Scandinavian Christmas

Trine Hahnemann selects her favourite new, family and traditional Scandinavian recipes for baking, brunch, edible gifts, lunches, dinners and parties for the Christmas season.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LARS RANEK

SCANDINAVIAN

Chr覺stmas 0

Trine Hahnemann

scandinavian

Chrıstmas 0

Outside, the snowy landscape is crisp and cold. A procession of girls in white dresses winds through the dark, freezing streets carrying candles to celebrate St Lucia, the bringer of light. Indoors, the ovens are on and Christmas baking has begun in earnest. Hygge, the Danish word for cosiness, is about being inside by the fire, with candles, great comfort food and lots of cakes and sweets. In Scandinavia the whole period of Christmas, from the first Sunday in Advent to New Year’s Day, is marked by festivals and celebrated in traditional but beautifully contemporary style. Jars of decorated cookies, gingerbread houses and clogs filled with little presents rub shoulders with simple wreaths, trees and tables decorated with white candles and fresh greenery: the perfect mix of ancient and modern. Every Sunday sees a gathering of friends to sing carols, collect Christmas trees from the forest and eat together. Brunches, cocktail and tea parties, lunches and dinners are celebrated with a mix of traditional goodies and delicious modern recipes.

Duck and pork rule on Christmas Eve, fish, ham and seasonal vegetables on Christmas Day. Sweets, biscuits, puddings and other treats abound, all washed down with gløgg – spiced wine – and fruity cocktails. In this glorious book, illustrated with Lars Ranek’s evocative photographs, Trine Hahnemann provides a cornucopia of 70 Christmas recipes – featuring ingredients common to all northern climes – showing how we, too, could decorate our homes and make delicious food to celebrate Christmas the Scandinavian way.

Trıne Hahnemann 0

Trine Hahnemann is a chef and food writer who writes for many magazines, including Denmark’s largest circulation weekly women’s magazine Alt For Damerne.

She has published many cookbooks in her native Denmark and two in English, The Scandinavian Cookbook (2008) and The Nordic Diet (2009), both published by Quadrille. Trine lives in Copenhagen with her husband and two children, but travels constantly to bring Scandinavian food and cooking to a wider audience.

£16.99 padded Hardback 0 978 184949 192 1 0 144pp 0 235 x 215mm0 30,000 words 0 Over 70 recipes 0 120 full colour photographs 0 Publication september 2012

Introduction 6 Tales Of A Scandinavian Christmas 8

12

Preparing for the Feast: Christmas Baking cookies 0 cakes 0 santa lucia bread 0 baking with children

32 48

Gifts from the Kitchen Chutneys 0 Preserves 0 Jellies And Marmalade 0 Chocolate And Booze 0 Edible Christmas Tree Decorations

A Whole Month of Christmas: The Scandinavian Celebration of Advent

64 118

Christmas Entertaining CanapĂŠs 0 Drinks

102

88 Festive Brunch

The Christmas Eve Feast

Christmas Day

128 Luscious Leftovers Glossary 140 Index 142

baking The first week in December means non-stop baking in many Scandinavian households! The reason why we make so many different cakes is that we want to have enough for the whole month. Everybody in my family has their favourite Christmas cookie, so we end up baking all of them.

I also use the cookies as gifts for parties in December, and they always make people’s eyes light up. My cakes and cookies are a mixture of family recipes and my own creations, all founded in the Christmas tradition.

Have fun with them, they don’t have to be perfect.

Honey hearts 0 Spiced christmas cake 0 Orange honey mousse cake 0 Vanilla cookies 0 Cinnamon cookies 0 Pepper nuts 0 lucia bread 0 Klejner ‘doughnut’ cookies

baking The first week in December means non-stop baking in many Scandinavian households! The reason why we make so many different cakes is that we want to have enough for the whole month. Everybody in my family has their favourite Christmas cookie, so we end up baking all of them.

I also use the cookies as gifts for parties in December, and they always make people’s eyes light up. My cakes and cookies are a mixture of family recipes and my own creations, all founded in the Christmas tradition.

Have fun with them, they don’t have to be perfect.

Honey hearts 0 Spiced christmas cake 0 Orange honey mousse cake 0 Vanilla cookies 0 Cinnamon cookies 0 Pepper nuts 0 lucia bread 0 Klejner ‘doughnut’ cookies

‘This season is all about being inside with candles and great comfort food.’

‘Christmas is my favourite time of year. I am a winter person, I love the cold and the way the world turns silent when covered in snow.’

‘This season is all about being inside with candles and great comfort food.’

‘Christmas is my favourite time of year. I am a winter person, I love the cold and the way the world turns silent when covered in snow.’

Roasted pork with spices and crisp cracklings Serves 6

Roast pork was always part of our Christmas Eve dinner, along with duck. As a child, I never really cared for it, but now I love it both on Christmas Eve and also cold on Christmas Day, sliced on to rye bread with a sprinkling of coarse salt and my red cabbage.

