Smørrebrød, not Smorgasbord

Smørrebrød is simply buttered bread. But the Danes, not usually a people given to excess (except for weekend alcohol consumption) don't leave it at that. Instead, they create works of art you can eat. The toppings can be meat, fish, vegetable, whatever you like. Here it's herring from Bornholm, a Danish island closer to the Swedish, German and Polish coasts than Copenhagen. This version was served to me at Promenaden, one of the fancier eateries at Tivoli Gardens, operated by the local Nimb restaurant group.

The bread must be the dense Danish rye found everywhere. Dark in color, tasted on its own or with just butter the bread is sour to the point of tartness, especially when sliced, baked to dry it out and served like a bagel chip with beer. But the bread finds its natural habitat topped with a generous smear of butter, and the fixings. The protein can be any form of meat or seafood imaginable, but some vegetable crunch, whether in the form of a little bit of onion or the sprouts here, is also usual. Cheese, of course, is always a welcome main ingredient or garnish. By my observation, shrimp seems the most popular, but not gigantic prawns: instead Danes favor the tiny northern shrimp from Greenland.

Comments

Newport: Memory of Childhood

To most the city of Newport, Rhode Island, is associated with the Gilded Age mansions lining Ocean Avenue and the Cliff Walk. For me it's the Awful Awful. The Awful Awful is a thick milkshake, but instead of being made from ice cream, milk and syrup, most of its dairy content comes from ice milk. It originated at Bond's, a northern New Jersey ice cream chain with an outpost in my home town, Elizabeth. It got it's name because it's "Awful Big, Awful Good". Drink three and get your name inscribed on the wall, plus a fourth for free. Two ice cream chains in New England took notice of the thick shake and bought rights to market it under the Awful Awful name anywhere but in Bond's home territory of the Garden State. But when one of them starting expanding, not being able to enter the New Jersey market was a major impediment, so they changed the name to Fribble. That's what the chain -- Friendly's -- continues to call its shake, though it...

Photographer at Sea

Everyone on board has a camera, of course. Including the two professionals aboard: Camille, the in-house photographer who offers tips and provides her photos at the end of the journey (for a price, of course), and Dan, part of a contingent of travel journalists aboard this repositioning cruise, accompanied by Hurtigruten's global PR manager, Øystein Knoph. But the photographer pictured here is no professional. He's a weight-lifter, based on the amount of heavy glass in that lens. He was trying to catch photos of trailing birds this morning on the Labrador Sea. I seriously doubt he could hold the camera steady enough (no tripod) to get a decent snap. I am reminded by this scene of the old saw about the inverse ratio between the size of a photographers lens and his... As for me, I'm relying on my iPhone 7's camera and my lightweight, compact Canon G-9, which has served me well for the past eight years. I considered bringing one of my old 35mm film cameras with lense...

Salem: Great Knockers

Forget the witches or the House of the Seven Gables when visiting Salem, Massachusetts. Instead, see a great set of knockers, and a whole lot of whimsical metalwork, at Herb Mackey's Metal Sculpture Yard, the last house on Blaney Street aside the parking lot for the Salem-Boston Ferry. It's free, and I'm told the whimsical welder who created the metal creatures will come out to chat when he's home. On Saturday, after spending a delightful time over a lingering lunch with my cousins Susan and Rita, who took the train to Salem from their Cambridge homes, I took a slow stroll through downtown Salem, maneuvering among the witches, warlocks and hanger-ons who descend upon this historic maritime hub to commemorate a nasty period in American colonial history, the Salem witch trials. The hordes made the Halloween crowds who descend on my neighborhood for Eastern State Penitentiary's annual scare show seem puny. Salem's most notable cultural attraction is ...

Greenland Passage

Search This Blog