Fish & Chips. Niçoise salad. Pulpo a la Gallega. Moules Frites. Brandade de Morue. This is a few dishes in which fish and potatoes play the leading role, or, more poetically, in which the land and the sea meet. There are many more examples of course, from Belgian Smeus to Portuguese Bolinhos de Bacalhau and from Peruvian Causa Limeña to Balinese Kari Ikan. But it is not my intention to be exhausting. The list is only intended to situate today’s classic between its peers. And ahead, perhaps also a bit to be able to find that fish and potatoes are simply objectively a super good set.
Janssons Frestelse, because we’re talking about that is a Swedish oven dish of potatoes, onions, fish and cream. ‘Frestelse’ means temptation and the court is said to be named after one Pelle Janzon, a Swedish opera singer from the second half of the nineteenth century known as Gourmand. However, this story is controversial, and I will come back to it for a while. First another misunderstanding must be helped from the world.
The reader who asked me to pay attention to Janssons Frestelse in particular wanted to know exactly which fish he should use. Most recipes prescribe anchovies. But is that correct? Good question that I decide to pass on to fellow cooker and friend Jacques Hermus. If anyone knows it he is. Hermus is the son of a potato farmer and this month published a thick pill full of potato dishes from all over the world, entitled Potato bible. Moreover, he is a fishing expert and has family in Sweden.
There are actually sprats in it, he says. And not the smoked sprats as the Dutch fishmonger sells them, but sprats in sugar, salt and herbs. The confusion of speech was caused by sprats in the Swedish Anchovies. But, he explains, they are really two different fish, because sprats belong to the herring family and anchovies (or in Swedish: Sardeller) not. Okay, and where do I buy those pickled sprats? “Take a look in a Polish supermarket, they often have a can, and sometimes fresh in the cooling compartment.”
Now that I have a connoisseur on the phone, I immediately inform about that name. According to Hermus, it is very unlikely that Jansson’s Frestelse was named after Pelle Janzon. The opera singer died in 1889, the court only came to the table after the Second World War and only became really popular in the 1970s. And that is still. “The recipe that I recorded in my book comes from my Swedish sister -in -law. I also checked with the Stockholm chef Jens Lindner, and he makes him almost exactly like that.”
After we have hung, I rush to the big Polish super around the corner. Immediately at the entrance I run into a cooling compartment with all kinds of pickled fish products and twisted, there you have them. Small filleted sprats in a plastic container: Gewürzte spraying fillets in Öl. Just to be sure, I quickly send a photo to friend Hermus and he answers:
‘Hurrah!’
When I got home I decide to make both my own, for twenty years of recipe for Janssons Frestelse with anchovies, and the sprat version Potato bible. And so in two days a liter of whipped cream went through in my kitchen, I found that they are both different but both delicious and that this potato dish is only tastier of one or two nights.
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