Shop: Scandinavian cuisine in Brussels

We have all heard about the healthy benefits of Mediterranean cuisine. However, our friends in the north have been gaining more and more attention in the last years, and Nordic cuisine is on an upswing not only in Europe, but on other continents as well. Even New York has celebrated the delicious tastes of Northern Europe!!

The Nordic countries, in general, are known for their clean and vast nature, and for the people living in a symbiosis with nature rather than exploiting it. No wonder that the Nordic countries, in this case Denmark, has held the title of the world's best restaurant (Noma) for several years - celebrating just that, clean food from the nature to your plate (albeit with the twist of some really professional gastronomical hands doing their magic in the kitchen).  Apart from the usual domesticated stuff, Nordic cuisine will offer wild game, fish, mushroom, berries, and wild herbs. Many people like to take a walk in the forest using the so called "allemansrätt" (freedom to roam) collecting food. Spring is the best time for collecting wild plants, and foraging is becoming increasingly popular thanks to chefs such as, for example, Sami Tallberg, who reaches out both to normal "people on the street" and to the culinary expert circles worldwide. When summer proceeds, more and more mushroom start to appear. There are no signs forbidding you to pick mushroom "for biodiversity reasons" or what have you - that would just cause riots (or laughter) up there! So people take their mushroom baskets and spend the day wandering in the forests, picking chanterelles, porcini, russulas, etc etc. Knowing which mushroom are edible and which are poisonous is something most people grow up learning! The same goes for berries, with especially blueberries and lingon berries filling the baskets and ending up being eaten as such or added to porridge, cakes, cookies, or why not being made into marmalade - or even spirits. Only your imagination is the limit! And when it comes to animals, there are a lot of people who have hunting licenses or take their fishing hobbies seriously, so there will be an abundance of wild meat or fish on the plates.

Although we still have to wait for truly Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish or Icelandic restaurants, it is already possible to indulge in Scandinavian delicacies right here in Belgium. There are a few places in Brussels where you can get products from the north.

First, let me introduce the Scanshop! There is one in Brussels next to Place Jourdan and one in Waterloo. From the Scanshop you can find products from all the five Nordic countries. You will find quite a wide variety of Nordic delicacies considering the small size of the shop at Jourdan! Especially noteworthy are the delicious - and healthy - rye breads available! I really would not like to sound like a commercial or put preference of one over another, as taste is always personal, but if you only pick up one thing from the rye bread shelf, then pick the Garlic Rye Crisps from the Finnish company Linkosuo. These are heavenly! You can eat them as such or you can serve them with cheese, pesto, mayonnaise, or whatever you find delicious! Apart from rye bread, there are lots of other products as well, not to forget Nordic sweets and chocolates. So, if you thought only Belgians were good at making chocolate - think again! Swedish Marabou and Finnish Fazer have lots of goodies to offer! In addition to food products, Scanshop also sells Scandinavian design, books and magazines. So to serve up your Nordic dinner, why not add something Nordic authentic to the setting? Scandinavian design is typically very simple and clean. No extra fuzz or mixing with crazy colours, but clean and simple lines with clear and distinctive colours. Whatever you choose, it will highlight the space without creating a fight with anything already there!

Second, there is a Scandinavian-Irish shop close to Schuman that also comes with a nice variety of goodies from the north. It is called Gourmet food and gifts and does unfortunately seem to lack a webpage. However, don't let that scare you away! You will find Nordic delicacies here as well! This shop does not have that many products from Finland or Iceland, though, so for that you may still be better off at the Scanshop. However, they have a slightly bigger section for frozen products, so if you are out of luck at the Scanshop, you may find yourself lucky here.

Should you be disappointed by the lack of Finnish products in the Gourmet food and gift shop, you can always head for the Finnish sailor's church and their store to find some goodies.

Hopefully this blog inspired you to give Nordic cuisine a try! If you want to start off easy, go to the store and ask for "gravad lax  or gravlax" and rye bread and make a small starter of that, then ask for some reindeer fillet and make a main course of that (e.g. with root vegetables), and why not ask for some Nordic berries that you can utilise in a dessert - and voila, you will have yourself a five star dinner!! There are several cookbooks available in English to help you out as well, just wander off to Amazon...