Worldwide Kitchen - Devouring Denmark

Trying to come up with titles for these food blogs is the biggest hurdle in the initiation phase of writing these things. I was thinking, "Denmarks the Spot," and "Denmark my Words," but let's face it, those are weak sauce. Speaking of weak sauce, the recipes for Denmark were very close to flavorless and vapid. Seasoning is optional and at a minimum, less than stellar.

How did we come to the decision to pluck Denmark off the global array of culinary delights? Easy. There are virtually NO "D" countries out there. Kinda hard to believe, isn't it? The letter "D" is a common letter, one of the few that are used consistently on Wheel of MisFortune. Hey Vanna, give me a "D"! Sorry mister wiseass, NO "D" for you! So, the competition for the "D" letter came down to Denmark, Dominican Republic and Djibouti. Whud you say about my booty??? Ehhh, anyway, we decided to opt for Western Europe since we hadn't sampled that geographical area yet.

As always, we scoured the internet for Danish fare and found a site that had a ton of stuff. You can check it out here if interested: http://www.mindspring.com/~cborgnaes/ ... We did find quite a few items on the menu, in all categories, such as meat, poultry, fish, veggie, salads and desserts. Since we haven't used our friend the pig yet, we opted for pork as our protein. It didn't hurt that we also had a pork loin in the freezer, begging to be thawed out and consumed.

After glancing over the many entrees, we noticed that pork and fish were the most common protein items, but most of the fish dishes were pickled in some way. Pickled cod, pickled whitefish, pickled herring, yada, yada, yada... We chose the Roast Loin of Pork, otherwise known as Svinesteg. You dirty SWINE! Tender pork loin, stuffed with apples and prunes, while cooked in cream and red wine. Instead of taters, we picked Flour Dumplings (Melboller) to accompany the main dish. For a vegetable, the Green Beans and Mushrooms (Grønne Bønner) looked good as well. We also decided to do a salad. We saw one that contained Havarti cheese, so we were sold. The salad was called Tivoli Salad (Salat). And since we are gluttons for punishment, as well as for sweet stuff, we picked a dessert as well. In this case, it was the Cherry Cake, AKA Kirsebærkage.

So as we became pickled like the fish described above, we made our shopping list. Nothing too unusual. White pepper and prunes were about the only things that we didn't have lying around. It was as if we didn't have to go shopping at all, but shopping is the fun part, so we made a day out of it anyway. And in our first attempt to create International fare in front of an audience (guinea pigs), we had to stock up on another pork loin. Ohhh you poor Rameys!

Shopping: We ventured out to our usual haunt, the Johnson Avenue HyVee. The parking was atrocious as usual, and the store is set up like Cheech and Chong did the planning after a bender. However, since the list we had was not as challenging, we had an easy time of it. When it came time to grab another pork loin, we decided to try and get one that was as close as possible in weight as the other one that was thawing in the freezer. It had to be about 1.5 lbs. We had planned on cooking both the loins simultaneously, so this made sense. We did cheat a little bit on one of our items. We decided to make pork gravy for the dumplings, but just in case we blundered it, we grabbed a jar of pork gravy as a backup.

Prep: What we experienced as a piece of cake for shopping, we more than made up for it in the prepping process. Prepping was a hardcore pain in the Danish ass. I volunteered to do the Tivoli salad and the Green Bean/Mushroom dish. Lauri took on the Pork loin, Cherry cake and Dumplings. We were all over the kitchen, arm-wrestling over measuring cups, the food processor, the nice ceramic knife, the rum, ummm you get the picture.

The first thing I did was cut the cheese. Yah I said it! No, seriously, I had to cut up the Havarti in small bite size pieces for the salad, and then had to do the same with the other ingredients, cucumber, green pepper, diced ham and tomatoes. Since the salad was supposed to be chilled, I pretty much completed the task of finishing it, then stuffing it in the fridge. Mixing the bite size pieces with sour cream, mayonnaise, white pepper and curry brought the Tivoli salad to conclusion. As I tasted it, it lacked that savory goodness, so I tossed in a few pinches of sea salt.

Since we goofed on cooking cake and chicken for Cambodia by trying to share the oven, we decided to get the dessert out of the way. The cake recipe called for egg whites whipped to a meringue-like consistency, before mixing in with the dry ingredients. FAIL. Initially, we tried using one of those emulsion mixing sticks that look like "shake weights" with a menacing little blade on the end. Lauri whipped the eggs into oblivion, but no firm peaks, so I suggested tossing it out and using a regular mixer. Voila, white peaks of flavorless frappe! We were back on track for success!

In the meantime, I started to get the green beans ready for the veggie dish. We bought whole string beans which needed both ends cut off. More knife work for me. I am getting to point where I think I could do surgery. The beans were ready to be steamed, but it was too early, so I covered them and waited. The shrooms were already sliced up, so I got a reprieve.

