Danish

You see those dense, dark, grainy loaves? Grab 'em! They work well with this smoky iteration of avocado toast.

The butter cookie recipe you'll come back to year after year. Pro tip: Using chilled butter and freezing the cookies before baking encourages clean, tidy edges.

The official pastry of Wisconsin has Danish roots. Our homemade kringle recipe is filled with almond paste and cherry jam.

There is nothing quite like this Scandinavian-style cake tower. For Christmas, the Kransekake is decorated to look like a Christmas tree.

This cake has been a favorite since 1965, when a girl won a baking competition with her grandmother’s secret family recipe.

When Beatrice Ojakangas published The Great Scandinavian Baking Book in 1988, she won a lot of fans—including Julia Child—who asked Ojakangas to be on her television show. There Ojakangas demonstrated how to make this simplified version of traditional cardamom-scented Danish pastry.

Using chilled butter and freezing the cookies before baking encourages clean, tidy edges.

In general, these are milder than Italian-style meatballs (Polpette, page 53), with cooked onion and no garlic or cheese. Often served with a cream sauce (and lingonberries), they can be made without one, skewered on toothpicks, and passed at parties. A combination of pork, veal, and beef is best here, but if I had to choose only one meat it would unquestionably be pork.

This is a fluffy eggless rice pudding scented with sherry and almonds. My mom usually serves it with fresh raspberries, which is the perfect choice when they’re in season. But I like it all year round, so I like to make a sauce with dried cherries, which have a similar sweet-tart quality. It is lovely served in elegant stemmed glasses with the sauce spooned over the top. My mom still makes this pudding every year for my birthday. Thanks, Mom!

This is a special bread/cake that Danes like to make for the holiday season. It’s a quick version of flaky Danish pastry.

This is not a sweet dish—don't be fooled by the first step for the sauce, making a caramel. Browning the sugar brings out savory and bitter notes that balance out the silky, earthy potatoes in an irresistible way. Though this dish is actually a Danish Christmas classic, we think these gorgeous potatoes should be cooked a lot more often than just once a year.

Be sure to sample "forest greens" if you find them on a menu in Copenhagen—this term is not just a flight of fancy. The greens on offer there are pristine wild lettuces, herbs, and grasses growing in the mountains and on the forest floor. Since most of us don't have the opportunity to forage forest greens, we made this salad with a tangle of microgreens, which work nicely. The vinaigrette nods to the Scandinavian love for curry, but it truly plays up the flavors of the pork and potatoes as well, so feel free to drizzle it all over the plate.

Pork all over Denmark is hauntingly tender. Ruggiero was particularly taken with the pork belly she tasted at the restaurant Gammel Mønt—crisp, but succulent and rich. To re-create these qualities, Ruggiero devised a version that requires minimal effort but promises stunning results: Pork shoulder is braised first, until it's super tender, and then flash-seared for a golden crust. The aroma alone will convince you that this unorthodox technique is entirely worthwhile.

Gael Greene shared these recipes with Epicurious from her new book, Insatiable. To learn more about Greene, read our Q&A. This meat loaf started life as a meatball recipe in the Times.

The ultimate Danish holiday dish from chef Torben Jensen of Gråbrødre Torv 21 restaurant.

This rich and comforting pudding is served at the floating restaurant Fregatten Sct. Georg III in Tivoli Gardens.

This Danish dessert consists of layers of applesauce and sweet cinnamon-scented bread crumbs, veiled with whipped cream.