Hot Danish æbleskiver. [Photograph: Kalle Bergman]

Before I moved to Denmark about 13 years ago, I didn't know about the treasure that is æbleskiver. That I missed out on this delicacy for almost 25 years still bugs me to this day.

Æbleskiver, which is Danish for "apple slices," are a classic Danish dessert primarily served during Christmas that resemble round pancake balls with a doughnut-like texture. The name is completely misleading though—the recipe hasn't contained apples for over a century. Served warm with icing sugar and jam, they're delicious and deservedly one of the country's most famous desserts.

During December, æbleskiver are sold at stalls at most Christmas fairs around the country, along with cafés, pubs, and restaurants. They're normally served on a paper plate to go, along with a large cup of hot mulled wine. Warms you right through!

If you want to make æbleskiver at home, one thing you must get is a cast iron æbleskiver pan. This pan features spherical indentations where you melt butter and pour in batter made of flour, buttermilk, egg whites, sugar, and baking powder (and if you want to go really old style, feel free to add a few pieces of apple)—without the pan your æbleskiver will be flat. To buy the pan online, check out aebleskiver.com, amazon.com, or williams-sonoma.com.

God Jul!

About the author:Kalle Bergman has a lifelong obsession with simple and honest food. He is a food writer at Honest Cooking and as a Swede residing in Denmark he is placed right in the middle of the vibrant Nordic food scene. Under the Scandinavian Streetfood banner, he is staging weekly excursions into the vast fast food culture of Scandinavia, digging into everything from hot dogs and beef subs to open faced smørrebrød and fried herring. Follow Kalle Bergman on Twitter.

Fried Herring pm Crisp Bread at Hötorgshallen in Stockholm. [Photograph: Kalle Bergman]

Herring is a fantastic little fish that's always been hugely important in Scandinavia. If you visit the region, you can't really leave without having some. Try it pickled, seasoned (with one of the hundreds of local seasonings), or fermented as the infamously super-stinky Surströmming (I dare you—double dare you!). Or if you want to be on the safe side, in Stockholm, visit one of the many hotdog-stand-like-stands marked Stekt Strömming and get a plate of freshly fried herring and mashed potatoes. Delicious.

But I also have another suggestion. A snack-sized dish that I find myself returning to almost every time I visit Stockholm: Fried Herring on Crisp Bread with Onions and Tartar Sauce. It's served at one of my absolute favorite places in the city.

The cosmopolitan market hall Hötorgshallen is situated in the very center of the Swedish capital. Delicacies from across the world share the space with numerous Scandinavian food treasures, and in one of the corners you'll find an unpretentious bar that serves fried herring in this slightly non-traditional manner.

Accompanied by a cold beer, it's a perfect light lunch for both winter and summertime, and I try to make it to Hötorgshallen as often as I can. Hope to see you there next time, and stay tuned for more good stuff from Hötorgshallen in the future.

SMAKLIG MÅLTID

About the author:Kalle Bergman has a lifelong obsession with simple and honest food. He is a food writer at Honest Cooking and as a Swede residing in Denmark he is placed right in the middle of the vibrant Nordic food scene. Under the Scandinavian Streetfood banner, he is staging weekly excursions into the vast fastfood culture of Scandinavia, digging into everything from hotdogs and beef subs to open faced smørrebrød and fried herring. Follow Kalle Bergman on Twitter.

Crispy Pork Cracklings [Photograph: Mads Damgaard]

The look has a vague resemblance to pig tails. Not the ones attached to heads of little girls, but the ones attached to actual pigs. And the flavor is all oink. But it's the texture that's the star of the show when it comes to Danish crispy pork cracklings: partly firm, cracking under the pressure of your teeth, and partly buttery with a more gentle crunch. If you're the type of person who, like me, occasionally enjoys munching on pigs, welcome to heaven and say hello to the flæskesvær, as pork cracklings are called in Danish.

In Denmark, pork cracklings are not merely a snack, but an integral part of one of the most quintessentially Danish foods around: the pork roast. Here, pork roasts are eaten throughout the year and in innumerable varieties. Making smørrebrød? Pork roast. A sandwich? Pork roast. Tuesday night dinner with the family? You guessed it! Hell, the Danes even star the pork roast as one of the main attractions in the sumptuous Danish Christmas dinner.

But even if the pork roast is ridiculously popular in Denmark, the most popular part of the roast is the crackling. And the street food version, which has been clever enough to do away with the actual roast, is popular too. In butchers across the nation, they're made daily and served in paper bags, a bagful providing comfort and fat that'll last you most of the day and into the night. There are, of course, horrible (horrible, I tell you!) industrially processed versions in the supermarkets, but die-hard fans wouldn't dream of getting them from anyone else than their local butcher.

Growing up in Sweden, this fantastic snack was almost completely unknown to me until I met my Danish wife some 14 years ago. But I've more than made up for that since, grabbing every chance I get to sink my teeth into one of these crispy bombs of artery blocking pork skins.

Check out my recipe if you want to make these at home.

VELBEKOMME!

About the author:Kalle Bergman has a lifelong obsession with simple and honest food. He is a food writer at Honest Cooking and as a Swede residing in Denmark he is placed right in the middle of the vibrant Nordic food scene. Under the Scandinavian Streetfood banner, he is staging weekly excursions into the vast fastfood culture of Scandinavia, digging into everything from hotdogs and beef subs to open faced smørrebrød and fried herring. Follow Kalle Bergman on Twitter.

