China Crumpet

Tomorrow I leave for Paris-Copenhagen-Lomma and not a moment too soon! China has been eating on my nervs and I know there is nothing better than a cold and wet Swedish Christmas to make me see that my life actually is pretty good. Either that or I will fall head over heels in love with my new little nephew, eat too much yummy christmas food again and see long lost friends which will make it difficult for me to return to my smog ridden current residence. I guess the high prices will snap me back to reality, and I hope my relatives will give me a harder time than usual to ensure no a good and healthy dose of China home sickness. I’ll keep you posted…

Today I read this article that mentioned a fantasy menu written by Mark Twain where he discribes his favourite American foods. Since I am also stuck in a foreign land and waiting to go home very soon to partake of Swedish Christmas gluttony, I have decided to make a list of my own. Here is my modest dream menu from the relatively unknown but underrated Swedish kitchen:

Pickled herring in all its varieties
Stuffed egg halves
Pickled herring cake
Smoked eel with scrambled eggs
Lobster soup
Dill boiled crayfish
Dill cured salmon
Smoked mackerel with crisp bread and bacon
Caviar with sour cream and chopped onion

Cold cuts of raindeer, venison and roast beef
Liver pate with pickled gherkins
Smoked Lamb
Smoked Ham

Baked salmon with herbs and lemon
Grilled trout
Baked pike with horseradish
Potato and anchovy gratain (Jansson’s Temptation)

Pickles
Beetroot salad
Potato sallad
Grilled root vegetables with herbs
Butter fried chantarelle mushrooms
Clove stewed red and brown cabbage
Dill boiled new potatoes

Roast goose
Moose Wallenbergare
Meatballs
Game pie
Game sausages

Sour cream spiked with chives
Lingonberry sauce
Cream gravy
Grainy mustard
Warm dill sauce
Dill mayonnaise
Herb butter

Crisp bread
Whole grain bread
Soft, thin wheat bread
Vört bread

Apple pie with custard
Rhubarb tart
Sweet rice pudding
Wild rasberry cream cake
Cinnamon rolls
Swedish cheeses with crackers and wild gooseberries
Waffles with cloudberry jam and whipped cream

So there you have it. I am going to try to make all of these one day and post recipes but for now, our minds are free to wander…

Exactly one week from now it is Jonas birthday and on his birthday it is exactly one year since I had the best meal of my life. We went to a restaurant in Malmö called Vendel at Sturehof and experienced the genius of their six course tasting menu. Chef Alexander Sjögren from VaS, nabbed a third place in “cook of the year” 2008 in Sweden AND he is single. Ladies, seriously, you’re going to let this Swedish Chef get away? Really? Anyway, before I begin a rant on how nerdy guy’s (especially food nerds) deserve better, I should continue and say that I had never before experienced food that made me completely silent with awe. In fact, I have never experienced anything that made me silent. The ingredients were lifted to heights that I never knew pumpkin and cauliflower could reach. I also found out that olive oil goes excellently with chocolate, something I have later discovered that all other foodies already knew. Don’t I feel sheepish.

I think though, that this meal was not as much a great meal (it was, it really was, don’t get me wrong, sometimes I cry a little bit when I think about how good it was) as it was a paradigm shift of sorts. It took me from knowing food could be good to knowing food could be art, a significant difference. Since then, I have tried to perfect my cooking of ingredients and improve on my level of adventure when it comes to making a meal. I still have a very long way to go but I am getting better at it and I am relishing the feeling of people honestly loving my food. It annoys me so much when people make statements like “food is fuel” and other such nonsense. It also annoys me that people have completely stopped making food from scratch and have started using processed rubbish as a substitute for real food.

So as the one year anniversary of my perfect meal comes up and my impending wedding/stretch mark zapping/reaching goal weight looms closer, I have decided to take my new found love of all things fresh and delicious to new levels by really paying attention to my ingredients.

Now, where’s that bag of chips?

So in Sweden, you celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, the 24^th of December. The day starts with getting pimped out; this normally involves curling irons and pretty clothes. Then, there is Christmas lunch at 13.00. Lunch is eggs and pickled herring, with something called Janson’s Temptation. It is a kind of gratin made with potatoes, onions, anchovies and cream. Delish. Then there is a break for Walt Disney’s Christmas which all of Sweden’s population of 9 million watches religiously at 15.00. When it gets dark, around four or five pm, it is present time, after which we have our MEAT. The meat course consists of ham with mustard, sausages, meatballs, ribs and more of the left over fishy stuff. Then there is a rice pudding desert, chocolate pralines and fish again in the middle of the night. At Christmas, all Swedes are stuffed like sausages by Christmas morning and we eat left-over’s for the rest of the week. I feel faint even typing about it.

I love Christmas food. And as a kid, I loved it so much that I did not realize that you were only supposed to take a little of each thing so for each helping, I helped myself to a hell of a lot too much. Anyway, for a couple of years in a row (when I was around ten years old I think) I stuffed myself so full of food that I was in absolute blistering agony. My parents thought it was appendicitis and took me to the hospital pronto only to find out that it was simple indigestion. After the second or third time of this, my parents got savvy and put restrictions on my plating.

The moral of the story: check your kids plate when they come back from the buffet table.