Nordic Bakery

On our third day in London, we finally started doing some sightseeing (that wasn't food-related). Our first stop was Piccadilly Circus, but before we got there, we stopped for a light lunch at Nordic Bakery's Golden Square location. I don't remember how we found out about the bakery, but I had written in my notes that they had, among other things, a Finnish pastry and we hadn't done anything yet for WorldEats for Finland, so we really wanted to go. The bakery was packed when we got there and it was hard to find a seat, although admittedly some people were just taking up tables without actually eating or drinking anything.

A started off with a pour-over coffee (£2.60, all prices from current online menu and similar to what we paid last year), which they called a filter coffee. He found it a little weak and watery with not much flavor. He didn't like many of the coffees in London, but that's a topic for another post. Besides the coffee, we got a few snacks to split. The first was a cinnamon bun (£2.90). According to the bakery, every Nordic country makes a unique cinnamon bun and theirs is a take on the Finnish style.

This cinnamon bun was really dense but had a nice sweet flavor to it without being overwhelmingly sweet. It was very sticky. We saw some review on Yelp before we went there that the bun was hard as a rock, but that was definitely not the case with ours or any of the other ones we saw while we were there. I don't know if that person was expecting Cinnabon, but this is a different style and frankly I liked it better. The sweetness also seemed much more natural.

The second thing we got was the karelian pie (£2), which was the Finnish snack we had come for in the first place. They describe this on their menu as a "rye crusted savoury snack with rice or potato mash filling, served with butter spread." We had never seen or heard of this pie before, but we've never been to a Finnish restaurant or close to Finland itself.

We got the rice version of the pie, and the rice filling on the inside had the consistency of rice pudding (which we like). It was a little sweet, but the butter spread on top helped make it into a savory pie. The crust was a lot thinner than we were expecting before we ordered it, so the entire pie was very soft. It was a really interesting snack, very tasty and worth trying, but not our favorite part of the meal. We haven't really had anything like it before or since, and would likely try it again if we had the chance.

To balance out all of the pies and pastries, we also got the leverpostej sandwich (£4.40), which was an open-faced sandwich with liver pate and pickled beetroot. This was our favorite part of our meal at the bakery. The pate had really nice flavor and wasn't too metallic, just very balanced. The beets were really fresh and went well with the pate. The ingredients on the sandwich were all good quality and the whole thing tasted very clean. We just found it a little expensive since it wasn't very large, as you can see since there is a fork in the picture with it.

We enjoyed the food we got at the Nordic Bakery, and if we happened to be passing by again, we would drop in again for another snack (but maybe not coffee). Now that we've tried the Finnish snacks that we wanted to, we probably wouldn't take a big detour or make a special trip just to visit, but we would definitely consider trying some more snacks if in the area.

Week 35 - Nordic

Our feast for the Week 35 Nordic challenge didn't fully come together until the day I made it. I had decided earlier that I would make some Lindström patties (based on this Guardian recipe page, but with turkey instead of beef), and figured I would follow the Guardian's suggestion and just serve it with pan-fried potatoes and a vegetable side dish (although I planned to do peas instead of mangetout, which I hadn't known at first were snow peas). The day I was going to make the patties, I decided to search to see if there were any Scandinavian potato recipes and came up with a recipe for sugar-browned potatoes on Epicurious. Since that only had basic ingredients that were already in our pantry, I decided to do that for our potatoes side, especially curious about how it would be since it had been published in House & Garden back in 1964.

Lindström Patties

The ingredients for the Lindström patties (adapted a bit) were:

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.99)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 2 egg yolks ($0.20)
- a little more than 1/4 cup of cornichons ($1.35)
- a little more than 1/2 cup of pickled beets ($0.85)
- 2 spoonfuls of capers ($0.25)
- about 1 tbsp dried chives ($0.10)
- 1/2 medium onion ($0.25)
- butter for pan-frying ($0.25)

The total for the patties was about $8.29, not too bad for turkey burgers.

The steps for making the patties were:

1. Prep - finely chop onions, finely chop cornichons, chop capers, finely chop beets, and measure out chives.

2. Add ground turkey to mixing bowl, season with salt and pepper, and add the 2 egg yolks. Lightly mix together with hands.

[Note: The original recipe said to also add some water here, which I did, despite my instincts telling me not to. I thought the vegetables had more than enough water content, but followed the recipe anyway. As soon as I poured the water in, I knew it was a mistake (at least for the ingredients we had), as it was like the ground turkey was swimming in soup. It was going to be way too watery after mixing in the ingredients, as there would be nothing to bind it or soak up the water, so I drained most of the water out, and then added more pepper to replace the stuff that got washed away.]

3. Add all the chopped vegetables into the turkey mixture and mix together well with hands. (Don't overmix, but just make sure everything is evenly distributed.)

4. Form the turkey mixture into patties. (To make them all fit on one plate, I made them into meatball shapes and then flattened them out when pan-frying them. I had to squeeze the water out when making the meatballs and then again when flattening the patties. Way too much water.)

5. Melt some butter in a frying pan, and then pan-fry burgers, a couple of minutes on each side until cooked through. (I had so many that I ended up doing them in 3 batches.)

