Danish Sandwich with Egg & Shrimp: Smørrebrød med æg og rejer

This open-faced sandwich uses Danish rye bread (rugbrød), which is dark, but unfortunately it is not available to many people outside of Denmark, unless you check online, or if you happen to have a local bakery that makes this as a specialty bread. So... you can substitute the much more easily found pumpernickel, and German or German-style pumpernickel is more like Danish rye, but any good pumpernickel should be fine. Extra small cooked shrimp of 61 to 70 per pound or small cooked shrimp of 51 to 60 per pound are best for this, but the day I went to the seafood shop, they were out of extra small shrimp, so the choice was made for me. In Sweden, they do a very similar shrimp sandwich, but they often use cucumber slices as one of the ingredients, but I don't believe they use watercress or arugula. In the U.S., depending upon where you live, watercress might be difficult to find, but arugula is a good substitute and easier to find. Watercress was once sold in many produce markets, but its availability has declined in the U.S. 

Ingredients (4 servings):

4 slices pumpernickel bread or Danish rye bread (rugbrød)
4 lettuce leaves (head lettuce or romaine lettuce)
4 hard boiled eggs
extra small or small cooked shrimp(s) * (see preparation below for amounts)
juice of one lemon
2 tomatoes, cut into quarters
some arugula or watercress, rinsed and drained on paper towels  
4 pats of butter (at room temperature, to spread easily)
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
black pepper to taste
salt to taste

Boil the eggs for 7 minutes, pour off the hot water, rinse the eggs in cool water, and let them cool, then remove the shells. Slice the eggs (if you have an egg slicer, that's perfect). Butter each slice of bread with a pat of butter, then cover each bread slice with a leaf of lettuce. Put the egg slices of one egg onto each slice of lettuce. Put some mayonnaise on top of the egg slices, add some shrimps to each slice of bread,** then add 2 tomato quarters to each sandwich. Sprinkle a little lemon juice onto each open "sandwich," then add a little watercress to each and finish with salt and pepper to taste.

*  In the U.S., the plural "shrimps" is seldom heard, as "shrimp" is overwhelmingly used as both singular and plural.  

** If you get the extra small shrimps, with 61 to 70 shrimps per pound (often called "salad shrimp" in the U.S.), use about 8 or 10 per slice of bread, or the small shrimps, with 51 to 60 shrimps per pound, use about 6 or 7 per slice of bread.

 This is German-style pumpernickel bread...similar to Danish rye bread... 

WORD HISTORY:
Weir-While not all that commonly used today in American English (it might still be used more often in some parts of Britain), it is still around in place names, although sometimes spelled "war(r)," as in "Warwick" (meaning "settlement by a weir"), and also as a family name.^ It goes back to Indo European "wer," which meant "to cover, to shut off." The notion of "cover/shut off" gave Old Germanic "warjanan," which meant "protect;" thus also, "defend." This same meaning continued in the various Germanic dialects, including Old English, which had "awerian" (to defend against) and "bewerian" ("to guard, to protect"), but it also often took on the meaning in the West Germanic languages (English is West Germanic) of "dam up;" that is, "protect from water by shutting it in." In Old English this was represented in the verb form "werian,"^^ ("to dam up") and there was the noun "wer," which meant "a dam, an embankment, an enclosed area of water;" as well as the noun, "wering," meaning "the process of damming up water." Related forms in the other Germanic languages are numerous, but some are: German noun "Wehr," meaning, "military force, weapon, shield, enclosed water area for keeping fish, a dammed off area of water;"^^^ the noun "Abwehr," meaning "defense;" the verb "bewehren" meaning, "to arm with weapons, to reinforce;" the verb "wehren" meaning, "to defend, to offer resistance to"; Low German has the verb "wehren" meaning "to defend, to offer resistance to," the noun "Wehr" meaning, "dammed off area of water"; Dutch has the verb "weren" meaning, "to fend off, to repulse;" the noun "weer" meaning, "defense, a dammed off area of water"; West Frisian "ferwaarje" meaning, "to defend, to offer resistance to," the noun "ferwar" meaning "defense, dike"; the Danish noun "værge" meaning "guardian"; the Swedish noun "värja" meaning "sword," and the verb "värja" (same as the noun) meaning "to defend, to protect"; Icelandic verb "verja" meaning, "to guard, to defend."

^ The family name "Weir" isn't exclusively derived from the word "weir," as some families have the name from a different source.

^^ Old Saxon, the Saxon dialect/language that remained in northern Germany after part of the Saxons went to Britain, where they helped to found England, also had "werian."

