Aquavit: And the New Scandinavian Cuisine by Marcus Samuelsson (Hardcover Edition): Booknear.com

I think the answer to the second question is a solid `Yes'. The cuisine and the recipes are interesting, inviting, and accessible to the average home cook. Samuelsson makes it clear from the subtitle of his book that he is spicing up the usual Swedish meatballs and gravlax with fusion elements. The surprise is that middle eastern spices arrived in Swedish cuisine several centuries ago through the Swedish East India Company trade between India and Stockholm.

The book has thirteen chapters, mixing conventional with unconventional recipe categories. These are:

The Raw and the Cured is preparations of uncooked salmon, herring, tuna, bass, char, cod, duck, and beef.
Bites, Snacks, and Little Plates, appetizers and hors d'oeuvres
Sandwiches, more gravlax, plus wraps and crispbread
Salads, fairly conventional root vegetables, seafood, and trendy greens. Still delish.
Soups, with mushroom consomme, yellow split pea, chicken soup, and smoked salmon
Fish and Shellfish with char, snapper, halibut, cod, monkfish, sea bass, tuna, lobster, and more salmon
Birds, Meat, and Game with recipes using coffee, Glogg, lots of mustard, and fruit
Sides with lots of Mediterranean, Korean, Central Asian, and Northern European representatives,plus lots of mustard and even more smoked salmon.
Crackers and Breads with typical Swedish flatbread, potato mustard seed bread, and bread with blueberries.
Jams, Salsas, and Chutneys with mustard, berries, horseradish, and mangos
Desserts with lots of unusual berries and candied beets, citrus, and ginger.
Drinks with Aquavit, berrry liqueur, and glogg (a wine, spice, fruit, and sugar holiday drink)

Some of the most interesting recipes are for Crispy Salmon Skin, Slow Roasted Turkey Wings, Tuna Burger with Cabbage Tzatziki, Salsify Cappuccino, Seared Tuna and Sfcallops with Soy Beurre Blanc, Prune-Stuffed Rack of Lamb, Crispy Duck (breasts) with glogg sauce, Carrot Parsnip cake. One of the most unusual pantry items in the book is Berbere, a hot Ethopian spice mix similar to Middle Eastern and Indian mixes. Other unusual ingredients are berries which appear to be exclusive to Scandinavia. Fortunately, few recipes include these berries.

The very best part of the recipes, as it always is in book of this type, are the chef author's notes and comments regarding how the dish came about. The value of this text is what makes the difference between just another cookbook and something worth the extra bucks. The discussions of smoking are especially interesting, seeing how it is done outside the world of the great American barbecue. One comment is especially interesting in showing how Samuelsson used smoking farm raised fish to simply reproduce some of the gamy flavor found in wild fish.

I generally feel that a fusion cuisine must do just a little more than a purely ethnic cuisine to prove itself. Ethnic cuisines such as Italian, Indian, Thai, Japanese, and French have stood the test of time. A particular interpretation of Gnocchi may be a little off, but the dish is generally very reliably tasty and satisfying. Samuelsson has two things which more than outweigh this innate disadvantage. First, just like in Venetian cuisine, much of the fusion of diverse cultural influences was done for him three centuries ago by the trade with India and the middle east. Second, Scandinavian cuisine is not well known to American tastes outside the north central plains states. Thus, his successes will be more interesting than an Italian / Thai fusion dish.

Like many books of this type, it is as much a creation of a team as it is by a single person. The copyrite page gives credits to a book designer, a food stylist, a prop stylist, and a team of photographers, who happen to be the same pair of photographers who did Eric Rippert's `A Return to Cooking'. All this artistic talent has paid off, as the photography is almost as luscious as the food and they avoided some of the design errors of Ripert's book. However, the photographs of the completed dishes do not always match the recipe. I found at least two cases where the food in the picture was prepared using a different set of directions than those given in the recipe, and, the method in the picture was clearly better for both presentation and logical cooking. I will not say there would be a difference in flavor and I'm sure the intent was to write out the easier method for the home cook, but it did spoil my appreciation of the book just a smidge.

Overall, this is a very well done book of it's type and well worth the money to acquire the recipes, the comments, and the much better than average food styling and photography. I learned from it.

Summary of Aquavit: And the New Scandinavian Cuisine

In this long-awaited book, Marcus Samuelsson introduces the simple techniques and exciting combinations that have won him worldwide acclaim and placed Scandinavian cooking at the forefront of the culinary scene. Whether it's a freshly interpreted Swedish classic or a dramatically original creation, each one of the dishes has been flawlessly recreated for the home cook. Every recipe has a masterful touch that makes it strikingly new: the contrasting temperatures of Warm Beef Carpaccio in Mushroom Tea, the pleasing mix of creamy and crunchy textures in Radicchio, Bibb, and Blue Cheese Salad, the cornflake coating on a delightful rendition of Marcus's favorite "junk food," Crispy Potatoes.
In "The Raw and the Cured," Marcus presents the cornerstone dishes of the Scandinavian repertoire, from a traditional Gravlax with Mustard Sauce (which gets just the right balance from a little coffee) to the internationally inspired Pickled Herring Sushi-Style. The clean, precise flavors of this food are reminiscent of Japanese cuisine but draw upon accessible Western ingredients.
Marcus shows how to prepare foolproof dinners for festive occasions: Crispy Duck with Glogg Sauce, Herb-Roasted Rack of Lamb, and Prune-Stuffed Pork Roast. Step by step, offering many suggestions for substitutions and shortcuts, he guides you through the signature dishes that have made Aquavit famous, like Dill-Crusted Arctic Char with Pinot Noir Sauce, Pan-Roasted Venison Chops with Fruit and Berry Chutney, and Fois Gras "Ganache." But you'll also find dozens of homey, comforting dishes that Marcus learned from his grandmother, like Swedish Roast Chicken with Spiced Apple Rice, Chilled Potato-Chive Soup, Blueberry Bread, Corn Mashed Potatoes, ethereal Swedish Meatballs with Quick Pickled Cucumbers, and Swedish Pancakes with Lingonberry Whipped Cream.
From simplest-ever snacks like Sweet and Salty Pine Nuts and Barbecued Boneless Ribs, to satisfying sandwiches like Gravlax Club, to vibrant jams and salsas and homemade flavored aquavits, Marcus Samuelsson's best recipes are here. Lavishly photographed, Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine provides all the inspiration and know-how needed for stunning success in the kitchen.

Chapters cover the basic menu stops, including soups, salads and sides, plus the likes of Steamed Crab Rolls from "Bites, Snacks and Little Plates"; Blueberry Bread from "Crackers and Breads"; and Lamb Sausage Wrap from "Sandwiches." Chapters on dessert offer such treats as Swedish Pancakes with Lingonberry Whipped Cream and Chocolate "Blini"; and a drinks section includes the unusual and very palatable likes of Lemon, Pepper, and Dill Aquavit and Yellow Mary Mix, a yellow-tomato bloody mary descendant. Illustrated with ravishing color photos that reiterate the sleek pleasures of the food, Aquavit is as special as its innovative and very worldly author. --Arthur Boehm