Hunka Hunka Burning Love

Howdy. Today we are going to talk about another selection from the freezer aisle at your local Danish grocer. With my limited Danish skills I knew I was getting some potatoes, probably mashed, with a meat topping of some sort. Back home, I took the time to look at the easy-to-translate ingredients and found I was about to cook up some bacon and fried onion covered mashed potatoes. You may remember the same fried onions cropped up on my less-than-delicious Cowboy Toast.

Easy as pie, just prick the plastic film and bake for 25 minutes. The result wasn't bad -- mostly very creamy potatoes but all in all it had good flavor.



With a bit more work on the Google Translate tool, I found that "brændende kærlighed" literally translates to "Burning Love" and is a classic Danish dish. That led to finding a recipe for the dish at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the website for the Danish Consulate in New York. The website has a good starter course in Danish food. Burning Love is not a difficult dish:

Burning Love - Brændende kærlighed
2-2½ lb (1 kg) floury potatoes
1½-2 oz (40-50 g) butter
About ½ pint (3dl) cream
8-10 thick rashers of fat bacon
3 onions
Salt
White pepper
Pinch of nutmeg

Peel and cut up the potatoes. Cook until tender in unsalted water, drain and mash. Whip in the butter gradually, and finally the cream, until the mashed potato is light and airy. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Cut the rashers and onions into small cubes and fry until crisp in a little of the bacon fat. Pile the mashed potatoes into a dish. Scoop out a hollow in the middle, pour in the fat and sprinkle with onion and bacon cubes. Serve with slices of rye bread and pickled beets.

Next time I will skip the frozen variety and make my own heart-clogging version.

“That would be cool if you could eat a good food with a bad food and the good food would cover for the bad food when it got to your stomach. Like you could eat a carrot with an onion ring and they would travel down to your stomach, then they would get there, and the carrot would say, It's cool, he's with me.” -- Mitch Hedburg (one of my favorite Comedians 1968 - 2005)