This is one of the better looking cookbooks in my collection. The photography is elegant and gorgeous, evoking a rich sense of place and tempting one to make it a personal destination someday. The seasonal approach to organization is interesting, particularly in light of recent movements among cooks to source more local ingredients, while little anecdotes with the recipes give this some extra color and personality. Many of the recipes seem straightforward enough though there are a few with ingredients not common in my local grocery store. I do wish after reading this I knew of a local source of reasonably-priced game as the pheasant and moose recipes sound delicious. Now that we're coming into baking season, particularly looking forward to trying the cardamom buns recipe, and as the weather continues to cool, I have my eye on the potato soup with bacon and chives.

This beautifully photographed book is much more than a set of recipes. It is a expression of the Scandinavian soul--of a how a people so often plunged in darkness celebrate life. The book is divided into months and highlights the truly seasonal way Scandinavians eat (something we Americans are just beginning to appreciate). The recipes themselves tend to be short and, for the most part, simple. A reliance on seafood is evident, as is a love baking and celebrating.

This cookbook isn't just a collection of recipes, but is also a beautiful photo essay of life in Scandinavia. Most of the recipes have a straightforward and simple list of ingredients with clear instructions. However, this being a regional cookbook, there are a handful of items that cooks in America will have some difficulty finding. I especially look forward to trying the meatballs in curry sauce, and the classic Danish butter cookies look amazing. And unlike so many cookbooks today, this one shows pictures for all of the recipes. These food images are interspersed with photos of Scandinavia, and this gives the book the feel of a travelogue. ( )

At first glance, this is an utterly beautiful book, with full-color, glossy photos of food and Scandinavian landscapes--food and travel porn at its best. Trina Hahnemann divides her recipes into the four seasons, which is an increasingly popular style of organizing a cookbook. It doesn't always work, but I think in this case it does, as she is in part emphasizing the seasonality of food in Scandinavia--especially the foods that are fished or hunted. She also puts together menus for different holidays, which is appropriate considering most of her readers in the United States will not be familiar with the customs in Sweden and Norway (the two cuisines most often highlighted).

All that being said, I have tried one recipe from this cookbook, and it was very nearly a disaster. I made the 'Rice Pudding with Warm Cherry Sauce,' a dessert traditionally eaten following Christmas dinner. The first pitfall was far too much salt in the rice pudding (and I used less than what was instructed), an error, I suspect, of translating from metric to English measurements. The second was too much sugar and corn starch in the cherry sauce, making it very closely resemble canned cherry pie filling. Not the result I wanted when I spent a small fortune on organic frozen cherries. I was also confused by her insistence that the pudding be eaten cold, as my second generation Swedish immigrant grandmother always served rice pudding warm. The resulting dessert was edible, but just barely.

I am not willing to give up on this cookbook, however, as it has too many promising recipes to try, including ones to use up my significant other's vast quantities of venison in the freezer. I will come back to this review and rating once I have tried others, but for now I must say I was very disappointed.

Also posted on Amazon and my blog: http://redpersephone.blogspot.com/200... ( )

Full color photographs and seasonal arrangement makes this an attractive, but at first glance, alternate purchase. The recipes look so simple and use mostly common ingredients that my first thought was "ho-hum." However, after cooking a couple of recipes, most notably Lightly Brined Chicken, and Barley Salad, the true value of this lesser known cuisine becomes apparent. The ingredients are common and not exotic, yet the amalgam of the parts compose themselves into different spins on old themes. Delightfully simple and refreshing. Nicely photographed. Thank you Library Thing for adding this to my already overflowing cookbook shelf! ( )