FISHY PUDDING: A CULINARY RANT

While looking for herring on the internet -- as a Dutch-speaker, I naturally experience cravings for what is the world's best seafood, no I'm by no means pregnant -- one thing that caught my eye was fiskepudding. Which is something I had not heard of before, but it turns out to be a Scandinavian fishcake, or congealed fish mash product, made coherent with starch, flavourings, and binders.

It is commonly served with boiled potatoes, carrots, and a severe Lutheran béchamel sauce. It does not resemble Lutefisk.

I like the Vikings, I really do. But their cuisine is a frightening and vast unexplored Siberia. There are no 'fina Skandinaviska Restauranter' in the city of San Francisco.

Actually, there probably are, but I didn't bother checking; I'm really not that interested. Please don't think of searching on my behalf.
Fiskepudding is wirklich nicht mein ding.


Fiskepudding is a tundra version of gefilte fish.


If you want to experiment at home, take a pound of firm-fleshed white fish, one egg, and two tablespoons of cornflour, and pound it together, adding dribbles of water to achieve a stiff but not smooth paste. The protein component should still have some texture. One version has this glop cooked in a water bath for about an hour till firm.
But you can also form it into balls ('fiskeboller') the size of a pigeon's egg, then poach these gently in stock.

Serve with a white sauce, possibly augmented with other materials.

Or have it in a fiskesuppe made with parsely root, celeriac, plenty of fresh chopped vegetables, miscellaneous gleanings from your local fish market, and a dollop of sour cream on top.

Other than the sour cream, it could be Netherlandish.

It actually looks pretty good.


[No offense to the Dutch (notorious herring eaters), but their native cuisine is part of a frigid continuum of blandish foods extending all the way to the Arctic circle, sometimes leavened with frightful offal, and deep-fried objects. It isn't until you get to North Brabant and Limburg that (considerable) refinement is noticeable, and once you go south of Brussels, French pretensions have taken over completely.]


There are a few cuisines that do seafood well. Cantonese, Dutch-Belgian, and Filipino, to name most of them. But white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American is not one such. Folks from the interior of North America, even of Scandinavian descent, should not be allowed anywhere near a fish that someone else is supposed to eat. To make my point: lutefisk, tuna in a can, fast-food breaded shrimp with mayo, and fried fish a la Anglaise.
All fondly favoured by the stinky Protestant tribals in the Midwest.
There is nothing worse that average fish and chips, by the way.

Why does it take a Dutch-speaker to tell you that?

And why is there no green herring here?

Cowboys, damned cowboys.

Fiskepudding.



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