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.

An Ikea Feast

As we headed over to Ikea in Brooklyn this weekend, A and I talked a bit about our first experiences with Swedish food. Unsurprisingly for both of us, the first Swedish food that we remember having was from Ikea, and it was, of course, the meatballs. I'm not sure I could even tell you what else Ikea offered back when I used to go there with my parents a lot in the '90s. Just Swedish meatballs.

After living in Chicago for a few years which had an incredibly vibrant Swedish community in Andersonville, it's been surprising to us how little Swedish cuisine there is in New York. There's quite a few Swedish (or general Scandinavian) spots at the higher end of the spectrum, like Aquavit, but on the more casual side, they seem to be mostly coffee shops. It would have been so easy to hit up a casual Swedish restaurant in Chicago to check the Swedish box for our Women's World Cup challenge, but it was more difficult here. So we went to Ikea. They're a Swedish chain, so they count.

We were so hungry by the time we got to the cafe on the day we went (it was late and we had sat in traffic for about 30 minutes (while hungry) to go less than a mile; we could have walked faster) that we ordered a serious feast of Swedish food for lunch. I'm not sure we've ever gotten that much to eat at Ikea before.

A ordered the Swedish meatball combo ($7.99 with the Ikea Family card, which is free so why wouldn't you get one?), which came with 15 meatballs, gravy (cream sauce), mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam. This is the plate that Ikea's had for as long as we can remember, and it pretty much tastes the same to us as it always has. We love these meatballs, the rich gravy, the creamy potatoes, and the sweet and tart lingonberry jam. Ikea's the first place either of us had ever tried lingonberries, and they're delicious.

The combo came with a drink (we got lingonberry juice, a lot of it) and our choice of soup or a basic garden salad. The soup was aromatic chickpea soup, so of course, we got that. Despite being the middle of June, it was quite cool and in the 60s outside, so soup was welcome. The soup was just okay, probably our least favorite part of our feast. It wasn't bad, just not as "aromatic" as we were expecting. There was some black pepper and some herbs with the chickpeas, but it wasn't as herbal or flavorful as we thought it would be. But it did seem healthy, so it balanced out a lot of the other stuff we had.

I ordered the chicken meatballs (and A and I swapped a few meatballs from each of our plates). This was the first time we'd eaten at Ikea since they introduced the chicken meatball option, so we wanted to check it out. The chicken meatball plate ($4.99) also comes with gravy, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam, but there are only 10 meatballs instead of the 15 regular ones. The chicken meatballs are a little bit bigger than the original ones, a little softer and spongier in texture, but full of chicken flavor. They were tasty meatballs, and I would consider getting this again instead of the original one in the future.

Normally we would just get meatballs, but we were so hungry that everything looked good as we walked past the refrigerated cases. I picked up a plate of the gravlax salad ($4.99), since gravlax is one of the most Swedish foods there is and we like salmon. This was good, but definitely not the best gravlax we've ever had. It came with a side of mustard sauce, some sprigs of dill, and a pile of arugula.

To finish off our Swedish meal, we indulged in a slice of Swedish apple cake ($2.49). The pastry part of this was soft and a bit dense, and the apples were sweet and delicious. We also tasted hints of spices in there, possibly cinnamon or cardamom and maybe some others. It came with a vanilla cream sauce. All together, it was a pretty good slice of cake. We were glad that we were so hungry that we picked up dessert since we don't usually try it there. The apple cake was flying out of the refrigerated case and luckily we got the very last slice. Now we know why it's so popular!

It was great to take a break from the frenzy of Ikea and dismal weather to grab some Swedish food, and it knocked another place off the Women's World Cup challenge. Unfortunately, it's now kicked up our craving for Swedish meatballs, and we didn't bring any home from Ikea!

AQ Kafe

Over Labor Day weekend, after a bird crapped on my head, we went for lunch at AQ Kafe, a Scandinavian cafe near Columbus Circle. We like Scandinavian food, with its clean and healthy dishes, but hadn't yet tried this cafe.

