Swedish anchovy dish is a smorgasbord must
WAYLAND -- No proper smorgasbord would be complete without cured salmon gravlax, many kinds of herring, and other fresh, pickled, or smoked fish. ''Swedish people eat a lot of fish," says Ann-Kristin ''Anki" Cowen.
Matching their love of fish is the Swedes' fondness for potatoes. The two are the main ingredients in Janssons frestelse, or Jansson's temptation. In this case, the fish is anchovies -- and lots of them.
Cowen, 44, gets her fill of Jansson's temptation when she returns to her native Sweden, but she also makes it in her home in Wayland. Anki Hakansson grew up in a village near Malmo, in the south of Sweden; her father and two brothers are vegetable farmers. She came to the United States in 1980 when she was 19 to work as a summer camp counselor in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and taught the thing she knew best: farming. A fellow counselor, Jon Cowen, taught creative writing. The two married five years later in a historic windmill in southern Sweden. Today, Anki runs East Coast EdVentures, which offers tour groups to foreign students, and is also a part-time human resources consultant; Jon is a litigation attorney in Boston.
Their cultures could not have been more different, but there are a lot of similarities between her husband's family's Jewish table and her own family's Swedish buffets. He was raised on smoked salmon, herring in sour cream, stuffed cabbage, brown breads, and pot roast. Anki Cowen knew those dishes, but bagels were a novelty, and American ice cream was such a treat (and completely different from the frozen treat she occasionally ate at home) that she gained more than 10 pounds her first summer in this country.
That might make you think that Jansson's temptation is a slimming dish -- which it is not. The casserole of matchstick-cut potatoes cooked with onions, anchovies, and abundant heavy cream makes a rich, salty, satisfying dish. It appears on all celebration tables, Cowen says. Remembering parties at home that continued well into the night, Cowen says the creamy potato dish was particularly welcome near the wee hours. ''We often eat Jansson's temptation for a midnight snack," she says. Traditionally, the dish was served just before a party ended to nourish guests with something warm and strong before they ventured out into the cold.
When Cowen returns to her village once or twice a year, there are lots of lavish smorgasbords to eat her way through. Besides the popular fish dishes, the buffets usually include meatballs, hard cheeses, dark breads, pickled red cabbage, boiled potatoes, sliced meats, and hard-cooked eggs.
Swedish children learn that there were several people after whom the dish might have been named. One account is that the 19th-century Swedish religious zealot Erik Janson was sorely tempted -- against his better judgment -- by the crusty dish. Other explanations credit it to a 1920s Swedish film of the same title. It also might have been named for Swedish opera singer Pelle Janzon.
In her Wayland kitchen, Cowen cooks a lot of Swedish specialties for Daniel, 15; Lina, 13; and Alexander, 10. None are big fish eaters, and aren't tempted by the Jansson dish. So their mother makes two versions: one without the anchovies.
