Ya, Sweden: for one of New York City's culinary stars, Scandinavian cuisine is just good homecooking.

In the rarefied world of haute cuisine, a black executive chef is indeed all anomaly. Rarer still is Marcus Samuelsson, one who is not only the co-owner of an acclaimed Scandinavian restaurant in New York City, but also author of a definitive cookbook: Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine (Houghton Mifflin Company, $45.00, October 2003, ISBN 0-618-10941-2).

Not since the heyday of Tavern on the Green's celebrated Patrick Clark has a black chef captured the accolades and esteem of the culinary community. Under Samuelsson's direction, Restaurant Aquavit has earned three-star reviews from the New York Times, and he has garnered Rising Star Chef and Best Chef awards from the prestigious James Beard Foundation. He also recently opened a second Big Apple eatery, Riingo.

Samuelsson, at 32, is a master of a style of cuisine largely unfamiliar to many Americans. "I was raised around this type of food, so it's not unusual to me," Samuelsson explains. "But, one of the great things about New York City is that it's an incredible melting pot of different cultures and cuisines, and it gives you a real opportunity to experiment."

When he was three years old, Samuelsson's birth parents died in a tuberculosis epidemic in his native Ethiopia. He and his sister were adopted by a Swedish couple and raised on the west coast of Sweden, where Samuelsson learned the basic principles of cooking from his adopted grandmother, who worked as a private cook for a wealthy family.

"We'd do things like go hunting for mushrooms, or go out fishing on our own when I was nine," Samuelsson recalls. "By spending time with her and being raised around food and nature, I didn't just learn how to cook, I learned where food comes from, how to identify different things and combine ingredients to create unique flavors."

A summer job in a bakery as a teenager led to a formal education at a Swedish culinary school by day and stints in restaurants at night. After completing apprenticeships in Switzerland and Austria, then working as a chef aboard a cruise ship, Samuelsson was selected by the owner of Aquavit for an eight-month apprenticeship in 1991.

Then he left the States and worked as a chef in France before being asked, in 1994, to return to Aquavit and work under Jan Sandel, then executive chef. When Sandel died unexpectedly, the 24-year-old Samuelsson took charge. "I was ready," he says. "New York is a tough town, and I worked hard to get where I am. No one handed anything to me on a silver platter. I've been choking professionally since I was a teenager, so I feel that I earned my success.

"I wanted to keep the identity of Aquavit in the book, but the recipes are different from what we do in the restaurant," explains Samuelsson. "They're more adaptable to cooking at home, and I reworked many of the recipes with the American palate in mind."

Apart from the use of an occasional exotic ingredient, the recipes are short, manageable and accompanied by large, lush photographs. He offers more than 100 recipes, ranging from his interpretations of Swedish meatballs and Glogg (a spiced wine) to creative twists on roasted red snapper with lemongrass and crispy potatoes coated in Japanese breadcrumbs.

Samuelsson's new restaurant, Riingo, features Japanese American cuisine. Says Samuelsson, "The book took three years to complete, the new restaurant took many years to get going, so I don't have plans to start any other projects in the near future. Creatively, I'm where I want to be."

Melissa Ewey Johnson is a food writer and editor in New York City.