A Scandinavian TV Show Makes Eating Trees Look Cool
Get ready for a new taste of Nordic cuisine filled with some questionable choices
As someone whose only connection to Scandinavian culture is through her husband and her adopted married name, I know next to nothing about Swedish food (except for IKEA, of course) and even less about Norwegian food. I knew about lefse, the Norwegian flatbread made with potatoes, flour and milk that looks very much like a thin tortilla. I also knew about lutefisk, that clear, glossy dried fish cured in lye, which sounds as delectable as eating grass treated with chemicals, something that unfortunately, my dog does a lot of. (She never learns). And of course, I knew vaguely that Norway is surrounded by water, thanks to this thing called a map, that it’s really beautiful and somehow associated with the Vikings.
But I digress.
I admit, my lack of knowledge was quickly filled when I discovered a food show called New Scandinavian Cooking, available on local public television stations—in my hometown, it’s called PBS/Oregon Public Broadcasting. New Scandinavian Cooking is perhaps one of the most unique food shows I’ve ever watched, mainly because it promotes, or rather, suggests that eating rocks, drinking tree sap and harvesting juniper berries are cool activities. I kid you not. All of this is made possible by the show’s longtime host, Andreas Viestad.
In an episode titled “The Taste of Trees,” we see Viestad extolling some virtues about birch trees (“The birch tree is the most common tree in the Nordic countries,” he says—a fact that I had to Google because I did not know myself) while standing next to one. Seconds later, he takes a plastic bottle and “harvests” the tree sap and then…get ready for this…drinks the sap, right there on camera! I could not figure out whether or not he enjoyed drinking the tree sap, for his face showed little emotion. If he didn’t, I hope they paid him well enough to perform that experiment.
Viestad is serious about Norwegian cooking. Born in Oslo, he’s made his way around the world, having lived and worked in several African countries, including Zimbabwe, Zanzibar, and South Africa, where he supposedly keeps a home so he and his family can “escape the cold, Scandinavian winter.”
I don’t blame him. Norway looks cold, and it is cold. Temperatures in Oslo, for example, hovers in the low 30s during the daytime and 20s at nighttime. Go further north and you’ll find that temperatures are negative with lots and lots of snow. All of this is evident in many of New Scandinavian Cooking’s episodes, including one called “Arctic Cuisine With a Russian Twist” where Viestad rides on a snowmobile and later, makes a Russian borscht next to a cruise ship frozen in ice.
As if that’s not strange enough, he also talks about juniper berries.
Yes, juniper berries make a lot of appearances on the show. I’ve never seen juniper berries in real life and would never be able to tell what it looks like (and what it can be used for) if it weren’t for Viestad. Thanks to him, I learned that these little green branches can be used to flavor gin, that Norwegians like to use it to cook game, and it can also be included in a variety of sweet dishes.
And while we’re on the subject of trees and sweet dishes, why not spruce up your cheesecake with some pine needles? Be sure to do it in the snow, just like Viestad did. Don’t have any? Substitute with rosemary instead.
Apparently, Viestad is a well-known culinary figure in Norway. He has his own barbecue restaurant in Oslo called St. Lars, named after St. Lawrence, a third century deacon from Rome who was supposedly grilled and later declared as the patron saint of comedy for his famous last line, “I am done, turn me over and have a bite.”
Aside from hosting New Scandinavian Cooking for 16 years, Viestad also wrote a column for the Washington Post called The Gastronomer, in which he divulges the culinary delights of Scandinavian cooking and culture, combining elements of food science with home cooking. Although he’s no longer writing the column, the evidence remains. And so, I had to find out for myself what else this guy can do.
I dug through the archives and found a treasure trove of recipes and articles, including salmon roe and raw quail eggs to a simple gravlax. I particularly enjoyed this article on the science (and art) of creating a simple meal for a party at home using a technique-driven approach from several of his beloved cookbooks, and this one about a sauce he loved called Sauce Kientzheim, one with “many of the same properties as hollandaise and bearnaise, but with a thicker, firmer consistency and a rich flavor, with hints of caramel.”
At any rate, whether you spend an hour perusing The Gastronomer archives or watching episodes of New Scandinavian Cooking, you’re sure to learn something new about Norwegian (and Swedish!) food like I did. After watching the first episode, in which a young-ish, preppy Norwegian chef named Ida Gran-Jansen visits some fishermen and makes fish soup on a boat, I was hooked.
Watching the show is like getting a history and cultural lesson at the same time, one that does not highly reference the Vikings. The Norwegians, as it seemed, are over that period of their history. They are now average, simple folks who enjoy a good quality catch as much as the next person, who has a strong economy and solid social infrastructure that other countries (like the U.S., for example) could emulate.
Turns out, the secret to a good food TV show is to do things the unconventional way. Just about every New Scandinavian Cooking’s episodes were filmed outside. Many times, the hosts performed their culinary duties out in the wild, mostly in freezing cold temperatures. You could see their teeth chattering; their eyes tell you how much they’d rather be inside cooking instead of standing behind an erected table with cold, arctic winds blasting in their faces as they attempt to chop up dill and parsley and place them into a pot.
Still, these shots allowed me, the viewer, to see the beauty of Norway and other Scandinavian countries. And at the end of every episode, there’s always a meal being enjoyed by a small group of people, the host included. This provides a nice, intimate ending to close out some rather unique outdoor cooking experiments.
Now, that's what I call a complete culinary experience.
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Sounds awesome. Will check it out.
Just got around to reading this as we were traveling and my Substack reading has been sporadic. Such a fun read! I will have to check out this program. Your discussion made me hungry--perhaps not for lutefisk or salmon roe, but gravlax and cheesecake covered in cloudberries! I doubt I can find any reindeer meat around here, but yes to Swedish meatballs! Thanks for a great post, Hoang!