China Crumpet

My waitress didn’t accept this bill tonight. Took me a while to figure out why. Can you?

Christmas at the Mauritzon’s this year will be celebrated in Beijing.

This means new challenges in bringing together the traditional Swedish Christmas smorgasbord of delicacies such as pickled herring and smoked eel. In order to seek out some of these Swedish must haves, we went to IKEA yesterday, to look at our fellow Beijinger’s sleeping in the bedding section and picnicing in the kitchen section, but also to purchase some of those Christmas essentials such as herring, tubed caviar spread for the egg platter and anchovies for the classic, Jansson’s temptation.

Unfortunately, we were out of luck. While we managed to buy a new salad bowl and cutting board and stock up on tea lights, IKEA seemed to have forgotten what Swedes eat for Christmas and had stocked up on candy and beer instead of herring and anchovies. We left with a bag of dill chips, some crisp bread, Swedish cheese and, luckily, the famous caviar spread. Now however, a new game plan must be devised. I have set my mind to making a couple of soft cheeses, curing my own ham and dry curing salmon so hopefully things will be ok despite the huge gap on the fishy side of the table this year.

But for those of you who want to join me in my ham curing, I am following this recipe by Jens Linder for a traditional Swedish ham:

1 ham (4-6 kg)

For the dry cure:
4 tbs salt (without iodine, it colors the ham)
2 tbs sugar
1/2 tbs saltpeter

For the brine:
5 liters water
9 dl (3 3/4 cups) salt (again, without iodine)
2 tbs sugar
1/2 tbs saltpeter

Mix the ingredients for the dry cure and rub it into the ham with clean hands. Put the dry cured ham into a plastic or ceramic bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Leave in the fridge over night.

The next day, mix the ingredients for your brine in a saucepan and bring to a boil, skimming off anything that floats to the surface. Let cool.

When the brine is completely cool, pour it over the ham, cover and leave in a cool, dark place (like your fridge or a food cellar) for 15 days afterwhich it is (finally) ready to boil and mustard-glaze.

Good luck my friends, may your hams and mine come out brilliantly!

Breakfast is one of those things that you always miss when you are not at home, isn’t it? I consider myself pretty adventurous when it comes to eating but nothing for me beats a good old Swedish breakfast of warm rolls, a selection of hard and soft cheeses, deli-meats, some sliced veggies, home made jam, a soft boiled egg and a glass of orange juice. And the paper of course.

Here in Beijing, breakfast has been a particular challenge. We quickly ruled out you tiao, baozi, tea soaked eggs and warm soy milk. Although they are all delicious and it is nice to once in a while experience a true Beijing breakfast experience, the taste profile of that particular breakfast is not what I get out of bed for.

Lining up for some delicious shaobing and soy milk

For a while now, we have settled the matter by making oatmeal porridge with chopped dried fruits, fresh milk and cashew nuts. It has been a good healthy start to the day and yummy enough to have lasted a while.

Our usual brekkie

On the weekends however, when there are a few extra minutes to spare, I have recently found out that baking breakfast rolls is not as hard as it seems. Plus, with home made butter and jam, it’s almost like home!

To try your very own Swedish breakfast experience at home, boil an egg, buy some oranges and squeeze them for some lovely, fresh juice, get some cheese, jam and butter, brew your favorite tea and make a load of Källarfranska (Swedish breakfast rolls).

I usually cheat a bit and make the batter and roll them out the night before I want to eat them and then bake them in the morning. That way I can sleep in instead of having to spend the morning kneading dough and the house will still be filled with the gorgeous smell of newly baked bread while I enjoy the latest copy of the Economist.

Hot rolls on a smoggy morning

For 16 rolls you will need:

14 g instant dry yeast (swedes, this is the equivalent to a 50 g package of fresh yeast)
1/2 litre (2 cups) water, room temperature or slightly tepid
1 tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 tbs oil
13 dl all purpose flour

Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle.

Mix a couple of tablespoons of the water, the sugar and the yeast in a small bowl until everything is dissolved and leave it until you see tiny bubbles forming on the surface of the yeast mixture.

Pour the yeast mixture, oil and the rest of the water into the well you made in your flour and work the liquids into the flour with your hands. Knead the dough on a floured surface until you have a smooth, springy dough which isn’t too dry or too sticky. Add a little more flour if you need to.

Form the dough into a 50cm long sausage and cut it into 16 parts. Roll the balls slightly and then flatten them so you get 16 roundish dough lumps. Give them a flour coating by gently turning them in a bit of the flour you have on your work space. Put them, well spaced out, on a well oiled or buttered oven tray.

Now you can either put the tray in the fridge with some cling film over it and bake them (without the cling film) straight out of the fridge in the morning or you can let them rise for 40 minutes under a clean kitchen towel.

40 minutes later or the next morning, set your oven to 250°c and bake for 15 minutes or until golden. When they are finished, they should sound hollow when you tap them.

Enjoy with all your different spreads and toppings (if you really want to be Swedish, enjoy your bread with butter, a sharp hard cheese and a thin layer of apricot or orange marmalade) while reading your favorite mag or the paper.

