Is Nordic cuisine the new “hot” trend?

Local, healthy ingredients are a world-wide craze. But what do you do when your growing season is only two-months long? This is one of the challenges that modern Nordic chefs face as they try to expand beyond “Ikea food” (although Ikea’s meatballs are pretty darn good). Since 2004, when a group of cooks published “The Nordic Manifesto,” emphasizing local and healthy products, Nordic cooks are, as NPR states,  “opening the windows and looking outside for the first time.”

So what ingredients do they find? Seafood, seaweed, lichen, meal worms, and pine needles are all food for experimentation.  The new Arctic pizza is topped with salmon, potatoes, smoked cheese, and cress. Grasshopper garum is considered to be a singular success “like soy sauce with oomph.” So check out this discussion, and if you’re still skeptical, don’t forget that one of America’s most popular chefs, Marcus Samuelsson, was raised in Sweden.  Find his author page here for more info.