventures
They're actually great ventures, there's just a lot of restaurateurs who don't know how to make money.
Anyhow, Noma is influential in the foodie world, but their influence on popular culture and eating habits outside Scandinavia is way overstated.
That's any restaurant, you don't work at these places because its a good business proposition with good work-life balance, you do it mainly out of passion. It just so happens that Michelin awarded places have deeper talent pools to draw from.
I should know, I worked at a new 'concept' headed by a 3-star chef and lasted 5 weeks before I realized what a scam it was and walked out. Just for context, I've been a Sous-chef but I'm often the highest paid BOH hourly worker in most my restaurant jobs as just a cook, making more per hour than almost all sous-chefs on a weekly basis with 1/2 the responsibilities. I can usually jump from BOH or FOH if/when needed.
I also had the privilege of working with one of the rockstars from El Bulli Hotel, who pretty much said the same.
> They're actually great ventures, there's just a lot of restaurateurs who don't know how to make money.
What first hand experience do you have with this? I've ran kitchens before (granted, it was in Europe) and the food, maintenance, utility and labour costs are only ever really reasonable when you run lean as hell and alcohol sales are through the roof (think late Spring/Summer and holidays). Otherwise buy-outs are the only thing to be seen as a healthy ROI.
> Anyhow, Noma is influential in the foodie world, but their influence on popular culture and eating habits outside Scandinavia is way overstated.
Wrong again:
https://www.eater.com/2018/11/8/18068596/dan-giusti-brigaid-...
I grant you a lot of it is good PR, as most high-profile 'foodie/chef' stuff typically is. but it has made a significant impact in the end consumer that wasn't there. And its trying to disrupt archaic, bloated budgets in Government run crony-capitalist systems (school lunch programs).
Dan Barber's trajectory to its current notoriety is a good example of how collaborative efforts help elevate profiles:
https://www.vogue.com/article/rene-redzepi-dan-barber-lela-r...
Now, would I personally travel to eat at Noma DK/MX, no... not really. I'm not into molecular gastronomy, I come from a Scientific background with several years working in a lab, and most of their novelty relies on HS level lab/bench work.
Its interesting, and I'm glad they're successful; but unless I'm a being treated to a menu for free I'm not going, also I'm not there target demographic as I cook.