Northern (de)Lights (PM)

I can barely believe that neither Legsley nor Miguel referred to that dinner as Northern (de)Lights. Or Biz. All of them were key candidates for that kind of pun. Weird.

Don't worry guys! Here is a picture of K's pretzels plated up:

See that butter looking thing in the background? Anchovy and egg butter K made! Yum, people. Effing yum

I'm not going to take you on a step by step journey of my preparations, let me just tell you a little about the night.

We decided that in the ancient Nordic tradition we should eat smörgåsbord. Before people arrived with their food and the hot food hit the table, it looked like this.




By the time we sat down it looked like this:

From top right: pretzels (K), honey-glazed ham (K), cheese platter - jarlsberg, pickled sardines, crackers and pear (Blizzie), celeriac remoulade (K), hasselback potatoes (me), oysters (K), sides platter - egg white, egg yolk, cucumber, lemon, dill, pickles, capers (me), beetroot relish (guilty), Swedish meatballs (Miguel), gravlax and gravlax sauce (David), rye bread (Blizzie), Jansen's temptation (Russeth).

Oh, you wanna get a little up close and personal with some of that? I'm not surprised. David made TWO kinds of gravlax. One aniseedy one, the details of which I did not hear, but I know it included pernot.  The second one used the ancient tradition of pine needles from Fitzroy gardens. Needles(s) to say both were delicious!

Here are some hasselhoffback potatoes I made. Yep, as good as they look.

Everything was delicious. Personal highlights for me were (in no particular order) Jansen's temptation, hasselback potatoes, anchovy butter, gravlax - both kinds. But it was really the entire smörgåsbord that brought it all together.
Then it was time to retire to the sitting room for dessert and digestifs.

What are these you ask? Ice-cream sandwiches of gingerbread with honey and nutmeg ice-cream. Just a little something I whipped up. And yes, they are snowflake shaped. \

Oh, and there were these kanelbullar:

Swedish cinnamon buns

Just a little something Miguel whipped up. And in case you are interested, yes, you can have them with coffee in the morning and still respect yourself.

So what else happened at Northern (de)Lights? I got hysterical no less than 3 times, everyone got super full and we discovered that Ikea has an alcohol that tastes just like alcoholic Ribena. Basically it was success all round, I'd say!