My Norwegian friend and teammate Steinar and his wife Katrine are about to move from Arnhem to Utrecht. In order to say goodbye to everybody in the Arnhem area, Steinar organized a bridge party at his house last weekend. 16 players and an individual movement where everybody plays 2 hands with everybody less. Add some good Norwegian food halfway and a well-stocked bar, and you have all the ingredients for an evening of fun. On the food, I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing as a Norwegian kitchen. So-far, the only Norwegian dish that I was aware off, was “graved lax” and that is more Scandinavian than Norwegian, this weekend that list doubled with Katrine’s excellent Norwegian soup.
A cute hand was this one. 2NT showed spade support, the rest of the auction was natural. West leads a small club, ♣3, ♣J, ♣A. You decide to cash the ♠A, ♠Q, ♠6, ♠3. That looks like a singleton ♠Q, so your next move is to play a heart to the ace and run the ♠9: ♠5, ♠2, ♠J. Your LHO returns a diamond to the ♦K, a diamond is returned to the ♦J and ♦Q, followed by the ♦A. So-far, it appears that neither side has played the hand very well. EW could have defeated the hand by returning a club instead of a diamond. Declarer on the other hand, hasn’t made much progress towards 9 tricks. He has lost 3 tricks and still appears to have a loser in both hearts and clubs. So, do you think that declarer can recover from all this, in the 6 card ending below?
Actually, he can. West doubled 1♠ for take-out and simply counting points shows that all the remaining high cards must be with west. Ruff the 3rd round of diamonds, play a heart to the king and ruff the last diamond. Now give up the lead in the position on the right. West will be forced to win the ♥Q but is then end-played: a club can be ducked to the ♣10, a red suit can be ruffed in dummy, followed by 2 black kings.
In literature, this is known as a partial elimination and endplay, partial because you only remove the exit cards from one player, not from the other, and the endplay only works if the right player is forced to win the ♥Q.
That also shows the defense to beat the contract after all. If west plays the ♥Q on the second round of hearts, east will win the ♥T with the ♥J. Any card he plays, will spoil the fun. Of course, this is not easy to spot.
About the graved lax, literally translated that means buried salmon. I’m sure that most people are familiar with it and it is actually readily prepared available from most shops. But, as usual, this dish is much better if you prepare it yourself and it is actually quite easy to do. We did it for our Easter brunch a couple of months ago, and it sure beats the pre-packaged, plastic fish from the supermarket.
Here is how: Get a piece of fresh, wild salmon (couple of pounds) from your local fish monger, with the skin still on it and the bones removed. Sometimes this is called sushi-grade salmon, you can of course do this yourself too. Take the best quality fish you can get, don’t go for artificially grown or frozen fish, the better the fish, the better the result. Take a cup of salt, half a cup of sugar, some fresh pepper and about 2 bunches of fresh chopped dill. Mix the ingredients. Cut the fish in 2 equal parts, put one part on a plate, put the salt-sugar-dill mixture on top (there should be a thick layer on the fish) and cover with the other half of the fish. Wrap in plastic foil. Put a second plate on top of the fish, then put a few stones or other heavy objects on top of it. The 2 layers of fish should be pressed tightly together. Leave this for a 2 days to a week. Norwegians will simply put the dish outside in the cold in a hole in the ground, the rest of the world can put it in the fridge. Unwrap the fish, remove the seasoning, cut into thin slices and serve with dill-mustard sauce (or whatever else you prefer).