Okay, so the title is a clever play on words - but what exactly is the book all about?
Simon Bajada is both a chef and a photographer (and a food stylist - multitalented man, isn't he!) so it's a clever title he's given his new book. It's both literally the light of the Nordic countries, which lends such a beautiful mood to the scenery captured in these pages, and a style of eating. As he writes in the book's introduction, it's "a name I have given to a particular style of eating - one that combines elements of New Nordic cuisine, classic Scandinavian, raw food and vegetable-focussed eating to create a better balanced diet that satisfies our desire to eat more healthily, more interestingly and more deliciously".
That sounds dangerously worthy. Good thing, then, that the "delicious" bit is just as important as everything else.
If Bajada's description makes you expect a book full of either high-end Nordic modernism, or page after page of food that's just a bit too worthy, here's the good news: this is the sort of food you'll want to cook, and eat. There are comfort foods - right now, in an Australian winter, the rhubarb braised pork with roasted parsnips sounds looks just the ticket; the white chocolate, blackberry and rosemary mud slice (Bajada tells us it tastes even better the next day) looks wickedly good.
So Nordic food is not only tasty but healthy?
Bajada says that since he moved from Australia to Sweden with his family, "Nordic cuisine - with its use of seafood, grains, berries, seasonal vegetables and lean wild meats - has revealed itself to be a very healthy diet... since moving to Sweden, my family has felt the positive effects of a more diverse, less meat-heavy diet". He hasn't forsaken meat - "Don't get me wrong, I still love to bite into a steak, it's the 'how often that's changed". So in the book, he's gathered together recipes that are mostly quick to make and use lots of those grains, seafood and vegetables. He says he hopes to inspire all of us to think a little differently about how we cook and eat.
What's in the book, then?
Nordic Light kicks off with a chapter on Nordic brunch - kinda breakfast, kinda mid-morning dishes, including cherry spelt cakes with licorice sugar - and works through snacks, lunches, fika food (fika is the idea of taking a break over a warm drink, with something sweet to eat; his options are slightly lighter sweet and savoury options for snacking on a coffee break), bowl food, food to share and recipes to set yourself up by cooking on the weekend for the week ahead - stock, chutneys, home-made fresh cheese. Some of the recipes use Nordic products that might not be easy to get your hands on, but he includes a list of replacement ideas (golden raisins instead of dried white mulberries, or cranberry jam instead of lingonberry jam).
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Source: Hardie Grant Books
Source: Hardie Grant Books
Source: Hardie Grant Books
Source: Hardie Grant Books
Source: Hardie Grant Books
