RECIPES
We cherish our Scandinavian roots and especially our fine culinary traditions. The following dishes have been around for decades, and you'll find variations of one or the other at our hotels all around the world.
Toast Skagen
Toast Skagen is an elegant combination of shrimp and other ingredients on a small piece of sautéed bread. It was created by the popular Swedish restaurateur Tore Wretman. More than anyone else, he embraced Swedish culinary traditions during the decades immediately after World War II. At a time when home cooking was starting to fade away and be replaced by foreign fast food, he also elevated classic Swedish dishes into fancy restaurant repertoire, lending them new status.
Named for a fishing port at the northern tip of Denmark, in Sweden toast Skagen is an appetizer that means “party.” People who really want to celebrate something are extravagantly generous with the whitefish roe. The sprig of dill on the top serves as a fanfare.
Gravlax
Gravlax is a Scandinavian dish consisting of raw salmon cured in salt, sugar, and dill. Gravlax is usually served as an appetizer, sliced thinly and accompanied by a dill and mustard sauce, either on bread or with boiled potatoes.
During the Middle Ages, gravlax was made by fishermen, who salted the salmon and lightly fermented it by burying it in the sand above the high-tide line. The word gravlax comes from the Scandinavian word grav, which literally means "grave" or "hole in the ground", and lax, which means "salmon", thus gravlax is "salmon dug into the ground".
Today fermentation is no longer used in the production process. Instead the salmon is "buried" in a dry marinade of salt, sugar, and dill, and cured for a few days. As the salmon cures, by the action of osmosis, the moisture turns the dry cure into a highly concentrated brine, which is used in Scandinavian cuisine as part of a sauce. This same method of curing can be used for any fatty fish, but salmon is the most common.
Toast Pelle Janzon
Pelle Janzon was a celebrated Swedish opera singer at the Royal Theater in Stockholm in the late 1900 century. He was known as a cheerful, friendly, party prone gourmand who frequently invited his friends over for late night snacks and drinks after his performances. One of his specialties was the famous tenderloin, egg and bleak roe creation on dark toast.
The rumor about Pelle Janzon’s magnificent toast spread around Stockholm and soon several restaurants added “Toast Pelle Janzon” to their menus. Today the toast is a cherished Scandinavian classic.
