Still, Vancouver is an enormous, diverse city – how hard can it be to find Danish rye?\u00a0 Quite challenging, as it turns out.\u00a0 There was a Danish baker just a few blocks from my office, which closed in 2018 after sixty years in business.\u00a0 So that’s a shame.<\/p>\n
And then I found La Charcuterie.\u00a0 Their website lists a HUGE array of Scandinavian products.\u00a0 Rugbr\u00f8d! Spiced Herring! Medisterp\u00f8lse! (A coiled Danish sausage.) And they have a deli attached.\u00a0 Awesome, right?\u00a0 It’s an hour drive away, but we can get some great Danish sandwiches, buy the products we want, maybe have a browse around for other things that would work well, and be all set for our Danish meal.<\/p>\n
Our first clue should maybe have been that “La Charcuterie” ain’t exactly a Danish spelling.<\/p>\n
When we got to the store, which is in a run down industrial park between a motorcycle shop and an auto parts store, there was a line of people out the door.\u00a0 OK, this is a good sign, right?<\/p>\n
Well, no.\u00a0 Apparently the owner of this shop is a local legend, to the point that there has been an entire documentary made about him.\u00a0 What he is legendary for is a constant, CONSTANT stream of vulgar stories, and enormous, cheap sandwiches. Turns out we had arrived in the domain of “The Sandwich Nazi.”\u00a0 Seriously – that’s what it said on the door and on his Facebook page.<\/p>\n
The store itself contained almost nothing of the bounty of Danish products advertised on the website – lots of tinned fish, but pretty much nothing else.\u00a0 No Danish bread. (The sandwiches are on standard sub rolls.) No medisterp\u00f8lse. No spiced herring.\u00a0 Heck, not even a choice in what you are being served past “How many sandwiches you want?” (There was a menu on the wall, but it’s apparently just there for decoration.)\u00a0 You have to pay cash, and you have to make your own change from the huge pile of loose bills sitting on a table behind the counter, because apparently he got busted for not washing his hands between handling money and food.<\/p>\n
Oh, and the Sandwich Nazi is apparently Lebanese.<\/p>\n
The sandwiches are enormous and overstuffed, but otherwise completely average.\u00a0 Just a big pile of cold cuts on bread.\u00a0 Dirt cheap, though – easily four servings from one 10CAD sandwich.<\/p>\n
However, we were left with no Danish products whatsoever.<\/p>\n
So we went home and bought some Russian Dark rye at Sav On Foods, which is not right, but as close as we could get, and some local pickled herring.<\/p>\n
Oh well.\u00a0 Let’s move on to the actual COOKING portion of the program, shall we?\u00a0 Denmark had a survey for the official national dish in 2014, and the winner was\u00a0stegt fl\u00e6sk med persillesovs,\u00a0<\/em>or grilled pork belly with parsley sauce.\u00a0 Accompanied by waxy potatoes, this is actually a pretty simple dish to make, and represents the third technique we’ve used to cook pork belly in the last two months.\u00a0 (We also fried it for Colombia, and braised it for Dong Po Pork, which was not part of this blog series.)<\/p>\n To cook the pork belly, it is simply sliced into relatively thick slices and then roasted in a hot oven for 40 minutes until crisp.<\/p>\n Before:<\/p>\n After:<\/p>\n Meanwhile, you make a parsley sauce.\u00a0 It starts with a butter and flour roux, into which you add milk.\u00a0 This is cooked until it is thick, and then you season it and add a whole pile o’ parsley.<\/p>\n I am relatively certain we did not get this quite thick enough.\u00a0 It was tasty, but runnier than in the video we watched.<\/p>\n This was accompanied by nicely boiled new potatoes.\u00a0 Here’s the whole spread:<\/p>\n Denmark also has the advantage of being one of the few countries that we can simply walk down the street and easily buy beer from.\u00a0 We know where<\/em> to get Estonian beer in Vancouver, but the next time it’s going to be EASY isn’t going to be until Germany. (France?\u00a0 Maybe?\u00a0 I don’t know any French beers, but I don’t drink a lot of pilsners.)<\/p>\n But let’s not distract from the meal at hand!\u00a0 How was stegt fl\u00e6sk med persillesovs?<\/em> Quite tasty!\u00a0 Roasting the pork belly made it deliciously crispy, and drowning it in the parsley sauce (I put a lot more on after taking this picture) was a fantastic flavor enhancement.\u00a0 The potatoes turned out perfectly, and also soaked up the sauce quite well.\u00a0 And while the herring and bread weren’t the right\u00a0<\/em>herring and bread, they were still delicious.<\/p>\n I will mention dessert, which, while not Danish, was funny.\u00a0 Nigella Lawson’s recipe of the day for inauguration day was, for some reason, “Bitter Orange Tart.” Can’t imagine why. But since I found some Seville oranges at the Granville Island Market, here it is.<\/p>\n Next up, we head to eastern Africa for the first time since Burundi with the small nation of Djibouti.<\/p>\n Recipes: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Denmark did not quite go as planned. I mean, I’m sure the country is doing fine, but our Danish meal ran into a few snags. One of the quintessential Danish foods is Rugbr\u00f8d,\u00a0a particular style of sourdough dark rye bread … Continue reading ![\"Uncooked](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/20210124_182339.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nStegt fl\u00e6sk med persillesovs (pork belly with parsley sauce)<\/a>
\nBitter Orange Tart<\/a><\/p>\n