It was sometimes hard to tell whether the patties were done because they were still pink from all the beets. I ended up cutting one patty from each batch open to check them, and they were cooked through. (It also gave us an excuse to eat a few patties before dinner since it was late.)

Overall the patties were really good. There was sweetness from the beets, saltiness from the capers, and a nice sour flavor from the cornichons that all worked together really well. It was nice eating patties with so many vegetables inside, as they tasted so healthy.

Sugar-Browned Potatoes

I followed the original recipe for these potatoes pretty closely, other than using baking potatoes instead of small boiled potatoes, mostly because we had the giant bag from Costco. The ingredients I used were:

- 2 large baking potatoes ($1)
- 2 tbsp sugar ($0.15)
- 2 tbsp butter ($0.20)
- sprinkling of salt ($0.05)

The total for the potatoes came out to $1.40. Paired with our vegetable side (5 large mushrooms, a couple cups of frozen peas, and the other half of the onion cooked in olive oil) and the patties, the total for dinner was approximately $12.94. It made a lot of food, and there were some potatoes and vegetables left over for lunch the next day, so it seemed worth it.

As far as making the potatoes, the process was pretty easy. Boil the potatoes until fork tender and then drain. Melt butter in a pan, add the sugar, and stir constantly as the sugar browns (but doesn't burn). Add the potatoes, coat them in the sugar, and keep stirring until potatoes are browned or as done as you want them to be. When they're done, take them off the heat and sprinkle with salt, and mix some more. Because of the constant stirring, I was really glad I had A's help so I could fry the patties at the same time.

The potatoes were really good, and when we first tried them, we could definitely taste the difference. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about sugar-browned potatoes, thinking they might be too sweet, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the taste. They weren't super sweet (not like candied yams or anything), but the mild sweetness of the sugar helped the flavor of the potato come out. The subtle sweetness was really good. We were impressed. No wonder this recipe from 1964 is still floating around out there.

Overall, our Nordic night dinner was a really good meal. We would make both of these dishes again (the vegetables are pretty standard and we make stuff like that all the time). It was a little time-consuming making 3 different dishes at once considering the size of our kitchen and amount of usable counter and stove space, but it was really delicious.

Nordic Delicacies

One year ago today, we went over to Nordic Delicacies in Bay Ridge intending to have some lunch for the Norway portion of our WorldEats quest. Nordic Delicacies was pretty much the last Norwegian shop in an area that used to be known as Little Norway, and we had heard the sad news that they would be closing at the end of the month after serving the community for decades. This could have been our last chance to get Norwegian food in NY (as it's harder to classify the restaurants that just call themselves Scandinavian by country for WorldEats), so we wanted to make an effort to get out there.

When we got there, it seemed pretty crowded and the shelves weren't very full. It was clear that a lot of people had stopped by for some final Norwegian treats in the weeks before they closed. But we weren't intending to buy groceries. Instead, we were more interested in their prepared foods. We had heard all about their herring and seafood salads and fish pudding and other dishes, and thought they'd make a good lunch.

Unfortunately the prepared food cases seemed to be mostly empty. It looked like the big group of people hanging out there were regulars and/or part of some Norwegian heritage group who were having a get-together or party at the store before they closed. That, combined with the fact that we had arrived on the later side for lunch, meant that there wasn't much of anything left. We were disappointed but understood. It's not like they were going to make a ton of food every day when they were planning to close soon.

Since this was really the only Norwegian option we'd come across in our research (other than occasional festivals and events at the Norwegian church), we decided the next best thing we could do would be to pick up some groceries and make them for WorldEats. It wasn't exactly what we intended for WorldEats, but we were at a Norwegian shop picking up Norwegian groceries for an at-home Norwegian dinner. Close enough (for now).

The first thing we picked up was a packet of fish soup. This was pretty much an instant soup packet - just add the powdered mixture to a pot, stir in some water and milk (or cream), bring it to a boil, and simmer it for about 10 minutes. The entire packet was written in Norwegian and I didn't translate it until right before I started to make it, so it was a good thing we had something other than water on hand. (This was a couple of months ago, so I'm only about 90% sure we used some leftover half and half from the salmon and leek soup and not milk.) As for the other ingredients in the packet, there was flour, milk, cornstarch, salt fish, sugar, carrot, onion, leek, celery, eggs, chives, and a few other things. We really liked the soup. It was creamy but not too heavy, and the flavors of the fish and vegetables were good. We paired it with some fish sticks for a nice dinner.

To finish off our Norwegian night, we dove into the other item we picked up from our Nordic Delicacies visit - a milk chocolate bar with chopped hazelnuts. This was a really high quality chocolate bar in our opinion. The chocolate was rich and creamy, and chocolate mixed with hazelnuts is one of our favorite flavors. This was quite good. The only way we could think of that this chocolate could have been better was if it were dark chocolate, but then it wouldn't have been as creamy.

Our Nordic Delicacies visit may not have gone the way we planned exactly, and we never got to try the prepared dishes that we hoped we would for WorldEats, but we did end up with a nice Norwegian night with real imported Norwegian products. We enjoyed our little mini exploration and hopefully will find another Norwegian place in the future to do some more WorldEats exploration.