Seriously Scandinavian has undergone extensive plastic surgery and a name change to Scandinavian Street Food. From now on I'll be doing weekly excursions into the vast fast food culture of Scandinavia and let you know what's going on in the streets of the cold north. From hot dogs to fried herring, from lompe and lefse to smørrebrød and beef sandwiches—welcome to Scandinavian Street Food!

The Bulldog: Halal veal & beef with garlic, aniseed, and cumin. [Photographs: Kalle Bergman]

This week, I'm sticking to the Danish dogs I first talked about a few weeks ago. But this time around, let's move away from the traditional red sausages and on to real hot dogs: logs of meat shoved into a bun and topped with various good stuff. Because even if the red sausage (with bread served on the side) is the king of Danish sausages, most Danes also have a very soft spot for a classic hot dog. And there are a few places where the hot dog is taken very seriously.

The Andersen hot dog stand, for instance. Situated in the palatial Nimb (a crazy Taj Mahal copy in the world famous Tivoli in downtown Copenhagen) is the Japan-based faux-Danish bakery franchise Andersen Bakery. And even if I'm personally not a huge fan of standardized international mega-bakeries, there's a small—very small—and unpretentious corner of this place that has fast food lovers making pilgrimages from all over the country: The Hot Dog Corner.

The Grand Danois: Classic pork sausage from Bornholm.

Here, for $9 USD you can choose between a couple of different kinds of hot dogs, all sourced locally and artisanal. I have two favorites. The Grand Danois is a classic pork sausage packed with meat flavor, and grilled with a perfectly crispy outside and juicy inside. The Bulldog, on the other hand, is made from halal veal and beef and has a fiery, slight Asian-inspired flavor from being seasoned with cumin, garlic, and aniseed. It's a smaller, darker dog with just a little bit of a bite (which confirms the theory that the smaller the dog, the more aggressive it is).

The bread is of course baked in the Andersen Bakery, and the ketchup is organic and brought in specially from a butcher in Holbæk. The remoulade and mustard is homemade, as well as the lovely crispy onions and cucumber salad. Everything is organic.

It's quite expensive to pay nine bucks for a hot dog, but considering the sheer size of these dogs, you absolutely get your money's worth. Taste-wise, there's no doubt in my mind that these hot dogs are among the best in Scandinavia. With all the ingredients, from dog to dough, made locally by people who actually care about the final product, I will have a very hard time going back to regular hot dogs in the future.

...Or at least for a few weeks.

Andersen Bakery

Bernstorffsgade 5, 1577 Copenhagen, Denmark (map)
+45 33 75 07 35; andersenbakery.com

Danish red sausage with bread, served on Royal Scandinavian porcelain. Not the traditional hot dog stand plate. [Photograph: Mads Damgaard]

Hot dogs. Probably the world's most popular fast food, and by far the ruler of Scandinavian street food. The three Scandinavian countries all have their own varieties and local traditions, but they all have one thing in common: They absolutely love hot dogs. From boiled to grilled, with or without condiments, homemade or bought at the local hotdog pusher; Scandinavians jump on every chance they get to grab a dog.

To me a hot dog (or any one of the many local alterations) is always a top ranking alternative for a quick lunch or on the way home from a very late night on the town. And regardless if I end up having a Danish Rød Pølse, a Swedish Grillkorv, or a Norwegian Pølse i Lompe (usually depending on my geographical location), it's always great to share a few laughs and listen to the infinite wisdom of the hot dog man (the cabbies of fast food) while waiting for hunger to be pig-tamed.

The author of the article at the favorite hot dog stand in Vesterbro, Copenhagen. [Photograph: Mads Damgaard]

I'll be featuring Scandinavian hot dogs and other fast food specialties from the region in the coming months, so keep your eyes open for the best of Norway and Sweden as well. But we'll start in Denmark, self proclaimed kings of everything that has anything to do with pork and sausages.

In cities and towns across this lilliputian country you can see pølsemænd (hot dog men) pulling their electric hot dog stands back and forth between their homes and their vending location every day, most of them walking in the middle of the street—during rush hour. It's quite an amusing sight for an outsider, especially considering the fact that nobody seems to get ticked off at the vendors for blocking traffic. Unpractical, perhaps. But the Danes stick to these mobile stands, with many cities still prohibiting more permanent structures in order to preserve this charming culinary cultural heritage.

The essence of Danish hot dogs is the Rød Pølse, or Red Sausage, seen in the top picture. Originally these strange looking sausages were the ones that were too old to be sold. But instead of throwing them out, sausage vendors in the poverty stricken Denmark of the late 1920s instead chose to dip these sausages in a red dye and sell them for cheaper prices. The red sausage quickly became a success, and in the end all sausages were dipped in the red dye since people stopped buying the other ones. Traditionally, these babies are served on a paper plate with bread and condiments such as ketchup, mustard, remoulade sauce, and onions on the side. Since more than 100 million of them are sold in Denmark every year (in a country with a population of 5.5 million), they must be doing something right!

Smaklig Måltid!

About the author: Kalle Bergman has a lifelong obsession with simple and honest food. He is a blogger at kallebergman.com and as a Swede residing in Denmark he is placed right in the middle of the vibrant Nordic food scene. Under the Seriously Scandinavian banner, he is digging into everything from traditional Scandinavian fare to contemporary food trends from the cold North.