Gravlax, cheese, cucumber, sweet mustard, pickles, boiled beets, and rye bread – check.
Reindeer? Yeah, I couldn’t find any of that, but I did find some French Rosette de Lyon sausage that worked alright. And I threw in some Dijon while I was busy being so French.
Lutefisk? Sadly, also no. The lye-treated fish dish (it’s a specialty) would have taken more days to prepare than I had home in Newfoundland, are where do you find lye anyway? Sadly, lutefisk doesn’t come in convenient pre-made packages in the grocery store there either, as it does in Scandinavia. Apparently not too many people are throwing winter Smorgasbord parties.
I did throw in lots of salt cod, though—bought from my trusted fish guy at the Fish Depot on Duckworth Street. Normally I wouldn’t buy the fish as it’s not generally a sustainable fishery, but I respect this guy because he doesn’t sell junk farmed fish and he doesn’t sell endangered fish. I didn’t buy herring to pickle my own, mind you, but I gave him some good Christmas business anyway.
How do you make mustard? And what’s Finnish mustard?
Thanks for asking. Mustard is simple. You use either mustard powder (ground mustard seeds) or soak whole mustard seeds for awhile with some kind of vinegar. the vinegar and type of mustard seed determines the piquancy of the mustard. It also mellows in the fridge. Finnish mustard usually involves sugar and heavy cream. Yup—dessert mustard. It’s delicious. I made mine with coconut sugar (which turned it brown instead of yellow) and coconut cream (which tasted just like regular cream). It’s rich and creamy and has a soft bite to it. More like a nibble than a chomp.
The really nice thing about a smorgasbord is there aren’t a lot of cooked things. I threw those Karelian pasties in there because they go with the cheese and sausage. And the herring salad I served on the side. But the bread and butter of the smorgasbord—a mixed buffet of pickled and cured and raw foods—are the bread and cheese and cucumbers.
I spent a week and a half in Finaldn when I was twelve. I stayed with families in Helsinki, Oulainen, Oulu, Joensu, and Turku. I learned about two Finnish words —hello and thank you. I still remember them. I also remember that cheese came in large cylinders and every family had a handheld cheese slicer instead of a knife. And every morning breakfast was a couple of these cheeses with untoasted bread, cucumbers, and maybe some sliced tomatoes. In such a cold place I don’t understand why room temperature food is so appealing, but I do remember that there are saunas in almost every home and apartment building, and staying warm is generally important.
Maybe it’s the vodka? It’s not as though when I was twelve I was doing shots of vodka with my Finnish host families, but bread, cheese, and cucumber aren’t going to cut it circulation-wise. Maybe they drink the hot beet water after boiling the beets for the smorgasbord. I don’t remember that part of the morning…
Anyway, the highlight of this smorgasbord that I made for my family’s annual Christmas party (the 6th annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza, to be accurate) was the Finnish mustard. I made it with this recipe, and the only change I made was adding 2 teaspoons of tapioca starch mixed with 2 tsp water at the very end to thicken it up. It was supposed to be pretty thick and it just wasn’t happening. So I added the paste and stirred a couple extra minutes and all was well.
I made it with Keen’s English mustard. I don’t know if that’s a “hot” mustard powder or not, but to my tongue it worked fine.
Boy this was delicious. I ended up using it for everything from salad dressing to a vegetable dip, to a butter replacer for bread, to a topping for those savoury pasties. Maybe if I’d been into mustard when I was twelve I would have also been more into breakfast.
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