I am married to a Dane.
This may sound like part of an unused verse from a Rogers & Hammerstein musical, but it happens to be the truth. My full surname takes twelve minutes to say and I can't pronounce most of it. I can't pronounce many Danish words. In fact, the only word I can say is 'tak', which means 'thank you' and I have been saying it a lot recently because we have just been on a quick trip to Copenhagen.
If you haven't been, I urge you to make plans to visit. It is the most glorious place. Indeed, if it weren't for the 52% basic tax rate and the thought of langlaufing to the shops in winter, I could quite happily move there tomorrow.
We took the ferry from Harwich to Esbjerg, in itself a jolly excursion since it involved overnighting in a cabin with hilarious bunk beds and by the time we arrived at the restaurant for a Danish Cold Table Buffet we were alternately giggling insanely and rubbing various bruised bits occasioned by trying out the sleeping arrangements. "No, no, you have the top bunk, darling, I insist. And please don't ever call me that again."
A Danish Cold Table is quite outstanding. It runs along almost the entire length of an averagely huge ferry and – Danes being naturally hospitable – holds enough food to feed the whole of Europe twice over with spare enough to cope with unexpected arrivals, although how this might be achieved in the middle of the North Sea is up for conjecture...
There is a fish side, a meat side and a separate hot service. Cruise sedately down the fish side and there is smoked salmon, Gravad Lax, any amount of crustaceans, some with shells and some without, soft pressed salmon roe in attractive knicker pink and a bewildering array of assorted salads, some containing fish and some not, along with various accompaniments such as olives, capers and so forth. There may also have been approximately 30 different varieties of herring as well, but I had to give up counting since I wanted nothing more than to return to our table and interrogate something I had never seen before – pickled slices of marrow – which was utterly delicious and rather like dill cucumbers with attitude.
Sally forth along the meat department and you will find rare roast beef served with grated horseradish, luscious slabs of ham, generous slices of paté, crispy bacon, cubes of glossy meat jelly, more and different salads and some prawns, just in case you shouldn't have been down the fish side yet and require an intermediate piscine experience.
Away from the main buffet spread was a hot counter offering Frikadelle and so forth and a separate table
loaded with at least nine varieties of interesting breads and rolls.
The trick with a Danish Cold Table is to attack it slowly and thoughtfully, putting a small amount of one or two things on the plate and digesting each before returning for a re-fill. This process, if tackled in the right way, can take two hours and leave one feeling pleasantly full. I much prefer this to the English way with a buffet, which appears to involve loading one's plate with as much as is humanly possible, eating it with the crazed terror of someone who thinks everything might run out in three minutes and then lolling around helplessly, looking like Mr Creosote, burping wildly and feeling sick.
Open-face sandwiches are big in Denmark. Henrik returned to our table with a slice of rye bread on which he proceeded to place some paté, topped with a couple of slices of salt beef and a cube of darkly glistening meat jelly. This is a traditional and much-loved combination and is charmingly called The Vet's Midnight Snack.
Once in Denmark, we drove to Copenhagen and although a lengthy trip, is worth the experience if only for crossing a bridge that is so long you can't see the end of it. It is quite new and is now used in place of the ferry that used to be employed for crossing from one island to the other, which trip used to take an hour. I like to think that a chef who has two hours' more time in his day as a result of this exceptional feat will soon develop The Engineer's Midday Snack as a tribute.
The Tivoli is the central attraction of Copenhagen for locals and visitors alike. The size of a city block, it is in essence a pleasure garden of such style and elegance and containing so many attractions that it impossible to take it all in at once. There are concert halls and open air theatres, boating lakes, delightful fairground attractions with all the charm of childhood but none of the accompanying tawdriness that becomes apparent in adulthood,
there are shops selling handmade Christmas tree decorations which, oddly, doesn't seem out of place in late August, there is a kiosk inside which a smiling lady hand-rolls cigars with consummate skill and there are bars and restaurants and cafés and more bars and more restaurants and a few take-away counters and some more restaurants, for Tivoli is the undisputed gastronomic centre of the city.
We strolled through the Tivoli, Henrik reminiscing about previous visits, I (for once) completely silent, utterly captivated by everything. Even the weather had conspired with the Danish Tourist Authority by providing an evening of balmy warmth, hugely conducive to finding an outside bar at which to sip a cold beer whilst watching the dusk settle and the lights come on everywhere in muted rainbow hues.
Strengthened by our rest, we ambled towards the restaurants. Luckily, all Danes speak English and menus are mostly printed in both languages. The late-lamented Jennifer Paterson must have been a Dane Manqué, since she and they were at one in their abundant and voluptuous use of cream and eggs and general derision of portion control. Neither squeamish nor overly sentimental as a society, there isn't a restaurant that doesn't offer several dishes containing either paté de foie gras or veal and - in more than one case – both together. Truffles are very popular as well and cost a great deal less than they do over here. The only thing we didn't find on the menus was pork in any form and we decided it must be because it's cooked so much at home that people opt for something
else when they're out. The fish is so ludicrously fresh you can almost see it flapping to the side of the plate to make way for the vegetables.
In the end, however, we left the Tivoli and found ourselves outside The Copenhagen Corner not, admittedly, the most romantically-named of restaurants, but one with an international reputation and deservedly so. The food was exceptional and the thing that impressed itself on us both so vividly was the service. Professional and friendly, you could quite see how people might want to consider a career as a waiter, working for an organization that obviously valued both its staff and its clientele, each appreciating the other in a proper manner. I particularly appreciated my pudding, a flat disc of the lightest and crispiest puff pastry I've ever had, surmounted by oozing marzipan and apricot pureé and topped with slivers of tart apple and served with home-made ice cream of the old-fashioned variety, not made in a machine and slightly gritty.
The next evening, we decided to have a snack instead of a full dinner and made our way to a Tulip Wagon – a national institution selling a variety of hotdogs in various forms. Ours came with remoulade, tomato ketchup and mustard, sprinkled with both crispy and raw onions and made to be eaten standing up. After some strolling through the elegant boulevards, still busy at ten o'clock at night, we stopped off for a coffee and Danish pastry at yet another of the seemingly endless pavement cafés that appear between every other shop.
I have returned home with some reluctance, I can tell you, but with a CD ROM of "Laer Dansk" that hopefully will teach me to say more than 'tak'. I wish to sound less like a Gatling gun and more like the appreciative and regular visitor I hope to become.
