The best guide to Swedish cooking?

What is the best guide to Swedish cooking?

I think the book "Vår kokbok" (Our cookbook) is the best. Sorry, you must first learn Swedish in order to read it. But it's worth it.

The book in the picture is the family's third, or perhaps fourth, copy of the book. We have used the others so much that they have fallen apart.

Now a new edition is published. You can watch a selection of its content via this link: http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789113051000/var-kokbok/
(provläs = look inside part of the book).

Spring in the air and rhubarb on the ground

Rhubarb is one of the first primeurs in Sweden. It has grown quickly this year because spring has been warm and alternately sunny and rainy.

 

 

Therefore it is now time to cook rhubarb pie.

It will be on absolutely newly harvested rhubarb from our own cultivation.

I cut the rhubarb into small pieces and put them in an ovenproof glass bowl. This time I chose to also add small pieces of an apple from our own harvest last fall.

Over the fruit I pour a little syrup (treacle). Sometimes I take the brown sugar. Today I used the so-called bread syrup, which has richer taste than ordinary light syrup.

I put the fruit in the oven at 390 degree Fahrenheit (200 degree Celsius) for about 20 minutes to be limp.

Meanwhile, I do pie batter. It is called the crumb pie. It's easy to do and it does not need to be rolled. It consists of approximately 150 grams of butter or margarine (I will gladly use a little more), 1.5 to 2 decilitre oatmeal and same amount flour. According to the recipe it should also be 2-3 tablespoons sugar. Sugar is not so wholesome, so I'll take just one or two teaspoons. The butter will melt and then the flour and sugar mixed together with the butter.

I crumble pie dough over the fruit and put in the oven for about 30 minutes or as long as required to get a nice color on the surface.

 

 When the pie has cooled down, we eat it with a little cream.

 

Sour! Lovely! Lots of spring taste in your mouth!!

Pickled herring (inlagd sill)

Dear Readers! 

Maybe you are tired of reading my repeated tributes to fish in general and herring in particular. But when it comes to Swedish food, herring is an important ingredient.

One of our specialties is pickled herring.

Mostly, we buy it ready in small glass jars as in the picture. It can be flavored with various spices and herbs, such as onion, pepper, dill and black currant. 

Sometimes pickled herring lies in spicy mayonnaise - preferably seasoned with mustard and fish eggs. I prefer the herring pickled in clear liquor, onion, pepper and maybe some additional spice.

If you want to put your personal touch on the pickled herring, you have to do it yourself.

The easiest way is to buy a can of salted herring fillets. These are hosed down with cold water and cut into thick slices.

Then make liquor. There are lots of recipes. The basic recipe consists of cold liquor with

• 2 cups of sugar
• 1.5 deciliter water
• 0.5 dl of vinegar (12%).

Stir until sugar dissolves. Cut a red onion into thin slices and crush 10 allspice.

Herring fillets are interspersed with onion rings and pepper e.g., in a glass jar. The liquor is poured over the herring. The dish should rest in refrigerator for two days before serving.

Delicious!

This dish is mandatory on the Christmas table, but equally welcome at any time.

Kassler (slices of smoked pork) with good sauce salad

When you have worked hard for a few hours of digging in the garden plot, it's nice to have a quickly cooked, satiating and tasty lunch.

This we did today: Kassler (slices of smoked pork) with good sauce salad.

• Kassler, about 1 centimeter thick slices roasted in 2 minutes on each side
• fried mushrooms
• boiled potatoes

and Sauce salad:

• 1 deciliter creme fraiche
• 1.5 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 2-2.5 teaspoon French mustard
• some dried tarragon
• some coarse ground black pepper
• 1 diced acidic apple, gladly in shell (we used "mistress apple"/"Husmorsäpple" harvested in October 2014)
• 4 canned pineapple slices diced

The apple was harvested in October 2014 but still in very good condition. 

From our own plantations in the garden.

Simple but very tasty.

 Drink? Light beer is good enough.

The result of the digging

Grilled fennel and rose pepper marinated salmon

As I told you earlier, Swedes are very fond of fish dishes. The same applies to me.

Yesterday I and my wife visited the restaurant Lomma fiskbod (fish shop) in Lomma, a seaside village about 10 miles west of Lund.

The restaurant is located right next to the quay where the fishing boats are moored and unload their cargo.

We ordered grilled fennel and rose pepper marinated salmon with horseradish rouille and fried potatoes. (In Swedish: Halstrad fänkåls- och rosepeppargravad laxfilé med pepparrots rouille samt råstekt potatis.) Excellent! There was also a salad buffet with various vegetables, sauces, homemade bread and butter.

The main course

From the salad buffet

 

View from the restaurant window.

  

Images from the surroundings

Unfortunately, the camera in my cellphone has poor resolution, so the pictures are not possible to enlarge more.

Christmas buffet dinner at Louisiana

Some time ago I visited Denmark's world famous art museum, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, for the opening of the exhibition of Paula Modersohn-Becker's art.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is organizing the first major exhibition in Scandinavia of the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907). The exhibition comprises about 100 paintings and 40 drawings. See more: http://en.louisiana.dk/exhibition/paula-modersohn-becker

But Louisiana is not only art. The Louisiana Café offers very good food and boasts one of the most beautiful panoramic views of the Øresund. Therefore we combined the art exhibition with a delightful Christmas buffet dinner.

This is what was served:

Smoked salmon with Dijon cream sauce and crispy herbs / Celery soup with ginger and crispy bacon / Rib roast from Grambogård with smoked juniper berries / Glazed duck breast with pepper and honey / Orange sauce / Red cabbage salad with. salted walnuts and white wine syrup / Spinach salad with baked apples / Wheat kernels with pickled red onions and chives / Carrots with cinnamon and orange / Bread w. clove salt / Seeded rye bread / Potatoes roasted w. bay leaves and goose fat / Rice pudding with cherry sauce and caramelised almonds.

Rice pudding with cherry sauce and caramelised almonds.

Well, Louisiana is located in Denmark and I live in Sweden. But between Denmark and Sweden is a bridge across the Øresund. Therefore, it is very easy for me to take my car and drive away from Lund in Sweden (where I live), across the sound, via Copenhagen to Louisiana. Motorway almost the entire route.

Two big plaice - fresh from the sea

I have said before that if a plaice is too big you can instead buy a flounder. The other day, however, was the hunger for real plaice too great. Therefore, we bought two big plaice.

Of course, we bought them in the market square of our city - Lund. There are two fish trucks. One that comes all the way from Gothenburg (300 km from Lund). And one from the more closely related harbor village, Lomma (10 km from Lund).

Here are the fish trucks:

The one from Gothenburg

And the one from Lomma from which we bought the plaice 

 

We used two pans to fry the plaice.

We did own remoulade sauce. It is a sauce that is very well suited to plaice.

The sauce is mixed by:

• crème fraiche
• mayonnaise
• chopped pickled cucumbers
• chopped olives
• curry powder
• white pepper
• tarragon
• salt