Fresh fish, foraging and flæskesteg: TV's Valentine Warner falls for Scandi food

Thanks to a certain grim-faced detective, Scandinavia has never been so cool. And yet, says chef Valentine Warner, we still haven't learned to appreciate the region's food.
It doesn't, he explains, begin and end with Copenhagen's much-heralded Noma restaurant, and he's on a mission to prove it - starting with a new TV series, Valentine Warner Eats Scandinavia, due to hit television screens this month.

Television chef Valentine Warner donned his themals for his new show Valentine Warner Eats Scandinavia

Lake of plenty: Valentine visited the Lofoten Islands in Norway

He's certainly not wrong, as anyone who has visited Denmark, Sweden or Norway will attest. From bitter rye bread to flæskesteg (Danish roast pork), wild berries and smoked reindeer, there's more to Scandinavian cooking than pickled fish.
Not that herring doesn't make an appearance. 'I ate a memorable pickled herring with a glass of beer in Nyhavn,' remembers Warner.

'Pickled herring is something people eat a lot,' he adds. 'They tend to be more sweet than our pickled things here and we don't do a lot of pickled herring.

Dried fish anyone? Some of Scandinavia's foodie traditions remain an acquired taste

'It's time we got into herrings,' he adds, with the zeal of a man converted. 'It's a very good thing to have at breakfast, you know.

'Sweet, pickled fish at breakfast with chopped onions and hard-boiled eggs is a breakfast that's so much better than cereal and toast and all that other rubbish that we eat. Ban terrible sugary cereal and get into pickled fish!'
Food aside, it's clear that filming has left Warner with an abiding love of Scandinavia. He waxes lyrical about the open spaces of Sweden and describes Copenhagen as 'one of the greatest cities I've ever been to'.
But perhaps that's not such a surprise when you consider that as a farmer's son, he's a country gent through and through and is never happier than when out in the sticks, fishing or tracking down berries for pudding.
As a result, most of his TV work has revolved around getting outside and finding supper - a philosophy that dovetails neatly with the Scandinavian love of foraging.

Ice, ice baby: Temperatures plummeted to -40 degrees while filming in Sweden during the winter

Tellingly, he raves about Scandinavia's wildernesses and fell head over heels in love with Norway's remote Lofoten Islands and Sweden's even more out-of-the-way Weather Islands.
'There was something very wonderful about the really bare Väderöarna, which we would call the Weather Islands, which are these little blasted rocks out in a sea of clouds which end up in all the creases where the wind doesn't go,' he remembers, misty-eyed. 'That was a magical place.'
He talks longingly of barbecuing an entire lamb on a remote beach at the end of a Swedish fjord, albeit with 70 fellow chefs for company, and gets increasingly animated as he remembers filming in Sweden's desolate northern wilderness in temperatures that hit a shiver-inducing minus 40, turning the area into 'huge natural freezer'.
'I think there's something quite wonderful about filming in deep, deep snow and the mysteriousness of that kind of living,' he remembers, fondly.
'[The north is] cold and it's not just snowy like Switzerland, it's crusted in ice. Everything turns blue. And I found that really, really magical. People are so jolly there - just out doing their thing.'
It might be beautiful, but as a foodie destination, it really doesn't sound that promising. Warner, not surprisingly, doesn't agree.
'You eat reindeer!' he exclaims. 'Reindeer, reindeer, moose, reindeer, moose, moose, moose, moose! And then you get a lot of things that are frozen because it's just a huge, natural freezer. All the berries that have been picked in summer keep in there.
'And then there's lots of ice-fishing through little holes in the snow. Reindeer, berries and spruce. Little spruce tips. In winter, there's no wheat up there or very, very little, so they cook with tree bark. They can make an amazing biscuit out of ground tree bark.'

Berry good: 'I was the perfect person to send to Scandinavia', says Valentine referring to his love of the food

Eating local: Reindeer remains a popular dish

Did he ever get sick of all the berries and game? 'Nope, no, no,' he emphasises, chuckling. 'That's why I was the perfect person to send there because actually, as much as I love all food, I just really like simple things so when I see a few bits of bone with quivering marrow in the middle and some blood dumplings floating around in some delicious stock, that's right up my street.'
He's clearly adored every second spent in Norway, Denmark and Sweden, and even talks wistfully of taking the Warner family off to live in the Scandinavian wilds. Not Finland though.
'Finland is strictly speaking not Scandinavia,' he explains when I ask why Finland got left out.

'I don't know where [the assumption that Finland is part of Scandinavia comes from] but technically, it's not Scandinavia. I have been to Finland a few times though and it's absolutely beautiful. Very, very different. And the cooking not as good.'

He smiles wryly, realising he's probably caused a few raised eyebrows on the opposite side of the Gulf of Bothnia. 'Now I might not be able to go there.'
While the Finns might not be too thrilled, his enthusiasm  for the rest of Scandinavia and its culinary efforts is infectious. Was there anything at all he found hard to stomach?
'I think the thing I had the hardest time with was the [Norwegian] brunost brown cheese. I didn't like it initially and there's very few things I don't like.
'But I forced myself to enjoy it and I ate it every morning for breakfast. Like any cheese, there's really crappy versions and there's really amazing versions, and I started finding the good ones.'
He talks longingly of smoked reindeer heart, of a Danish lady who made rhubarb cakes so good he tracked her down to get the recipe, of the Danish genius for pork and of blood dumplings in 'delicious broth'.
I ask where the best place to go for a taste of Scandinavian food is and he furrows his brow in consternation. Clearly, there are far too many to choose from.
'I'd say definitely go to Niklas Ekstedt's restaurant in Stockholm which is all about cooking over fire,' he says eventually.
'I had a plate of sweetbreads with corn puree [there] and it's one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten.'
Valentine Warner Eats Scandinavia is new and exclusive to Good Food, weeknights at 8pm from Monday 16th September (Sky/HD 247 | Virgin 260)

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