>> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> ♪ No, take me home ♪ Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

♪♪ Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.

>> Viestad: I don't really understand why liver has gone out of vogue.

It has this mild, round flavor.

Hi, and welcome to "New Scandinavian Cooking," from Brumunddal in eastern Norway.

I'm Andreas Viestad.

This is the most productive farmland in the country, but only for a few months.

In winter, this is all covered with ice and snow for months on end.

And right now, people are busy filling their larders.

In today's program, I'll help myself to some treats from that larder.

I'll start off in the mountains with a dish that is flavored by the mountains.

Veal liver with chanterelles, heather honey, and heather oil.

And to experience the variety of produce in the region, I'll visit the new food hall, where local farmers and producers showcase their specialties.

And a visit to the local baker is mandatory for the daily bread, but also for store-made ice cream.

And I'll try and combine the two, making toast ice cream.

It sounds strange, doesn't it?

But think of all the sweet aromas of toast and combine that with ice cream.

You see the point?

I'm using fresh local ingredients to make a chopped salad that I'll serve with another local delicacy, vendace roe.

And finally, I'll visit a pig farmer who also runs a guest house, and I'll make the Norwegian-style porchetta.

For 3 1/2 months every summer, the cattle and the sheep are up here on their summer pasture.

And in one way, it's just about agricultural economics.

In the lowlands, you can grow grain so better, keep them here, where you can't really grow anything.

But it has an added effect, and that is flavoring the meat.

The meat tastes of what the animals have eaten, and they've eaten all kinds of shrubs and bushes that grow here.

And I'm going to make a dish that is truly inspired and flavored by the mountains.

veal liver with heather honey and juniper and mountain mushrooms.

I'm dredging the veal liver in flour and salt.

Liver is something you don't encounter so often, mostly in fine French restaurants.

But it is actually an ingredient that is very, very simple to cook, and I'm cooking this for about three to four minutes on each side.

Once I've flipped it, I'm adding some mountain mushrooms.

These are lovely chanterelles.

And they don't need more than three or four minutes.

And about a minute before it's done, I'm adding a little bit of cream.

Just letting it boil for a few seconds, and then turning off the heat.

Season with salt... and heather honey.

And heather honey is the honey that the bees create at the end of summer, early autumn, when the heather is starting to bloom.

And it tastes fantastic.

The heather is like this.

This is a part of the diet of the cows and the sheep.

I've also made some heather oil.

I've collected a whole lot of heather, and I've mixed it with oil and let the oil infuse for several weeks, then I've sieved it.

And now I've just returned it to a bottle with one little sprig of heather.

But it also tastes of the mountains, and you can do that same thing with any kind of flowering plant.

For instance, thyme or oregano.

And another thing you find a lot of here in the mountains is juniper.

And here I have some juniper pines, and they actually taste lovely.

And they almost taste like rosemary, so if you can't find juniper pines, you can either use juniper berries or you can use dried rosemary.

And finally, some lingonberries for a bit of acidity.

You can also use cranberries.

I don't really understand why liver has gone out of vogue.

It has this mild, round flavor, and it can match other flavors, as well.

Not just in classic French dishes, but also with the flavors of the mountains, like here.

You can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

Brumunddal is a quite new and relatively modern town in the middle of a very traditional agricultural area.

[ Cow moos ] [ Birds chirping ] [ Bells jingling ] And the perfect mix between urban and rural, between modern and traditional, can be found in the local bakery, a place with a moose on the wall and espresso in the coffeemaker.

This is where people come to buy cakes whenever they have something to celebrate.

But most of all, they come here for their daily bread, and there is an enormous difference between bread that's made in a factory somewhere and bread that is actually made by hand.

And then, as an added bonus, when you buy your bread, you can also buy an ice cream that's made here in the bakery.

And I'm going to combine the two, the daily bread and ice cream.

I'm going to make a bread ice cream, or rather, a toast ice cream.

I think that most families who eat bread for breakfast are in a similar situation as I am.

We're left with the odd slice of dry bread in the back of the cupboard.