Lauri was getting the oinkers ready for their apple and prune stuffing. As we looked at the pork loins, they did weigh the same, but one was thicker and stockier than the other. This would come back on us, as you will find out... Lauri completed the arduous task of slitting and stuffing the loins with apple and prune slices, seasoning them, and then tying off the swine with twine.

Finally, with everything completed as far as we could take it, it was time to assemble the dumplings. At that point, we had cleaned up the mixer, but then the recipe called for more whipped egg whites! DOH! Get the mixer out again, honey!

Cooking: I should preface the cooking part by saying that the TIMING of everything was stupefying. I was rapidly approaching headache mode as I whipped a calculator out to make sure everything got done at about the same time. The only thing that was a not dependent on time was the Tivoli Salad, still chilling in the fridge. The stovetop, the steamer, the oven, the microwave--every appliance in the kitchen was slated for duty.

While cooking is usually easier than prep, this wasn't the case with Denmark. The Pork loin has cook in several phases. Brown the pork, drown the pork, baste the pork, bake the pork, add this, that and the other, then baste again. Madness I say. The green beans had to go into the steamer for 20 minutes, but not before I had to sauté the mushrooms for 15. The salt and white pepper had to wait til everything was mixed together, and then add bread crumbs. Time for a drink and aspirin.

The Cherry cake was finishing up, so we took it out and just let it sit there heating up the kitchen. The pork was about done on the stovetop, getting a nice brown crust on it, then we added cream and let it simmer, while spooning liquid over the whole thing. Eventually, the loins went in the oven to finish for about an hour. We added the wine and let it go. We almost forgot that we needed gravy for the dumplings, so we kept the pork drippings in the pan, added some cream, flour, salt and pepper. It made a whopping half a cup, so we grabbed the store-bought gravy and threw it in. Oh the horror, the horror...

With about 30 minutes left on the pork, I got the steamer started with the green beans, then also started sautéing the mushrooms. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel cake. At that point, our friends had just arrived in time to help us drink more and become more inebriated than usual. I enthusiastically described the steamer we just purchased and how it was the next best thing to an IPOD. I was like a drunk guy on the Shopping Channel, "whooohooo, check this sh*t out folks--it steams stuff! It cooks with WATER!!!" Our friends were sold... They bought a steamer the same night on Amazon.

The beans were then mixed with the shrooms, along with some cream, flour and butter. Finally, everything came together at the right time, and we finished off by poaching the dumplings. They only took about a minute to cook, so it was like an afterthought.

Eating: Time to dig in! Everything once again, looked fantastic and just how we had wanted it to look. After we took a few pics of the items, it was time to carve up those piggly wiggly loins and go to town. We let our friend Chris do the slicing, as he is a master at cutlery and chopping things up with various weaponry. Once the meat was adequately sliced, the chowdown had begun. The first pork loin that was sliced was the skinnier of the two. As I mentioned before, the difference in the pork loins would be discussed. The pork was dry and tough, like my lawn mowing shoes after sitting in the sun for a week.

The other items were mostly edible and delicious. The beans/mushroom platter was like a homemade green bean casserole, but without the fried onions. Had to add salt and pepper, as it was bland, like the food you get at Bishops. However the mushrooms and freshly steamed beans were perfect. The Tivoli salad was fresh, cool and creamy. The ham with the Havarti cheese added depth and comfort to the otherwise light and cool veggies. Then it was time for the dumplings. Little spongy and chewy bread chunks, as dense as a doorknob and the flavor of construction paper. Thank goodness for gravy.

I was somewhat disappointed in the pork, since we worked so hard to do it right. I then decided to cut open the other loin to see what we may have been missing. Sure enough, the second loin was cooked to perfection, moist and flavorful. I told everyone to stop eating the shoe and try the new stuff instead. The evening was salvaged as almost everything was consumed and very little leftovers to bag up.

Finally for dessert, we broke open the Cherry Cake. It looked better than it tasted. As most of the items from the recipes were somewhat dull and lacked flavor, so did the Cherry Cake. The cherries were fine, but the cake was like fluffed drywall. Perhaps putting on some spackle frosting would have gave this insipid flapjack some zip.

All in all, it was a decent feast, with some highs and lows. The fun is in the challenge of creating new and unfamiliar things and the journey from conception to execution. Our mistakes are getting smaller and less noticeable. Speaking of mistakes, when the wife says she doesn't need any help, it means "get the f*** out of my way, old man!" Next time, I will heed that advice and make myself small and stealth-like. We also learned that seasoning is underappreciated and adding spice to your cooking leads to a fulfilling and flavorful experience.

Next up: E is for Ecuador or Egypt... We haven't decided yet! Stay tuned!