Scandinavian

This is a special bread/cake that Danes like to make for the holiday season. It’s a quick version of flaky Danish pastry.

This is a favorite bread, especially in the Midwest, where many people have Scandinavian roots.

The defining aspect of Swedish pancakes is their superthin size. Make these small for a sweet Sunday morning treat. Berries appear often in Swedish food, both fresh, as atop these pancakes, and in sauces for savory dishes.

Legend has it that on December 13, 1764, a gentleman in Sweden was roused in the middle of the night by a beautiful voice. He saw a young woman in white moving through his room singing. She had wings and was carrying a candle. That was Lucia the Saint. She brought light, food, and wine as comfort on what was, in the Gregorian calendar, the longest night of the year. We celebrate Saint Lucia on December 13. Children will walk with lit candles singing the beautiful Lucia carol and bringing the Lucia bread.

Some dishes are best when they are as plain and simple as possible. Whole fish fried in butter and served with lemon and parsley potatoes: That is simple and tasty!

The gjetost or brown goat cheese in this recipe is not made from milk but from whey that is cooked until caramelized. It is also known as fudge cheese, and a version called Ski Queen can be found in many American markets. Lars Tyssebotn's brown goat cheese makes this dish one of my favorites.

Like Jell-O, but all grown up, these tart little puddings have a bracing fruitiness that is just what's needed after a sumptuous holiday spread. The scarlet juices of pomegranates, lingonberries, and raspberries are bound into a very soft gelée.

This classic goes best with a tart berry sauce.

The soft, slightly sweet bread called pulla is made with plenty of butter, which results in tender pieces that can be pulled apart, bite by bite.

Scandinavians simply adore black licorice; the selection available in their grocery stores rivals that of chocolate bars in ours. But you don't have to be crazy about it to enjoy this pudding, which is wonderfully smooth and tantalizingly tinged with molasses and anise. We found that Panda brand black licorice works best in this particular recipe.

This is not a sweet dish—don't be fooled by the first step for the sauce, making a caramel. Browning the sugar brings out savory and bitter notes that balance out the silky, earthy potatoes in an irresistible way. Though this dish is actually a Danish Christmas classic, we think these gorgeous potatoes should be cooked a lot more often than just once a year.

Be sure to sample "forest greens" if you find them on a menu in Copenhagen—this term is not just a flight of fancy. The greens on offer there are pristine wild lettuces, herbs, and grasses growing in the mountains and on the forest floor. Since most of us don't have the opportunity to forage forest greens, we made this salad with a tangle of microgreens, which work nicely. The vinaigrette nods to the Scandinavian love for curry, but it truly plays up the flavors of the pork and potatoes as well, so feel free to drizzle it all over the plate.

Pork all over Denmark is hauntingly tender. Ruggiero was particularly taken with the pork belly she tasted at the restaurant Gammel Mønt—crisp, but succulent and rich. To re-create these qualities, Ruggiero devised a version that requires minimal effort but promises stunning results: Pork shoulder is braised first, until it's super tender, and then flash-seared for a golden crust. The aroma alone will convince you that this unorthodox technique is entirely worthwhile.

Though Denmark travel guides characterize smørrebrød as an open-face sandwich, food editors Melissa Roberts and Maggie Ruggiero found that this national favorite is somewhere between that and an oversize canapé, with a few carefully chosen ingredients arranged generously on top (often to the point where the bread is no longer even visible). Here, whittled down to bite-size, it's an elegant hors d'oeuvre that retains the Danish spirit; caraway butter complements the classic rye base, and lightly fried beets and sweet onion are an alluring counterpoint to the smoked salmon.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Marcus Samuelsson's book, Aquavit : And the New Scandinavian Cuisine Salads like this one are part of the Swedish smorgasbord enjoyed on special occasions such as New Year's. Called skagen in Swedish, this salad is named for a Danish fishing village across the river from Sweden. It's a very traditional dish that appears on every smorgasbord table in the country. Here is our version, which includes smoked salmon, shrimp, and crabmeat. It makes a great lunch served with crusty French bread or whole-grain crispbread.

Lefse Enjoyed year-round, these soft flatbreads are especially common during holidays. For many Norwegians, and members of Norwegian communities such as those in the Midwestern United States, making lefse symbolizes the start of the Christmas season. They can be either sweet or savory: On the Christmas Eve buffet, they often accompany lutefisk (preserved cod) and pork ribs, but as a snack, they're popular rolled up, spread with butter, and sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar. Lefse are traditionally made using special grooved rolling pins; large, superheated griddles; and long wooden spatulas. However, we found that a regular rolling pin, a 10-inch cast iron skillet, a pastry bench scraper, and a thin metal spatula worked just fine. Cooking the potatoes thoroughly and using a ricer or food mill will ensure that there will be no lumps in the potato dough.

Traditional Scandinavian fare, this rich stew is comfort food at its best — think chicken potpie without the crust. Boiled potatoes are the perfect starch to balance the sweet carrots and parsnips.

Gael Greene shared these recipes with Epicurious from her new book, Insatiable. To learn more about Greene, read our Q&A. This meat loaf started life as a meatball recipe in the Times.

If you have a nice sharp chef's knife, this is a breeze. (Or if you don't, you should buy a sharpening stone, and you'll never have blunt knives again.) The idea for this recipe came about when we were catering a HUGE job on a TINY budget. They wanted tuna tartare, but I knew it would be expensive, and it's best eaten soon after it's made or it starts to get all gummy. Gravlax, on the other hand, needs at least a couple of days to cure, so I decided to use diced salmon instead of tuna, for economy, and to marinate it with our gravlax spice mix a day before the event, freeing up the chefs for other last-minute things. In my test run, I added orange zest, thinking, isn't orange good with salmon? Normally you would put something like this on a cucumber slice and that would be fine, but the juniper in the marinade suggested potato, so we served it on a slice of crisp potato, and it was ravishing in the extreme. The potatoes can be made ahead of time too, as long as they're cooked until they're completely crisp and stored in an airtight container until you need them. Any potato not cooked all the way through will soften the others; if that happens, pop them all in a 350°F oven for five minutes, or until they've crisped up again. The salmon can be sticky, so use two teaspoons to put it on the potato. I could never remember of which there was more in the gravlax cure, sugar or salt (since in the basic gravlax recipe one is three tablespoons and one is four). So after years of irritably looking up such a short recipe, I decided to THINK for a second and realized salt has four letters so salt is the four tablespoons. Welcome to my world.

Gravlaks — fish cured with salt, sugar, and dill — is usually made with salmon, but we like the milder flavor of arctic char for this particular dish. Keep in mind before starting to cure your fish that you will need to turn it every 12 hours for a total of 36 hours.

(Hot Scandanavian Christmas Punch)