Baked Salmon with Creamy Dijon Mustard & Herb Sauce

It turned out to be the bucket-list trip I didn’t know I needed. From Oslo and Lillehammer to Rindal, Trondheim, and Geiranger, and all of the magical places in between, this was the road trip I could have only dreamed of—until this summer, when, on a whim, we pointed the car toward Norway to escape the intense summer heat we had been experiencing.

Norway is truly the motherland for me. It’s a deeply emotional place, filled with childhood stories, traditions, and memories of time spent there with my mother and her family. Growing up in California with my Mexican-American father, and with the influence of Mexico just over the border, always left me thinking I related more strongly to that side of my heritage than to the Norwegian in me. But once I set foot in Norway one summer solstice evening, I’ve never felt more connected to a place. And with each subsequent visit, those feelings seem to grow deeper.

Half the fun of road-tripping is discovering the off-the-beaten-path places I hope never make their way onto the curated lists of travel influencers. Whenever we thought we had seen the most stunning landscape we had ever seen, we’d come around another curve in the road and have our breath taken away all over again.

The villages felt precious, filled with kind people and a way of life so enticing that, more than once, I found myself wishing we could simply stay.

There was a small bakery one of our Airbnb hosts told us about, Bakarhuset På Romundstad. Open only on Saturdays from 10 to 2, the little shop sits along a mountainside dirt road, where cars line up to pick up loaves of freshly baked sourdough, pizza dough, sauces made by the owner, Inger, and beautifully handcrafted gifts, many made from local wood. In fact, the gorgeous kitchen had been built by Inger’s father, using wood sourced locally.

We spent ten days quietly tucked away in a secluded log cabin on a lake. It was bliss. We watched the light change throughout the long days and cooked in the tiny kitchen or over a wood-fired barbecue pit. Breakfasts were Norwegian waffles and brown cheese on buttered toast; dinners were steaming bowls of soup or Norwegian salmon.

One meal we made twice was oven-roasted salmon with a creamy Dijon  mustard-herb sauce, served with pan-sautéed Hokkaido squash and a Norwegian-style smashed pickled cucumber salad.

It was the perfect cabin meal. The individual ingredients, restrained seasonings, and cooking technique might make you underestimate the flavor. But it’s one of those meals where the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.

The salmon is baked, wrapped in parchment to steam it gently, keeping it moist and tender. The squash can be pan-sautéed or roasted in the oven. For this dinner, I keep the spices simple. As the squash cooks in the pan or roasts in the oven, it caramelizes, which goes beautifully with the salmon. The smashed cucumber salad is cool, with just a hint of tang and sweetness from the brine, and the sauce, which couldn’t be much easier to make, pulls the whole dish together. It’s elegant without being pretentious, and incredibly delicious.

As I reflect on the past few weeks and as we head south to Copenhagen, Zurich, and Lyon, I’m reminded of the warmth of the Norwegian people and the beauty of the land. I feel truly nourished.

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