No one really wants to eat it, but it's a shame to throw it away.

Well, think of all the wonderful flavors and smells and aromas of toast.

Well, imagine if you could capture them and put them into an ice cream.

Well, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

So I'm starting off with dry bread, a few days old, and I'm just toasting it.

Normally, when you make ice cream, you make a big point out of making an ice cream batter with milk, cream, and eggs, and you have to heat it to thicken it.

Well, here, the bread will actually help thicken it, so I'm making a very, very simple base just with confectionery sugar.

About 1 cup, 2 1/2 deciliters, which I'm mixing with 2 cups, 5 deciliters of whole-fat milk.

And 4 cups, 1 liter of cream, full-fat cream.

And then just soak the toasted bread in the batter.

It is amazing how much of that toast flavor is captured by the cream of just a few minutes.

Now, the bread has done most of its work, so I'm just going to press to remove as much of the moisture as possible, and while doing so, some of the now-soaked bread will also come through the colander and into the ice cream batter and will actually help thicken it.

Now the flavor is even more pronounced.

It's almost as if I've added an extra spice of some kind, some vanilla or some allspice.

But there's really nothing else here.

There's just sugar, milk, cream, and toast.

And I'm going to freeze this in an ice cream maker.

But if you don't have an ice cream maker, you can just pop a metal bowl in your freezer, take it out, and stir it every 15 minutes or so until it freezes and it has the right texture.

If you don't stir it, it will just freeze to one block, and that's not very nice.

And I've saved one delicious, super-dry toast, to which I've added a little bit of honey, and I'm going to crush this and sprinkle it over the ice cream.

Mmm.

This feels like such a luxury.

And imagine that it's really just leftover, stale, dry bread.

Mmm.

It is a real treat.

Thank you.

>> Oh, sure.

>> Viestad: Brumunddal lies right at the heart of the most productive food-producing area in the country, and we're going to visit the local food hall, where local producers and farmers can showcase their produce.

At the newly opened food hall here in Brumunddal, people can shop for local meats, cheeses, preserves, berries, and great local vegetables.

Today, Hege has picked out some wonderful kohlrabi for me, some fantastically purple-colored cauliflower, some fennel, and freshly picked plums, the first of the season.

And I'm going to use them all in the salad I'm making.

I travel quite a lot, and in order to get to know a place, I want to taste it.

The flavor of a place can often be found in its ingredients.

And a deep part of culture is embedded in local products and specialities.

In this part of Norway, there are plenty of small producers, both innovators and custodians of tradition.

Brumunddal is in the middle of the breadbasket in Norway.

It also borders on Norway's largest lake, Mjosa.

A great pride of the lake is the old paddle steamer Skibladner.

In old Norse mythology, Skibladner is the best of ships.

It always finds good wind, and it goes wherever it needs to go.

The ship dates back to 1854 and is said to be the oldest paddle steamer still in use.

I'm going to use these fabulous vegetables and the tart plums to make a chopped salad that you can serve at least two different ways.

I'll come back to that later.

We've got the very crunchy kohlrabi, the licorice-tasting fennel, the funky-looking cauliflower, and the tart plums.

The basic technique when you're making a chopped salad is that you take some ingredients, some vegetables, and then you chop them.

You can use basically any kind of vegetable in a chopped salad, as long as it tastes good in its raw state.

But I think it's nice to balance with different flavors.

So the kohlrabi is sweet-tasting and very, very crunchy.

The cauliflower has a bit of a cabbage flavor.

And the fennel, of course, is sweet and with almost a hint of licorice flavor.

Now, what might seem a little bit unusual is adding plums to the chopped salad, but I think that it's always nice to have at least one fruit or berry in a chopped salad to add some acidity and also an extra hint of sweetness.

You can also use peaches or an apple.

Then I'm just adding some chopped onion to give the salad a bit of a bite.

And instead of making a proper dressing, I'm just dressing it with yogurt and sour cream.

And some grainy mustard.

