How Swede It Is | TIME

Lisa Mclaughlin

October 20, 2003 12:00 AM EDT

Scandinavian food? For many Americans, those words conjure up visions of smorgasbords and Swedish meatballs, with perhaps some sort of odd preserved fish. But interest in cuisine from the land of the midnight sun is growing, and two new cookbooks are setting out to explain the variety and bounty of Scandinavian foods. Kitchen of Light (Artisan, $35) by Norwegian TV cooking-show host Andreas Viestad, already a surprise best seller, has been joined on bookshelves this month by Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine (Houghton Mifflin, $45) by James Beard-award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson.

Born in Ethiopia, Samuelsson was orphaned at age 3 by a tuberculosis epidemic in his homeland. He and his elder sister were adopted by a Swedish couple and grew up in the port city of Gothenburg. Samuelsson began cooking when he was about 6 at the side of his Swedish grandmother, Helga Jonsson. “I learned the most about food from my grandmother,” he says. “Her world completely revolved around food.” After a stint at culinary school, followed by work in kitchens throughout Europe, Samuelsson became executive chef at New York City’s sleek Aquavit in 1995 when he was only 24; he has lived in New York ever since, with annual visits to both Sweden and Ethiopia. His recipes reflect his global view, with traditional Swedish dishes–such as gravlax with mustard sauce, prune-stuffed pork roast and, yes, Swedish meatballs–interspersed with his own creations like pickled herring sushi style that reflect his fascination with Japanese food, and coffee-roasted duck breasts, inspired by Ethiopia. His roots are Swedish, he says, but “I am an American now … I live here, I pay taxes. But as a cook, I am sensitive to other cultures. There are no barriers in cooking. It’s not about where this food comes from–it’s about how can we make this dish hot.” He’ll cross more international barriers this fall as he opens his second New York City restaurant, the Japanese-American Riingo.

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