What’s your favorite breakfast?

So I was getting water from the cooler at the office and glancing around to see if any new mooncake shipments had reached our lonley administrative part of the hospital. Alas, it had not. However, I was intregued by these:

On the bag it said beef orchid bean. I know these characters, part of them are in my Chinese name, so I knew I was not making a horrible error and that it actually said “marinated century livers” or something. And yet, it did not look like any kind of beef, or any kind of orchid.

My curiosity got the better of me and I grabbed a handful and tried them. They were pretty good, a sort of spiced up, dried broad bean snack. They tasted salty and savoury and sweet at the same time and were very fragrant (fragrant is my new favourite word, it sums up China so perfectly all year round). I suppose they are meant to taste a little floral and beefy, hence the name.

Perhaps it is time to explore other uneaten snacks in the capital.

It doesn’t happen often.

Every September or October however, for a few days at a time, Beijing transforms itself from a stinking, disgusting, huge, grimy, pile of dust to a gorgeous, urban wonderland. On Saturday, we had spent the sunny day sitting outside the glitzy Shin Kong Place discussing agriculture politics and the outfit of the girl sitting next to us. I was already in a good mood.

As we left, we wandered home next to the otherwise smelly river just south of the China world trade offices. The sky had turned a golden purple blue and bathed the skyscrapers in a pool of fairy dust. Next to the river, migrant workers had turned a rather unattractive group of ramshackle housing and un-hygenic restaurants into rubble and then into a park, complete with pagodas, sculptures and weeping willows. A cool breeze was stroking my skin.

Beijing had me once again.

Ok so it’s been a while. I have been up to my neck in starting my business, managing my busy hospital day job and arranging my wedding. Now that everything is pretty much ready to go, I can relax a little and write again.

But what to write about? Today, the answer came in the form of an umbrella hat.

I have long been chuckling at the thought of someone actually thinking of this, as my Chinese compatriots are deathly scared of the sun and avoid it at all costs. There have been Darth Vader welding masks, ball gloves, caps, hats, newspapers and many other innovative sun blockers, however, somehow I never thought an umbrella hat would appear in real life… But, the Chinese being the safety minded individuals they are, have of course thought of a way to stick an umbrella to their heads to leave hands free for steering.

I have nothing more to say, except, enjoy the pictures.

Pretty Bad-A**

so clever!

One of the great things about China is all the things one is able to do here. I have had the pleasure working as a freelancer for Swedish National Radio for almost five years now. It is great fun and I am able to express all the great things about China with background noise and everything which is a great China vent and a good way to focus on all the fun sides of Beijing. Definitely a way to stay sane.

This month, I am “correspondent of the month” which means four little anecdotes, a couple of interviews and some off the street reporting. In my first episode I talk about what has happened to the city after the Olympics.

It’s funny because I haven’t really thought about it at all but reporting about it made me realize that things have really changed in the last couple of years. It was brought home yesterday when I was sitting enjoying a little impromptu picnic in our garden, in the sunshine. Yes, you read correctly, there is a garden with real trees and everything right here in our complex. And we could, in fact, see the sun. They even have a network of ponds, a bunch of goldfish, birds that actually know how to sing, rock gardens and little mini-pagodas spread out around the area so that one can sit and contemplate the fake nature or take ones birds outside and hang their cages up in the trees for exercise, as one of our neighbors did yesterday. My point is, that it’s really quite nice here. Nicer than last year. People behave quite well too, which is strange at first but then becomes quite plesent.

Then I go out into what can only be described in the old cliche as the old “concrete jungle” where people spit and ones heels break on the uneven pavement. And of course, it looks really crappy compared to my garden. Plus, the places that wouldn’t have shocked me at all (read: toilets without running water and wooden floors) two years ago now seem really gross compared to the stainless steel loo’s in the hutong. In fact, just the other day I found a public loo that had a sitter instead of just squatters. And it was not covered in pee from someone squatting on top of the seat while peeing. Nice.

Anyway people throughout the land (and other lands), times (and me) they are a changin’ here in the ‘Jing. Our old roads are rapidly agin’. The order is rapidly fadin’.

You get the gist.

Living in China is both a blessing and a curse for the waist-line. There is so much cheap, delicious and deep fried food here that can wreak havoc on any diet but there are also such fantastic high fiber, delicious, low fat options AND great raw produce to be bought that staying fit shouldn’t be an issue.

For me though, staying fit is unfortunately always an issue. I love to eat, cook, think about food, come up with new recipes and even dream about food. It pains me to leave that last morsel of sweet and sour pork on the plate and I tend to always over order, over grocery shop and finish up the leftovers.

This has all had to change though, I realized on a recent trip to Chile (when I had to don my bikini for what would otherwise be winter but for the Southern hemisphere was summer), and enough really and truly had to be enough. Didn’t help that the Chileans actually BBQed cheese. Seriously.

Anyway, my vanity has gotten the better of me as my nuptials and the old wedding dress deadline draws near and I have also realized that my outfits and holiday photos will all improve greatly if I manage to shed some excess pounds. Enter the gym.