^^^  For history buffs, "Wehr" is the same word in German "Wehrmacht," the term Hitler used for his armed forces; with the "macht" part being the close relative of the English noun "might" (strength, power, force).  

Danish Liver Pâté: Leverpostej

"Leverpostej" is pronounced like: "layver-post-eye."

You don't have to chop the liver, pork fat and onion into some exact size, just into somewhat smaller pieces, as these will all be put into the grinder or food processor. And please don't cringe if you don't like anchovies. This is not a pizza. The anchovies are blended into the mixture and you will not get the strong taste, at all.

Often served on Danish whole rye bread (rugbrød),* with all or some combination of pickled beets, fried mushrooms and bacon. Finding Danish whole rye bread outside of Denmark will likely be a problem, although "perhaps" some specialty bakeshops may have it, or similar. Of course you should be able to get it online, but German "Vollkornbrot" ** is "essentially" the same thing (if I were running for dog catcher in Copenhagen, I just lost), and it is available in some stores in parts of the U.S. and Canada, including here in Cleveland. Some Vollkornbrot is imported from Germany (typically it comes sliced), while others are made in Canada or the United States (usually sliced, but in larger loaves). Both Danish "rugbrød" and German "Vollkornbrot" are types of dark rye bread with various cracked grains and seeds in them. 

Ingredients:

2 pounds pork liver, cut into somewhat smaller pieces
1/3 pound pork fat, cut into smaller pieces
2 1/2 cups roughly chopped onion
2 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons flour
6 anchovies
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons black pepper

Grind the liver, pork fat and onions to a fine consistency. The ground mixture will be runny and will look yucky. Add the other ingredients and mix in well. Put mixture into a loaf pan or loaf pans. Put the pan (or pans, if preparing all together) into a shallow pan and add some warm water to make a water bath for the loaf pan, also known as a "bain-marie" (see Word History, below) Bake in a 350 F degree oven. The baking time will solely depend upon the size loaf pan or pans you use, so it might take 45 minutes for a small pan, but 60 to 90 minutes, or even 2 hours, for a larger pan. The juices from the leverpostej should be fairly clear to signal that the dish is done. During baking, if the top of the leverpostej begins to become too dark, just lay a piece of foil over it. Danes at times use small disposable aluminum baking pans for their leverpostej and they fill some such pans and then freeze them. They need only remove a pan from the freezer and bake it, when desired. 

* The words of the Danish compound "rugbrød" are closely related to English "rye bread," as both words are Germanic in derivation, and English is from the West Germanic branch of Germanic and Danish is from the North Germanic branch. "Rye" was once spelled with a "g" in English, but the sound morphed into "ay/eye" sound, as happened similarly (somewhat different sound of simply 'ay') in a number of other English words like, "may," the verb, once spelled "mæg," and "day," which was once spelled "dæg."

** "Vollkornbrot" is literally "full corn bread" in English, but in English we say "whole grain bread." In North American English the word "corn" has come to mean the usually yellow kernels from a cob (synonym: maize) during the last couple of hundred years or so, but this word is from Germanic and it has long been the general word for grain throughout the Germanic languages, and it still retains that meaning in the UK, where "corn" and "grain" are essentially synonyms. The word "grain" is not an original English word, but it is rather a Latin-derived word, that was borrowed into English.
    
Slice of whole rye bread (I used Vollkornbrot) with "leverpostej," topped with bacon, with pickled beets and fried mushrooms on the side ...

WORD HISTORY: 
Bain-marie-This term is used for "a water bath of a large, shallow pan of water with one or more smaller containers of food placed inside the pan, then put into an oven to cook gently and with less threat of the food sticking to the pan(s)." English borrowed the term from the same expression in French in the first half of the 1800s. This was the French rendering of Latin "balneum Mariae" ("bath of Maria"). French "bain" was derived from the verb "baigner" (to bathe, to have/take a bath), from Latin "balneare," with the same meaning, derived from the Latin noun "bal(i)neum" (a bath), which had been borrowed from Greek "balaneion," which meant, "warm water bath;" thus also, "a place for bathing, a bathroom." Where Greek got the word is unknown. The use of "Marie" seemingly goes to "Maria the Jewess," who was an alchemist in Egypt some time in the early centuries of the Christian Era. Such water baths were used in science, and she seems to have been mistakenly credited with the invention of these baths, at the time, so her name was applied to the process. "Marie" is simply the French rendering of "Maria."