Black (Licorice) Friday

I'm not sure if we've mentioned this before, but licorice is a pretty big deal here in Denmark.   How big?  Let me give you some examples.

While pregnant, my doctor advised me not to eat more than 75 grams of licorice per day until the baby arrived.  I had never in my wildest dreams considered eating 75 grams of licorice in a day.  But people here regularly do!  Let me just say, 75 grams is a lot.  Also, eating licorice every day?  Only the Scandinavians do that.

Now imagine an American fair or amusement park.  Obviously there's a hot dog stand, an ice-cream stand, and possibly some sort of fried-dough-- funnel cake, churros, deep-fried Twinkies, whatever.  I give you Tivoli, the enchanting Danish amusement park.  There is a sausage stand, an ice-cream stand, and a licorice stand.  See below.

I was once on an SAS flight from Copenhagen to New York, and the available hot drinks were coffee (obviously not decaf) and licorice tea.  None of the flight attendants seemed to find this at all odd; in fact, no mention was made of the fact that it was licorice tea--it was just called "tea."  I personally find licorice tea truly abominable, although I am doing my best to Dane-ificate and have embraced both black and salty licorice.

If you didn't gasp, you should have (and have obviously never tried salty licorice).  As a child I shunned black licorice and only accepted the red stuff, which I've never seen here in Denmark and Danes would probably call "konfekt" if they deigned to notice it at all.  Sometime in the last three years I started eating the black kind, probably because it was a naturally vegan product foisted on me at every turn.  And then I kind of liked it.  And then I discovered the really good stuff--gourmet licorice, if you will-- Lakrids by Johan Bulow.  And then Johan Bulow had the salty kind too, so I tried it and, you guessed it, I kind of liked it.

Yesterday I was on my way to yoga and saw a sign announcing that the king of licorice, Johan Bulow himself, will be here in Aarhus on Friday, signing copies of his new book, "Lakrids i Maden." It will feature 72 recipes for both sweet and savory dishes, all containing licorice in some form.  I may need this book (though it is surely not vegan) simply because I can't imagine 72 ways to use licorice.

The Danes, however, are one step ahead, and have already developed licorice bread, ice cream, croissants, and coffee.  When I remember that I've heard licorice referred to as "the Danish chocolate," this seems OK to me.  But then I think, "licorice coffee? why???"

I guess the Dane-ificating has a ways to go yet.