Around the Table with Brooke Black

On community dinners in the Danish countryside, her love for open-faced sandwiches, and the food she misses most from home

Hi, friends! WE SURVIVED THE HOLIDAY BREAK (!!!), and we’re back to regular scheduled programming with our Around the Table interview series. Raise your hand if you’re also ready to get back to the routine! It’s been so interesting to hear stories from other expat moms around the world, and we hope you like these just as much as we do. Today we’re getting a peek into life as an American mom in Denmark with Brooke Black.

Some housekeeping — As we move forward with this fun little project, we’ll be alternating between these interviews and our top 10 lists. As always, feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment below. We love when you chime in! - Katie & Meredith

A little bit about Brooke

Brooke, her husband, and their two young daughters left Los Angeles for a trip to Denmark during the pandemic. The intention was to visit her husband’s family and return to the U.S., but instead, they stayed, bought and renovated a 1722 farmhouse in Jutland, and are now settled in Copenhagen. By day she’s a global communication director at a Danish-founded podcast and audiobook company, but you can also follow her on Instagram where she shares her life abroad.

Cooking & food:

What’s the one kitchen utensil or tool you can’t live without?
There are three: a toaster for my English muffins and toasted PBJs when I’m cold and feeling a bit sick, a cheese slicer (the kind with the wire), and teaspoons. I hate tablespoons—I find them to be offensive and far too large for what I’m eating.

What did your kids (or kids’) school serve for lunch today, or what did you pack them?
My husband usually packs the kids' lunches. Today they had chopped up veggies—cucumbers, red peppers, carrots. A bolle (bun) with butter and cheese, and some fruit—a pear and part of a fuyu persimmon (my favorite fruit).

What’s the most surprising thing about grocery shopping in Denmark?
I find the selection to be limited, no matter what size grocery store you are in. The dairy section is massive and takes some time to understand. Letmælk for example is not “light milk” it’s more like whole milk. Also, it’s really easy to accidentally buy a really stinky Danish Danbo cheese, so stinky that the second you open the refrigerator it stinks up the whole house even if you have double bagged it. It tastes great and not at all like the smell, but it’s a force to be reckoned with. They have formulas on them that say things like “45% mellemlagret,” and not even Danes know what it means. The only non-stinky cheese that is mild is from Samsø.

What’s a food you’ve come to love that you’d never tried before moving to Denmark?
A stjerneskud! (shooting star)—it’s a traditional smørrebrød (open faced sandwich) dish that involves a piece of dark rye bread with butter piled with different types of seafood, usually a fried fish filet, baked filet, shrimp, mayo, remoulade, roe, a slice of lemon, and asparagus.

What’s your go-to meal when you don’t have time to cook?
Instant ramen with a hard boiled egg if I’m feeling fancy (I cannot believe I’ve picked back up an instant ramen habit in Denmark. I haven’t eaten it since college but I’m always cold here, and it works if I want something quick and easy). Otherwise breakfast for dinner or taco night.

What’s one “kitchen hack” you’ve learned since becoming a mom?
It’s a bit silly, but folding the kids’ madpakke (packed lunch) with wax paper/sandwich paper is a fun hack. Because sandwiches are open faced in Denmark, you need something to put in between the layers, so it’s a fun little set of maybe three half slices of bread with different toppings unfolded in a little wax paper accordion. The dark rye bread is so dense you don’t need a top layer anyway!

What’s one food that you miss from the U.S. that you can’t find or recreate?
Broccoli rabe/rapini! I can’t find it anywhere—not even in Italy when we visited, and that’s supposed to be where it’s from. My mom makes it every Thanksgiving as part of our Italian-American Thanksgiving, and I miss it so much.

What’s your favorite place to go out to eat in Copenhagen?
We love Koreansk BBQ in Nordhavn in Copenhagen. It’s an all you can eat Korean BBQ place with cat robot waiters, and you can order food on a little ipad. It’s fun for the whole family.

Family & community:

What’s a local food custom or tradition that you’ve adopted into your own routine?
Danish lunch hours are 11:00-12:00 typically, and at my office, if you get there at 12:00, there’s barely any food left. Most eat between 11:15-11:30 so I’m used to eating lunch earlier now and together with my colleagues, which is so nice, instead of mindlessly at my desk like I did in the U.S.

What’s the best food-related memory your family has made since moving to Denmark?
When we first moved to the little village out in the country, all the neighbors ate together in the community house every week or every other week. Two families would join together and do the cooking. It was really special to have that time with the neighbors, who were of all ages and vocations, and be able to feel like we went out for the night but just go back home through our backyard in two minutes.

How have you built a village where you are?
We are lucky to live in a special community in Copenhagen that compares to the one we lived in in the country. I’m chipping away at it, through work friends, neighbors, and parents of my kids’ friends. It’s slow going, but I’m happy it includes a mix of Danes and non-Danes.

Just for fun:

What are you loving reading to/ listening to / watching right now?
I’m catching up on the second season of Rings of Power, and just watched the new Netflix holiday movies Hot Frosty and Our Little Secret. I’m loving Lindsay Lohan’s comeback. I’m also reading the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales, as well as revisiting a lot of Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears books as I try to get my kids into my English favorites from when I was a kid.

Where else can we find you on the internet?
I’m mainly on Instagram and TikTok. I occasionally write articles about life in Denmark for places like CNBC, Business Insider, and Scary Mommy. I also appear semi-frequently on the podcast, “What Are You Doing In Denmark?”

If you could only eat one cuisine or food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
That’s a tough one. Probably Japanese because of the variety of noodles and sushi, but a close second would be Italian.