We split two dishes.  One was the gravlax sandwich (cured salmon, red onion, avocado, mustard), which also came with a side salad.

Gravlax sandwich

Salmon, greens, avocado and mustard

We have had better gravlax but this sandwich wasn't bad.  The salmon tasted fresh and clean, the greens added a nice crispiness, the avocado and mustard added creamy texture and flavor.  The bread was probably the weakest part of the sandwich as it wasn't anything too special, and I had trouble biting it.  The side salad was pretty much mixed greens with a light coating of dressing. It was fresh and clean which was nice to have but not amazing.

The other dish we split was the Swedish meatball entree (meatballs, pickled cucumbers, lingonberries, mashed potatoes, cream sauce).

I liked the arrangement of this plate, separating each part of the dish into its own section. It looked so uncluttered.  The mashed potatoes, cucumbers and lingonberries were fairly standard and about what you would expect from them. 

The meatballs came covered in the usual gravy, which in this case was necessary since the meatballs themselves were a little dry (especially in the middle). I'm not sure if it's because the meatballs were of a slightly larger size than some other Swedish meatballs we've had, but after biting into them, we had to add more gravy to them each time in order to improve the flavor and texture. We've definitely had better meatballs.  Might even say they are better at Ikea, which offers them to the masses at a fraction of the price.

Our meal at AQ Kafe wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as the other Scandinavian food we've had.  We've only written here about the Scandinavian kiosk at the Epcot Food & Wine Festival but we liked those (small) plates more.  The other thing about AQ Kafe was that prices were pretty high. Not that surprising since it's a (non-Ikea) Scandinavian place, but another reason we might not return.

Taste of Scandinavia

The first kiosk we visited at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival was Scandinavia. We had been walking around the lagoon looking for a line that wasn't insanely long and this was one of the first we found.


There were 3 dishes at the Scandinavian kiosk: a seafood assortment called "Taste of Scandinavia", Swedish meatballs and a rice pudding dessert. We're generally fans of Scandinavian food and were looking forward to trying everything.


First up, the Taste of Scandinavia ($4):

Left side: cured salmon with mustard; right side: other side of the plate - herring and shrimp salad (with cracker)
The salmon was good. We love smoked salmon and this one was nice and tender. Mustard is always the perfect accompaniment. The herring was pretty good, but not on the same level as the herring we had in Amsterdam at Frens Haringhandel. A's favorite part was the shrimp salad, which was nice and creamy. M can't decide if the shrimp salad or salmon was her favorite part. The dish as a whole was a nice sampling of seafood and very light and refreshing for a hot day.

Next, Swedish meatballs with lingonberries ($3.50):

3 meatballs with gravy and lingonberries
If you've ever eaten at Ikea, you may have gotten the Swedish meatballs with lingonberries there. This was similar but better. Unlike Ikea, these meatballs were all juicy and tender. (Sometimes the Ikea ones can get dry.) A didn't think the lingonberries had much flavor and that Ikea's has more sugar. M found these to be more sweet and the Ikea ones to be more tart. Maybe we need a trip to Ikea soon for a good comparison. Anyway, we really liked the meatballs. Although it was a heavier dish than the seafood, it was comfort food.

Last was dessert - rice pudding with strawberries ($2.75):

Think that kid wants some rice pudding too?
This was excellent. Unlike a lot of rice puddings, this wasn't that sweet. You could really taste the rice in the rice pudding. It was light and delicious with a nuanced flavor. We were big fans. The strawberries were also so fresh and good. We were hoping to get another one before leaving, but didn't have a chance. This might have been our favorite dessert at the festival (still trying to figure out our faves). So simple but so good.

There were also some drinks there - Carlsberg beer and 2 Xante (a pear spirit) drinks. We ended up not trying any of them. We were more interested in the food at this kiosk.

Favorite dishes at the Scandinavia kiosk:
A: Rice pudding (followed by shrimp salad)
M: Rice pudding (followed by meatballs)