Swedish Spice Mixes

Faithful Reader, do you recall that, back in March, Hillary and I bought some Swedish spice mixes at a Scandinavian store in Bismarck, ND?  Since then they've been waiting patiently in our pantry, and I decided to make use of them for tonight's Scandinavian Saturday supper.  Suzanna was my helper this week.  Behold the spread that we created:

Drool and then read on for details.

This meal started yesterday, actually, when I used the gravad lax kryddor ["marinated salmon spices"] packet to start curing some raw salmon.  It was a mix of socker ["sugar"], salt, vitpeppar ["white pepper"], and dill that I rubbed all over the salmon fillets before putting them in the fridge overnight.  I was supposed to slice the cured salmon thinly and serve it uncooked, but I did cook it on the stove top just to be on the safe side.  Then I used the hovmästarsås kryddmix ["mustard sauce spice mix"] to make a sauce to spoon over the salmon.  The mix included socker, salt, vitpeppar, dill, and senapspulver ["pulverized mustard"].  If tyou imagine the plate as a clock face, the salmon and mustard is at 9:00.  Super-salty but delicious.

At about 12:00 on the plate/clock are meatballs.  I used the mammas köttbullar kryddmix ["Mama's meatball spice"] to turn a combination of ground beef and ground pork into three dozen little meatballs.  The packet says the ingredients were lökpulver ["pulverized onion"], potatisstärkelse ["potato starch"], salt, jästextrakt ["yeast extract"], potatisflingor ["potato flakes"], lök ["onion"], sojamjöl ["soy flour"], vitpeppar, maltodextrin, kryddpeppar ["allspice"], and svartpeppar ["black pepper"].  I sliced up pickled beets and used toothpicks to top eat meatball with a beet slice before serving.  Because they were so small yet so tasty, I ate several more of the meatballs than I really ought to have.

At about 2:00 on the plate/clock are hashbrowns that Suzanna made because we felt that our protein-heavy meal (thanks to the spice packets) needed some balance.  For the same reason, I made the pickled cucumbers, too, that are in the bowl near 11:00.  At 4:00 are shrimp with cocktail sauce; I had bought the shrimp for a Thanksgiving appetizer, but we didn't take them out for that meal.  And at 6:00/7:00 is flatbread with two kinds of cheese: Norwegian gjetost ["goat cheese"] and Danish Havarti mixed with dill.

Susan and I enjoyed little glasses of this homemade schnapps.  Yesterday I used the packet of snapskrydda skåne ["Skåne schnapps spice"] to turn vodka into Swedish schnapps.  I let a mixture of kummin ["caraway"], anis ["anise"], and fänkål ["fennel"] seeds steep in the vodka overnight and then chilled it so that it would be icy by mealtime.  Uff-da!  A very little goes a very long way!  Tasty enough but with the effect of having consumed gasoline.

For dessert we thawed the peach kuchen that Abigail made in October (remember?) and served a slice to everyone.  So tasty!  The whole meal, in fact, was very good, although I don't think that it was intended that one would make all the spice packet items and serve them all at the same meal.  Oh well, it worked out just fine.  (But would anyone like to share our knock-you-on-your-butt schnapps?!)