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The Nordic Approach: Let The Fish Do The Talking

Scandinavian coastal cooking begins with a simple assumption: if the fish is good, you need very little else. The cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic and the Baltic produce firm, clean-tasting fish and shellfish, and the cooks who live alongside them have never seen the point in burying that flavour under heavy sauce. A fillet of cod poached in salted water with a knob of butter, a handful of dill and a squeeze of lemon is not a compromise. It is dinner, and it is very good.

This suits a British kitchen rather well. Our own waters give us cod, haddock, mackerel, mussels and langoustines of real quality, and our fishmongers are used to customers who want a thick fillet or a whole fish rather than a uniform slab. What follows is a gentle route in.

The Four Pillars Of The Nordic Seafood Larder

You can cook a great deal of Nordic seafood with four things, plus salt. Keep them in and you are never far from a proper meal.

• Butter. Unsalted for cooking, so you control the seasoning; salted for finishing. Nordic cooks often let butter brown until it smells of hazelnuts, then spoon it over poached or pan-fried fish. That nutty note is the closest thing the region has to a signature sauce.
• Dill. Use it generously and add it late. Fresh dill loses its perfume quickly, so stir it through at the end or scatter it over the plate. The stalks are not waste: drop them into poaching water or a pot of mussels for a clean, aniseedy background.
• Lemon. Acidity is the counterweight to all that richness. Wedges on the side, zest grated over cured fish, or a spoonful of juice whisked into melted butter.
• Black pepper. Coarsely cracked and added at the end rather than cooked in, so the heat stays bright. White pepper appears too, especially in northern Denmark, but black is the everyday choice.

Salt deserves a mention of its own. Nordic cooking uses it confidently, both to season and to cure, and a well-salted poaching liquid is what makes plain boiled fish taste like something worth eating.

Three Methods That Do All The Work

You do not need many techniques. These three cover most of what you will want to cook.

• Gentle poaching. Bring two litres of water to the boil with 30g of fine salt, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns and a handful of dill stalks. Reduce to a temperature where the surface trembles but never bubbles, around 80°C. Slip in thick cod or haddock fillets and leave them for six to eight minutes, until the flesh just separates into flakes. Boiling makes fish tough and cloudy; a tremble keeps it pearly and sweet.
• Pan-frying in butter. Dry the fillets thoroughly, season them, and lay them skin-side down in a hot pan with a little oil. Press for the first twenty seconds so the skin stays flat. Cook for four to five minutes without moving them, add a generous knob of butter and a sprig of dill for the final minute, then baste and turn for barely a minute more.
• Quick curing. Mix two parts fine salt to one part caster sugar, add chopped dill and cracked pepper, and pack it around a salmon fillet. Weight it, refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours, then rinse and slice thinly. Mackerel fillets need only twenty minutes in the same mixture before a quick rinse.

Matching Fish To Method

As a rough guide, lean white fish takes to poaching, oily fish to the pan, and anything delicate to the cure.

• Cod and haddock: poach, then dress with browned butter, dill and lemon. Also excellent baked at 180°C for twelve to fifteen minutes.
• Salmon and trout: cure, or pan-fry skin-side down and finish with a mustard and dill sauce.
• Mackerel and herring: the oily, assertive end of the range. Pan-fry mackerel briefly, or cure herring and serve it on rye with raw onion and capers.
• Mussels: a centimetre of white wine or cider in a hot pan, a lid, four minutes, then butter, dill and black pepper.
• Langoustines and prawns: less is more. Split langoustines, brush with butter, and grill for two minutes a side until the shells turn pink.

A Plate To Start With

The open sandwich, or smørrebrød, is the friendliest way into this style of eating. Butter a slice of dense rye bread, lay on cured salmon or a few peeled prawns, add a spoonful of mustard and dill sauce, and finish with dill, lemon zest and cracked pepper. Eat it with a knife and fork, as the Danes do, and keep the topping to a single layer so the bread stays crisp.

Alongside it, the classic Nordic side: small waxy potatoes boiled in salted water, drained, and tossed while hot with butter, chopped dill and a little lemon juice. They work under poached cod, next to pan-fried mackerel, or on their own with a spoonful of cured fish on top.

Buying, Storing And A Few Quiet Rules

Start with the fishmonger rather than the supermarket chiller, and ask what came in that morning. A whole fish should have bright, domed eyes, red gills and flesh that springs back when pressed. It should smell of the sea and nothing else; ammonia is a warning sign. If you buy fillets, ask for pin bones to be removed.

At home, keep fish cold and dry. Put it on a plate over a bowl of ice, cover loosely, and use it within a day. Frozen-at-sea fish is often in better condition than tired "fresh" fish, so do not overlook it. Cook shellfish the day you buy it, and discard any mussels that stay open after a sharp tap.

Finally, resist the urge to add more. Warm plates, sharp knives, good bread and a little patience at the pan will do more for your cooking than any extra ingredient. That, more than anything, is the Nordic lesson.