In Scandinavia, summer is lived outdoors – perhaps, at times, wrapped in blankets – and food traditions revolve around a seasonal hygge that invites lingering over meals with conversation stretching into the night. Trine Hahnemann, chef, food writer and owner of Copenhagen’s Hahnemanns Køkken bakery, recalls her childhood through favourite recipes
The magic of summer nights, where it doesn’t really get dark until the early hours of the morning, never really leaves you,’ says Danish-born Trine Hahnemann, author of over 20 cookbooks.
The further north you travel, the more geography asserts itself and in Scandinavia, seasons arrive with a ferocity that often forces immersion. ‘We live a lot with the weather and the light,’ says Trine. ‘Life is very different in the winter, when we’re at home a lot, from the summer, when we’re outside a lot.’ Scandinavian culture, she explains, teaches a heightened awareness. ‘Always notice the light,’ she says. ‘One day it’s grey, the next it’s pink. It plays such a big role in our lives.’
Growing up in Copenhagen during the 1980s, Trine’s holidays rarely involved travelling abroad. Instead, like many Scandinavian families, hers escaped to a simple summer house (‘something small, almost like a shed’). Days were spent exploring familiar landscapes – sailing, canoeing and camping.
That way of living in summer shaped the food. Cabins might be equipped with little more than a couple of hobs and perhaps a small oven, which led to a style of cooking that was simple, inherently seasonal and unfussy. ‘Spending a lot of time in the kitchen was not the thing you wanted to do,’ says Trine.
Many of her summers were spent on a small island with her grandparents. ‘There’s such a deep understanding of precisely where you are in the world when you’re there,’ she says. ‘The last ferry leaves and you can see the edges of your world.’ A lesson, perhaps, in embracing limits rather than resisting them.
And it’s a comparison she draws with seasonality, as cooks learn to revel in immediacy and abundance. ‘When did people start wanting to eat different things all the time?’ she laughs. ‘Even on restaurant menus, when asparagus or strawberries are in season, every dish should have them in.’
That simple idea of total immersion is at the heart of Midnight Sun. Eat the strawberries while they’re here. Notice the light while it lasts. Explore the place you find yourself in.
Photography by Kim Lightbody (Quadrille, £25)