I have always liked the idea of going to the gym much more than actually doing it. I buy in to the idea of “pampering oneself” by working up a good sweat and then chilling out in the sauna. Unfortunately, the saunas here are too gross to hang out in which means a brisk and sweaty walk back home in the cold for a shower. No matter though, Jonas and I have been dragging our lazy behinds to the gym loyally for a while now and lo and behold, I actually have a bottom. I also no longer have a sack attached to my front that shirts and pants won’t cover.

I have discovered however that the goal of weight loss alone is not enough to motivate me to get my new bottom and I off to the gym every day so Jonas devised an evil plan. He told me how fast he runs and bet I couldn’t do it. It was a cunning and evil plan, so simple that it had to work. And it did.

So, for the first time in my life, I entered a running competition last week. I did not don a cute outfit or nice hair (as you can see) but I managed to finish not last. Pride abounds… and I have realized that 5 km (and perhaps more!) is not impossible. Jonas managed to run in record time of course but he will have a worthy opponent soon enough. I will keep you posted on my progress but until next time: I race on!

On your marks....

There are wedding shows and there are Chinese wedding shows. Yesterday, as I was walking through my local shopping mall, I stumbled upon what was obviously the Chinese variety and let me just tell you ladies, Chinese girls (and some boys I think) apparently take their weddings SERIOUSLY. I mean, I am starting to become a little obsessed with dresses and flowers but I have nothing on my Chinese counterparts.

The exhibitors were mostly photographers, because as everyone knows, you must have a life size wedding picture taken (framed, of course, in rococo style) as well as an enormous, glossy picture book of you and your beloved. The photographers all had clothes you could rent and they were also happy to photoshop you into a gorgeous landscape, with ummm…. wind farms in the background? Believe me, I tried my best to convince Jonas that we should have some photos taken of us and the wind farms in our gala best but he, alas, did not think it was worth 8000 Kuai.

At least now we know, a wedding is not a wedding without lots and lots of tulle, rhinestones, life size cardboard cutouts and a wind farm or two. Good to know.

I was surprised by today’s dooce post to read that she too had succumbed to the online survays circling facebook lately. This one was however fitting, since my life right now revolves around my coming nuptuals in August so I caved and filled it in, sucker that I am… feel free to continue the chain of cheesiness.

What are your middle names?
My middle name is Christina and his middle names are Erik Olof. 2-1, he wins.

How long have you been together?
Three and a half shiny years.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
About six months, but I knew he would be mine from pretty much day 1.

Who asked whom out?
Hah! I have never been one to procrastinate announcing my feelings of affection, my philosophy is that the worst thing that can happen is that they are flattered and I get over it. Anyway, in this case, let’s just say my blatent declarations of love and my persistence paid off.

How old are each of you?
He is 31 and I am 28 (almost 29). A good solid age difference.

Whose siblings do you see the most?
Well, since we live in China, my siblings live in Sweden and Belgium and his live in Sweden and California we see them all around once a year. Perhaps that’s why we all get along so well…?

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
Low blood sugar.

Did you go to the same school?
Nope! He is a tech-head and I am a tea clutching, blanket wearing hippie.

Are you from the same home town?
Kind of. We are both from the Malmö-ish area but he is from posh Lomma and I am from ghetto Kroksbäck.

Who is smarter?
I’m the brawn and he’s the brains in all matters, including work, friends, pub fights and arm wrestling.

Who is the most sensitive?
Let’s just say that he has resorted to laughing at me when I cry.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
The “ten kuai place”, local Chinese around the corner. We try to venture out to posher pastures sometimes but it’s just so convenient, delicious and cheap!

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
Chile. A 30 hour plane trip from Beijing but the best trip ever.

Who has the craziest exes?
Me. But he has the funniest ex-stories. Mine are just scary.

Who has the worst temper?
Both of us are really scared of conflict which makes for a wonderfully peaceful household.

Who does the cooking?
We both do. It’s our biggest hobby and a constant source of creativity, inspiration, conversation subjects and happiness.

Who is the neat-freak?
He has actually begun to enjoy doing dishes so I guess some of my obsessive compulsion is rubbing off.

Who is more stubborn?
Definitely him. I don’t even try any more.

Who hogs the bed?
Me. I am a bed hogger, a sleep talker and a general nuisance maker when I sleep.

Who wakes up earlier?
We’re both sleepy heads. He is better at getting up though.

Where was your first date?
We never went on dates, we just hung out.

Who is more jealous?
Neither of us are jealous because we’re both flirts. It just wouldn’t work if we got jealous.

How long did it take to get serious?
About 2 minutes.

Who eats more?
Me. I also eat faster and with worse table manners. He often compares me to labradors or fairy tale monsters at the dinner table.

Who does the laundry?
Xiao Li, our help.

Who’s better with the computer?
See the answer to the question about what schools we went to.

Who drives when you are together?
Since I moved to Asia before I got my license and Jonas is a petrol head, he has to. And wants to. I will hold out for a personal driver and a rolls royce. (Jonas just told me to edit this because Rolls Royce should be spellt with capital R’s.)

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