It’s the kind of thing I will sneak out late at night to eat from the fridge all by myself, while I gaze at the cold weather outside and read a book, and my house is completely quiet.

you will need 1 organic lemon 1 red chilli, chopped seeds from 10 cardamom pods 5 garlic cloves, peeled 5cm cinnamon stick 2 star anise salt freshly ground black pepper 2kg boned pork foreloin, rind scored by your butcher

108

the christmas eve feast

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6. Finely grate the zest from the lemon and place in a mortar with the chilli, cardamom, garlic, cinnamon, star anise, salt and pepper.

Grind with the pestle to a paste. (Alternatively, mix the ingredients to a paste in a mini food processor.)

Remove the pork rind and fat in one piece from the top of the meat. Score a diamond pattern on the top surface of the meat, then rub in the spice mixture. Replace the piece of rind and fat, then tie all the way along the joint with a long piece of kitchen string at 2.5cm intervals. Place the pork in a roasting tin and roast for 1½ hours.

Remove the pork from the oven and leave to rest for about 15 minutes so that the juices can settle throughout the meat, then remove the string and carve the pork into slices.

Serve, making sure there is a piece of the crisp crackling with every portion.

‘It’s the kind of thing I will sneak out late at night to eat from the fridge’

Roasted pork with spices and crisp cracklings Serves 6

Roast pork was always part of our Christmas Eve dinner, along with duck. As a child, I never really cared for it, but now I love it both on Christmas Eve and also cold on Christmas Day, sliced on to rye bread with a sprinkling of coarse salt and my red cabbage.

It’s the kind of thing I will sneak out late at night to eat from the fridge all by myself, while I gaze at the cold weather outside and read a book, and my house is completely quiet.

you will need 1 organic lemon 1 red chilli, chopped seeds from 10 cardamom pods 5 garlic cloves, peeled 5cm cinnamon stick 2 star anise salt freshly ground black pepper 2kg boned pork foreloin, rind scored by your butcher

108

the christmas eve feast

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6. Finely grate the zest from the lemon and place in a mortar with the chilli, cardamom, garlic, cinnamon, star anise, salt and pepper.

Grind with the pestle to a paste. (Alternatively, mix the ingredients to a paste in a mini food processor.)

Remove the pork rind and fat in one piece from the top of the meat. Score a diamond pattern on the top surface of the meat, then rub in the spice mixture. Replace the piece of rind and fat, then tie all the way along the joint with a long piece of kitchen string at 2.5cm intervals. Place the pork in a roasting tin and roast for 1½ hours.

Remove the pork from the oven and leave to rest for about 15 minutes so that the juices can settle throughout the meat, then remove the string and carve the pork into slices.

Serve, making sure there is a piece of the crisp crackling with every portion.

‘It’s the kind of thing I will sneak out late at night to eat from the fridge’

scandinavian

Chrıstmas 0

Outside, the snowy landscape is crisp and cold. A procession of girls in white dresses winds through the dark, freezing streets carrying candles to celebrate St Lucia, the bringer of light. Indoors, the ovens are on and Christmas baking has begun in earnest. Hygge, the Danish word for cosiness, is about being inside by the fire, with candles, great comfort food and lots of cakes and sweets. In Scandinavia the whole period of Christmas, from the first Sunday in Advent to New Year’s Day, is marked by festivals and celebrated in traditional but beautifully contemporary style. Jars of decorated cookies, gingerbread houses and clogs filled with little presents rub shoulders with simple wreaths, trees and tables decorated with white candles and fresh greenery: the perfect mix of ancient and modern. Every Sunday sees a gathering of friends to sing carols, collect Christmas trees from the forest and eat together. Brunches, cocktail and tea parties, lunches and dinners are celebrated with a mix of traditional goodies and delicious modern recipes.

Duck and pork rule on Christmas Eve, fish, ham and seasonal vegetables on Christmas Day. Sweets, biscuits, puddings and other treats abound, all washed down with gløgg – spiced wine – and fruity cocktails. In this glorious book, illustrated with Lars Ranek’s evocative photographs, Trine Hahnemann provides a cornucopia of 70 Christmas recipes – featuring ingredients common to all northern climes – showing how we, too, could decorate our homes and make delicious food to celebrate Christmas the Scandinavian way.

Trıne Hahnemann 0

Trine Hahnemann is a chef and food writer who writes for many magazines, including Denmark’s largest circulation weekly women’s magazine Alt For Damerne.

She has published many cookbooks in her native Denmark and two in English, The Scandinavian Cookbook (2008) and The Nordic Diet (2009), both published by Quadrille. Trine lives in Copenhagen with her husband and two children, but travels constantly to bring Scandinavian food and cooking to a wider audience.

£16.99 padded Hardback 0 978 184949 192 1 0 144pp 0 235 x 215mm0 30,000 words 0 Over 70 recipes 0 120 full colour photographs 0 Publication september 2012

Trine Hahnemann selects her favourite new, family and traditional Scandinavian recipes for baking, brunch, edible gifts, lunches, dinners and parties for the Christmas season.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LARS RANEK

SCANDINAVIAN

Chr覺stmas 0

Trine Hahnemann