This chopped salad is a celebration of the vegetables from the region, but the lake here is also full of fish.

And one of the fish here is vendace, which has fantastic roe.

Vendace roe is a true delicacy, and I'm going to use it now to turn this simple salad into a starter.

The vendace roe has this incredible color, as well.

You can also use trout roe or salmon roe or lumpfish roe.

And finally, I've made a simple herb oil.

I've just put some parsley and some chervil and some chives in a blender together with some oil.

And this gives this incredible color and full of herby flavors.

You can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

It's a really delicious dish.

It's fresh-tasting and crunchy and with that extra depth of flavor of the great inland ocean of Lake Mjosa.

I like to visit farms.

I like to see how the food I eat is produced.

And I'm on my way to Lier Gard, a small pig and cereal farm, where the two owners, Ulf and Ingerine, have opened a small guest house where they serve their own meat.

Normally, it's Ingerine who does the cooking around here, but I'm going to make a dish inspired by one of her signature dishes.

It's a pork roll made with pork belly, or in this case, it's from a very small pig, so there's part of the back, as well, with the ribs cut away.

And I'm going to flavor it with lots and lots of herbs, most importantly, the quintessential Scandinavian herb, namely dill.

I'm going to chop them finely in the blender, but it is smart to just cut them into smaller pieces to begin with.

And then fennel.

Fennel looks a whole lot like dill.

But it has that distinct licorice-like flavor, as well.

And then parsley.

And then just a few leaves of sage, as a nod to tradition.

And some spices, as well.

Fennel seed.

And caraway seeds.

[ Blender whirs ] And I mix the herbs with 450 grams, one pound of minced pork.

Before I mix the herbs and the mincemeat, I'm adding 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 grated apple.

Up here, the apples are far from being ripe, but further down in the valley, the first summer apples are just nearly there, so they've got quite a lot of acidity but also a nice hint of sweetness to them.

Then I just roll it up and tie it together with cotton string.

Then I just cut away the loose ends.

Otherwise, they might burn in the oven.

I'm going to bake the meat in two steps.

First, at relatively modest temperatures at around 150 degrees Celsius, around 300 Fahrenheit for 2 full hours.

And the best thing is to use a wood-fired oven.

And I'm going to use the municipal baking oven.

The municipality has bought a baking oven that anyone can borrow for free.

Isn't that a great idea?

Now the first phase of the cooking is over.

The great thing about cooking in a wood-fired baking oven like this is that it lives, it has a bit of temperament, so it was probably a few degrees more when I put it in, and then it's gradually dropped while the meat has been in the oven, so it cooks in a very nice and even, dynamic way.

And I'm serving the meat with some oven-roasted vegetables that I'll cook with the meat, as well.

These are some lovely turnips.

I've got some lovely zucchini.

This is a round zucchini.

Basically the same flavor as the normal-shaped zucchini, but it looks nice.

And different beets.

Look at that color.

One thing I think is necessary when you have fatty meat like pork belly is something a little bit acidic.

And in France and Italy, you would have added some local white wine or you would have gone and picked a lemon in your own garden.

We can't do that here.

And instead of emulating them, we can look what's around here.

And as I mentioned, the apples are still quite unripe.

[ Chuckles ] It's sour but delicious.

Just like drinking lemon juice or vinegar, it's a bit too much, but it's kind of addictive, as well.

And you can use this green apple juice for dressings and in sauces.

But you got to know, it oxidizes very quickly, so if you're going to keep it for more than just a few minutes, you should add a little bit of vitamin C, which is an antioxidant.

And I'm adding about half of the juice now, and the rest to serve just to adjust the flavor.

Now, we've burned a couple of more logs.

So it's about 200 Celsius, 400 Fahrenheit.

But I'm just going to cook the vegetables until they're nicely baked, about a half an hour or so.

Remember that you can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

♪♪ >> For more of the "New Scandinavian Cooking" experience, visit our website or Facebook page.

♪♪ >> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> ♪ No, take me home ♪ Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

♪♪ Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.

♪♪