Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen.
Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!) So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!
7 December 2015
December is one of those long, dark Danish months where you just want to stay indoors and hibernate. The kids go to school on their bikes in the dark. And come home from school on their bikes in the dark…
It’s also the month where the Danes get all homely, put on their mob caps and suddenly start baking, salting, pickling and smoking anything they can get their hands on. I’ve succombed to the practice myself – I always bake småkager (cookies) and spend an afternoon or two with the kids making konfekt (homemade sweets) – and have in years past made my own snaps and even made my very own rullepølse (‘rolled pork’) a couple of years running. Very good it was too. And very smug I was too! 😉
Last year I threw caution to the wind and set about marinating my own sild (herring). Though, to be honest, it was the cheat’s version as I found this easy peasy DIY herring tin in a Swedish supermarket. But it was home-marinated by my hands, nonetheless. And very good it tasted too! 🙂
All I had to do was mix up a cold brine of sugar, vinegar and water. Then open the tin, rinse the herrings and cut them into bite size pieces…
Finely sliced a red onion and crushed about 10 black peppercorns.
Layered the herring, onions peppercorns in a container (I have a dinky one from Tupperware that also has a draining function for when you take it to the table…) and poured over the brine.
Lid on, into the fridge for 24 hours and Bob’s your uncle! 
Which also gave me time to get rid of the pungent herring smell from my hands… 
Marinated herring like this is always served on ryebread and topped, the traditional way, with æggesalat (a very lightly curried Danish egg mayonnaise). And washed down with a beer and sometimes also a snaps… Velbekomme!
See you tomorrow!
Diane